EXCERPTS FROM KENT NERBURN’S BOOKS 

 

SIMPLE TRUTHS

CLEAR AND SIMPLE GUIDANCE ON THE BIG ISSUES IN LIFE

On Strength and Giving

We each have different kinds of strength. Some of us are able to persevere against hopeless odds. Some are able to see light in a world of darkness. Some are able to give selflessly with no thought of return, while others are able to bring a sense of importance into the hearts of those around them.

But no matter how we exhibit strength, its truest measure is the calm and certain conviction with which it causes us to act. It is the ability to discern the path with heart, and follow it even at moments we might wish to be doing something else. True strength is not about force, but about conviction. It lives at the center of belief where fear and uncertainty cannot gain a foothold. Its opposite is not cowardice and fear, but confusion, lack of clarity and lack of sound intention.

True strength does not require an adversary and does not see itself as noble or heroic. It simply does what it must without praise or need of recognition.

A person who can quietly stay at home and care for an ailing parent is as strong as a person who can climb a mountain. A person who can stand up for a principle is as strong as a person who can fend off an army. They simply have quieter, less dramatic kinds of strength.

True strength does not magnify others’ weaknesses. It makes others stronger. If someone’s strength makes others feel weaker, it is merely domination, and that is no strength at all.

Take care to find your own true strength. Nurture it. Develop it. Share it with those around you. Let it become a light for those who are living in darkness. Remember, strength based in force is a strength people fear. Strength based in love is a strength people crave. And strength combined with giving is even greater.

Giving is a miracle that can transform the heaviest of hearts. Two people, who moments before lived in separate worlds of private concerns, suddenly meet each other over a simple act of sharing. The world expands, a moment of goodness is created, and something new comes into being where before there was nothing.

Too often we are blind to this everyday miracle. We build our lives around accumulation — of money, of possessions, of status — as a way of protecting ourselves and our families from the vagaries of the world. Without thinking, we begin to see giving as an economic exchange — a subtracting of something from who and what we are — and we weigh it on the scales of self-interest.

But true giving is not an economic exchange; it is a generative act. It does not subtract from what we have; it multiplies the effect we can have in the world.

Many people tend to think of giving only in terms of grand gestures. They miss the simple openings of the heart that can be practiced anywhere with almost anyone.

We can say hello to someone everybody ignores. We can offer to help a neighbor. We can buy a bouquet of flowers and take it to a nursing home, or spend an extra minute talking to someone who needs our time.

We can take ten dollars out of our pocket and give it to someone on the street. No praise, no hushed tones of holy generosity. Just give, smile, and walk away.

If you perform these simple acts, little by little you will start to understand the miracle of giving. You will begin to see the unprotected human heart and the honest smiles of human happiness. You will start to feel what is common among us, not what separates and differentiates us.

Before long you will discover that you have the power to create joy and happiness by your simplest gestures of caring and compassion. You will see that you have the power to unlock the goodness in other people’s hearts by sharing the goodness in yours.

And, most of all, you will find the other givers. No matter where you live or where you travel, whether you speak their language or know their names, you will know them by their small acts, and they will recognize you by yours. You will become part of the community of humanity that trusts and shares and dares to reveal the softness of its heart.

Once you become a giver, you will never be alone.

The Spiritual Journey

We are all born with a belief in God. It may not have a name or a face. We may not even see it as God. But it is there.

It is the sense that comes over us as we stare into the starlit sky or watch the last fiery rays of an evening sunset. It is the morning shiver as we wake on a beautiful day and smell a richness in the air that we know and love from somewhere we can’t quite recall. It is the mystery behind the beginning of time and beyond the limits of space. It is a sense of otherness that brings alive something deep in our hearts.

Some people will tell you that there is no God. They will claim that God is a crutch for people who can’t face reality, a fairy tale for people who need myths in their lives. They will argue for rational explanations of the origin of the universe and scientific explanations of the perfect movements of nature. They will point to evil and injustice in the world, and cite examples of religion being used to start wars or to hurt people of different beliefs.

You cannot argue with these people, nor should you. These are the people the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu spoke about when he said, “A frog in a well cannot be talked to about the sea.”

If you have any sense of the mystery of the universe around you, you are hearing the murmur of the sea. Your task is to leave the well, to step out into the sun, and to set out for the sea. Leave the arguing to those who wish to discuss the size and shape of the walls that close them in.

If you hear the call of the distant sea, do not be turned away by the naivetés and contradictions of the beliefs around you. There are many paths, and the sea looks different from each of them. Your task is not to judge the paths of others, but to find a path that will lead you ever closer to the murmurings that you hear in your heart.

Begin by accepting where you are.

We all have special gifts of character. Some of us are blessed with compassion; others, laughter; others, a power of self - discipline. Some of us are filled with the beauty of people, others with the beauty of nature. Some of us have a keen sense of the injustices in life; others are drawn to celebrate the goodness around us.

These are all starting points, because they are all places of belief. You must find the gift that you have — the source of your belief— and discover a way to cultivate that gift.

Reflections on Loneliness and Solitude

You should spend time alone. Not just minutes and hours, but days and, if the opportunity presents itself, weeks.

Time spent alone returns to you a hundredfold because it is the proving ground of the spirit. You quickly find out if you are at peace with yourself or if the meaning of your

life is found only in the superficial affairs of the day. If it is in the superficial affairs of the day, time spent alone will throw you back upon yourself in a way that will make you grow in wisdom and inner strength.

We can easily fill our days with activity. We buy, we sell, we move from place to place. There is always more to be done, always a way to keep from staring into the still pool where life is more than the chatter of the small affairs of the mind.

If we are not careful, we begin to mistake this activity for meaning. We turn our lives into a series of tasks that can occupy all the hours of the clock and still leave us breathless with our sense of work left undone.

And always there is work undone. We will die with work undone. The labors of life are endless. Better that you should accept the rhythms of life and know that there are times when you need to stop to draw a breath, no matter how great the labors are before you.

For many people, solitude is just a poet’s word for being alone. But being alone, in itself, is nothing. It can be a breeding ground of loneliness as easily as a source of solitude.

Solitude is a condition of peace that stands indirect opposition to loneliness. Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union.

Loneliness is small; solitude is large. Loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands toward the infinite. Loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nobody answers; solitude has its roots in the great silence of eternity.

Most people fear being alone because they understand only loneliness. Their understanding begins at the self, and they are comfortable only as long as they are at the center of their understanding. Solitude is about getting the “I” out of the center of our thoughts so that other parts of life can be experienced in their fullness. It is about abandoning the self as the focus of understanding, and giving ourselves over to the great flowing fabric of the universe.

Though this may sound mystical and abstract, the universe has an eternal hum that runs beyond our individual birth and death. It is a hum that is hard to hear through the louder and closer noise of our daily lives. It is the unity that transcends us all and, as much as possible, reconciles us to the reality and inevitability of our deaths. It makes us part of something larger. In solitude alone do we become part of this great eternal sound.

Nature is the clearest source of solitude. The greatness of nature can overwhelm the insignificant chatter by which we measure most of our days. If you have the wisdom and the courage to go to nature alone, the larger rhythms, the eternal hum, will make itself known all the sooner. When you have found it, it will always be there for you.

