Phillip Berry | Orient Yourself

Maybe a real hero is the last one to hear about it.

For some reason, this post came to my mind this week. I wrote it almost exactly a year ago. Maybe it’s watching my grandson play basketball, or another grandson play in the yard, or a granddaughter draw a picture for me. These little dreamers who see it all in front of them…even if “all” encompasses just the next moment. Perhaps it’s just a timely reminder.

Berry gets the ball, two seconds on the clock, the shot flies….he scores! Victory! And so it went in my mind. Basketball. Baseball. Football. A soldier. A knight. A firefighter. An astronaut. How many places did my youthful mind find glory?

I can remember spending hours in imaginary basketball, football, or baseball games. With a bit of quiet, I can almost return to them. In the front-yard or under the basketball goal hanging over the garage. In front of the pitch-and-catch net that would return the baseball to me. Football passes thrown to myself, caught over imaginary defensive backs in the endzone. My imagination had no limits nor self-conscience awkwardness over these flights of fantasy. I didn’t need friends over or an iPad, I could step outside and disappear into another world, lost in the possibility of it all.

A recent conversation reminded me of those days when my heart was full of the call to greatness. The fantasies didn’t stop with sports. Plastic machine guns and a green helmet helped transport me to the battlefront, when war looked like a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate my heroism. A wooden sword took me to the middle ages, called to the chivalric duty of the knight saving his fair damsel. Space? Of course! It was the final frontier. A place in which my courage and wits would best the most devious alien.

Whatever the field or call to duty, the result was the same. Allstar Phil, Sir Phillip, or Captain Berry, would somehow win the day. On my more creative days, I might even create my own nickname like “the gazelle” or “the blue knight” – anything that might make it clear just how great this hero was. No good hero would want people to miss the particular genius of his greatness.

Time goes on and those boyish fantasies fade. The reality of our experience comes to bear and most of us never hit that last second shot or win the Superbowl on an amazing catch. We grow to realize that a battlefield is the last place we want our courage tested and walking on the moon is way beyond our heroic aspirations. In the stark light of reality, we finally recognize those boyhood games for what they were, flights of fantasy within reach of only the few truly great among us or visions turned to nightmares in the cold light of experience.

Curiously, the old fantasies fade but new ones take their place. The big boys (and girls) among us begin to dream of great careers solving impossible problems, making crazy money, building unimaginable towers into the sky, curing insidious diseases, inventing the product that dents the universe…maybe even building the company that fixes a dysfunctional healthcare system. Moving beyond knighthood and sports-based superstardom, we see ourselves at the center of a different sort of greatness. A practical greatness that looks a bit more attainable.

Perhaps some of us lose the dream part of that journey. Maybe those fantasies fade in the face of the realities that make it clear to us that whatever we once dreamed is no cakewalk. The delusions of grandeur disappear before the harsh difficulties of a life that includes setbacks, loss, hurt, self-doubt, distraction, and occasional apathy. We grow up and learn that our fantasies don’t put bread on the table and the struggle to exist doesn’t adhere to the dream plan we once imagined.

For others, the dream comes true…at least in some fashion. However, the last second shot disappears in a fleeting instant of greatness. The world-changing product creates painful unintended consequences or that beautiful building we designed, shooting gloriously skyward, only satisfies for a moment, as the race to stay on top becomes a grinding competitive treadmill. The younger, more creative designer appears, and we find ourself lamenting: I thought I was supposed to be the great one. I was the great one.

“Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” We think back to Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1, and wonder about the point of it all. “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear.” Dante, The Divine Comedy.

It seems that our notion of “greatness” like most of the books, dreams, people, and places of our lives, meets us where we are. Greatness to that little boy so many years ago morphs into something else for the middle-aged man seeing the world through a very different set of lenses.

Our sixth grandchild was born yesterday. Alexander Roy enters this life with a blank slate and literally everything before him. With great expectations, we welcome him. With great love we embrace him. I wonder, what will greatness look like to him and how will that change as he encounters the path of his own life?

Wrestling with my other grandchildren last night, I was humbly reminded that my life is not about me. There is a true grounding that occurs amid snotty noses wiped across one’s shirt, the indignities heaped upon one’s person in the midst of a dogpile, and the delightful necessity of losing in order to see the thrill of victory at your expense in a race across the yard. Suddenly, greatness becomes something that is given away and nowhere near the center I once dreamed.

Perhaps the struggles of life aren’t so much a conspiracy to strip that greatness to which we once aspired, but a formation of the selfless humility that inspires greatness in those around us. Perhaps, that’s where we begin to find lasting joy.

When was the last time you laughed like a child? Have you ever noticed that whenever anyone asks, “When was the last time…” you can almost feel the sting of some nostalgic regret before the question is even finished?

Again, when was the last time you laughed like a child? You know, uncontrollably, with abandon, without self reserve or self-consciousness? How about your spouse? When was the last time you saw or heard him or her laughing like that?

I saw my wife laugh like that last night. Gentlemen, there could be something here worth noting. We decided to attend a couple’s event that included an introductory lesson in ball room dancing. There was a point in my life when I thought I was graceful, fluid, perhaps even debonair…but it seems to have passed. The good news is that my wife’s joyful smile wasn’t really attached to my robotic movements…well, maybe a little.

Though our initial efforts were definitely less swan lake and more ugly duckling…perhaps less Fred Astaire and more Jerry Lewis is a better analogy…we had a great time in our mutual incompetence and were able to navigate a few basic moves.

