Phillip Berry | Orient Yourself

This week, a post from a connection on LinkedIn caught my eye. It was a share of some unmemorable political headline, a criticism of Donald Trump, and then the conclusion that anyone voting for this man is deplorable. I get it: divisive election, strong views, competing vision for the country, etc. I know we’ve got bots manipulating us, fake news, false prophets, yada, yada, yada. But this post was from a highly educated professor at a prestigious institution. A professional on LinkedIn who often has intelligent things to say. i really don’t care that he is voting for Kamala Harris, despises Donald Trump, or whatever it was that struck him about the headline.

However, I was struck by the labeling of about 75 million American voters as “deplorable” because they are making the “wrong” choice. Deplorable is a strong word. Google says it is an adjective for something “deserving strong condemnation” with this example: “the deplorable conditions in which most prisoners are held.” Synonyms for deplorable include shameful, disgraceful, dishonorable, disreputable…you get the picture. It is not only not nice, it is aggressively critical in an extremely generalized fashion. What makes a smart, articulate, individual call so many others by such a mean-spirited adjective?

A couple of nights ago, I decided to watch The Darkest Hour, a 2017 film starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill. The movie captures the early days of WWII, centering on Churchill’s selection as Prime Minister, the fall of France, and Britain’s decision to fight rather than negotiate at the outset of the war. The movie finishes with Churchill’s famous “We Will Fight” speech (delivered fabulously by Oldman). Here is his closing flourish:

“We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God’s good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old.“

The final line caught my attention, particularly: “…until in God’s good time, the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old.” Of course, I love the call to the “New World” but what really struck me was “until in God’s good time.” it was a political speech, meant to rouse the British Parliament and the entire nation, but that line truly said something in referencing Divine Providence – the acknowledgement of things beyond our control and understanding but still moving to the will of a higher power whose plan is ultimately good.

Today, the motto of the United States is “In God We Trust.” The motto was approved for U.S. currency in 1873 and formally adopted as the U.S. motto in 1956. However, the notion of Divine Providence runs to the roots of our nation. From George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789:

“Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Churchill and Washington both invoked the mystery of Divine Providence, and trust in it, as part of their messages of hope to their nations. Why? Because hope in the good of God ran deep and both nations trusted that good would overcome the evil things that befell it. Divine Providence was both a hedge against fear and a source of gratitude for the many blessings.

The Darkest Hour is a movie infused with fear: fear of Germany, fear of losing freedom, fear of the unknown, fear of doubt. Churchill’s effort to counter those fears centered on creating hope in will, courage, and the “New World” helping the struggle. He attached that hope to God’s Providence, those purposes beyond our understanding, and the trust that His purposes would align with those on the side of good and right.

In his Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas argues that love is the cause of fear. He opens his argument by quoting St. Augustine: “There can be no doubt that there is no cause for fear save the loss of what we love, when we possess it, or the failure to obtain what we hope for.” Aquinas argues that there are good things in our lives that bring pleasure (perhaps in the form of joy, satisfaction, and hope), going on to say “since it is through his loving a certain good, that whatever deprives a man of that good is an evil to him, and that consequently he fears it as an evil.” We fear the things that might get in the way of what we love, our attachments.

Returning to my question earlier: What makes a smart, articulate, individual call so many others by such a mean-spirited adjective like “deplorable”? Perhaps Aquinas’ wisdom is instructive. If a group of opposing voters is supporting someone you fear may take away something you love, or believe in, then you may come to hate them for that threat. Describing another human being as deplorable certainly sounds hateful. Fear tends to negate our better selves (and our better reasoning), drawing us to the baser side of our being: raised voices and insults.

We’ve gotten really comfortable confusing the simplistic categorization of our two-party system with the reality that human beings are complex and capable of sophisticated thinking. Dumbing humanity down to the either-or buckets of two political parties is dangerously narrow thinking. Narrow thinking that leads otherwise intelligent people to see millions of people as deplorable because they make a choice he or she opposes. However, bringing fear into the equation helps us realize that those hurtling insults aren’t considering the complexity of the other, they are fixated on the simple, in its appearance as a threat to their love or desire.

Fear is such a powerful force and fueling it such an effective political tool. When we back people into a corner with an either/or decision and attach it to our worst fears, hate becomes quite easy and motivating. So often, reason falls short in the face of such highly charged emotive forces. Thinking of fear as an opposite to love is a fascinating consideration in coping and/or countering it.

What are the “goods” we “love”? Why? What are those attachments that we get worked up about? Are they really the issues we create in our mind? Are they really under threat? What is it we’re really scared of and who wins in flaming that fear?

There are people out there doing truly deplorable things. Shameful, disgraceful, criminal, predatory, things. Some perspective, and a few headlines, helps us see how deplorable a person really can be. By itself, exercising your right as a citizen to vote, Democrat or Republican, is not deplorable. Calling another person deplorable based on that line makes you look pretty small and unreasonable.

Guess what? Neither candidate is anywhere near perfect. Neither party will do all that you want them to do or much of what they say they will do. And, that’s probably a good thing.

Perhaps this is a great moment to remind ourselves of our motto: In God We Trust. Not a politician, a political party, a new agency, a marketing company, a pundit, a lobbyist, or anyone who wins by getting us worked up over things we ultimately cannot control. The First Mover, the Alpha and the Omega, the Divine Author, the Creator, “That than which no greater can be conceived”. Might I suggest deferring to Divine Providence a bit more and letting go of those many things we cannot control?

Maybe it’s time to trust that our great experiment will go on, this election is not the end of the world, and that whatever disappointing things happen with the next President, our greatest fears will most likely not come to pass.

Gladness of heart is the life of man, and the rejoicing of a man is length of days.

Sirach 30:22

Winter is coming…but not yet. Sitting outside yesterday evening, the fading October sun cast shadows across a perfect day. Only the slightest touch of evening coolness appeared as we enjoyed chips and salsa on a patio in the shade of broad umbrellas amid the familiarity of Mexican music. After nearly two weeks in France, even the unrecognizable Spanish words of the song seemed like home while the burrito and taco salad were comfort food for these blissfully weary travelers. There is glory in the familiar and truly no place like home.

After a day of family photos, made incredibly joyful by our return home, a picture perfect day, and four generations gathered in the moment, we found ourselves in full-throttle leisure, basking in it all as Sally and I shared stories of the day, our recent journey, and broader paths that have made life so profoundly interesting. At one point, our conversation turned to an experience she had during her years as an OB nurse when an expectant mother was given the news that, due to amniotic bands, her baby’s legs would not form below her knees. Hearing the news, the mother paused for a moment, then brightened and replied: “I’m so glad it’s not her arms.”

Sally continued, “She was so grateful that she would be able to hold hands with her little girl. After she delivered, I walked in to see her holding her baby and watched mom lean-in as the little girl moved her hands and fingers over her mother’s face.”

Just a few days ago, we stood in the middle of the American cemetery at Normandy. Nearly 9,000 graves were marked by either a Cross or a Star of David. They seemed to go on endlessly in each direction. At one end of the cemetery was a memorial with a huge bronze statue in the middle – a young man moving skyward with his hand outstretched. The statue is called “Spirit of American Youth Rising From the Waves.” It is a somber, holy place.

Shortly thereafter, we stood on Omaha Beach, the bloody landing place of American solders during D-Day, the beginning of the Allied invasion to liberate France in 1944. Looking at the memorial along the edge of the beach, I noticed the flags of the allies: Britain, America, France, Canada. Then I saw the German flag flying alongside all of the others, a profound symbol of moving forward in an effort of healing. A memorial built in the spirit of unity amid the bitter pain of blood and loss.

Not so many miles, or months, away in Germany, Sally’s grandfather will be the only survivor of a mine explosion that will impact the rest of his, and his family’s lives. Similarly, my great-grandfather will be declared missing in action as his plane disappears in the English Channel on his return to his home in England. Meanwhile, my grandfather, Poppy, will be inviting my grandmother, Nanny, to be his wife and returning to America. Such is the way of pilgrimage: walking the paths of the past to connect to the threads of our greater story.

Returning to the sunlit patio and steady beat of the strange familiarity of the Hispanic music in our American eatery, I wiped a tear away as I considered the profundity of a mother finding the joyful upside of her baby born without legs and that statue rising toward the heavens sitting in a cemetery in the north of France. What is it that enables us to accept and move on? From where did that mother’s gratitude flow and what enabled succeeding generations to forgive the senseless slaughter of their young men?