The peace without will become the peace within, and you will be able to return to it in your heart wherever you find yourself.

For most of us, the search involves a grinding of the gears as we slow from hurried to quiet to still to peaceful. But it is worth the struggle.

Slowly, inexorably, we emerge into the ultimate quiet of solitude. We are in a place where we are beyond thoughts — where we hear each sound and feel each heartbeat; where we are present to each change of sunlight on the earth around us, and we live in the awareness of the ongoing presence of life.

In this awareness the whole world changes. A tree ceases to be an object and becomes a living thing. We can smell its richness, hear its rustlings, sense its rhythms as it carries on its endless dance with the wind. In solitude silence becomes a symphony. Time changes from a series of moments strung together into a seamless motion riding on the rhythms of the stars. Loneliness is banished, solitude is in full flower, and we are one with the pulse of life and the flow of time.

The awareness we experience in solitude is priceless for the peace it can give. It is also the key to true loving in our relationships. When we have a part of ourselves that is firm, confident, and alone, we don’t need another person to fill us. We know that we have private spaces full of goodness and self-worth, and we grant the same to those we love. We do not try to pry into every corner of their lives or to fill the emptiness inside ourselves with their presence.

As always, look at the world around you. The mountain is not restless in its aloneness. The hawk tracing circles in the sky is not longing for union with the sun. They exist in the perfect peace of an eternal present, and that is the peace that one finds only in solitude. Find this peace in yourself, and you will never know another moment of loneliness in your life.

On Education and Learning

Life is an endlessly creative experience and we are shaping ourselves at every moment by every decision we make.

Education is one of the great joys and solaces of life. It gives us a framework for understanding the world around us and a way to reach across time and space to touch the thoughts and feelings of others.

But education is more than schooling. It is a cast of mind, a willingness to see the world with an endless sense of curiosity and wonder.

If you would be truly educated, you must adopt this cast of mind. You must open yourself to the richness of your everyday experience -- to your own emotions, to the movements of the heavens and languages of birds, to the privations and successes of people in other lands and other times, to the artistry in the hands of the mechanic and

the typist and the child. There is no limit to the learning that appears before us. It is enough to fill us each day a thousand times over.

The dilemma of how best to educate has always pivoted on the issue of freedom to explore versus the structured transmission of knowledge.

Some people believe that we learn best by wandering forth into an uncharted universe and making sense of the lessons that life provides.

Others believe that we learn best by being taught the most complete knowledge possible about a subject, then being sent forth to practice and use that knowledge.

Both ways have been tried with every possible method and in every possible combination and balance.

If we find ourselves tempted to celebrate one approach over the other, we should remember the caution of the Chinese sage, Confucius, who told his followers, "Study without thinking and you are blind; think without studying and you are in danger."

Formal schooling is one way of gaining education, and it should not be underestimated. School, if it is good, imparts knowledge and a context for understanding the world around us. It opens us to ideas that we could never discover on our own, and makes us one with the life of the mind as it has been shaped by people and cultures that we could never meet in our own experience. It makes us part of a community of learners, and helps us give form and direction to the endless flow of experience that passes before us.

It is also a great frustration, because it often seems irrelevant to the passions of our own interests and beliefs.

When you feel burdened by formal education, do not be quick to cast it aside. What is happening is a great surge in your growth and consciousness that is screaming out for immediate and total exploration.

You must remember that all other learners have traveled the same path. And though all true learners have felt this urge to strike out on their own, formal education, in its many shapes and guises, has been sought and revered by all people and all cultures at all times. It has a genius that is greater than your passions, and is abandoned at your own peril.

Still, formal education will not inform your spirit and make you full. So, along with knowledge, you must seek wisdom. Knowledge is multiple, wisdom is singular. Knowledge is words, wisdom is silent. Knowledge is standing outside, understanding what is seen, wisdom is standing at the center, knowing what is not seen. No person can be whole without both dimensions of learning.

There are many ways to seek wisdom. There is travel, there are masters, there is service. There is staring into the eyes of children and elders and lovers and strangers. There is sitting silently in one spot and there is being swept along in life's turbulent

current. Life itself will grant you wisdom in ways you may neither understand nor choose.

It is up to you to be open to all these sources of wisdom and to embrace them with your whole heart.

So do not disparage the lessons of either the schooled or the unschooled.

Those who have less formal education may have learned some single thing more deeply, or they may have embarked early upon the search for wisdom. In their uniqueness, they have discovered something special about life, and it is yours to experience if you are open to what they have to teach.

Those who have devoted their life to formal learning may have walked further along a path than you can even imagine, and may be able to lead you to a vista that will take your breath away, if only you can overcome your boredom and fatigue at the rigors of the search.

Remember the words of the musician who was asked which was greater, knowledge or wisdom. "Without knowledge," he answered, "I could not play the violin. Without wisdom, I could not play the music."

Place yourself among those who carry on their lives with passion, and true learning will take place, no matter how humble or exalted the setting. But no matter what path you follow, do not be ashamed of your learning. In some corner of your life, you know more about something than anyone else on earth. The true measure of your education is not what you know, but how you share what you know with others.

Embracing the Mystery

When all the words have been written and all the phrases have been spoken, the great mystery of life will still remain. We may map the terrains of our lives, measure the farthest reaches of the universe, but no amount of searching will ever reveal for certain whether we are all children of chance or part of a great design.

And who among us would have it otherwise? Who would wish to take the mystery out of the experience of looking into a newborn infant’s eyes? Who would not feel in violation of something great if we had knowledge of what has departed when we stare into the face of one who has died? These are the events that make us human, that define the distance between us and the stars.

Still, this life is not easy. Much of its mystery is darkness. Tragedies occur; injustices exist. Bad things befall good people, and sufferings are visited upon the innocent. To live we must take the lives of other species; to survive we must leave some of our brothers and sisters by the side of the road. We are prisoners of time, victims of biology, hostages of our own capacity to dream.

At times it all seems too much, impossible to accept.

We must stand against this. The world is a great and mysterious place, and it contains within it all the possibilities that our hearts can conceive. If we incline our hearts toward the darkness, we will see the darkness. If we incline them toward the light, we will see the light.

Life is but a dream we renew each day. It is up to us to infuse this dream with light, and to cultivate, as best as we are able, the ways and habits of love.

Those of great heart have always known this. They have understood that, as honorable as it is to see wrong and to try to correct it, a life well lived must somehow celebrate the promise that life provides. The darkness at the limits of our knowledge — the darkness that sometimes seems to surround us — is merely a way to make us reach beyond certainty, to make our lives a witness to hope, a testimony to possibility, an urge toward the best and the most honorable impulses that our hearts can conceive.

It is not hard. There is in each of us, no matter how humble, a capacity for love. Even if our lives have not taken the course we had envisioned, even if we are less than the shape of our dreams, we are part of the human family. Somewhere, in the most inconsequential corners of our lives, is the opportunity for love.

Death

"Death is our common mystery. Like birth and love, it is a bond that unites us all. Yet none of us can know for certain what it contains or what it portends.

