Today I am Writing: On Rest

It is Sunday, in the setting sun. I am sitting on my porch, encased in a giant sweater, after a day of good but not-much-time-to-think-about the things that feel-important-to-think-about.

I sat down here with a stack of journals, the last five plus the current one. There is something I am trying to figure out and I thought maybe the journals would help.

As I read, I find some helpful words, I remember some moments that felt particularly key in my continuous coming-to-know of myself. But after a while, I notice that my brain feels very very tired. It feels as if it is twisting around itself, which--I notice--hurts.

In truth, I am an inveterate trying to figure it out type. I have sat on this porch many an hour, attempting to wrap my brain around the inveterate questions of what should I do and what should I not. Until recently, I thought that this was wisdom at work. I called these contemplative moments Rest, and I made space for them in the inveterate quiet of my life.

I called them rest, that is, until I began to notice that more actually those restful moments could more rightly be called paralysis, the numbed out fear of I have to have an answer to the what should I do and what should I not and it is up to me to figure it out and if I don't, then...

(Thinking thinking thinking, weighing out my choice with the consequence. Since when did fear become equated with rest?)

I think of the friend who spoke into my quiet way of being, saying "I just perceive you as so wound up...". I think of how I would have scoffed, except for how I saw straight into that paralysis that he was so so right.

And then I think of the Friend who spoke into that wound-up-ness one day, saying "Rest is where I AM..." and how this changed things for me, how I laid down what I was carrying and climbed right into His very very Presence.

So today, I sat down here with the stack of journals until I noticed my hurting brain, and then I remembered the Rest baby. Rest.

And now the sun has set and my sweater feels like not enough and I have spent all this time, trying to figure it out instead of climbing straight into I AM? Enough, I say; enough.

Today I am Writing: On Preparing

I have just spent an hour and a half in my kitchen, preparing food for multiple events. I've been chopping vegetables, roasting sweet potatoes, opening cans and draining all variety of things. Since this is the wrap-up of the season where I-do-not-have-a-lot-of-time, my recipe choices were ones I know, ones I've prepared on a multitude of previous days. Hence, I was like a little wizard, throwing ingredients from right to left, scooting with little steps from drawer to stove to sink. Thinking but not too much, humming just a little, pleased.

It struck me that I was preparing in the active sense for these friends that I will feed, but that it was enabled by the long preparing, learning these recipes over many years.

I had just returned from a recital, dressed in my concert blacks, my curls pinned back behind my ears. Beethoven, Wagner, Donizetti, Brahms; Debussy, Britten, Bernstein. I listened to my friend, the baritone; I responded to him and sometimes he responded to me, and we had a lovely moment, just making our instruments sing. I played with great ease, and I played with a lot of love. For what may be the first time ever, I played without evaluation, without the tyranny of imagining what all those hard-to-read faces were behind-the-scenes thinking. I just made the music, free.

He and I have been preparing, of course; rehearsals and lessons, the working it out alone and together over the months of this now-ending semester. But my agendas have felt heavy over these wintry months, and my preparation felt less focused than I would have liked. And yet, today, as we stood backstage and heard the audience gathering, I felt ready. Excited.

As I stood there, bouncing on my toes a bit, waiting for that door to swing open towards me, I thought: How many backstages have I seen?

And the answer is: A lot.

And there have been the practice rooms, and the hours churned out, and the audiences causing a bit of the stomach-lining-terror, and the fingers aching and the back near breaking from bench after many bench, adjusted just for me.

It turns out that a lot of preparing, went into today.

I didn't see today in my mind's eye, when I found the recipes, when I closed down the music buildings. But today, I am simply very glad that I diligently prepared, anyway.

I think: Isn't it true that every day is preparation, for another?
And I find myself wondering: Am I preparing, well?

Today I am Writing: On Writing

For 365 days, I looked for the thing I was loving the most, and wheedled it into that-one-phrase that spoke to it best. It's what I had time for, capacity for, room.

It was an exercise in simplicity, poetry, vision. I learned what it means to look at something, to see it with your eyes and then spin it into minimal words, the impact of the image taking precedence over the thinking out a thought, but the combination of the two making the moment all the stronger.

Settling ever deeper into my being-ness, I learned to listen to myself, to notice what it is that draws my attention, turns my heart, makes alive my every nerve.

I didn't know what I was doing when I started it, but ultimately it became an exercise that every person inclined toward writing should take. Can you see it? Look at it from every angle, and then say--it?

And I didn't know it when I started it, but it became an exercise of realizing: There is much more about myself as being-in-the-world that I would like to know.

(I think of Emily Rapp, who was thinking of Hegel: things become what they are during the process of  becoming what they are; in other words, all life forms are forged in the fire of a never-ending, tumbling-forward-and-behind-and-sideways process. They don't just land at an end point, whole and complete, and they never stop changing. They never arrive.*)

So, I didn't know it when I started it, but the series of Today I am Loving is (of necessity and who-else-saw-it-coming?) birthing the next series: Today I am Writing.

Some days it might be simple, silly even, sweet; others, the serious, stuff-of-the-earth and the Kingdom-come kind. Every day might be a stretch (my email inbox can tell you that), but every day is what I'd like.

And in the writing I hope to be able to remind myself (and anyone who is right there watching) that we are living in a world that is writhing with desire, for what it means to Live.

*The Still Point of the Turning World, Emily Rapp, p. 102

Today I am Loving {365}

When you are a little chilly, in this cottage under the trees, and you walk upstairs and are met by warm, smelling the way that it smells, like wood-lined floors and under the eaves, and lilacs, waving in the breeze.

Today I am Loving {364}

When it's a day where you need a friend, and you're just settling in to start the working and the friend walks in, and she sees the book sitting there and says "oh, that's our friend, that's on my coffee table too!", and you proceed to give her the other book sitting there that it just seems she should read, and she tells you about another, by the same woman, sitting in her office just now, and you decide to walk there together, so that you can trade, and on her desk is the calendar that says "African art at the Palmer today" so you walk together over, you listen to the ambassador who brought them there, you look at the intricate beauty carvings, and then you wander through the splendor of the glass there on display, and she says "Here are two things that made me think of you" and both of you have a moment where you realize this University life is charmed, yes, blessed, and then you leave her and walk back to your cottage, cut the lilacs, bring some to your Director sitting now at his desk but very soon to leave you, which chokes you up every time you think of it, and you settle back down then, 

to get to the less important "work."

Today I am Loving {363}

When finally (finally!) you have some time to put your feet up, 

and grade.

Today I am Loving {362}

When the morning seems right, 

for the warm weather soundtrack.