Still walking with Ross Gay

Early this year, I took writing class with Jeannine Ouellette. We wrote a weekly short essay inspired by Ross Gay’s Book of Delights. We were encouraged to find and write about a delight every day, as Gay had done in writing his book.

I have learned a few things while finding and writing about delight. I am reminded of the time in my past when I have kept gratitude lists. I am grounded in the importance of breath and presence. My paying attention muscles, my hope bones, my vision horizon, my imagination machination all work together to make finding delight happen like breath. 

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Empathy

A meditation on civilization’s strength

My ministers have been encouraging us to think about empathy lately. At a monthly Bible study. In sermons on Sundays. During casual conversations. I hate to admit this. There might be a significant possible crack in my knowledge and practice of empathy. I don’t want to seek first to understand cruelty. I don’t want to extend a hand to those who hate. I don’t want to turn the other cheek when our world burns. I don’t want to forgive evil even one time. I especially don’t want to talk about empathy when powerful people declare empathy as Western Civilization’s fundamental weakness. Truth. Full Stop.

Read entire post here.

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Strength. Courage. Wisdom.

An ecstatic delight.

It’s been inside of me all along, the quiet voice that knows, the abiding hands that hold, the fearless heart that breaks — in the cracks and crevasses of a body seeking to breathe in peace, breathe out love, breathe in peace, breathe out love, breathe in peace, breathe in love — we know what it means to break, we know what it means to cry tears flowing deep through yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows and all that was, is, or ever will be, we know what it means to be hungry, angry, lonely and tired and keep going: that is the delight, the delight is that strength, courage, and wisdom find me, shake me to the core when I am standing at the edge, hitting a wall, building monuments to doubt, burning everything down to escape pain (or maybe to sit in pain longer because chaos is comfortable): They find me in a corner paralyzed, doubled down in all that is, not seeing anything beyond fear’s horizon: strength, courage, and wisdom are all about perpetual morning, dawn is in me, So let it be, So let it be, So let it be.

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The Amen Corner

On how we learn we are seen and loved

I delivered a eulogy at my grandmother’s funeral. Standing in front of those gathered to celebrate and remember her, I recollected that she always made my brother and I — her grandchildren — feel like we hung the moon and the stars. She loved us deeply. She was part of my Amen Corner. An Amen Corner, loosely understood, is a corner in a church reserved for the most fervent praise. The kind of praise that starts in your bones and must be shouted. The kind of praise that is the heart’s exclamation point. The kind of praise that propels prayers directly to God or Allah or Source or Love. I want to suggest there are Amen Corners (or at least I hope there are) throughout and around and within and above the corners of our lives. Let me explain. Think of the people (and may there be many) who get your back. Think of the people who are the cheerleaders at your football game, the ovation at your opera, the lawyer in your court. Your ride or die. Your hill to die on. Your moon and stars. (It occurs to me there is a reciprocity to Amen Corners that I need to think more about.) That is your Amen Corner.

Thank you for taking a walk with me. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project to take more walk and find delight.=Subscribed

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