Gratitude is a special thing. Perhaps its comparative, after all, things could be worse. Or maybe it’s the relief of some kind of closure, thank God it’s over. I see it as a gift of Grace. Something we cannot fabricate or contrive on our own. We cannot “make it happen” or create it in someone else. The grace to go on is a gift, and gratitude the by-product of something beyond us. Coming upon us by no act of our own, it is the necessary start to healing and hopefulness.

Eighty years ago, the beginning of the end of World War II was thrown upon the beaches of Normandy, France, in the blood and toil of young men committed to doing their duty. Gratitude for their sacrifice grips me as I consider the beauty of my day with my family. Miles away from France, and many years, later, a young mother celebrates the life of her crippled child, graced with the opportunity to love and touch and exist in a world formed from the sacrifices on that foreign beach. These are small, grace-filled, threads on that great tapestry of our collective story. For that, I am grateful.

For that, I am glad.

I write to discover what I know.

Flannery O’Connor

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” Ernest Hemingway gave us this line in his novel, A Movable Feast, reminding himself that, when stuck at the beginning, this was the place to begin. His counsel seems appropriate to a piece on writing as a practice for growth. However, the “All” in “all you have to do…” can seem like a thousand-mile journey.

Even for those not dependent on writing to put bread on their table, translating an array of words into one true sentence may seem insurmountable. It might even seem pointless to bother with the effort.

Perhaps that’s the point. Words have power: to create and to destroy; to hurt and to heal; to elevate and to lay low. If words are the ammunition, then writing is the gun. What are we aiming for when we put pen to paper? Do we need to aim for anything in particular?

Maybe “aiming” is the wrong word, and seeing our words, even those in a true sentence, as an offensive tool is the wrong place to begin. Here, “writing as a practice” emerges as a more appropriate model for how we leverage the act of writing in our own growth and development. In a world obsessed with making its point, maybe there’s a better point to be made to ourselves in how we use writing to become our very best.

Let’s start our journey by moving words from our arsenal to our creative field. Words are seeds and our world is a big field. What might grow when we plant them? Ideas. Change. Movement. When they begin to grow, words can bring many things to life. Writing is the act of planting those seeds in patterned ways: sentences and structure that bring order and meaning to our thoughts through the words we choose to convey them.

The aim of writing is to direct our thinking in a particular direction, to touch ourselves and others. Our best writing touches us first. From there, it must be made to land wherever else it needs to. Change and possibility hide in these ordered words. Writing makes words real. It gives them a permanence. To write something down is to immortalize it, giving it visible form, and beginning its manifestation in the world. The first step of a vision realized are the words we choose to convey it.

Writing changes people. The act of writing changes the writer and reading the writing of another changes the reader. The words force a decision: yes or no. I agree or I disagree. Every assent takes us further into the writer’s mind and heart…or further from it. Every word written takes the writer closer to some truth…or further from it. To read something is to create extended exposure to the ideas, joys, frustrations, observations, and journeys, of another. To spend time writing is to create extended exposure to the process of thinking, structuring, refining, failing, and concluding, that accompanies the experience. There is no embarking on such a journey without something changing within us along the way.

Writing captures a moment. An image. A thought. A memory. An insight. Writing is history and prophecy. It allows us to see where we’ve been and imagine where we might go. It allows others to see as well. Writing is a glimpse into what we’re thinking, feeling, seeing, and experiencing, right now. It is a season. Some seasons are timeless and some fall quickly out of fashion. 

Writing allows us to give form to complexity. Layer upon layer, words build to ideas, then to pathways, and finally to action. Writing allows us to play it out, revise it, learn from it, and redirect it, all before doing it. Writing helps us build castles in the air and tear them down, lest they fall dangerously. Within our words, we can argue with ourselves, with others, or with reality – seeking truth through syllables and sentences. Writing forces us to take a position. The formation of letters is not fuzzy. In the right order, they mean something.

Writing transports us. Words can be beautiful and uplifting, helping us soar beyond earthbound reality. They can take us somewhere else, tasting, touching, and experiencing an otherness while safely testing the terra firma across the landscapes of our mind. Writing allows others to come with us, to see what we see, and experience it in the context of our seeing.

Writing pushes us, forcing us to think clearly. This is especially true if we’re writing for the eyes of others. Words demand order and intention if they are to become coherent and meaningful as expressions of thought. Writing creates cosmos from chaos. It chases away incoherence as it illuminates. Writing reveals the rambling mind, forces us to confront it, and presents the reins to harness the scattered or the half-formed.

Writing exposes us. Whenever we put something we’ve written in front of others, it says something about us and something to them. There is always a point, even if there is no point, as the writer’s words are received by the reader wherever he or she is, regardless of where the writer is. Sharing our writing puts us at risk: risk of confusion, of ridicule, of disagreement, and of rejection. Our writing might alienate those we don’t want alienated, reveal something we didn’t intend to reveal, or convey something we didn’t intend to convey. It might also convey exactly what we intended and create unintended consequences. Though writing can expose us to risk, it also exposes us to reward. Our words might attract others, inspire them, encourage them, or soothe them. Putting our writing out there may bring praise, or scorn; it can unite or divide.

Writing allows us to safely voice confusion, frustration, and anger. When chaos consumes, writing gives it room to run, and the chance to release the pressure of potentially destructive energies into words that need not gather coherently in the wrong place. Releasing them onto the paper or the screen, drains their energy, and possibly their power to hold us fearfully or move us destructively. Their toxicity drained privately, cooler words are allowed to take their place publicly.

Writing is communication. Whether art, business, leadership, or reflection, our words are a creative conveyance of thought, intention, and direction. Writing reflects how we think, tells others where we’re going, and invites them to come along, occasionally entertaining them along the way. It is the pragmatic and the esoteric. Upon the blank page we can be all things or nothing at all, master and slave, teacher and student, artist and assistant, philosopher and laborer, leader and follower, expert and neophyte. It allows us to live within our own bubble or to bring others in with us, inviting them to react. It is part of the great human dance we call communication.

Writing is a practice. Like all we possess, it fades away when left unused. It can be profound or mundane, elevated or base, but it cannot sit statically and remain fruitful. To write is to lean dynamically into the known and unknown, wrestle with it, and engage it. It is a skill to be developed, stewarded, and used.

Writing is yours. Good or bad, elegant or elementary, it belongs to you along with all those thoughts and words you’ve collected over a lifetime. Each word perfectly happy to sit, waiting patiently, for you to call upon it in that next sentence, paragraph, post, letter, or chapter. All of them desiring expression from the fount of your being, whether on paper or in the digital universe. Writing is intelligence manifested, reason directed, and creativity brought to life, in an endless combination of letters and sentences telling the world, and yourself, that you are here, your voice engaged, and your heart ready to share. Your words cry, “I’m ready to say something, no matter the consequences.”

Writing is a gift. Writing is half of that great gift we call literacy, and it should be cherished, even in its imperfections. It is part of our cultural inheritance and given to us through our education. It is also a gift we give, to ourselves and to others, in a great expression of sharing. A gift manifested in the thinking it demands, the self-reflection it offers, and the opportunity it provides others to experience the same.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Just write it to yourself first.

The points we want to make, ideas we want to convey, dreams we want to share, or even the rants we feel compelled to immortalize, all land first within ourselves. They are often just whisps of a notion in our head, but the ink or LED image of those letters transforms that notion into something else.

Even writing other people’s words and ideas sets off a chain reaction in our hearts, our minds, and our souls. Writing is the process of making real all that hides in the light and the dark of our conscious or subconscious mind. Sometimes it needs to be shared and sometimes it needs to be purged. The physical act of writing brings it all into the visible with form and structure, ready to be put to use, or put away.

Ultimately, writing reveals, then changes us. And that’s why it’s so necessary. Once we write the idea, the dream, or the observation, we’ve acknowledged it, and planted it deeply. The physical act of writing it, manifests reality. That one true sentence points to the next truth and, in so doing, begins the process of realizing it. This is the hidden power of writing. We often think of writing for the point to be made to the world, but the best writing starts with those words we need to share with ourselves.

Thank God for big personalities. My grandfather and grandfatherly namesake, “Poppy,” was a big personality. An endearingly imperfect man, he was prone to hyperbole in colorful stories of dubious accuracy, the occasional expletive, warm-hearted teasing, nicknames, and entertaining colloquialisms. His approach to raising his children was as colorful as any exaggerated story he could produce, and being around him was always a bit of an adventure. My nickname? He liked to call me Pistol Pete, though I think it had more to do with cowboys and six guns than the sharpshooting Pete Maravich.

