From Friday to Friday, 22

[When whatever ends up on my phone, ends up here.]

Today I am Writing: On Witnessing

Here at the Institute we are buzzing around, planning an event called "The Witness."

The event is built on a documentary of the same name, the story of the story that inspired the 911 system. As the story goes, in 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was stalked, raped, and murdered while 38 people watched it, and yet no one did anything about it. The documentary follows Kitty's brother, trying to find out what happened. He talks to "the witnesses" he can find, and finds out: They didn't actually witness anything.

The story he has built his life on turns out to be not true.

And yet, in the journey, he makes connections with people who knew his sister, people involved in the story in deep ways. In the long run he finds a new truth: Love.

The documentary raises questions regarding "what is the truth that I think that I know?" and "what does it mean to be a witness anyway?" It causes one to think, "If I'd been there, and I'd seen it...what would I have done?"

And swirling in my mind is the question:
What kind of witness would I be?

Then, this morning, I find a beautiful moment of witnessing right there on the nytimes. It tells the story of the man who bowed his knee, giving his name to those who would malign it, because he witnessed something, because he felt it too. He bowed his knee to say: I will be a witness; will someone witness me?

It tells the story from the perspective of the friend who was there too, the friend who is saying, "If I saw but I stay silent, my silence has betrayed you." And the moment is beautiful, because right there at the center of it is: Love.

And it swirls in me, it sticks with me. It makes me say:
What kind of witness am I being?

Also this morning, I find myself in my own painful rage. I stalk out to the coffee shop, to do my work, to get myself together. As I arrive, I run into the friend, seated in a meeting. He says hello; I wave my arms as my angst comes tearing out of my face. Later, he finds me. He sits down at my table. He looks at me. He listens. His witness doesn't judge me. His only response is one small sentence, but in it all, my heart relaxes.  In it all, he says: My ears are yours. And I see you.

His witnessing says: Doesn't matter that you're downright crazy.
You. Are. Loved.

And I think: Will I be a witness who first and foremost says,
I will see so that I might love? You.

On the top of my stack of books to be read is a new one, referred to me by a friend. Titled Blindspot: hidden biases of good people, it aims to reveal the ways we all come to some kind of truth or other about the world around us. It helps us to say: Yeah, you're a good person. But even good people hold on to truth that is not Truth. And it is hurting people. (It is even hurting you.)

And I think: Will I be a witness who has dealt with her untrue truths?

All these things swirl through my mind as I go about my day. I think about what witnessing requires, what witnessing does. It validates. It says I heard it, I saw it. But if the witness never tells, what good is it? And if the witness has built their life on a truth that is not true, will they understand what they have seen? And will they know enough to do something about it?

I go about my day and to the top there rises tall
the Really Swirling Question, which is:

What kind of witness do I want to be?

And to it, I find the only really possible answer:

The kind who has prepared her eyes, to see. Prepared her ears, to hear. Prepared her heart.

To Truthfully Love.

Because what we witness and how we respond?
[To the one who lost his sister,
to the one who is afraid of what else might be lost,
to the one, who--]
Absolutely matters.

Today I am Writing: On the Unfolding

On Saturday of this weekend past, I looked at my mighty list of to-do. Then I got in my car and drove out to the country.

I found there summer sunshine.

A man with perennial joy.

A young girl with long-eyed longing for life.

And fall-turning leaves.

I also found cucumbers and watermelons and tomatoes, lying right next to the butternut squash.

I thought about the seasons of life, the crease along which they overlap. I tend to wanting to turn the page to the next, but this time I bought strawberries, a pumpkin, and a mum.

I wandered through roads bastioned with high corn. I drank sun leaking through trees. I watched words wave before my eyes until they wed themselves as one. I tasted nostalgia on my tongue.

And I remembered: there is beauty in the moment unfolding, where time is not quite gone, and time is almost here.

From Friday to Friday, 21

[When whatever ends up on my phone, ends up here.]

Today I am Writing: On Automatic Processes

I wrote of the pens, dotting my house, and then I left it but I forgot to say: I carry a pen with me everywhere I go, anyway.

I climb up the stairs and I place the books heavy down on the desk, and though it has been established I will find pens there, in my hand there is a pen. Just like when I move from the living room chair to the notepad in the kitchen, and on the table there is a practical colony of pens, but in my hand, there is also one.

It's just an automatic process.

One in which I do not think.

There are others; the wake-in-the-night-with-a-gasp because I cannot remember what email address I chose when I sent a particular email that day. Did I send it, the right way?

Of course I did. I chose the name so automatically, my brain just didn't notice.

I sit around the table with the colleagues having lunch, and we talk about language and hearing music with our eyes, and someone brings up the automatic processes of how we make sense of the things we hear and read and see. "Something's happening!" we say, but we're such an expert at it by now, we pretty much don't even need ourselves in order to make it happen.

I know this of course; teaching for expertise is what I think a lot about, and "automatic processes" are what I actively work to build every time a piano baby steps into my house. But I lie awake at night and hear my fears do battle with my dreams, and I realize that we are experts at many ways and beings of things. The helpful things, yes; but the destructive things too. Expertly woven in automatic process, they define every step of every day. A lifetime of steps, and we do not even know.

These are the expertises that keep us locked up tight,
spinning in our webs.

Then suddenly something jumps out-- its looking for attention! You notice it in all the places, you can no longer ignore you carry it in your hand like a pen you will not need.

You cannot quite make out what it is...but you can see you cannot see. You begin to see its traces, though, long history documented right there in your skin.

And so you begin to focus your eyes. You begin to watch, to listen.

And then you begin to unravel the chains. You begin to walk,

until there is a new automatic;

free.

From Friday to Friday, 20

[When whatever ends up on my phone, ends up here.]

Today I am Writing: On Peace

There are the spinning days, the ones where the surface is smooth but the currents underneath threaten every moment to give it all away.

The currents cry out, but the surface doesn't always know it.

Or,

The currents threaten and the surface bullies down its concrete hold.

It pretends, well.

The pretending is peace but the currents say other.
The currents always say what is most true.

I read, "When you lose touch with your chosenness, you expose yourself to the temptation of self-rejection, and that temptation undermines the possibility of ever growing as the Beloved."*

The currents try to get the concrete hold's attention:
your Belovedness is stunted.
Spinning.

I pull out the appear-put-together dress, and then I am looking and I am looking and then I find.

The forgotten necklace. A heart, embedded with a tiny diamond. Given to me by the Atheist, Ironic? It reminds me: I am chosen. Beloved.

I wear it close to my skin. (The surface says: I am tired of holding together the spin.)

*from Life of the Beloved, Henri J. M. Nouwen, p. 56