"We have glimpses from those who have experienced clinical death and returned to tell us what they saw. We have promises from all faiths and religions. However, we all must meet death alone, so it remains the great private preparation for each of us.

"Many years ago I was present at a total eclipse of the sun.

"I climbed to the crown of a high hill and sat down facing the growing morning light. Birds were singing. Cows and horses grazed on the hillside. As the moment came and the moon began to carve away the sun, the earth became inexpressibly still. The winds ceased; the birds fell silent. The cows sank to their knees and the horses bowed their heads. Soon only the ghostly corona of the hidden sun remained to cast a fragile light on the dark and silent earth.

"In that moment, something momentous happened. I lost my fear of death. The light of the sun had been taken from me and the world I knew had been cast into a great darkness. But there was no sense of terror, no sense of fear. The self was annihilated, but it was an annihilation into oneness.

"I can't put a name to what was shown me in that oneness. But it was too far beyond the human for me to understand. But I do know that it had to do with death, and that I was swept up into the greatest peace that I have ever known, a peace that surpassed all understanding. I accepted it like the tranquil embrace of a long-sought sleep.

"If that moment on the hillside contained truth — and I think it did — we do death no justice by measuring it against ourselves. We are too small; it is too great. What we fear is only the loss of self, and the self knows eternity like a shadow knows the sun.

"So, fear dying if you must. It takes from us the only life we know, and that is a worthy loss to mourn. But do not fear death. It is something too great to celebrate, too great to fear. Either it brings us to a judgment, so it is ours to control by the kind of life we live, or it annihilates us into the great rhythm of nature, and we join the eternal peace of the revolving heavens.

"In the brief moment when I stood on that hill while the earth's light went out, I felt no indifference and no sense of loss. Instead I felt an unutterable sense of gain, a shattering of all my own boundaries into an overwhelming sense of peace. I was part of a great harmony.

"We should embrace our dying as a momentary passage into that harmony. Perhaps we cannot hear that harmony now. Perhaps we even hear it as a vast and empty silence. But that vastness is not empty; it is a presence. Even in the greatest places, the silence has a sound."

Legacy

If I am blind, I can run my hand across the back of a shell and celebrate beauty. If I have no legs, I can sit in quiet wonder before the restless murmurs of the sea. If I am wounded in spirit, I can reach out my hand to those who are hurting. If I am lonely, I can go among those who are desperate for love. There is no tragedy or injustice so great, no life so small and inconsequential, that we cannot bear witness to the light in the quiet acts and hidden moments of our days.

And who can say which of these acts and moments will make a difference? The universe is a vast and magical membrane of meaning stretching across time and space, and it is not given us to know her secrets and her ways. Perhaps we were placed here to meet the challenge of a single moment; perhaps the touch we make will cause the touch that will change the world.

When we come to the end of our journey, and the issues that so concerned us recede from us like the day before the coming night, it will be these small touches — the child we have helped, the garden we have planted, the meal we have prepared when we were too weary to do so — that will become our legacy to the universe.

If we have played our part well, offering love where it was needed, strength and caring where it was lacking; if we have tended the earth and its creatures with a sense of humble stewardship, we will have done enough. We may pass quietly, and rest gently in the knowledge that we have left the world a little warmer, a little kinder, a little richer in love. Though our moment was brief and our part small, somewhere, in the fullness of time, our acts will bear fruit, and the earth will raise up a bit of goodness in our memory.

It is a small legacy, perhaps, but a legacy nonetheless. Somewhere, between a baby’s cry and the distant brightness of a star, the mystery was alive in us for a moment. It was our privilege to feel its presence, and to have the chance to pass it on.

SMALL GRACES

A CELEBRATION OF THE ORDINARY

SACRED MOMENTS THAT ILLUMINATE OUR LIVES

"We seldom pause to shine a light upon the ordinary moments, to hallow them with our own attentiveness, to honor them with gentle caring. They pass unnoticed, lost in the ongoing rush of time."

The Offering to a Quiet God

We see no need for the setting apart one day in seven as holy, for to us all

days belong to God

- Ohiyesa, Dakotah Sioux There are those who search God in the quiet places – no churches, no public displays of piety, no dramatic or flamboyant rituals. They may be found standing in humble awe before a sunset, or weeping quietly at the beauty of a Bach concerto, or filled with an overflowing of pure love at the sight of an infant in the arms of its mother. You may meet them visiting the elderly, comforting the lonely, feeding the hungry, and caring for the sick. The greatest among them may give away what they own in the name of compassion and goodness, while never once uttering the word “God” out loud. Or they may do no

more than offer a smile or a hand to someone in need, or quietly bow their heads at a moment of beauty that passes through their lives, and say a simple prayer of gratitude to the spirit that has created us all. They are the lovers of the quiet God, the believers in the small graces of ordinary life. Theirs is not the grand way, the way of the mystic or the preacher or the zealot or the saint. Some would say that theirs is not a way at all. All they know for certain is that life has beauty and a joy that transcends all the darkness that surrounds us, that something ineffable live beyond the ordinary affairs of the day, and that without this mystery our lives would not be worth living. This book is dedicated to those who search for the quiet God, who seek the spirit in the small moments of our everyday life. It is a celebration of the ordinary, a reminder that when all else is stripped away, a life lived with love is enough.

Small Graces

"Night is closing in. It is time for sleep.”

"I have walked a quiet path today. I have done no great good, no great harm. I might have wished for more — some dramatic occurrence, something memorable. But there was no more. This was the day I was given, and I have tried to meet it with a humble heart.

"How little it seems. We seek perfection in our days, always wanting more for ourselves and our lives, and striving for goals unattainable. We live between the vast infinites of past and future in the thin shaft of light we call 'today.' And yet today is never enough.

"Where does it come from, this strange unquenchable human urge for 'more' that is both our blessing and our curse? It has caused us to lift our eyes to the heavens and thread together pieces of the universe until we can glimpse a shadow of the divine creation. Yet to gain this knowledge, we have sometimes lost the mystery of a cloud, the beauty of a garden, the joy of a single step.

"We must learn to value the small as well as the great.

"In the book of Micah, the prophet says, 'And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?'

"Confucius told his followers, 'Bring peace to the old, have trust in your friends, and cherish the young.'

"Do we really need much more than this? To honor the dawn. To visit a garden. To talk to a friend. To contemplate a cloud. To cherish a meal. To bow our heads before the mystery of the day. Are these not enough?

"The world we shape is the world we touch — with our words, our actions, our dreams.

"If we should be so lucky as to touch the lives of many, so be it. But if our lot is no more than the setting of a table, or the tending of a garden, or showing in a child a path in a wood, our lives are no less worthy.

"I crawl into my bed, feel the growing warmth of the covers, hear the quiet rhythms of my wife's gently breathing.

"Outside, the wind blows softly, brushing a branch from the birch against the house.

"To do justice. To love mercy. To walk humbly with our God.

"To bring peace to the old. To have trust in our friends. To cherish the young.

"Sometimes, it seems, we ask too much. Sometimes we forget that the small graces are enough."