Though I don’t believe he ever used it on me directly, one of my favorite memories of his bright colors was his classic, “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know” line, typically used with smart aleck children in both serious and playful ways. I’m pretty certain he didn’t hesitate to use it on his adult children when they got a little “too big for their britches.” I smile as I recall his voice and bluster.

I’m pretty sure I’ve used it (I hope playfully) with my kids at some point or another over the years, but it came to my mind this week-end during a fishing retreat with my sons, son-in-law, two grandsons, and my dad. Though I do have a rather precocious 7-year old who could, from time to time, be worthy of bringing out such a blustery line, it came to mind as we were gathered around a fire sharing stories.

On the surface, when one claims to have “forgotten more than you’ll ever know,” he is saying that his complete span of knowledge is so much more than yours, that the collection of knowing which he’s forgotten, is actually greater than the sum of all you’ll ever possess as knowledge. Yes, on the surface this is total bluster. However, there is a profundity buried within. Looked at slightly differently, there is truth in it. Anyone saying it is actually correct in the sense that you cannot know all of the things that I have forgotten.

Sitting by the fire, old stories came up (including many classic movie references) and I realized that we often remembered some things differently in our shared experiences. What stuck with me in a particular moment was not necessarily what stuck with my boys. We remembered different details from the same stories, and held different emotional connections to them. We saw many of our shared experiences under a different light; our own perspective and filter casting meaning across the moment.

Of course it did, how else could it be? Not only have I forgotten things that no one else will ever know, we’ve even forgotten shared things that we experienced differently – only to have them recalled in a new sharing, colored by time and distance. This is a gift of community, and the potential in unity-of-experience, even as we experience something uniquely. Bringing it all back together broadens it with nuance and texture, making it more even as we begin to remember less.

Our minds are such miraculous and mysterious things. The past is never really as clear as we think it is. Our filters refract experience and memory, as certainly as a prism splits a white ray of light into the spectrum we know as color. We receive certain colors at certain moments, and we often remember them differently in time. What a gift.

Considering the many stories, refracted rays of memory, emotional connections, and the ways we see our individual and collective pasts, I realize that, moving in parallel to our growing collection of memories, is the reality that I’ve forgotten more than I’ll ever know. Don’t worry, today has no need for a winsome reflection on all that is lost in time. Perhaps we’ll go there in another post. The truth is that our ability to forget is also a gift.

To have forgotten more than we’ll ever know is simply the acknowledgement of the rich depth of our existence and the experience accompanying it. There is more to know than we can ever know, and there is more to our lives than we can ever remember. And that is ok. I have forgotten more than you can ever know, and you have forgotten more than I can ever know. What a beautiful abundance.

Looking down from the cottage, I see the span of four generations, talking, laughing, and looking with wonder upon the sunrise and the countless mysteries of the water, and its abundant life. I’m reminded that, right now, it isn’t what I’ve forgotten that matters, or even what I remember. It is this moment, present, full, and full of life, that matters. Passing, soon to be remembered differently, and then to be forgotten.

Such a gift.

What is it to be called? Some may get the “burning bush” moment when the message comes through loudly and clearly. Perhaps it’s the voice from the cornfield promising, “Build it and they will come.” For some, it may be the billboard giving clarity: “This is the song you’ve been looking for.” For most, it’s in the normalcy of life that the signs appear. Starting quietly, and only growing if we can tune-in to first consider, and then getting clearer as we begin to respond. Oddly, the signs become most clear when we look back at them through our rearview mirror.

Standing on a platform in front of a crowd of about 500 people on this beautiful Saturday morning, I looked out to see a block of white t-shirts belonging to my Northwind family…including Sally and some of our children and grandchildren. My words disappeared into the microphone as my heart soared with joyful pride. The good kind. Once again, our team showed up when needed, in a way that mattered.

Yesterday’s event was the American Diabetes Association’s Step Out Walk to fight diabetes. This is the Indiana version of a national campaign to raise awareness and money for the ADA. Just a few weeks ago, we were invited to participate in this event but we’ve been coming to this moment for years.

First, a few facts on our nation’s growing problem with diabetes:

• 38.4 million Americans have diabetes – that is 11.4% of our population.

These data points are definitely signs that need to be followed. Diabetes is a metabolic disease centered on how we process sugars in our blood but it’s implications can affect our heart, kidneys, eyes, feet, skin, hearing…you get the picture. For those living with diabetes, it demands constant vigilance with life-threatening consequences if poorly managed. Diabetes generally goes hand-in-hand with obesity which has a 40% prevalence in Americans over 20 years old and many of its own consequences beyond diabetes.

“Diabetes is a disease of degrees. Effectively  managing those degrees is a life or death proposition. It is also a quality of life proposition. We are here today to support the ADA’s efforts to find answers. How do we eliminate this disease and how do we best manage it?” So began my brief comments to yesterday’s Step Out participants. As I looked at those white shirts, I thought of the St. Anthony of Padua quotation printed in black across the front: Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak. Seeing or hearing the signs is of little use if we don’t respond. Smiling, I considered the action-oriented group in those white t-shirts.

With regard to diabetes, Northwind directly supports thousands of individuals through our Clinical Blueprints – programs that pair medications, supplies, technology, and clinical coaching/support. We launched these about 5 years ago as one of the ways we work to help employers and their employees manage healthcare and its costs. What we’ve learned along the way is just how closely bound human flourishing is with our physical health and the state of mind it drives. When one begins to physically feel better, particularly through his or her own efforts at improvement, everything else in life begins to feel, and look, better.

Disease often attacks hope, and a massive opportunity for those in healthcare is bringing hope in those times that it is elusive. The best sources are signs of progress and the feeling that we’re not in it alone. We all get this. We know it intuitively, but such knowledge seems empty when feelings of frustration and despair grip us. The massive size and complexity of our healthcare system can make it difficult for those needing it to get what they need and for those working within it to give all of which they are able. It takes a lot of work on both sides. To show up ready and able to make a difference is a high call.

To actually make a difference day in and day out in quantifiable and unquantifiable ways is truly miraculous. Thus my smile as I looked at that Northwind team. “They showed up,” I thought. They keep showing up when and where they are needed.

A short while later, I found myself standing before that same team at our Fall Picnic. (Sorry Team, lots of listening to me this week-end.) “You showed up,” I said. “You keep showing up and it is making a difference.” We talk a lot about following the signs and showing up. We spend much time and energy interpreting the data we review, planning the strategies to help address challenges, and then acting on it in direct encounters with those who are counting on us. It can become easy to look at the tasks and go into execution mode with single-minded focus on getting things done.

However, when we understand why we’re doing what we’re doing, how it ties to our greater purposes and movements, and what it’s implications truly are, then we can return to the source in a way that enables us to draw energy and redeploy in ways that go beyond the tasks. In this place, we return to the call that was whispered to us through the voices, the data, and all of the signs, appearing in our lives. This source helps us unify our efforts in a way that goes beyond our individual selves and strengthens us for the difficulties and resistance we encounter along the way. Our own, our organization’s, and those being born by the people we serve.

Yesterday, looking at the beautiful collection of individuals gathered in that bigger unity we call Northwind, I was struck by the profound way that we become more in our belonging. We really do belong to each other. Not in a possessive, controlling way, but in a collective responsibility built upon our gifts, capabilities, and unity of purpose. In this way, we are made stronger together and better able to fulfill the duty of our call.

Standing together under a pavilion at a park, it is very easy to see it. Walking out into the broad world, it can get lost. Considering our morning at the ADA Step Out Walk, the broader fight against diabetes, and the possibility that comes from unity of cause and purpose, I realize that we really do belong to each other. Amid all of the complexity of the world around us and within us, there is a lovely simplicity to that notion. Perhaps that’s the brightly blinking sign hidden right in front of us.

One of my nieces recently approached me to talk through her job search. We spoke of her objectives, the types of jobs that interested her, and her approach to launching her professional career in her first post-college job search. I encouraged her to take a networking approach and pointed her in a few directions. As she progressed, she shared a few updates. Over time, I noticed that she would go in spurts. A contact would give her an idea or another connection and she would back-off going to events. A name I gave, responded, and she would stop reaching out to others on the list to see how the first contact played out.