There is a precious edge between competence and incompetence. It is a place of tension and uncertainty. Dancing as a couple adds a new dimension to that edge as one cannot cross the threshold of incompetence without the other. The pair must find a rhythm together, learning the moves and timing in coordination. Mastery must be created mutually.

Leading also takes on it’s own meaning in the dance, light touches at hand or shoulder indicating direction and intention. Traditionally, the man leads which demands that he give good signals while requiring the woman to follow. This is quite an art and I noticed Sally closing her eyes at points in an effort not to lead or anticipate me too much.

There was no mastery on our part and I was only marginally less stiff at the end of the lesson. However, we did laugh and it was mostly without self-consciousness.

I could write much more on this as I think dancing has many lessons to offer us as couples and individuals. However, I woke this morning to thoughts of many things. Not many bad things. Not even necessarily too many things. All of us are living in a season of many things, places that demand our presence, people that need our attention, duties that require our engagement.

Undoubtedly, there are things that are not critical, noisy, or unnecessarily distracting. But we’ve got plenty of people telling us how distracted, unfocused, and not present we are. Amid all the noise, there are still many things that need us – appropriately, necessarily, dutifully. These are places we need to show up with people we need to show up for.

Today’s post isn’t about deep breaths, disconnecting, mindfulness, prayer, or being a better person. Those are all wonderful things and you already know where to get plenty of encouragement, or boot camp kick-in-the-pants messages.

No, I just wanted to say: I saw my wife laugh like a child last night. And today, there are still many things that rightfully demand my effort and energy. And though she might have been laughing a little at my gritted teeth or Mr. Roboto footwork, she was mostly abandoning the many things for a moment, even though they would need her to show up for them today and tomorrow.

And that’s ok. It’s what we’re made for. We’re made to engage fully with our lives, wrestle with its realities, face its struggles, and yes, occasionally giggle like a little girl…or a little boy. Here’s to you and your beautiful many things. All of them. Let go of the less than ideal for a minute and embrace the meaning in all of it – it’s there. Allow yourself some missteps in your waltz, laugh it off, and get back to the many things that keep it all moving.

Some of us are at halftime and some are playing in the fourth quarter. There are many things in both places and everywhere in between. Engaging with them is a duty, relishing them is a gift.

I’ll close with a poem. May it meet you, and your many things, where you are.

Upon the field I stand,
This is the time of tension
The many things command
The limits of my most mortal self.
In that time, when all took the field
We marched with heads high
Banners waving, high heraldry parading
But this was no fair nor
Castle in the air, the enemy is real.
Honor no longer a child’s imagining,
Reality cuts harshly upon virtue.
More than table stakes, blood and soul
Cast upon the battlements of eternity.
This is no invitation, but a challenge –
The calling to lines where things are lost
And the questions of youth
Fade before experience,
Answered at the edge of a finality
That once seemed distant.
This is the season of many things,
The far fields now seen close,
And the scattered wishes of yesterday
Focused into the necessity of today.
The time of preparations complete,
Though never fully prepared –
On we press, driven by obedience.
There can be no shrug or shirk,
No hiding from Providence.
To all, all must be given,
The lion and the lamb must appear
Fiercely humble, leaping and laying
Down before the one thing,
To which all finally conduces.

My brother-in-law buried his mom this week. Literally. We watched as he lowered a vault containing her casket into a hole he had dug with his excavator on his land. There was something earthy, real, pure, profound, and final in it.

Pulling onto the gravel drive of the family farm, parking near a barn being built, seeing the chairs set before a vault and the casket being laid upon the lift that would lower it, I felt that I had entered another world. It all felt very strange, very foreign. Though the funeral held all the normal rituals: prayer, eulogy, music, tears. There was something otherworldly about the burial scene.

After the final prayers, the funeral service was declared complete and the many well-wishers disbanded to go their own ways. We remained to join the immediate family at the gravesite. Before we walked to the grave, I watched as the casket was lowered into the vault and massive lid was laid on top with a mechanized mobile lift. Then my brother-in-law used a large tractor to lift the entire vault and move it to his mother’s final resting place. There was something surreal in watching the tractor slowly move the vault across the field, past a pond, and up a hill into a small clearing in the trees.

Walking with family members to the grave, I realized why this felt strange. There was no curtain between us and the tasks of the burial process. We are accustomed to a host of others who insulate us from the practicalities of death. A funeral home removes our loved one to do the things they do in those mysterious rooms behind the scenes, preparing the body for the viewing and funeral. Everything is carefully staged, the rituals are observed, we process to the gravesite, bid our farewells, and leave the heavy-lifting to others who bring the event to closure.

Standing over the grave and watching as family members tossed flowers upon the vault sitting six feet in the ground, I realized that the veil had been removed. When the first shovel of dirt was cast, I recognized the final closure of the ritual and saw the beauty of this incredibly intimate moment. A few days before, these family members had been witness to her last breaths and now they bore final witness to the close of her earthly journey. The practicalities of the funeral mechanism had become something poetic and ancient, a true coming to ground for her and for those mourning her loss. The frightening strangeness had become a beautiful farewell.

Later that night, Sally and I watched Here, a Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) film starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. The movie portrayed time though a place – the space of a living room in a house – showing the lives that had passed though that place. We saw the stories of multiple families and got glimpses into generational challenges and the humanity dealing with them. Profound themes of relationship, marriage, children, loss, age, society/culture, women, race, work, dreams, danced across the scenes, mostly following Hanks’ and Wright’s characters as they aged. It covered a lot of ground within the human experience.