The Window of the Heart

I walk to my window to greet the day. I chose this window for my own long ago, as one chooses a chair or a spoon or a mug. I seek it out each morning before the others in the house awake. It faces slightly to the north, so the morning sun enters it obliquely, giving the light the delicious subtlety of indirection. From it I can watch all of life turn toward the coming of the day. Whenever I have had to move from a house, the memory I have carried with me the memory that has most animated my spirit is always the memory of the light, and the way it cascaded in through the windows and illuminated the passing moments of the day. Sometimes a shaft, sometimes a soft glow, sometimes a brilliant illumination that made me fear that the house itself was on fire. But it is always in the memory of light that the spirit of the house comes to life. This house I live in now will forever touch my spirit for the way it offers me the dawn. From my window the day arrives like the distant chanting of a prayer. I sit before the window and watch the growing dawn. A memory of Alice rises before me, for it was Alice who taught me about windows. She was small, frail, framed in a halo of light from the window before which she sat. I approached cautiously, and knelt beside her. "Alice?"I asked. She turned to me. Her eyes were cloudy, but filled with light. "They said you would be willing to talk to me about life here."

She nodded. This was not a task I had relished. I was writing a small piece about life in nursing homes, and my sense of rage at the heartless way our elders must end their lives had almost overwhelmed me. My heart had been torn a thousand ways as I had walked the halls and spoken to the residents in these places that claimed to care for our aged and give dignity to their final days. It had been a gauntlet of pain and sorrow. The lonely; the incoherent lost in their private memories; the dazed; the angry; those who grabbed your arm and begged "Daddy, Daddy, take me out of here, I want to go home" -- all of them and more had confronted me and filled me with a deep and unassuageable grief. With each footstep tears welled up within me and I raged against a heartless God, a heartless society, the cruel ways of nature and the sadnesses of life. My heart did not have enough tears to purge the rage and pain that were washing across me. "You must talk to Alice," the nurses had said. "She will show you something." Reluctantly I agreed to do so And now I was beside her. She said "Good morning" but her eyes were staring out the window. I did not wish to disturb her; I kept my silence. "Look," she said finally, pointing out the window. The traffic flowed noisily below. The cacophony of a life she would never again share rose up from the streets. I stared through her one opening into the outside world. Far in the distance was the cupola of a cathedral. "Isn't it beautiful? she said. "I come here every day to watch the sun rise. I've been all over Europe. I've seen Notre Dame and St. Peter's and the Duomo in Florence. But none was more beautiful than this, and I can see it every day. I looked out. The sun was bursting around the edges of the dome, enveloping it in a halo of pastel light. The sun reflected off her glasses, and I could see the tears in her eyes. We spoke a bit. I took some notes. But none of that mattered. It was the cathedral, and the dawn, and the radiant morning light that we were sharing. She reached over and grabbed my hand. "Isn't this a gift?" she said. I did not know what to say. I had come that morning, prepared to look with sadness on the shrinking horizons of her life, to weep for her lost dreams and the tiny window that framed the boundaries of her day. But those were my tears, not hers. Her tears were for the beauty. From her window she received the spirit of the dawn.

I think often of Alice. She was an artist of the ordinary. The great French Impressionist painter Claude Monet had sat before a window, painting the cathedral at Rouen as the light played upon its surface over the course of a day. Alice was doing no different, but she painted with the colors of her heart. I left that day changed in some fundamental way. I had wanted to define the walls of Alice's prison; she had wanted to give me the gift of the day. I had wanted to see limitation; she had wanted to show me possibility. She had taken a moment from the seamless flow of time and space and held it up in private consecration, and we had partaken of it together in a small communion of our spirits. As I walked back down the hall, one of the nurses who had directed me to Alice looked up from her desk. "Did she show you something?" she asked. "Yes" I answered softly "Her window?" "Yes." "I thought so," she smiled, and went back to work I walked out into the morning with the eyes of a child

A World Alive With Holy Moments

"We must never forget that the mindful practice of daily affairs is also a path into the realm of the spirit. The Japanese have long known this, and hallowed the ordinary moments of life by elevating them into art. The Native Americans have also understood this, and consecrated everyday actions by surrounding them with ceremony and prayer.

"But ours is a transient life, lived on the run, with an endless sense of process, of movement, of chasing the future. We seldom pause to shine a light upon the ordinary moments, to hallow them with our own attentiveness, to honor them with gentle caring. They pass unnoticed, lost in the ongoing rush of time.

"Yet it just such a hallowing that our lives require. We need to find ways to lift the moments of our daily lives — to celebrate and consecrate the ordinary, to allow the light of spiritual awareness to illuminate our days.

"For though we may not live a holy life, we live in a world alive with holy moments. We need only take the time to bring these moments into the light."

THE HIDDEN BEAUTY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

"This is a book for those who seek to hear that whisper — who believe that God speaks as surely in the murmurs of the trees and the laughter of the children as from the pulpits of the churches and the synagogues; who know that a mother tucking a child into bed is offering a prayer of joyful praise as surely as the cantor or the minister or the monk at evening vespers."

Sermon of the Birds

"The birdsong is different here, full of unfamiliar cadences and unfamiliar melodies. These birds are making different music than the bids outside my window in America, and this fills me with wonder.

"I do not often stop to realize how different the music of nature is in each place on earth. But something about this birdsong makes me pause and take notice. It fills me, in a way far deeper than intellect, with a humble awareness of the beauty and mystery of the world around me.

"Do they know each other? Are they talking to each other? Is their exuberance truly in their voices, or only in my hearing?

"Does each mother know the chirp of her young, as each human mother can pick out the cry of her own infant from the voices of all others? Do they feel love?

"These are the questions this birdsong calls forth in me. They lean me toward God and the ineffable mystery of life.

"Our lives are filled with moments like these — ordinary moments when the hidden beauty of life breaks into our everyday awareness like an unbidden shaft of light. It is a brush with the sacred, a near occasion of grace.

"Too often we are blind to these moments. We are busy with our daily obligations and too occupied with our comings and goings to surround our hearts with the quiet that is necessary to hear life's softer songs.

"There is no shame in this. We are only human, and the demands of life make a raucous noise. But we must not let those demands drown out the quieter voices of the spirit. We must take the time to stop and listen, knowing that the voice of the spirit speaks more often in a whisper than a shout.

"For spirituality is far more than religious practice. It is a cast of mind, a leaning of the heart, a willingness to see the shadow of the divine mystery in all people and all things. It is feeling the presence of God in every encounter, and seeing the reflection of the divine in the face of every person we meet on the street.

"The Confucian philosopher Zou Shouyi said that we too often fail to recognize wisdom in those without talent, achievement, and fame. Jesus, in the Beatitudes, tells us to look to the meek, the poor in spirit, and the pure in heart. The Native Americans tell us to look at the elderly, because their lives have walked the long path toward wisdom.

"They all are reminding us that the traces of the sacred are everywhere before our eyes, and that our task, as surely as performing acts of worship, is to find these sacred moments, hallow them with our attention, and raise them up as a celebration of the mystery of life.

"The birds are quieting now. The traffic in the streets, the angle of the sun, or something more mystical and inexpressible has told them that they have sung enough.

"But the silence they leave in their wake stays with me.