As I watched, I realized that there was always something else she could be doing. Another phone call. Another email. Another event. Another contact. Until she had arrived at the conclusion of her search, there was never too much activity. Yet, like most of us, she would invest just enough to get to the next step of her journey. I often see this in sales-related roles. Faced with an endless horizon of opportunities that require lots and lots of activity to uncover, most development people get a few things in their hopper, and cycle on them to some form of closure before adding more.

This strategy is great if the opportunities you find first, happen to work out. It breaks down quickly if things don’t happen as desired…which is normally the case. When it comes to generating opportunities, we cannot do “too much” to increase our chances of success. However, our normal mindset is to do just enough to give us the feeling that we’re on our way. Growing up, this happens in our schoolwork, our chores, and even our friendships. We study enough to get passable grades, clean up enough to keep mom off our back, and flex enough to remain likable to our friends.

Of course there are exceptions, we also have a wonderful capacity to over-achieve. When we really want something, we’ll do almost anything to get it. Particularly when we’re young, we have amazing energy and an incredible capacity to work really hard. However, our tendency is to pull up short. We have the endurance but it costs a lot to engage it. Sports are a great example. Even when we want to achieve something, we still need coaches to push us beyond “just enough.”

As we get older, we try to live on being “smarter.” We conserve our energy and use leverage to get things done. Over time, we tend to invest less energy and expect greater returns. Here, we begin to succumb to sloth – a malaise brought-on by our resistance to give it all. It’s painful to give it all – we come to a point where we don’t want to press to that edge, let alone beyond it. We calculate and do just enough to get by. But just enough is never enough – at least to flourish. When we aim for just enough, we always come up short of all that might be. It is a failure to steward our gifts and our energy; it is a failure to show up with our best effort.

Ancient monks called sloth the “noon day devil.” That part of the day when the going gets tough – I’m tired, I’m bored, I don’t feel like it. Perhaps I don’t have to put in the work. But it catches up with us. Yes, it shows in our performance and results. However, the worst effects go unseen. It degrades confidence. It lessens joy. It removes the color from our days and prevents satisfaction. It makes our time tasteless, bereft of the flavors that make the feast of life enjoyable. It weakens us and makes us susceptible to disease of heart and mind and soul. And when the inevitable lows come, it leaves us unprepared and vulnerable to the dangers of loss.

Sloth weakens our will and erodes our strength. It causes us to forget our true capacities to create, to build, to push, and to endure. It breaks down fortitude and leaves us gasping when the hits come. It lessens us and makes flourishing impossible. Sloth convinces us that even the things we like to do aren’t worth doing. It makes life uninteresting. It makes things seem pointless. It makes goals feel impossible and people appear as barriers and vampires. The noon day devil is incredibly difficult to escape. It hides behind rationalizations and blame. It whispers and shifts and shimmies. It is a low feeling, a brain cloud, a heavy heart.

The cure is wholeheartedness, an all-in embrace of the life that is ours. To break the feeling requires us to start small and often begins on physical activity. Do something. Get moving. Get active. Volume of activity breaks sloth’s grip. The initial step demands a massive dose of will – the wheels will grind and resist but the rust shakes quickly. Walk toward the thing you don’t want to do. How much do I have to do? Do 2, 3, 4 times what you think you need to do. Push. The more you roll, the more you’ll want to roll.

Many years ago, I read an interview with a beer entrepreneur – it might have been Jim Koch, the founder of Samuel Adams. In it, he described his moment of arrival: “I was standing on a cliff edge in a national park. Looking down, I noticed one of our bottle caps tossed on the ground. In that moment I knew we had arrived.” The story stayed with me as a very curious way to measure success but it also resonated: we’re so big that one might find remnants of our products as trash in an isolated spot in a national park.

Growing up, I loved to watch the Little Rascals. Sally and I still occasionally talk about an episode in which one of the Little Rascals is frustrated with having to eat mush for his meal. “Someday, when my ship comes in, I’ll never eat mush again,” he proclaims. Later in the episode, we see him sitting in a large, elegant, dining room with all of his friends. The table is set with all the fineries, and attendants bring out large serving platters with silver covers on them. We watch as the Rascals wait with hungry anticipation, while the covers are lifted to reveal fancy bowls filled with mush. Arrival indeed.

What is arrival? Is it a place? A state of mind? A number in a bank account? A bottle cap tossed on the ground in a public park? Is it that perfect job, or just our first “real” job? Maybe it’s knowing you can order any meal you want. Of course, it’s a misnomer, our lives are built on many arrivals…and many departures. For that beer baron, the affirmation of that trashed bottle cap was just a moment. Many arrivals, as well as the desire for more, surely followed his experience in the park.

As time goes on, I’m more inclined to see “arrival” as the point in time when we stop grasping. For what we don’t have. For what we should have or what we see others having. For survival, fulfillment, meaning, the passions that drive us crazy, the limelight or “Like” or positive review. Maybe arrival is when we stop saying “someday” or “when my ship comes in.”

Arrival is some form of enough. A place where we can experience contentment with our condition, place, status, address in the world. Where we surrender how we think it should be and embrace what it is. Not in a white flag, “I give up” kind of way, but in an assent to seeing what is good and true and beautiful in this place, this moment, this reality.

Can we be comfortable in our own skins? Can we trust that we’re not being short-changed, cheated, or duped in our particular reality? Not grasping does not mean sitting back, doing nothing, or giving-in to the “I don’t wanna” of sloth. It’s recognizing that the gift of this moment is enough and the next is just a bonus. It is a perpetual prayer of gratitude, even as we go about climbing the next mountain or charting a course across the open sea. It is recognizing that our grasping is what gives us anxiety, fosters fear, and creates rifts in our relationships.

We think we want arrival. We think we want to solve the puzzle and put the trophy on the shelf. But it is the working at it that makes it meaningful and brings us fully alive. In that sense, there is not, and never should be, enough, AND, we should wake each day seeing that yesterday was, in fact, enough, and that today is just one more gift.

One of the gifts of time and self-reflection is seeing the many opportunities we had to do things differently. One potential burden of such a gift is regret. Another potential burden is feeling like we’re obliged to share our expertise in life’s realities with those following behind. The glorious thing about arriving at this place in our life is that it is ours. All of it. The mistakes, the gifts, the successes, the failures, and everything in between. They are all part of our arriving. And our departing.

There is always more to be done. There is always more to be had. There is always a better way, a woulda, shoulda, or coulda. Yes, there are truly hard realities of life. We have to find our way to putting a roof over our head, feeding our family, and supporting our daily iced carmel macchiato habit. These are the necessities. Beyond such necessities, the world’s an open field of possibilities with extremes in all directions.

A great beauty of life is watching as the things one once thought were important, disappear into the background behind the things one discovers are truly important. The “enough” of yesterday is no longer near the list of priorities, and the “arrival” of today can bring about as much wonder and delight as we ever imagined possible in the things we’ve left behind. What remains are the necessities of our own experience. The way we had to get there, it’s mistakes, and the glory of its discoveries. Each shaping a piece of that blog post we’ll one day write explaining the secret of it all.

A secret we discover that was only meant for us.

Walking in our neighborhood late yesterday afternoon, we noticed dragonflies swarming. Pockets of them appeared in backyards and along the streets, darting, dipping, and weaving, in chaotic patterns across the sky. Looking up, we noticed how high they would fly: over trees and houses in twenties and thirties. On one stretch, we walked west toward the setting sun, their little silhouettes moving forward and backyard, up and down, with precision; as chaotic as the swarm appeared, there was clearly intention, purpose in the movements. Their dance was not random.

On queue, a text with a video appeared on our phones. It was three of our grandchildren, just a few blocks away, running around in their backyard as they followed the dragonflies, chasing them in their own chaotic way. We watched as they flailed their arms, singing and shouting with glee as they ran in circles, dancing in their own ordered chaos. The deepening shadows of their yard cast its own filter across the scene, making it seem to live in the now as well as some other nostalgic past. There was something profoundly elemental in their wonder at these creatures and the mystery of the moment.

Apparently, the magical swarming of the dragonflies is a kind of feeding frenzy that occurs during a seasonal migration. Precision is reality for these hunters as they catch their prey in 9 out of 10 tries and their “dance” reflects the pursuit of mosquitos and other flying insects. To see the dragonfly swarming is to experience the twilight of its existence as it moves from 2-5 years of life as a larvae in water through its six month lifespan as an adult. Sensing the seasons changing, the dragonflies move southward in front of the cold and their own changing season of life.