Reflecting on the day and the movie, I was filled with a sense of time and its passing. At several points during the film, one of the characters commented, “Time sure has flown by.” How many times have I heard my own voice saying those words?

A neighbor called last night to tell us of the passing of another neighbor. I thought of the veil I saw lifted at my brother-in-law’s farm and the intimate connection between the beginning and the ending of life. That intimacy can get lost in the many things, after all, life and death are filled with the practical necessities. However, with a bit of reflection, we come to recognize the intimate connection as living. Even though we can’t always live it intimately.

Many years ago, C.S. Lewis wrote that “the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.” Here is that moment. This place, right now. We cannot always rest in the intimacy of the moment – there is necessary tension, a both and dynamic that permeates our world of necessities and our capacity to pause and reflect on the moments they inhabit. However, I think my friend Steve is on to something when he characterizes fullness of life in that tension as resonance – the place where the necessary tension yields to a more sonorous intimacy.

If you can, pause for a moment today and consider time’s passing in your own life. See if you can tune-in to the intimacy of that reflection for just a moment and contemplate what it’s telling you. You may find something eternal.

“That’s not my problem.” Though I wasn’t exactly sure why, I felt the sting of the words as soon as they came out of my mouth. After all, it wasn’t my fault. I had done nothing to cause it, had fulfilled all duties for my part, and in fact was the person who would be unjustly affected by it. Wait a minute, I guess it was my problem. I realized, what I was really saying was “I don’t care” as I was thinking, “I don’t have time for this.”

We’re busy people. Lots and lots of stuff on our plates. Watching my grandson’s basketball game yesterday, I was reminded of the “raising years.” Those years when we were consumed with the things of children: events, school, sports, friends, supplies, clothes, presents, parties, boo-boos. Our days were so full that we couldn’t imagine anything outside of the urgencies associated with our kids. I heard the young parents cheering their young children and saw the wheel of time turning as a new generation assumed the mantle of busyness we passed along.

Busyness is a great cover for many things. Urgency is the ultimate justifier for almost anything. An after dinner conversation last night turned to 2020 and the craziness of COVID. We all shook our heads at how quickly we gave up so many freedoms to the urgency of fear. Justified or unjustified, basic survival instinct took us to the brink incredibly rapidly. Of course, the urgency of COVID made our busyness disappear even faster than it did so many basic things we took for granted. Things slowed down and priorities got really, really clear.

A strange effect of busyness is that it removes our ability to absorb. We reach a point where we just can’t. Can’t hear, can’t see, can’t deal, with anything else. We just can’t. Our plate is full, our mind is full, our hands our full…there just isn’t any more room for anything. Survival-mode makes decisions and non-decisions easy. Well, at least in the fashion that it seemingly limits our alternatives. We do what must be done or don’t do what we simply can’t.

I like to talk about “following the signs” as a way to navigate our world in the context of purpose and direction. What are the signals indicating proper direction? Do you see them? Can you hear them? Sometimes we get a “burning bush” moment, but most often the signs are more like whispers. They can be hard to detect when we’re consumed. Busyness makes signs hard to see and we often end up on the limited access highway – fewer on or off ramps.

Though “burning bush” moments may be rare, we are quite likely to get “Pontius Pilate” moments. Pilate is infamous for washing his hands of responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Our plates are full and the signs are hard to see as the billboards and bullhorns of necessity drive us along. When they do appear, we often shrug and wash our hands. I can’t. I don’t have time. I’m buried. Not my problem.

Being consumed with necessities is an incredibly liberating place to live. Buried in our own busyness, we are free to wash our hands of the things we simply don’t have time or capacity for. But busyness isn’t the only thing that shackles us to the liberating shrug. We do the same thing with anything that seems scarce in our lives. If time is short, we hoard it. If money is short, we don’t share it. If patience is short, we hold it back. If love is short, we don’t give it.

I was greeted this morning by Luke 6:38: “For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” From there, my mind went to the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When we are pressed, feel that we have nothing else, or stressed by the many things, we tend to punt: charity, mercy, attention, love. It becomes really easy to wash our hands.

We can’t always show up in the way we’d like. We don’t always have the capacity to give what is needed, desired, or our even our best. It is often not our problem and we are completely justified in washing our hands of it – at least by the standards of the world around us.

I suppose it really isn’t my problem. Perhaps that’s exactly where I should be showing up.

I sure hope someone will show up for me the next time I have a problem that isn’t theirs.

“How are you?” Pausing, I thought, do I give a glossy answer? Do they really want to know? Is this a casual greeting or are we really going to have a conversation? How am I, really?

For those who occasionally get more answer than they really want, please forgive me. Conversation is a tricky thing. Where do we invest? How much do we invest? What’s happening in this moment? Am I really compulsively overthinking this right now?

I suppose we can get ourselves into Woody Allen moments, neurotically stuck in our own heads and seeing everything, and everyone, in our quirky complex, self-obsessive ways. Recently greeting some people I don’t see often, my “how are you?” elicited heavy sighs, some head shaking, and a Christmas Vacation moment in which I felt like Chevy Chase reacting to the litany of aches and pains from his parents and in-laws. A little later, I heard myself respond to a similar question with a slow exhale, “It’s a lot.” Followed with “heavy” and some other ramblings. Did I just say that?

In the years that my daughter and my son-in-law played and coached basketball at Hillsdale College, I always paused when visiting the arena to look at the college motto in big letters on the back of the stands: Virtus Tentamine Gaudet – Strength Rejoices in the Challenge. What a powerful motto and a great rallying cry. The kind of thing you want to greet your competitors with when they enter your home court.