"Like the fading echo of a church bell, they have lodged in my heart, and no church, no religious text, could do more than their gentle song to incline my heart towards God."

......................................

"Our lives are filled with moments like these — ordinary moments when the hidden beauty of life breaks into our everyday awareness like an unbidden shaft of light. It is a brush with the sacred, a near occasion of grace.

"Too often we are blind to these moments. We are busy with our daily obligations and too occupied with our comings and goings to surround our hearts with the quiet that is necessary to hear life's softer songs.

"There is no shame in this. We are only human, and the demands of life make a raucous noise. But we must not let those demands drown out the quieter voices of the spirit. We must take the time to stop and listen, knowing that the voice of the spirit speaks more often in a whisper than a shout.

"For spirituality is far more than religious practice. It is a cast of mind, a leaning of the heart, a willingness to see the shadow of the divine mystery in all people and all things. It is feeling the presence of God in every encounter, and seeing the reflection of the divine in the face of every person we meet on the street."

On Faith

"We want our children to be people of faith, but we do not wish them to be blinded by belief. We see our task as helping them find their place in God's mansion. We do not care which room they choose, only that it be a place alive with the sacredness of life, the kinship of all creatures, and the true conviction that we are each our brothers' and sisters' keeper. If this is within the hallowed walls of a church and the embracing arms of a traditional faith, so be it. If it is on a starlit hillside, or in the touch of a lonely person's hand, so be that as well. We pass no judgment on how the spirit speaks, asking only that it speak in a voice of kindness and love."

MAKE ME AN INTRUMENT OF YOUR PEACE

LIVING IN THE SPIRIT OF THE

PRAYER OF SAINT FRANCIS

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.

Where there is hatred let me sow love,

Where there is injury let me sow pardon,

Where there is doubt, faith,

Where there is despair, hope,

Where there is darkness, light,

And where there is sadness, joy...

The Magic of Saint Francis

The magic of Francis is that his holiness always felt like fresh love. He would burst into song in the middle of a public square; he spoke with birds and fishes; he picked up worms and carried them to the side of the road to keep them from being crushedu underfoot.

Everything on earth and in the heavens — the stars, the animals, the sun and moon — was his brother and sister. He felt connected to all living things, and nothing, whether a tree or a pool of water or a leper or a wild beast in the woods, was too insignificant for his concern. He danced through the world embracing everything he saw.

How close this is to the innocent joy of love, and how much it warms the hearts of all of us who have known a first love's blessing. Like the old women hobbling across the piazza of Santa Croce and glancing at the young lovers, we cannot help but smile when we are in the presence of Francis's joyous and loving faith.

Where there is injury let me sow pardon

I once spoke with a man who had done hard time at a maximum security penitentiary. I asked him what had been the single most significant lesson he had learned from being inside. He looked at me with sad eyes and said, "You would not believe what lives inside the human heart. There really is such a thing as evil." I have never quite gotten over the chill that his words sent through me. And as much as I would like to believe otherwise, the occurrences that take place in the world on a daily basis make his assertion almost impossible to deny. What, then, are we to make of Francis's command to give pardon where there is injury? Are we to believe that we are to forgive all manner of crimes and transgressions, no matter how monstrous? Are we called to achieve some elevated state of spiritual enlightenment wherein we accept the evils of the world as somehow reflecting some higher divine purpose? Or is this command of Francis's merely the blithe platitude of a man who lived unencumbered on the earth and never had to face such questions as what to do if a madman breaks into your home and murders your family? These are questions that beset the earnest seeker who would try to walk Francis' path through a world of dark realities. And they admit of no easy answers. But I once had an experience that gave me insight into what some of those answers might be. I was present in a courtroom where a young man was on trial for murdering a girl he had seen walking down the street. He had not known her personally. She had wronged

him in no fashion whatsoever. Here crime was simply being young and alive and in the wrong place at the wrong time. He and a friend had dragged her into the woods, placed a gun behind her ear, and blown off the back of her head. The prosecuting attorney described in grim detail the specifics of the murder and held up a bloody paper bag that contained the clothes of the young victim. The horror was almost too much to bear. Most in the courtroom averted their eyes. But through it all the father of the murdered girl sat impassively, watching the trial, watching the boy. After the trial was over, and the boy was found guilty, the father announced that he was going to visit that boy in jail and get to know him. People were appalled. Why would anyone who had suffered what this man was suffering undertake such a task? But the father was adamant. "That boy and I are forever bound," he said. "We need to know each other. I do not know if I can forgive him. But perhaps if I know him I will not hate him. This is about healing and reconciliation." In that moment, the insight of Francis became clear to me. When he tells us to sow pardon, he is telling us to seek healing and reconciliation, not approval or even acceptance. There was no way that the father of the murdered girl was ever going to give approval to the boy for what he had done. It is not even clear that he could ever find it in his heart to accept the unthinkable event that occurred, though clearly he was trying to do so. But he could seek to reconcile two men whose lives were forever linked through the person of a young woman and to bring forth some measure of understanding and, hopefully, creative growth in the aftermath of a horrible event. This is a hard issue. Most of us would not have the power to make such an effort. I know that I do not have that greatness of spirit. But I also know, in my heart of hearts, that the grieving father was making the correct choice. He was trying to move the world forward from a point of horror and to turn a circumstance so dark that few can imagine it into a moment of healing and growth. The key is in the word injury. Francis did not say, "where there is wrongdoing, let me give pardon," or "where there have been crimes, let me offer pardon." He said, "where there is injury, let me sow pardon." And injury implies the possibility of healing. Healing rises above the question of right and wrong, even good and evil. It had to do with restoring a life to health. If we are able to look upon pardon not just as forgiveness, but as doing what is necessary to restore health to the body or spirit, Francis's injunction suddenly seems less impossible and disconnected from our lives. In fact, it seems like the wisest of counsel. The father of the murdered girl cannot change what has occurred. He may forever wonder why such an event had to take place and wrestle with a dark angel in his heart until the day he dies. But he cannot change the fact that the event happened.