Watching the dragonflies swarm, and our grandchildren dance among them, I too felt the season changing. Earlier in the day, we celebrated the 85th birthday of Sally’s mom, Sherry. For the last 15 years, the appearance of her birthday has been bittersweet as it’s also the day before the anniversary of the fall leading to the death of her husband, Roy. In Sherry’s card, I wrote of seeing her reflection in my girls, Sally, Madison, and Macy, and the beautiful way her essence appears in their mannerisms, stories, and character. Though there are precise academic and clinical words for such things, to me it is simply a beautiful feature of divine design.

The mysterious life of the dragonfly is ordered to that great design. The chaos of its swarm turns out to be purposeful and precise. Ordered to the pattern of its life, the dragonfly moves to the rhythm of its seasons, taking them as they come, and doing what it does when it is time to do so. Living to its purpose is its good, the reality of which is true, and ultimately beautiful in its fulfillment.

The simplicity of such purpose is profound to behold. The dragonfly, like children dancing, is unencumbered by self-doubt or confusion. Its existence is clarity, and moving within the pattern of that clarity liberates it to be fully what it is. The dawn of our human lives and the twilight offer similar clarity. As children, we move to simpler patterns in unencumbered innocence, following the whimsical and the precise, as we explore the edges of our emerging faculties and their burgeoning responsibility. In our twilight, we return to simplicity as our once urgent wants and needs, retreat before the necessities bound in our limitations and the struggle to navigate them.

As we walked along, the moment reminded Sally of Longfellow’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

We spend so much time anguishing and fearing what it isn’t, what it didn’t, or what it might not, that it becomes easy to miss life’s invitation to dance. Somewhere between the dawn and the twilight, the chaos overwhelms and the simple song of life’s beautiful waltz gets lost. Longfellow goes on:

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

As I write this, a rooster crows as sunlight emerges on the horizon. Another day and the song plays on. For a moment, I’m tempted to chase the list, the tasks, the necessities I see emerging in the day. For a moment. But Longfellow has more:

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

But the temperature is 59 degrees and the cool morning air is unhurried, unburdened with anything but its own necessity. The necessity of being. Even the dance has interludes, though they are still part of the greater drama. Longfellow concludes:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

My mind wanders to my grandchildren, and to my mother-in-law. Dawn and twilight intermingle, cascading stars across the simplicity of life’s grand design and our call to dance with it. To dance within it. Is that necessity I feel or an urging to let it go? The moment passes and I’m left with the song playing across my mind, inviting me to take the floor.

Ice is forming on the tips of my wings,
Unheeded warnings, I thought, I thought of everything.

Pink Floyd, Learning to Fly

“You have to know how to fall,” she said earnestly. “People always stiffen up when they need to stay loose and roll with it. I was a cheerleader once, you know. We had to learn how to tumble.” So goes the conversation when one spends an evening sitting next to a beautiful soul who has procured true wisdom over the span of 92 years. “Of course, it doesn’t always work,” she added with great earnestness. I smiled as I replied, “Brilliant. That is going to show up in a blog sometime.” She smiled back, perhaps a little uncertain of what I meant by “blog.”

Falling is serious business, particularly for those over the age of 65. Here are a few facts:

• In the U.S., every 35 minutes, a senior dies following a fall.

Falling isn’t reserved for the aged. Visiting my daughter at her college a number of years ago, I walked out of the bookstore looking upward at a building on the quad and missed a step down, causing my own action roll, and relatively quick pop-up with a furtive look around to gauge how just how public my fall was. Curiously, I was literally alone at that moment and very fortunately unharmed. I’m certain my “action roll” wasn’t as graceful as it seemed in my mind. There is always room to learn more about falling with style.

The data for falling suggest that odds are pretty good for most of us that we’re going to trip, stumble, or simply miss a step, at some point and take a tumble – 25% of everyone over 65 falls each year. However, physically falling isn’t the only kind of fall we’re likely to experience. In fact, there is a 100% chance that we will experience multiple falls in our life: falls out of relationships, falls out of jobs, falls out of favor, falls out of hope, or joy, or peace, etc. Our lives as human beings are marked by falls and, physical or not, they are almost always painful.

Reflecting on my friend’s sage counsel related to managing a physical fall, I wonder how we might apply it to the other falls that pepper our existence. How do we stay loose and roll with it when the falls come?

One natural reaction to falling is to “brace for impact.” Perhaps young children give us a hint at how we might approach our reaction to a fall. As I watch my grandchildren run around, I’m always astounded at how they seem to “bounce” with repeated falls. Sure, there are skinned knees and bruises, but on a percentage basis, they are really effective at falling. What’s their secret? They don’t grit their teeth. They don’t brace for impact. They don’t grasp at the situation. Even in a fall, children approach it with open hands.

Let’s face it, as we move along our crazy, bumpy, topsy-turvy, lives, we want the order of control and prefer to have a good grip on, well, everything. When the fall is upon us, we want to grab it and manage it to the proper conclusion. So many of our figurative falls mirror a physical fall: we are literally tumbling through open space and there is nothing to grab on to. However, in trying to grasp onto anything to help break our fall, we often do more damage to ourselves, and quite possibly, to those around us.

Toddler Rule Number One: Don’t grasp, your efforts to grip only add tension.

As we age, we have far less “bounce” in us than we did as children. However, most of the time, they’re not actually “bouncing.” Children have a beautiful way of surrendering to reality. They seem able to assent to circumstances in a way that so many of us have long forgotten. We’ve been convinced that success as an adult is about “making things happen” and “bending the world to our will.” Frank taught us that it’s glamorous and necessary to “do it our way.”

Such self-determination is completely counter to falling well. The toddler wants his or her way as much, or even more, than the most selfish adult, but has the gift of letting go when reality shows the necessary path. The “bounce” happens because his surrender is fast and his desires are redirected in the context of the reality of the situation. There is little lamentation, second guessing, or frustration as his energies are redirected quickly to what is possible.

Toddler Rule Number Two: Be prepared to surrender control when reality demands it. Assent quickens the bounce.

Sometimes, things just happen. We’re walking along and suddenly we trip and fall. However, there are other times when we can see it coming. Time and experience have trained us to keep our eyes open for the pitfalls, collisions, and “other shoes dropping” that mark the human journey. We just know stuff is going to happen. This early warning system can be a real life-saver but it can also exacerbate the impact of our falls.

Anticipating the falls of our lives can bring fear into our minds, hearts, and limbs. The hardening of soul and sinew that comes from the fear of what might happen can be worse than any amount of grasping or thrashing. Fear literally makes us brittle. It causes stiffness across our entire being, setting us up for a broken heart or broken will as surely as hitting a wall can break our bones. Fear is natural and necessary, however, learning to balance our circle of real influence with that greater circle of concern where things sit outside our influence is critical to staying loose when the fall comes.

Toddler Rule Number Three: A little fearlessness goes a long way in staying relaxed for the falls that inevitably come.

Considering my fall on the campus quad, there were two thoughts going through my head as I moved through it: Did I hurt something? Did anyone see me? Falls are going to happen and with them, there will be injuries. Our hearts, wills, and bodies, will break along the way. What does the toddler have to show us about these realities?

First of all, any injury sends the toddler looking for mom or dad or nanny. With the hurt comes the need for comfort and counsel. Injuries need tending. The wounds we endure require healing and we must be ready to call in help to manage them. There is no going-it-alone and all the self-reliance in the world amounts to little when we are broken.

Toddler Rule Number Four: When injury happens, seek help.

The good news is that many falls may occur but they won’t all cause major injury. At least physically. The next great danger is to our pride, and our ability to roll with it is often hampered by the sense of self that reacts to the fall. Did we stumble on our own or did we have some help? Falling by our own ignorance, mistake, or misstep, can be a devastating blow to self-esteem. Looking around as we are lying on the ground, do we see others laughing at our faltering? Perhaps even worse, do we see a look of horror in their eyes as they witness our fall?

Pride is such a tricky beast. It is both the vision we have of ourself and the expectation we have of the world to see it the same way. When our vision of self is impacted by a fall or we believe the world outside now sees us as less, the initial fall threatens to spiral further. The toddler is unburdened by such self regard. Facing the reality of the fall, embracing the need for healing, or picking herself up and motoring on, she sees it simply as it is: a bump in the road. It is just part of being and she feels no less for it.

Toddler Rule Number Five: You are not your fall.