What about when it doesn’t? You know, the moments when the strong you goes missing and isn’t really rejoicing in the particular challenge of the day. What then?

My “word” this year is tension. What that means and how it comes to be is something for another post, or better yet, a conversation. (asker beware: asking me “How I am?” could elicit a word of the year response). Think of it as thematic. We may associate tension with a negative sense of anxiety or pressure but for me, the word is more about edges…the line where our strengths shift to weaknesses or the goods we rightly desire flip into the bads of “too much.” Tension holds the line when we push to the edges.

Curiously, the tension of resistance is a necessary element of building strength. Pressing to the edge of what we can and cannot do actually increases our capacity to do more. Pushing past that edge, we fall into failure, the place where the tension overwhelms our strength and we fall to a point where the tension is released. Repetitions at that edge increase our ability to sustain the tension.

Do the physics of tension and resistance apply beyond building muscle? Can we increase emotional or spiritual strength in the same way?

Adversity is a form of resistance that creates tension. Chevy Chase was poking fun at our tendency to fixate on the little struggles of our lives but we all go through moments when it’s no joke. Whether struggle comes in the form of a physical malady, the emotion of a relational issue, a particularly difficult problem at work, or a spiritual crisis of self brought on by all of the above, such adversity can threaten to overwhelm. What happens when our perseverance muscle fails?

I suppose when we start to unload the heaviness of our struggles to others, we’re really just wanting someone else to notice. Does anybody see this besides me? Am I in it alone?

I’m reminded of the poem, Everything is Waiting for You, by David Whyte:

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

What is it to rejoice in the challenge? It isn’t to say “thank you sir, may I have another” but to see the challenge through the lens of purpose. What is it telling you? Where is it leading you? What is waiting for you beyond this struggle, this suffering, this moment?

We need the tension to become. We need the resistance to grow. We need the struggle to make us, and keep us strong. We also need to remember that the tension will subside. The rough seas will calm. This moment will pass. We must remember that it is so.

Rejoicing in the challenge is trusting that it is taking you where you are supposed to be. It is making you who you are to become.

“Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation.” Everything is waiting for you.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

Many years ago, I purchased a book entitled, No Way:The Nature of the Impossible. If you look it up, there is one review and it says “The title says it all. I like it.” I never did more than flip through the book but I felt the same way as the reviewer: the title always fascinated me. The book presented essays on feats of human ingenuity and capacity at the thresholds of the unimaginable. However, the really curious thing about the nature of the impossible is that it speaks directly to the possible.

Waking this morning, I wonder about the possible and what keeps us from it. Below is a post I wrote on April 14, 2019. A year after my hip replacement and a year before the travails of COVID-19. It is an interesting time capsule in its reflection on our limits, the doubts that foster and reinforce them, and our own role in defining the impossible within our own lives. What is possible? How do we know it? Where do we push and where do we pull up short? Why is that?

In a world that seems to have all the answers, it’s easy to hyper-focus on the many things that appear fixed. We have countless people telling us what we can and can’t do, how we should and shouldn’t think, what will and won’t work, and about all of the fools failing at all of their foolishness, that I wonder if we’ve become so certain of the possible that we’ve stopped pushing toward the impossible. Maybe we should stop gazing helplessly at the endless ocean of humanity’s collective capacities and focus on grappling with our own sense of the impossible in that little pond right in front of us.

Pulling up to my house, I saw the truck dumping a massive quantity of mulch onto my driveway. As I walked up, the driver stepped out and smiled saying “That’s a lotta mulch. That’ll keep you busy today.” I smiled bravely, knowing that it had been years since we had done our own spring cleanup on the beds around our house. Knowing that I had not tackled such a physical project since having my hip replaced last year. Fearing, that I might not have the strength or endurance to get the job done.

Doubt is an insidious companion. Walking beside you silently, quietly waiting for the opportunity to undermine any endeavor you seek to undertake. His presence mirrors our progression through life. Early-on, we are nearly impervious to him, recklessly fearless in those first steps followed by greater leaps until we find our limitations. From there, he makes himself known at every opportunity, dragging us brutally along the edge of realism and pessimism.

Life gifts us with a keen sense of our limitations. Our physical limits present themselves while we’re growing, gradually steadying to a comfortable range of activity then receding with age. The constant tests of life also remind us of our mental limits; literal academic tests as well as increasingly complex mental gymnastics required to solve the difficult challenges presented through day-to-day existence. Whatever direction we look, we see limits looming. Over time, they blend into the landscape as we accept them, rarely daring to challenge them lest they remind us of who is master.

With a clear sense of our limitations in hand, we pick and choose the battles we fight, the adventures we pursue, and the challenges we accept. We frame our dreams with our grasp of the impossible, the unlikely, and the not-to-be. “I can’t” becomes an unspoken mantra, hidden behind other excuses until one day we say it out loud and realize we mean it.

Hard limitations always begin with doubt. Sure, there are real limits to our capacities as human beings but we rarely hit them. We are quite content to pull up short of that dark place. Doubt creates a buffer. Doubt pulls us closer to the “safe” zone. Doubt protects us from an Icarus-like failure where we fly too close to the sun and see the wax melt from our feathers. Doubt also starts small, whispering “are you sure about this?”

Don’t misunderstand, self-protective instincts are quite important for survival. The problem comes when they grow into the habit of slowly shrinking our perception of our capacities. From doubt we move to shouldn’t which is just a few steps from can’t.