What Francis is telling us is when such incomprehensible event occur, our goal should be to promote healing in any manner of which we are capable. It is the only way that we can free ourselves from a frozen scream in time and fulfil our responsibilities as co-creators of meaning in this universe. Once again, we must remember that Francis calls us only to "sow." "Sowing" does not imply that something is fully grown, only that the seeds of possibility have been planted. Even if the father of the murdered girl cannot find the slightest possibility of forgiveness in his heart, by seeking reconciliation and healing on some level, he is sowing the seeds of the possibility of pardon and forgiveness at some future time. Perhaps this will happen. Perhaps it will not. It is not up to him to say whether the seeds he plants will fall on fertile ground. That is where faith in the goodness and mercy of God come in. But even if he spends the remainder of his days gnashing his teeth, rendering his garments, and shaking his fists at the heavens, he is leaning in the direction of hope. He is saying that even though he doesn't understand, and can't understand, he is trying to heal. And in the intention lives the seed of a possible resolution. There is a famous passage in the book of Exodus where Moses and Aaron ask the pharaoh to let their people leave Egypt. Over and over the pharaoh refuses. And each time, we are told, the pharaoh's heart was hardened. This same hardening of the heart occurs in each of us when we do not lean in the direction of healing. With each passing day, and each refusal to seek reconciliation, we become more callous and closed to the possibility of reconciliation. And the wound caused by the injury becomes more and more a part of our being. If we seek healing, it is true that the wound may still become an awful scar. But at least life goes forward. When an injury is not allowed to heal, the wounded person dies. This is what happens to us when we refuse to sow healing and reconciliation. Our hearts and spirits die. Perhaps this is what we want. Perhaps this is our monument and testament to what we have lost. But it is not the course that Francis would have us take. He would have us sow the seeds of pardon, no matter how difficult that sowing might be. Luckily, most of us, in our daily lives, are not confronted with such mortal injuries as the father who lost his daughter The Injuries we create, and the injuries we experience, are usually but small slights and affronts. The labors required to begin the process of healing are not great. It is a constant measure of our humanity to rise above these injuries and to forgive those who cause them even as we forgive ourselves when we cause injury to others. I often think of the way Dakotah Indians responded to a small wrong. When for example, a young person walked between an elder and a fire—an act of profound impoliteness in their culture—the young person said, simply, "Mistake." It was an

honest acknowledgment of an error of judgment, devoid of any self-recrimination or self-diminution. All present nodded in assent, and life went on. How healthy such an attitude seems. We all commit mistakes in judgment, and we all need forgiveness. If we had the option of making a simple acknowledgment of our mistake and then going on with our affairs, how much clearer and gentler life would be. And how much healthier would our own hearts be if we looked upon the injuries caused us by others as simply the mistakes of human beings who, like us, are struggling to get by in a complex and mysterious world. Our lives brush clumsily against the lives of others. A wrong word, a rash action—these are as much a part of our lives as the caring gesture and the loving touch. We are all guilty of them; we all receive them. There is no surprise when they come, issuing forth either from us against others or from others against us. The only surprise is that we never cease to make such errors and that we have such difficulty forgiving them when they are committed against us by others. It is our daily task in life to find a way to forgive these errors, in ourselves and in others, without ignoring or diminishing the wrong that has been done. And if the crime is so great that we cannot find it in our heart to offer forgiveness, at least we can make the first steps toward healing. Perhaps, with time and the grace of God, forgiveness, too, will result. What Francis is calling us to do is to live a life that stands for healing, however we are able to offer it. Yes, we may confront evil in this world. Yes, we may experience wrongs that defy our capacity for forgiveness. But if, like the distraught father of the murdered girl, we take the first tentative steps toward healing, we are sowing the seeds of pardon. And where the seed of pardon is planted, the flower of true forgiveness may someday bloom.

Where there is despair, hope

Being a Beacon of Hope

"We are not saints, we are not heroes. Our lives are lived in the quiet corners of the ordinary. We build tiny hearth fires, sometimes barely strong enough to give off warmth. But to the person lost in the darkness, our tiny flame may be the road to safety, the path to salvation.

"It is not given us to know who is lost in the darkness that surrounds us or even if our light is seen. We can only know that against even the smallest of lights, darkness cannot stand.

"A sailor lost at sea can be guided home by a single candle. A person lost in a wood can be led to safety by a flickering flame. It is not an issue of quality or intensity or purity. It is simply an issue of the presence of light."

And where there is sadness, joy

The Cab Ride "Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. It was a cowboy's life, a life for someone who wanted no boss. Because I drove the night shift, my cab became a moving confessional. Passengers climbed in, sat behind me in total anonymity, and told me about their lives. I encountered people whose lives amazed me, ennobled me, made me laugh and weep. But none touched me more than a woman I picked up late one August night. I was responding to a call from a small brick fourplex in a quiet part of town. I assumed I was being sent to pick up some partiers, or someone who had just had a fight with a lover, or a worker heading to an early shift at some factory for the industrial part of town. When I arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Under such circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, then drive away. But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself. So I walked to the door and knocked. "Just a minute", answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware. "Would you carry my bag out to the car?" she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness. "It's nothing", I told her. "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated". "Oh, you're such good boy", she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, then asked, "Can you drive through downtown?" "It's not the shortest way," I answered quickly. "Oh, I don't mind," she said. "I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice". I looked in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were glistening. "I don't have any family left," she continued. "The doctor says I don't have very long." I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. "What route would you like me to take?" I asked. For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where

she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing. As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, "I'm tired. Let's go now." We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair. "How much do I owe you?" she asked, reaching into her purse. "Nothing," I said. "You have to make a living," she answered. "There are other passengers," I responded. Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly. "You gave an old woman a little moment of joy," she said. "Thank you." I squeezed her hand, then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life. I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly, lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away? On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life. We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware - beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a "small one."

CALM SURRENDER

WALKING THE PATH OF FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness

"Forgiveness cannot be a disengaged, pastel emotion. It is demanded in the bloodiest of human circumstances, and it must stand against the strongest winds of human rage and hate. To be a real virtue, engaged with the world around us, it must be muscular, alive, and able to withstand the outrages and inequities of inhuman and inhumane acts. It must be able to face the dark side of the human condition ...

The Dilemma

"This is the dilemma that faces us all when we decide to walk the difficult path of forgiveness. Are we complicit in wrongdoing if we do not challenge those who wrong us? Or are we contributing to the darkness in the world if we get caught up in the web of heartlessness and cruelty that gave birth to the injustice?

"I don't know. And yet I must know. Somehow, I, you, each of us, must find a way to respond to the cruelty and injustice in the world in a way that doesn't empower those who harm others. At the same time, we must avoid becoming ensnared by their anger and heartlessness.

"One of the great human wagers is whether we best achieve this by shining a light of pure absolution into the darkness, trusting that the light will draw others toward it, or whether we stand against the darkness with equal force, and then try to flood the world with light once the darkness is held at bay.

"In either case, though, one thing is certain: Forgiveness cannot be a disengaged, pastel emotion. It is demanded in the bloodiest of human circumstances, and it must stand against the strongest winds of human rage and hate. To be a real virtue, engaged with the world around us, it must be muscular, alive, and able to withstand the outrages and inequities of inhuman and inhumane acts. It must be able to face the dark side of the human condition.

"How we shape such forgiveness is one of the most crucial questions in our lives. And, it is not easy. Sometimes we get so frustrated that we don't think we can take it any more.

"But we can and we must; it is our human responsibility. Even though we know that forgiveness, misused, or misunderstood, can become a tacit partner in the wrongs around us, we also know that, properly applied, it is the glue that holds the human family together. It is the way to bridge the loneliness that too often surrounds us. We must find a way to build that bridge, even if our hands are clumsy and the materials at our command are flawed."