In 1995’s Toy Story, toy cowboy, Woody, confronts the competing new toy, Buzz Lightyear, and all of his fancy gadgetry, by saying “That’s not flying, that’s just falling with style.” I wonder, is falling with style a form of flying?

Buzz Lightyear’s flying was his version of flourishing, a place in which he was operating at his peak self. Thinking of my 92-year-old friend and her long life, I realize that she has mastered the art of falling with style. She had to, otherwise there is no way she would have been at that table telling me about it. May we all find such a path to our own flourishing.

This week, I share my third and final reflection (at least for now) on Dante’s Divine Comedy. We’ve descended into the depths of Inferno, climbed the steep sides of Purgatorio, and now ascend into Paradiso. With Dante, and Beatrice, as our guides, we seek the pearls of great price to be applied in our own lives.

Driving down 96th Street, the familiar surroundings passed unnoticed to my eyes, clouded in fear and doubt, unable to focus on anything but the impending collision of our livelihood into the rocks of an emerging financial reality. My mind spinning, I wondered aloud, “how is this possible?” already knowing the answer and it’s seventy-seven antecedents. Building a business is difficult, so very uncertain, and loss of revenue exists as a perpetually looming threat to the fragile ecosystem of inputs and outputs that sustains any ongoing enterprise. Limping up the stairs of our empty house, I felt my own failure desperately anchored to the two-ton black monkey digging its nails into my back. “There’s no getting out of this one,” I muttered to myself, stumbling into the bedroom, hoping a heavy blanket and closed eyes would calm the nausea building in my stomach.

Between me and the bed stood a bright ray of sunlight streaming through the blinds of our northwesterly facing window, creating an angular sword-stroke of luminescence cutting across my path. Drawn to my knees in broken humility, my hands came together prayerfully as I closed my eyes and released the well of tears pooling at the corners of my eyes, “Father in heaven, I trust you. I need your help. I want our business to survive but I trust you to take us where we need to be. Please show me the way, help me to see your will and the path forward. I release my failings to you and surrender my ambitions to your will.”

The light was intense upon my closed eyelids, and I had the strangest sensation of the burning orange growing, coming closer, overshadowing me in its fiery luminosity. My heartbeat slowed. My tense fingers loosened their prayer-tuned grip. Deep breaths: in and out, in and out. There was only silence and my gentle easing into peacefulness. Having lost any sense of time, I opened my eyes to a softer sun, set lower behind the tall trees. Alone and steadied, I returned to the room, the reality of the moment, and the pragmatic. A soft whisper in my mind said, “There is always a way forward and, no matter what, all will be well.”

Moving up into Paradiso, Dante the pilgrim continues his search for the deepest truths as he ascends among the souls of heaven, now playing to the Divine song in the light of Truth itself. “So I, directly to the shimmering that spoke, and when it heard it grew more bright, such the delight it gleaned in listening” (Paradiso, Canto 5, Lines 130-132). Light and luminescence permeate Dante’s heaven, and we encounter souls glowing in their reflection of God’s love. “The holy figure in a happy blaze concealed himself by his bright reveling and from within those secret secret rays responded as the following song will sing” (Paradiso, Canto 5, Lines 136-139).

The songs that follow Dante through Paradiso echo God’s loving whisper through the wisdom offered by these souls who have secured their place in Eternity. The light moving in and among them illuminates their actions on earth, amid trial and suffering, to their great cosmic ends, while pointing toward an ongoing opening of Divine revelation in heaven itself. Paradiso’s theme of sun and light is hopeful and revelatory, assuring that the faithful choices, and trust, displayed in our temporal lives reflects onto our soul’s journey afterward, suffused with the Grace-filled opportunity to grow further through discovery in the infinite mystery of God.

At the heart of Dante’s journey through the Divine Comedy has been a quest for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, initiated in his mortal affections for the now eternal Beatrice. Finding her at last atop Mount Purgatory, Dante begins to learn how much more he must learn, particularly about his temporal love for her. Considering Dante’s experience with Beatrice, the rock band, U2, gives us some mortal perspective:

Johnny, take a dive with your sister in the rain
Let her talk about the things you can’t explain
To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal
If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel
On your knees, boy

She’s the wave, she turns the tide
She sees the man inside the child

It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right
She moves in mysterious ways, yeah
It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right

– U2, Mysterious Ways

Eyes still blinded by the Divine light of Paradiso, Dante is quickly level-set by Beatrice on the deficits of his mortal perspective: “You’re making your mind dull with false imagining – you don’t perceive what you would see, if you could shake it off. You are not on earth, as you believe. Lightning that flees its proper realm is not so swift as your returning to your own.” (Paradiso, Canto 1, Lines 88-93). Mysterious ways indeed!  Whatever we imagine of our Eternal home, falls far short of the spiritual realities He has waiting for us. Dante began his journey seeking a path beyond the beasts blocking his way, a path beyond the sin holding him back from his ultimate desire, represented in Beatrice, the symbol of the Fulfillment of All Desire. Now past the descent through hell and ascent through purgatory, Dante finds the limits of his mortal knowledge in its comprehension of God’s providence.

Encountering Saint Thomas Aquinas in the fourth circle of Paradiso, the sun, Dante is counseled by the wise saint: “People besides should never be too sure of what they judge, like farmers in the corn who count their crop before ears mature. For I’ve seen all the winter a bare thorn looking like nothing but a stiff rough stick, whose crown would blossom when the rose was born, And I have seen a vessel sleek and quick, racing through all its course along the main, founder as it was putting into port. So let no Master Dick and Lady Jane, seeing one rob, another give his all, think they can see with providence divine, Because the one can rise, the other fall” (Paradiso, Canto 13, Lines 130-142).

Many years from the fiery orange glow overshadowing closed eyelids in my sunlit bedroom, I found myself standing at the base of the Cruz de Ferro, the pole and iron cross standing nearly 5,000 feet above sea level atop Monte Irago along the Camino de Santiago. Now 650 miles into the journey and considering what I would leave at the foot of this iconic symbol of the Way, I realized that, though we came on this journey seeking God through the places and people of this pilgrimage, it was He who had found us. Like Dante’s journey through Inferno and Purgatorio, our Camino started as our quest to unify our suffering to Jesus’ Way of the Cross, but we discovered that it was, in fact, God’s quest to conform us to himself.

Thus is Dante moved in Paradiso from the particularities of sin and purgation to the higher refinements of conformity to God’s perfect will. Dante’s search for Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, results in that glorious Trinity finding, refining, and ultimately revealing to him the salvific insight into the gift of free will: “The greatest gift God made for any creature by His own bounty, gift most perfectly like His own excellence, gift He hold most dear, Was from the first the will at liberty: all creatures made to be intelligent were and are so endowed, and only they” (Paradiso, Canto 5, Lines 19-24).

Beatrice proceeds to enlighten Dante by describing vows in the context of this extraordinary gift and why they are irrevocable, ultimately setting up the spiritual logic of Christ’s paschal sacrifice. “You’ll see, then from this line of argument, the high value of vows if they’re so made that God consents as soon as you consent. For when both God and man have sealed the pact they slay this treasure in a sacrifice, and do so, as I say, by a free act. What could restore the loss, what could suffice” (Paradiso, Canto 5, Lines 25-31)? The free will we refused Him in the Fall, could only be restored in Jesus’ sacrifice. We, and Dante, in our mortal knowledge, set out seeking our Creator according to our understanding and with the designs of our desires. Dante reminds us that, all along our journey, and hidden in the mysterious ways of His own designs, God has been seeking us, and our heart, in the sacrifice of our free will to him.

Not so long after descending from the Cruz de Ferro, I found myself in conversation with a very charming, and intelligent, investor. He had approached me, impressed with what he saw as a successful company and fascinated by the potential he saw in helping us grow our business. He spoke of growth, investment, impact, and valuations. Early in our conversations, I asked him if he believed in God and he shared stories of his family life, commitment to attending church, and priorities as a man. I saw signs and serendipity in our paths crossing and began to follow him down the path he showed me. During one of his visits, while he was again speaking of investments and exits, Luke 4:5-6 came to my mind:

5 Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant.

6 The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish.”

With that warning, the insidiously twisting nature of the process revealed itself as I watched all conversations around the purpose of my business shift from the mission of improving health to the mission of maximizing investor value. Promises of a “long game exit” turned into a focus on short-term decisions to increase profit and quickly “demonstrate increasing EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes depreciation, and amortization).” I woke up to the realization that my original good intentions of doing more, impacting more, and truly changing lives, had been lost among the “what if’s” and “we could’s” of ideas centered on what a windfall bright bring. The velvety possibility of “more” had changed the fundamental nature of “why.”