Preparing to tackle my pile of mulch, I did some pruning, digging, and raking in our beds. By the time I scooped my first pitchfork’s worth of mulch, the aches had already begun. Three wheelbarrow loads of mulch and doubt had made his appearance. A couple of more and fear stopped-by. “I’m not sure” turned to “Perhaps I shouldn’t” and then began to sound like “I can’t.”

Mustering our courage and “can-do” attitude, we often jump into a challenge with hopeful energy. We’re quite happy to try. There, we’ve left the door open to doubt’s wily ways. “I’ll give it a shot.” “Let’s see what we can do.” Doubt has already made himself comfortable, biding his time. When things get more difficult, the rationalizations begin. Is this worth it? What if that ache isn’t just a sore muscle? I’m not in shape for this. I have other things I need to be doing. And on and on and on.

Pretty soon, we’re saying we can’t complete whatever task is at hand and we call-in a lifeline (if we’ve got one) or bail altogether if we don’t. If we happen to have some discretionary dollars, we’ll punt our troubles to a younger, stronger, more motivated body. If we’re dealing with something that seems intractable in the office, we might call in a consultant. A bit of money makes doubt easy because it gives us the sense of a backup plan. If I can’t do it, I’ll pay for help.

Of course, “I can’t” becomes easier and easier as we wrestle with more difficult problems. Once we’ve crossed the threshold, we rarely test it again. Convincing ourselves that we can’t, we stop trying.

Not even a quarter of the way into my yard project, I said out loud “I’m not sure I can …” Gulp. Did I just say that? A mixture of anger and despair welled-up within me. Was I really at this point? A point where I physically was going to retreat from this project because of the discomfort and the fear of what might lie on the other side of it? Was it the fear of hurting myself or did I really think that I was unable to do this work?

Retreat is easy when we attach an activity to injury. Fear of injury is legitimate. It is self-protective and necessary for survival. However, we need to ask “Am I really at risk of injury or am I rationalizing my desire to stop the pain?” Perhaps the better question to ask is “How do I push forward without hurting myself?”

From “I’m not sure I can…” I proceeded to spend the next seven hours moving that mulch (thank you Sally for helping me!). Was it a miracle of mind over matter? Not really. I changed my approach. I tried different tools and techniques. I slowed down. I took a few more breaks. I stretched. I mixed activities so I wasn’t doing the same repetitive task for too long. Was it uncomfortable? Yes. Was I exhausted? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes. Would I have paid someone if they had come to my door and offered to help. Definitely.

For those of us in the firm grip of middle age and beyond, there are a steady stream of voices explaining away our limitations. Physical, mental, and spiritual. As we age, we’re given a pass on certain things. Oh, he’s 50 so he can’t (insert limitation here). Yeah, she’s 60 so she can’t (insert limitation here). That couple? They are 70 so they can’t (insert limitation here). My grandma is 80 so she can’t (insert limitation here).

I know, there are real limitations and we all should have a sense for ours. However, we should not be so quick to surrender to them. We should not be so fast to accept another’s assertion of our capacities. and sometimes, our own assertion. Perhaps we have more to say in it than we realize.

This morning, I’m watching the gray skies water our newly mulched flower beds with the kiss of a soft rain. Looking at the work completed, I think they look lovelier this year than ever.

A few days ago, I was leaving early for a breakfast meeting. Stars dotted the clear night sky and I could hear the local rooster crowing his anticipation of dawn. Moving slowly through my neighborhood, I passed the house where my daughter and son-in-law live with their five children and noticed dim lighting with two silhouettes in their front room. Turning around at the end of the street, I returned and stopped in front of their house. On queue, One Republic’s anthemic Heaven, popped-up on the radio:

When the room don’t like us
I’ll be at your table
Yeah I’ll be sitting next to you
And when the world ain’t righteous
It’s raining Cain and Abels
I’ll be trying to dance with you
Oh everybody feels alive
So just one more time before the morning comes
Oh everybody feels alive

Through the big window, I could see my daughter and her daughter sitting in the living room, candles flickering along the wall and a soft light from the room beyond, outlining their forms. Reagan appeared to be reading (or was she singing?) and her mommy sat near her, likely holding her baby sister, now a few weeks old. The little girl was gently swaying and she occasionally glanced toward her mom.

Everyone they say that we don’t work
But I could swear this is heaven, yeah
Everyday I know that this might hurt but I don’t care
This is heaven, yeah

Everything about the scene was quiet, calm, magical. The exchange between mother and daughter was subtle and warm…without effort. They were caught in a moment of their own beautiful ordinary and the world had completely stopped, or more likely, had not yet started. I watched for a minute, wondering if they might notice the car’s lights but they were perfectly content to live, oblivious to my interruption, in each other’s company.

I drove off to meet my youngest son and his two boys for breakfast thinking to myself, This is heaven, yeah.

Of course, it’s not. There are plenty of Cain and Abels running around. But we occasionally get a glimpse of heaven in the beauty of the world around us. Sometimes the clouds clear and the night sky opens up to the moon and stars perfectly aligned. We get to encounter those special people who grace our days with their unique presence, and in that moment, we get to peer through the glass, past the veil, and into the deeper more of perfect joy.

Later that evening, we settled-in to finish the last episode of the 2020 series, Ted Lasso. Late to the game, we were unmoved by the hype around the show when it was first released, but we started watching about 60 days ago and found ourselves quite taken with it.