Candles on the Grave

It is near evening. The shadows are lengthening. The golden refracted light of day's end covers the world in a peaceful, radiant glow. I am driving home, past the cemetery that sits in the middle of our town. Occasionally, when I drive by, a group of mourners will be standing around an open grave, and I feel that soft shudder of sadness that comes from brushing against a deep grief I cannot share. Other times there will be bare-armed workers with shovels and front end loaders digging in the earth. Usually I look away. It is a strange sensation to be so near to death's immediacy, yet so far from its raw emotions. But today something unusual catches my eye -- a glint, a metallic flash, like a signal from a mirror. It seems a violation -- an unseemly bit of transience amid the timeless granite headstones and restful, quiet greenery. I drive around again, slowing at the point where the glint first caught my eye. It is still there, the same flash of movement, like light shimmering on sunlit waters. Curious, I stop the car and step out. I'm not comfortable doing this, as I know no one in this cemetery. So I enter with a certain sense of apology, like a person walking into a house where he doesn't belong.

The glint of light continues, now joined by others. There is a rhythm to it all, a hurdy-gurdy lilt, floating on the currents of the wind. I walk closer. Banners, pinwheels, all manner of ribbons and tracery, float and dance on a small piece of ground. As I approach, I see that they are centered on a single grave. As I get closer still, I see that the grave is covered with a hodgepodge of small toys -- figures from the fast food meals, miniature race cars, tiny trucks. Then, the photo -- a framed school picture set upon the grave as if on a living room shelf. A young boy, maybe seven, maybe ten, smiling out at me, guileless, winning, full of hope. A shudder runs through me. I think of my son, only ten himself, and retreat, filled with shame, to my car. The next day, as I drive by again, I try to avert my eyes. There is a knowledge here I don't want, a truth too horrible to absorb. Though my heart breaks at the tragedy of the small grave, it breaks at a distance, once removed from the immediacy of my own life. And that is how I wish it to stay. But I can’t help myself. The horror and fascination mingle, and like the sight of a fresh wound, I cannot keep my eyes away. There it is again, the glint, the flash, the multi-colored motion. Even in the fading light it sings and dances against the somber stillness of the stones. But this time there is something more. On the grave, barely visible, I see a shadow. It is a woman, sitting, rocking gently. In her lap she holds a children's book. She is reading aloud to the grave. My heart explodes. All around me cars are passing. People are hurrying home, planning supper, listening to traffic reports, running stoplights. What does this have to do with them, with me? The voices of daily obligations swirl around me, garbled and grotesque. Stop at the grocery store. Don't forget dry cleaning. Do the tires need rotating? Did Nick finish his homework? But the voices sound flat and distant, like echoes from another world. All that is real to me is that silent shadow rocking in the distance. And that shadow no longer cares if her boy finishes his homework. She no longer cares about supper, about tires, about anything at all. She is sitting among the toys that once littered her living room floor, reading a children's book to a grave. I want to approach her, to try to console her, to tell her that I stand in silent witness to her sorrow. But what would that matter? I am from the land of the living. She wanders in the fields of the dead. My spirit aches, out of control. What kind of world is this that takes a child from its mother? What sort of God condones these tragedies, then asks us to make sense of them? There is no rationale or justification. To say that this is part of some divine plan, unfolding before us and through us toward an unknowable wisdom, is like dry dust to that mother reading to the grave. Does God think us so docile that we should

be satisfied with saying, "All people must die. There is a reason beyond our knowing?" I have listened to preachers, standing over small coffins, fumbling for words and trying to shape meaning from tragedy. They invoke the unknown, praise the unknowable, speak of better lives, of lessons for the living. But their explanations are all empty, like husks rattling in the wind. When they have finished with their words, the dark truth still remains, and we can do no more than bow our heads before the mystery, and sit in silent grief until the balm of time reduces our pain to a burden we can bear. For such grieving we need no preachers. We need only the patience of the wounded, and such patience is given to the believer and the doubter alike. But I am weary of patience. I want more as I look at this woman. I want more for her, and for me. I want God to step out from behind the veil of inscrutability and offer explanation. I want God to give me a reason. I want God to apologize. "Why did you take that child from that mother?" I want to ask. "Why do you set her apart for all time from a moment of pure peace in her heart? If I were God, there would be no such crimes against the innocent. Good people would be rewarded. Bad people would be punished or changed. I would not sit at some haughty distance, toying with people like so many insects. We do not deserve this. This is the work of a bully God, and I do not choose to see you as a bully." But God is silent, and the silence feels like mockery. "Why do you do these things?" I continue. "What possible good can there be in taking a child out of season? Have you not set rules, and placed them in nature, that a child cannot be born before the parent? Then why have you not set rules that say that the child cannot be taken before the parent? Are you so indifferent to the fragile spirit that dwells within us that you cannot see that you have frozen the heart of this mother for all time? If you will not apologize, can you not at least explain? But there is no answer. Only the wind blowing through the gravestones, and the shadow reading silently to the grave. The light changes. The cars proceed. I hurry home to open envelopes and place pennies in a jar. The next day, again, I drive past. And the day after that. Sometimes the woman is there, sometimes she isn't. The decorations on the grave change, like the toys on the shelf in a child's bedroom. One week there is a large sunflower amidst the profusion of tiny plastic figures. The next there is a collection of stuffed animals. On rainy days it all becomes sodden, and seems to sink toward the ground in despair. On bright, windy days, it all glistens and dances and swirls, as if in celebration. Gradually, this tragic shrine is becoming part of my life. But still, I feel dishonest, like a man peering in the window on another's grief. I owe the woman who lives with this grief the honor of telling her that I, too, am moved by their tragedy, if only at a distance. The next time I see her, I resolve to stop.

On the following Tuesday afternoon she is there. She has placed a low white garden fence around the grave's perimeter, and she is spreading a fresh blanket of rich, thick, black dirt over the ground with a rake. All the toys and animals have been moved back against the fence, where they sit, in waiting, like guests at a party. I approach cautiously, almost apologetically. "Excuse me," I say. "I don't want to bother you. But sometimes I stop here. Can I ask you about your child?" She looks at me and smiles. "They don't care about the graves," she says. "They never pick the weeds." She doesn't stop here raking. "Will you tell me about him?" I ask. She pulls the rake across the fresh dirt, making sure the new seed she has planted is spread evenly across the ground. She glances at me for a moment. "He was a good boy. When we took him to the nursing home to visit his great-grandmother, we walked in the door and his eyes got wide, 'Oh, look at all the grandmas and grandpas I have,' he said." her raking never stops. "He sounds like a special child," I say. "He is," she answers. I kneel down and look at the photo. His face is winning, full of innocence and hope. She pauses for a moment to watch me watch him. "He loved everyone," she says. "One time there was an ant hill in front of the house. I had the broom and was going to sweep it away. He stopped me. 'No, those are my friends,' he said. That's what he told me: 'Those are my friends.'" Her memories are specific -- exact moments, full of detail and life. In each of them, the child speaks. "Are those his toys?" I ask, looking around at the audience of stuffed animals and plastic figures. She nods. Tears are beginning to well up in here eyes. She points to a little plastic bug that sits in vigil on the top of the fence. "That bug is because he was my little love bug," she says. She picks up a little lantern. Its top is covered with tinfoil to keep the wind out. "I light a candle for him every night because he was the light of my life," she says. The words are coming harder now. She looks around at the expanse of silent stones