Now in the sphere of Saturn, Dante the pilgrim encounters Saint Benedict, lamenting corruption within the monasteries he had founded so many years before: “Unto that height he saw this ladder rise, patriarch Jacob, with its topmost parts, and angels swift to duty. But these days No one wishes to climb it, no one starts one foot from off the earth, and so my rule’s nothing but parchment fit to throw away. Where there was once a chapel, now the halls are dens for thieves; and sacks of wormy grain, sacks brimming over, are the brothers’ cowls” (Paradiso, Canto 22, Lines 70-78). Dante the poet saw how the goodness of the monastic orders of his day had fallen from service to those most in need to satisfying the mortal appetites of those meant to serve.

How does this happen? The worldly success of the monasteries brought the possibility of more: more money, more power, more comfort. Saint Benedict continues, “The flesh of mortal beings is so weak, on earth a good beginning may not hold long enough to bring acorns from the oak.” (Paradiso, Canto 22, Lines 85-87). Even the best intentions find themselves challenged in the face of such temptations. Later, Beatrice provides more perspective on the challenge of worldly desires, “Cupidity! You who drown mortal men so far beneath you, no one has the power to lift his eyes out of your waves again! Good will in man is born and comes to flower, but the rains ever battering the ground swell the true plums and turn them soft and sour. For faith and innocence are only found among the children – but they flee at last, even before the down is on the cheek” (Paradiso, Canto 27, Lines 121-127).

Earlier, in Canto 26, and speaking to a blinded Dante, Saint John asks, “Begin, and tell to what felicity your soul aspires as to its single end. It’s well your sight has only gone astray, not died…” (Paradiso, Canto 26, Lines 7-10). Saint John is asking Dante: what is your center? What do you truly desire? A particular beauty of the Divine Comedy is in how it sustains the binary tension between pursuing the “good” and competing worldly desires, our human concupiscence, that makes attaining the “good” so difficult. Saint John presses Dante to explain his desire. “For good, as it is good, and known as good, enkindles love, and lights love all the more according to the good it comprehends” (Paradiso, Canto 26, Lines 28-30). God is the most desirable good. “For this world’s very being, and my own, the death He suffered so that I might live, the joy that I and all believing men Hope for, with that sure knowledge ever alive, have drawn me from the ocean that deceives and set me on the shores of the true love” (Paradiso, Canto 26, Lines 58-63). Thinking back to my brush with a different destiny, or at least a really bumpy ride down the primrose path, I see the tension in my own temptation to worldly desire and the call to a greater destiny; one unified with God’s mysterious purposes in His will for me, the business, and for those sharing in our mutual journey.

After over 500 miles and six weeks of walking, we entered the Plaza del Obradoiro, the square lying to the west of the main façade of the Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela – the culmination of the ancient pilgrimage known as the “Way of St. James.” The “golden square” was packed with peregrinos, many of whom we had seen along the way, including some of our “inner circle” with whom we had shared much of the journey. “You made it!” We were tired and exultant as we embraced each other and many of those special souls we had accompanied on the journey. I thought of Sven, a young man we had encountered a couple of weeks earlier and his response to my question, “What are you looking forward to in Santiago?” He responded, “Seeing all of the people I have encountered on the Camino.”

Sally and I had spoken much about this thought as we considered our arrival into Santiago. The pilgrimage, and it’s culmination, seemed a metaphor for moving through life with the hope of an eternal arrival. His answer spoke to the very human desire to be reunited with those we’ve loved, and lost, along our way. The joy of reunion with all our friends did not disappoint, but it passed. Quickly. Within twenty minutes, everyone had moved on, most to not be seen by us again. Leaving from our hotel on the square two days later, we shouted “Alto!” to our cab driver as we saw Sven, limping through the rain into a completely empty plaza. Jumping out of the car, we greeted him warmly, welcoming him and simultaneously bidding him farewell. Driving off, I wondered how disappointed he must have felt in his arrival, bereft of a throng of friends waiting for him.

Entering the tenth circle of Heaven, the Empyrean, Dante finds himself “enveloped in a live gleaming of light that veiled me in a veil so vivid all around, I lost all sight” (Paradiso, Canto 30, Lines 49-51). Soothed by Divine grace, his eyes are opened in a deeper way: “And I beheld a stream, A river of flashing light that flowed between two shores the spring had touched with wondrous hues, dappled with glimmerings of a golden sheen. And from that river living glints arose to settle on the banks with stippling blooms like rubies in a rounding ring of gold” (Paradiso, Canto 30, Lines 60-66). Having ascended through nine previous circles to this tenth and final level of Heaven, the pilgrim was now standing amid “an ocean filled by one reflecting ray,” a wide ring of light. Looking around he remarks, “…standing above the light surrounding me I saw in far more than a thousand rows the mirroring of the souls that had returned to Paradise…” (Paradiso, Canto 30, Lines 112-114). But it is not reunion on Dante’s mind: “Neither the height nor vastness swept away my clear perception, for I saw that joy in all its quantity and quality” (Paradiso, Canto 30, Lines 118-120). Those souls reflected Divine joy, and drew him all the more fully toward the fulfillment of all desires.

Dante the pilgrim’s heavenly journey is soon complete, but the journey of his life is not over. The pilgrim, newly educated in God’s salvific plan for him, must return to his temporal existence, and fight the good fight of his own salvation. Like Dante, we had to return. Our arrival and reunion in Santiago were a short-lived, temporarily satisfying, glimpse of Heaven. We recognized, in our longing to return to our children and our grandchildren, another glimpse of Heaven, imperfectly mirroring the longing for our Creator built into us. Standing at the edge of the Beatific Vision, Beatrice tells Dante, “The flames of longing, flames that now impel, urging you on to learn more of what you see, delight me all the more the more they swell, But such a thirst you cannot satisfy before you’ve drunk the water of this spring” (Paradiso, Canto 30, Lines 70-74).

Augustine wrote long ago of the restless hunger for God embedded in our hearts. In the Comedia, Dante has taken on us a journey down through all the sinful disorder we can imagine, back up through the heights of God’s mercy, and into the cosmic brightness of eternity, to show us a glimpse of the Unimaginable. He affirms that the thirsts of this life cannot ultimately be satisfied by anything less than our Creator. Within it all, Dante reminds us that we cannot do it alone and that, while we are looking for God in our own lives, we must open our hearts to receive, so he may find us, lovingly guide us, and forgive us when we fail. Midway in the journey of our lives, we still have the opportunity to find, and to be found, if we can keep our eyes on Him, recognize the limits of our own knowledge, and trust that His will is the perfect will for us.

Welcome to Part II of my three part reflection on Dante’s Divine Comedy. My goal is to offer a modern reflection on each of the Comedia’s three books and share some insights into Dante’s brilliant and profound epic poem. I’ve headlined this post with a 2004 painting by Sandow Birk entitled “On the Steps of Purgatory.”

Crossing the street in a mass of bodies, I saw the line of humanity stretching from a large doorway half a block away. Winding its way around landscaping and street vendors, the line proceeded to turn the corner and continue west to the horizon of my vision, disappearing in traffic and streetlights. I could feel the irritation welling within me, a visceral repulsion to the scene of people, the din of their voices, the seemingly endless line, and the waiting. Walking along the cheerfully buzzing throng behind bodies in no apparent hurry to claim their last position in the line as a cheerful nun encouraged over a bullhorn, I resisted the urge to turn around and leave. Fighting (mostly unsuccessfully) against the broadening grimace on my face, I forced myself to cover the nearly three city blocks to the end of the growing line. Looking at Sally, I felt the immediate sting of shame in her patient recognition of my impatience.

Later that night, kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament alongside 55,000 other Catholics in a cavernous football stadium made sacred, Dante the pilgrim came to my mind. Standing on the shores of Mount Purgatory, the pilgrim sees a bright and dazzling sight coming across the water: “The heavenly pilot stood before the bow; beatitude seemed written on his face. More than a hundred souls sat toward the prow: ‘When from the land of Egypt Israel came,’ they sang together in a single voice, with all the verses written in that psalm. He blessed them with the signal of the Cross, and they cast themselves upon the beach…” (Purgatorio, Canto 2, Lines 43-50). The pilgrims around me looked heavenward toward the monstrance below, filled with desire, a hunger for the Eternal.