American college football coach, Ted Lasso, is hired by England’s AFC Richmond soccer team as head coach…though he has no experience with European football. We come to find out that his hiring is actually part of a scheme of revenge upon her ex-husband by team owner Rebecca Welton. The surprises continue from there and for three season, we watch as this goofily sincere optimist named Ted Lasso provides a persistent and entertaining counter-cultural example that draws all into his unique version of what it means to be a good human being.

I’ll offer no spoilers here as the magic of this series deserves to be observed directly. In short, I found the show to be incredibly touching and, despite its creators’ efforts to remove any hint of religiousness, I see elements of my own Christianity writ large across its characters, situations, and ultimate message. Despite plenty of cringeworthy moments, the seeds of the Word appear repeatedly. We get glimpses of the truth even if if it isn’t always revealed directly or reverently. At the center is a man who is imperfect but true; he stays true through the entire series. Even when he is broken.

From start to finish, Ted Lasso exhibits forgiveness, humility, honesty, and willing the good of the other – even his enemies. This hokey coach from Kansas is frustratingly humble, often to the point of what looks like letting people walk all over him. In the face of name-calling, laughter, and scorn from fans, players, and the press, he takes it all, consistently responding with a smile, a witty, self-effacing riposte, or a word of encouragement. It takes all three seasons, but in the end, Lasso’s mercy, goodwill, and unflappable optimism, have conquered the doubt and cynicism of even his biggest haters.

Ours is a world of tension. We frequently find ourselves pulled by what the world around us tells us is right or true or necessary and what our heart and conscience pull us toward. Many of us live in the conflicted paradox of the “all” of life: having it all, doing it all, giving it all, juggling it all. Notions of success hound us with the things we should desire, the way we should look to others, our titles, our resumes, our headlines,…even the accomplishments of our children. We have a cultural fixation on what it is to be accomplished and that internal conflict we feel reflects our sense that we are blind to something more important.

But it is all there if we will but look. The glimpses are all around us. Windows into beauty abound when we open our eyes. There is truth and goodness, even holiness, when we pause for a moment to let it come into focus. Suddenly, we find ourselves peering through a window into a candlelit room where purity and innocence gathers to start its day, inviting us to feel it acutely and remember what truly matters.

One of Ted Lasso’s final gifts to his audience is a note on the cover of the draft version of being written by Trent Crimm entitled The Lasso Way. “One small suggestion. I’d change the title. It’s not about me. It never was. Ted” I think that is truly a glimpse of heaven.

The communities on the north side of Indianapolis have embraced traffic circles as a way of dealing with growth. Also known as roundabouts, these circular inserts have replaced traditional traffic signals and stop signs at many intersections along major thoroughfares, bringing the joys and frustrations that accompany pretty much any change in our patterns. Personally, I’m a fan. Though they have likely increased work at local body shops, they seem quite effective at keeping traffic flowing.

Rolling through a busy roundabout the other day, I received an aggressive honk from a fellow driver who was annoyed by my navigation of the circle and my proximity to her pathway. My first reaction to being called out thus is typically a range of reactive annoyance that then turns to analysis of correctness in the encounter. Who was wrong and who was right? Was I in the wrong lane? Did she round when she should have gone straight? Was I being too aggressive? Was she?

On that particular morning, I had to traverse an additional six very busy roundabouts. Now somewhat contemplative about these very dynamic carousels of human encounter, I began to notice the way drivers approached them, how they entered, and how they reacted to each other. The variables are many: speed, traffic volume, directionality of traffic volume, level of aggression in driving, road conditions, size of circle, number of lanes, type of vehicle, etc. Along the way, I witnessed the full range of humanity in these driver’s patience, impatience, kindness, meanness, aggression, passivity, distractedness, focus, fear, indifference, and anger.

Driving along, I began to think about the difference between these traffic circles and the stop lights they replaced. Comparatively speaking, the stop lights were well-ordered and structured while the roundabouts seemed much more chaotic. The stop lights had very specific rules of engagement while the roundabouts brought a bit of “anything goes” to the morning commute. With the stop lights, one knew exactly when one should stop or go and it was pretty clear when another driver made the wrong choice. In the roundabout, the blur of humanity made such clarity elusive.

Then it hit me. The stop light is about order, rules, justice. We know when someone has broached it’s command. The roundabout is about chaos, directionality, and mercy. Right and wrong are fuzzier so we are forced to endure more uncertainty. The stop light tells us what to do, the roundabout forces us to engage with other drivers and negotiate decisions we have to make for ourselves. There is structure in a roundabout, but it demands more from us both in how we think and how we react.

Thinking about the honk I had just received, I realized that her reaction was a response to the notion that I had broken a rule and acted unjustly. That is so very American. We are really attentive to the places where we feel others have broken the rules. In fact, one might say we are hyper-focused on the mistakes of others and our sense of being wronged. We rail at such injustice, real or imagined, and our reactions reflect our deep indignation of such breaches.

But the roundabout is about give and take, anticipation, and timing. It demands an acceptance of imperfection and less clarity in the “right” response to situations. There are still rules, but they demand more flexibility and more allowances for the other. The roundabout is more about mercy and less about justice.

Roundabouts requires us to live in the tension of the give and take, the edge where there is a less exact rule and we have to assess the situation and respond to it in all of it’s glorious uncertainty. Navigating these traffic circles demands a higher level of anticipation of the other, not in the expectation of compliance to a law, but in the highly dynamic variability of his or her free will. We have to roll with it. There is no light telling us what to do. We have to decide.

