This July, my fourteen-year-old daughter, who’s bug- and sun-adverse, who is obsessed with fancy hotels and delights in a mug that proclaims “I love not camping,” spent ten days hauling fifty pounds on her back through the Big Horn Mountains. Gwyn endured nose bleeds, boulder fields, and rehydrated textured vegetable protein. On good days she …
At my daughter’s swim lesson a few years ago, an enthusiastic teacher stood hip-deep in the pool with a plastic clipboard, laminated sheet, and wax pencil. The eight-year-olds water-wheeled by, chins awkwardly raised above the surface in desperate attempts to doggy paddle their way through the crawl. As they passed he shouted, “Relax! Relax! Relax!” …
Nine p.m., Gwyn and I drive from her second Park & Rec volleyball game through the night toward home and she’s bouncing with energy. I’ve just told her how proud I am. “I know!” she enthuses. “With tennis, it took me years to be mediocre. Volleyball’s much easier. I’m already mediocre!” Thus my pride. …
The crises of our times are overwhelming. And Covid has tied our hands; we can’t offer solutions the way we’d like to, the way we know is most effective—in person, together. My dream tells me to trust deeply in work we can do at home, alone and within our families.
If even my agency is a gift passed along by my family genes and my upbringing and white privilege and happenstance, then any sense that that agency is mine is an illusion.
The most powerful, willful action springs from acceptance. In Minnesotan terms, we take the “bad” weather and make the best of it.
If I never notice what’s happening, I can’t choose my response. I’m reactive. But if I first stop and observe, I can be deliberate about what’s next. I’m coming to think that inside this crack lurks the greatest arena of human freedom.
Ask what I’m learning in the Living School and I’ll blather incoherently, enthusiastically, and at great length about the Christian mystical tradition, the significance of contemplation, and a complete overhaul of my faith. I was doing just that at Easter dinner a few weeks ago. My father-in-law asked, and all eleven relatives at the table …
Learning of any kind is a way we come into consciousness.
This is a moment when we can make our love shine out in the history of the United States. This is a chance to send our loving sparks out into the whole world. Moments like this don’t come often. That’s why we’re marching.