and quiet greenery. "I wish I could put a candle on every grave," she says, "so all these people would be remembered. There are so many. So many . . ." Her voice trails off. She is moving inside herself, moment by moment. It is time for me to go. "Thank you for sharing him with me," I say. It sounds stupid, clumsy. But she does not seem to mind. I turn to leave, feeling like an intruder. She stops me with her voice. "Do you have a child?" she asks. I turn back toward her. "Yes," I answer, almost ashamed. "A boy, ten." She pulls the rake gently across the grave. "Hug him," she says. "You go home and hug him." I walk back toward my car, full of unfathomable grief and gratitude. Behind me, I can hear the rough scratching of the rake on the earth. If there is a challenge in the great tragedies that are visited upon us, it is only this: that if we were not to transcend them, we would descend into a darkness so great that, like a star burning in upon itself, we would implode, taking all with us as we died. We cannot let this happen. Even in the face of death and inexplicable tragedy, we must persevere, walking in zombie steps toward some light we cannot see. For from great darkness either bitterness or mercy grows -- a bitterness that it has to be so, and that it happened to us, or a mercy for all else in life that reminds us of what we have lost. We must choose mercy; it is our only course. Though its cause may be dark, and though we may not sense it at the time, it makes us a vessel of grace. It fills us with unbounded love that pours forth without judgement on all it sees, because it knows that every life, no matter how flawed or humble, is precious beyond measure, and that even the briefest moment of life deserves to be held aloft and offered up to God. As I walk away from the grave, I think of that young mother and the burden she carries. For years, and, in some measure for her entire life, when she sees children at play, she will see only the ghostly echo of her own fallen child. But then, so slowly, that echo will animate her love for those other children in a way that she never would have known had her own child lived to become the vessel to receive all here love. Like a priest giving himself to God, or a God giving himself to all humanity, she will give herself to all children, without question or reserve, wherever she meets them in the course of life. Perhaps behind her eyes others will see the dark hurt that will never be erased. But in those eyes they will also see the love that now spills over, unable to be contained, on all children who echo the memory of her fallen child. The gift she has received -- the darkest of gifts -- is that she no longer gives

forgiveness, she now is forgiveness, and no crime that any living child may commit will ever cause her to withdraw her love from that child. And no child, however forlorn, will ever be in her presence again and not feel the overwhelming mother love, flowing, as strong as an ocean current, toward them. In her all children's sins have died forever. Through the many sorrowful years remaining in her life, she will become the pure light of mother's love, and in her eyes the rest of us will learn, if only dimly, the value of that which we hold so fragile in our hands. Through her grief and sorrow, she will become the perfect forgiveness we long to feel in our own hearts. She has been crucified for all motherhood, and has taken our sins upon her. I turn to see her one more time. She is bending down and lighting the lantern. She is whispering, or singing. I cross myself -- an almost involuntary act from my distant past. Upon her shoulders is the burden of all loss. But in her heart a candle burns for every child, and in her presence, every child will forever be embraced and welcomed home.

Forgiving Ourselves

We need to find the hidden corners of our lives where we have not forgiven ourselves — for who we are, for who we are not. And it is not always easy. Sometimes we have to dig through tragic emotional wreckage. Sometimes we have to rip open scars we think have long been healed. Sometimes we have to tear down beautifully crafted psychological edifices. But to live with a pure heart and open spirit, we must have the courage to face these challenges.

LETTERS TO MY SON

A FATHER’S WISDOM ON MANHOOD, LIFE AND LOVE

Falling in Love

It is a mystery why we fall in love. It is a mystery how it happens. It is a mystery when it comes. It is a mystery why some love grows and it is a mystery why some love fails.

You can analyze this mystery and look for reasons and causes, but you will never do anymore than take the life out of the experience. Just as life itself is more than the sum of the bones and muscles and electrical impulses in the body, love is more than the sum of the interests and attractions and commonalities that two people share.

And just as life is a gift that comes and goes in its own time, so too, the coming of love must be taken as an unfathomable gift that cannot be questioned in its ways.

Sometimes, hopefully at least once in your life - the gift of love will come to you in full flower, and you will take hold of it and celebrate it in all inexpressible beauty. This is the dream we all share.

More often, it will come and take hold of you, celebrate you for a brief moment, then move on.

When this happens to young people, they too often try to grasp the love and hold it to them, refusing to see that it is gift that is freely given and a gift that just as freely, moves away.

When they fall out of love, or the person they love feels the spirit of love leaving, they try desperately to reclaim the love that is lost rather than accepting the gift for what it was, then moving on.

They want answers where there are no answers. They want to know what is wrong in them that makes the other person no longer love them, or they try to get their lover to change, thinking that if some small things were different, love would bloom again.

They blame their circumstances and say that if they go far away and start a new life together, their love will grow. They try anything to give meaning to what happened. But there is no meaning beyond the love itself, and until they accept its own mysterious ways, they live in a sea of misery.

You need to know this about love, and to accept it. You need to treat what it brings you with kindness.

If you find yourself in love with someone who does not love you, be gentle with yourself. There is nothing wrong with you. Love just didn't choose to rest in the other person's heart.

If you find someone else in love with you and you don't love him, feel honoured that love came and called at your door, but gently refuse the gift you cannot return. Do not take advantage, do not cause pain. How you deal with love is how you deal with you, and all our hearts feel the same pains and joys, even if our lives and ways are different.

If you fall in love with another, and he falls in love with you, and then love chooses to leave, do not try to reclaim it or to assess blame. Let it go. There is a reason and there is a meaning. You will know in time.

Remember that you don't choose love. Love chooses you. All you can really do is accept it for all its mystery when it comes into your life.

Feel the way it fills you to overflowing, then reach out and give it away. Give it back to the person who brought it alive in you. Give it to others who deem it poor in spirit. Give it to the world around you in anyway you can.

This is where many lovers go wrong. Having been so long without love, they understand love only as a need. They see their hearts as empty places that will be filled by love, and they begin to look at love as something that flows to them rather than from them.

The first blush of new love is filled to overflowing, but as their love cools, they revert to seeing their love as a need. They cease to be someone who generates love and instead becomes someone who seeks love. They forget that the secret of love is that it is a gift, and that it can be made to grow only by giving it away.

Remember this, and keep it to your heart. Love has its own time, its own seasons, and its own reasons for coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it, or reason it

into staying. You can only embrace it when it arrives and give it away when it comes to you.

But if it choose to leave from your heart or from the heart of your lover, there is nothing you can do and there is nothing you should do.

Love always has been and always will be a mystery. Be glad that it came to live for a moment in your life. If you keep your heart open, it will come again.

Partners and Marriage

I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn't fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives.

When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.

And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other's presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other's foibles. It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the others habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other?

The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed. It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages. Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side.

This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. Others deny the sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know each other apart from their sexuality. But they cannot see clearly, because the presence of unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps them from having any normal perception of what life would be like together.

The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other's laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they get swept up into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality.

This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility.

One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each others company over the long term.

If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new.

Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.

After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world.

As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again. If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can't accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.

Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance does not become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.

There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny.

If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the

cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.

So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word. There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation.

Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.

Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come.

If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.

But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things.

But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presence, two separate consciousness come together and share a view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains.

But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex.

So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation. If you believe in

your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom...endlessly.