Modern culture has fostered a disordered relationship between our desires, the notion of satisfaction, and timing. Ours is a world in which we suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out), fueled by the urgency of knowing that YOLO (you only live once), even as we create “bucket lists” feeling that we need to “live like we are dying.” The intersection of these social forces fosters a rapacious hunger demanding to be sated, often at great cost, with the short-sightedness of beasts instinctively following their animal appetites. We are driven by these unseen needs welling within us, unaware of their source, compelled by their urgency, and dissatisfied in their fulfillment. Impatiently baying for satisfaction, we resent the delays even as we retain the hunger which cannot be gratified in the many things we chase at its prompting.

The following morning, Monsignor James Shea quoted Amos 8:11, “See, days are coming—oracle of the Lord GOD—when I will send a famine upon the land: Not a hunger for bread, or a thirst for water, but for hearing the word of the LORD.” From there, he spoke of this recurring hunger present through salvation history, as well as the impatience of God’s people. “The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died at the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our kettles of meat and ate our fill of bread! But you have led us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of famine” (Exodus 16:3)! Thousands of years later, the story has not changed. The hunger, and the impatience, remain.

In Purgatorio, Dante the pilgrim lands among souls destined for heaven but required to purge the remnants of disordered desires from their earthly existence. Finding himself on the ring of wrath, Dante gets a lesson in hunger and satisfaction from Virgil: “Because your longings focus on a point where company would lessen each man’s share, envy blows up its bellows for your sighs. But if love for the highest heavenly sphere had wrung your yearnings, turning them above, your breast wouldn’t be troubled by such fear, For there, the more who say, ‘This joy is ours,’ the more joy is possessed by every soul, the more that cloister burns in charity” (Purgatorio, Canto 15, Lines 49-57). Now even hungrier to be satisfied, Dante asks, “For how can something good, if shared by more, make each ones portion richer in its worth than if the same thing were possessed by few” (Purgatorio, Canto 15, Lines 61-63)?

Dante speaks for modern man as well, as we struggle to believe there will be enough for us while we watch others receive, making us even more impatient to be satisfied. Virgil explains the heavenly physics of abundance, “And the more souls that burn in Heaven above, as mirrors flashing light on one another, the more there is for all of them to love” (Purgatorio, Canto 15, Lines 73-75). How do we know when our impatient desire is disordered? Dante shows us that, by God’s math, well ordered desires center on things that multiply when given away.

“So what?” asked Father Mike Schmitz later that night, as he took the stage at the National Eucharistic Congress. “In their hunger, Adam and Eve broke the world,” he continued. Impatient, fearful that they might be missing out, they disobeyed to satisfy a desire for something good, that in their disobedience, became disordered. Later, Father Mike added, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. The Eucharist is a beautiful gift, but it doesn’t end as a gift of sacrifice. We must repent.” In Canto 17, Virgil offers some insights on love and the ordering of desires: “Not the Creator nor a single creature, as you know, ever existed without love, the soul’s love or the love that comes by nature. The natural love is just and cannot rove. The soul’s love strays if it desires what’s wrong or loves with too much strength, or not enough” (Purgatorio, Canto 17, Lines 91-96). That original impatient desire, a love for a good, made bad out of disobedience, broke the world.

Virgil goes on, “Now understand the other, too, the love which, though its order’s been corrupted, pursues the good. Each soul can dimly see the one good that will lay the heart at rest; this it desires, and struggles valiantly to join with it” (Canto 17, Lines 125-129). Dante understands disordered hunger, even hunger for a good. Purgatorio is the path of the repentant. “Other good things there are – not the good Being, not our blessed Joy, the root of all good things, and their fruition. The love that yields itself too much to these (lesser goods) is mourned for in three circles toward the top” (Purgatorio, Canto 17, Lines 133-137). As he moves us up the mountain of repentance and purgation, Dante shows us that, our restless, impatient, hungers, even for that which is a good, become sin when they are not ordered toward God’s ultimate goodness.

“He moved his feathers, fanning us a breeze, asserting that all they who mourn are blest, whose souls will be consoled, and dwell at ease” (Purgatorio, Canto 19, Lines 49-51). With that, another peccato (sin) was purged from Dante the pilgrim, as he climbed to the fifth cornice. Sitting in a massive hall with about 5,000 other pilgrims, I listened as Sister Josephine Garrett spoke of hunger and the wounds so often sitting behind it. As with Dante’s pilgrims, this group, aware of sin and its wounds, climbed imperfectly toward redemption. “Healing begins with repentance,” said Sister Josephine, “but we struggle to be patient as God does His work.” There it was again, patience. Why must I carry this? Where are You? Why haven’t You shown up yet? Impatience is fuel on the fire of incontinence and an anchor on the climb of redemption: in desire, rapaciously claiming its love, and in suffering, lamenting the healing thorn in our side.

Back on the mountain, Dante encounters an old friend, Forese, who gives us an insight on patience: “And all these people singing in their pain weep for immoderate service of the throat, and thirst and hunger make them pure again. The odor of the fruit and of the spray splashing its fragrant droplets in the green kindle desire in us to eat and drink. And many a time along this turning way we find the freshening of our punishment, our punishment – our solace, I should say, For that same will now lead us to the tree as once led the glad Christ to say, ‘My God,’ when by His opened veins He set us free” (Purgatorio, Canto 23, Lines 64-75). Patient suffering by the starving soul speaks to the ordering of desire and the healing nature of that process. In this way, the temporal nature of Purgatory reminds us that time is necessary for our wounds to heal, for our hungers to be sated, and for patient trust to become a pathway to joy in our journey.

In The Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton gives powerful witness to the unifying power of the desire – the thirst – that sacrificially binds us to God, as he describes the death of his brother after a plane crash in WWII: “He was very badly hurt: maybe his neck was broken. He lay in the bottom of the dinghy in delirium. He was terribly thirsty. He kept asking for water. But they didn’t have any. The water tank had broken in the crash, and the water was all gone. It did not last too long. He had three hours of it, and then he died. Something of the three hours of the thirst of Christ Who loved him, and died for him many centuries ago, and had been offered again that very day, too, on many altars” (The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton, Page 443).

Moving up into the ring of lust, Dante the pilgrim encounters more souls: “O you who are no slower in desire but walk behind to show your reverence, respond to me, who burn in thirst in fire.  I’m not alone in needing your response – everyone here is thirsting for it more than Indians or Ethiopians Thirst for cold water” (Purgatorio, Canto 26, Lines 16-22)! Such thirst, hunger, and suffering, are made redemptive in their joining to Christ’s suffering. Considering the passing of his brother, Merton closes a poem with the following stanza:

For in the wreckage of your April Christ lies slain,
And Christ weeps in the ruins of my spring:
The money of Whose tears shall fall
Into your weak and friendless hand,
And buy you back to your own land:
The silence of Whose tears shall fall
Like bells upon your alien tomb.
Hear them and come: they call you home.

Now, close to Earthly Paradise, a final shade responds to Dante: “So pleasing to me is your fine request, I neither can nor wish to hide my face. I am Arnaut, who walk and sing in tears. I see too well the folly of my days, and see, with joy and hope, the joy ahead. And so I beg of you, by that same power that leads you to the summit of the stairs, at the just time recall my sufferings. At that he hid in the refining fire” (Purgatorio, Canto 26, Lines 140-148). In the end, we can find joy in the thirst and patient suffering, but only if we can unite it to a higher purpose, just like those souls in Dante’s Purgatorio, waiting for their liberation into Paradise.

Confessing my own impatience late the night of the closing of the National Eucharistic Congress, I too found myself liberated. Thousands of pilgrims descended upon Indianapolis, each climbing his or her own cornice of Mount Purgatory, each possessing the many hungers that grip us in our earthly lives, and each feeling the sorrow of those which have become disordered. For each of us, Dante’s Purgatorio offers an eternal message of hope amid the failings that mark our days. We are designed to hunger for Him who made us, and though we will continue to pursue our loves imperfectly and often impatiently, His sacrifice for us has made redemption possible for all those who can see their own need to repent.

For this, Dante offers his closing words: “But because now the pages set upon this second canticle’s loom are all complete, the rein of art prevents my writing on. From its most holy waters I returned as remade as a new young plant appears renewed in every newly springing frond, Pure, and in trim for mounting to the stars” (Purgatorio, Canto 33, Lines 139-145).