How should we approach the roundabout? Am I approaching it with confidence or hesitation? Am I coming in too fast or too slow? Am I taking or giving? Am I anticipating or expecting? With anticipation, there is less surprise and perhaps less shock. Expectation in the absolute rule leads to frustration, disappointment, anger. It didn’t go according to plan or my expectation was not met. Anticipation is subjective, it is more jazz, less arrangement. It is give and take – more mercy and less justice.

Of course, there are places, and a need, for both. We must have clear expectations, clear rules, and know we can count on specific justice. However, much of what it means to be human happens in mercy. Giving grace for the unexpected, the mistake, the misunderstanding, or the difference in interpretation. We tend to live more joyfully when we assume positive intent and occasionally subdue our own expectations in deference to the other.

Perhaps there are good some rules of engagement for the roundabout. Approach with confidence, anticipate the other, and be ready to go when it’s your turn, knowing that they are also trying to get somewhere. Be prepared to slow to let someone in or accelerate to move out of the way. Look for ways to share the space rather than resent others for getting in your way. Forgive when someone’s decision inconveniences you, realizing that having to tap your break or pause for a moment is really not the end of the world.

Hmm. Maybe there’s more to these roundabouts than meets the eye.

Photo Credit: WRTV

The snow was falling lightly, gently refreshing the thick layers of recent snowfalls. Pulling into the driveway, we noticed a stork and letters spelling “It’s a Girl!” stretching across the front yard, as three snowmen welcomed us. The magic continued inside as we entered the quiet of the warm entry, soft light greeting us from the kitchen beyond the next threshold. The voices of children playing echoed in the halls as we walked toward the light and sound, noticing the aroma of something delicious being prepared deeper in the house.

Moving toward the family room in the back of the home, we saw mommy and her new baby, sitting quietly on the couch. A picture of serenity, she smiled with the knowing glow of joy at her beautiful arrival and the turn of the calendar reflecting this new beginning. Baby’s big sisters, wearing pretty dresses and big smiles greeted us with the tender beauty of happy little girls, “See our new sissy?” Our faces hurt from smiling so broadly.

Walking toward mommy and her new bundle of joy, I suddenly felt the jarring awakening of a four-year-old cranial battering ram across the back of my knees and the weight of a seven-year-old wrapping me in an NFL-style tackle. The peace of the moment before was broken in total war, “Poppy!!” Noticing the bright blue receiver’s gloves now locked in front of me, I absorbed the hit(s) with all the grace of a stone statue, trying both to stay on my feet, keep the two attackers from falling into one another, and protect innocent bystanders from collateral damage.

Now on my knees, the battering ram was pressed into my neck as those little four-year-old arms closed across my throat, pulling backward as the life-saving Heimlich maneuver was repurposed to crush my Adam’s apple. I could feel the gut punches from the seven-year-old as I held his precariously balanced brother flailing upon my back, feet dangling as he gripped harder to hold on. Caught somewhere between breathless gasps of laughter and the real danger of passing out from my occluded airway, I rolled onto the floor to reposition my attackers in a more properly defensive attitude for my counter attack.

Moves and counter moves. The battle raged-on as I realized there was no end to their energy and mine would in fact suffer a shorter shelf life. Rolling, standing, ducking, diving, I noticed that all is fair in love and wrestling as I worked to protect my most vulnerable assets while simultaneously trying to safeguard these two brawlers who were clearly oblivious to any sense of danger. The berserker attack wore on and I discovered that everything was fair game: eyes, ears, legs, fingers, etc. Looking around, I wondered if the melee appeared more “Three Stooges” than “Rowdy” Roddy Piper… recognizing that perhaps those two examples might not be as different as one might first imagine. Please forgive the old-school references.

The love language of boys is a curious thing and it became clear that the sucker-punching, eye-gouging, throat choking, and de-pantsing, that appeared in our scrum was the most profound reflection of affection that I may ever receive from these two. The will to dominate the old man is both an act of joyful boyhood and a necessary testing of those physical limits that some of us never fully outgrow. My own weakened state from laughter, shock, and awe, notwithstanding, I held my own with these two warriors, eventually subduing them in the necessary lessons of old age and treachery. This is how we learn.

There is beautiful rawness in such play. When the boys start tumbling, it almost always goes too far. The battle can’t really stop until there is some kind of injury. This is how it has to be, the fun is had in the exertion, the effort, the abandon, but the lessons are learned at the edges. We can’t know ourselves fully until we find our limits, and boyhood, like most everything else in life, is a process of testing, finding, growing through, and adjusting to, those limits. Just how far can we push it and who will flinch first at that edge? That is such a boy thing. Some of us never really outgrow it.

Growing up is a rough business. We’ve put a relatively civilized veneer on our most animalistic tendencies but that rough and tumble beast still lies just underneath. The process of becoming requires us to pass through the instinctive, reactive self, to a place of self-control in the lifelong challenge of mastering our will. The sometimes maddening need for boys to be boys is a necessary part of that growth process. We have to live in the tension of our limits, sometimes colliding with them violently, before we can become fully what we’re made to be.

After apologizing to their parents for the ruckus and working to help them downshift, I found myself sitting on the couch with my two attackers, now converted to docile little boys. Spent and worn with the bruises and bumps from the battle, they now curled-up to share in the joy, and safety, of a knowing togetherness. The bond of the battle lives on and the intimacy of the physical confrontation reveals itself in boyish affection. Like all of us, it is in the time and effort they discover how they are loved. It is living at their limits that they find themselves and going there together that they find us loving them.

One of my favorite movies is 2002’s Signs, directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix. It is a story of loss and redemption set against the backdrop of an alien invasion. A great scene unfolds as the world watches fearfully as strange sightings and lights appear in the sky. Phoenix’ character asks Gibson’s what he thinks and the former pastor gives a melancholic soliloquy on fate and chance ending with this flourish: “See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?” In Gibson’s case, after loss and heartbreak, he no longer believes in miracles, just the random purposelessness of existence.

Do you see signs? That question came to my mind last night as I watched Make Peace or Die:Honor the Fallen, a dramatic and engaging film directed by my friend Manny Marquez. Here is the official description of the documentary:

Riddled with survivor’s guilt after his unit lost 17 men during “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, Marine veteran Anthony Marquez makes it his mission to reconnect with the Gold Star families of the fallen. By carving and hand-delivering a battlefield cross for each of the families affected by loss, Anthony finds the path to heal himself.

The documentary follows Anthony as he delivers the battlefield crosses he’s carved to each of the families. Along the way, we get some of the backstories of the men who died and a peek into the lives of those living with the loss. We learn that some of these Marines were part of an EOD, Explosive Ordinance Disposal, unit and were very much on the front lines of the action. We also learn that no one was left without scars from their experience. The title of the film comes from the motto of the unit. I cannot do the film justice in a few short words – it is powerfully compelling on many levels and I highly recommend it as a reflection on sacrifice, community, and redemption.

Many of the families of these fallen Marines described young men who felt a strong call to service. And not just any service, but service in the Marine Corps. As the parents expressed their hesitations and how insistent their sons were, to the point in some cases of wanting to enlist before they turned 18, the viewer could feel the weight of that call and its attending sense of purpose. For these young men, there was a powerful pull and they followed it.

Beginning a reflection this morning, Isaiah 42:6-7 appeared on my screen:

I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice,
I have grasped you by the hand;
I formed you, and set you
as a covenant of the people,
a light for the nations,
to open the eyes of the blind,
to bring out prisoners from confinement,
and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

These men and their sense of purpose seemed to center around such thinking as justice and duty and being a “light for nations.” Watching video of them on the ground in Afghanistan, the sense of brotherhood stood out against the backdrop of their calling. Firefights. IED’s (remember all we learned about “improvised explosive devices”?). Deployments. The words of war in countless headlines came back to me. The film evoked a strong sense of community and mission among these men – the bonds were deep and strong – but the headlines could never capture the essence of those ties or the harrowing reality of existing under such circumstances.

Years later, we watched as Anthony visited families and I could hear my friend Manny ask: “Was it worth it?” It was a provocative way to frame a question around purpose. Absolutely not. What could ever be worth the life of a child? Each family agonized over the loss of their son and questions of purpose were lost in the broad sweep of the political, whether in being there to begin with, for so long, or for leaving and handing Afghanistan back to the Taliban. All worked to draw the line between supporting their heroic young men in doing their duty and a sense that their deaths ultimately seemed pointless.

Particularly poignant were parental characterizations of the painfully dramatic visits from Marine Corps officers to tell them of the death of their son, the headlines and celebrations for the local heroes, and then the cold, piercing, fact of life moving on. More than one shared a sense of feeling their son had been forgotten. Death deals that card to all who have loved and lost, but the loss of a child seems particularly acute.

Is the death of a soldier ever pointless? Perhaps by the measure of such things as politics or power or revenge or economics. Maybe the seen and unseen why’s of war evade justice in the purest sense of the word as violence begets violence in the endless mystery of man’s own disordered desires. There is no reconciling such inevitable brokenness with the loss of precious life.

But there is meaning in every life and every death…if we choose to see it. If we’re able to see it. The journey of this veteran through struggle and suffering is taking him somewhere – has already taken him somewhere. The story of each of these young men means something. Their lives and their deaths have touched others, with pain yes, but with something else. The gift of love remembered, of life lived to a calling, of community with those who share the same struggle, of gratitude for time had, for the sharp edge of feeling the fullness of life and death. There is purpose in the beautiful gravity of it all and the weight of imprints left along the way.

For some it might be the gift of faith in a search for something more, even in meaning that’s hard to see. By our measures: time, place, fashion, circumstances – perhaps death has little purpose. Perhaps it always seems pointless to we who are left behind. But maybe the point is about what it points to: a life experienced, shared, loved, known… and something beyond life as we know it.

A few days ago, our seventh grand child was born. Little Marin Felicity Grace is number five for our oldest daughter, and by the standards of our society, a bold choice. Some might say foolish, after all, children are expensive and tend to get in the way of doing all that we want to do. Isn’t that the way of a call? It often gets in the way. Perhaps we’d like to be called to fame, fortune, and power, but such is the nature of a calling: it is vocational and the most meaningful vocations ultimately help us realize that our lives are not about us.

For baby Marin, it all sits in front of her. The choices, the challenges, the suffering, and the joy. She must learn it all. Experience it all. We cannot know how her story will go, the part we might play in it, or dramatic purpose it will hold in time and history. But her very being has already left an imprint, her little light has already shone, her existence already has purpose. From here, everything else is the beautifully difficult journey of her own becoming, and the fingerprints she leaves upon the world along the way.

Do you see signs or is life just a bunch of coincidences? Thinking of my friend’s gritty documentary of loss and the journey of healing that all battle with after such tragedies, perhaps the message is make peace AND die. For that is our shared experience. Death always haunts us and finding peace in a world marked by it is the fundamental struggle of humanity. However, the journey of a soul is never without purpose and no matter how senseless death may seem when or how it comes, the point of the story and the breadth of human experience within it, echoes in eternity.

Photo by Lance Cpl. Sergio RamirezRomero