What are you going to do today and how are you going to do it?
Shining Like the Sun
purpose
The Real Journey is Interior
In September 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War and following the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton wrote in a circular letter to a group of friends these thoughts on life’s journey:
“Our real journey in life is interior; it is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an even greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary for us to respond to that action.”
I was eight in 1968, barely aware of all that was going on in the world beyond the St. Louis Cardinals’ run for a repeat World Series championship. This week I turn 60. It’s one of those “big birthdays” that causes you to slow down, reflect on the past and consider what’s left of life.
My wife, Sue, threw a heck of a party for me on Friday night with some family and friends. She filled nine poster boards with photos from various periods of my life and set out copies of some of my books and music projects. Friends and colleagues from these different stages of my life got to see (and no doubt laugh) at the old pictures of me — the runt-sized boy in North St. Louis, the skinny high school basketball player, the heavily bearded young adult with a new bride, the new parent trying to figure it all out without an instruction manual, the expat in England with permed hair, the university magazine editor and administrator, the guy with the chemo-induced thinning hair, the traveler, the husband, the father, the grandfather. Me with all my musical friends and bands over the years. Me with friends I rarely, if ever, see anymore, and me with those who have been nearly constant companions for decades.
What’s Inside?
What’s inside, everyone wants to know
what’s inside? And I’ve always told them,
but I feel something needs to change.
You wanna know what’s inside?
I could tell you if I wasn’t hiding.
My whole life is in here,
in this kitchen, baking.
What a mess I’m making.
Sara Bareilles, “What’s Inside,” from Waitress.
I had the privilege a few years ago of seeing the musical Waitress on Broadway with its original Jenna, the remarkable Jessie Mueller (who also portrayed Carole King in the original Broadway cast of Beautiful). What Jenna is hiding inside is, on the surface, the ingredients in her delectable pies. But on a deeper level, she is hiding her insecurities, a bad marriage, an unwanted pregnancy, and her stifled dreams. And the mess she’s making? Oy vey. Go see the play.
We’re all hiding something inside, and we’re all making a mess of it from time to time. We’re multilayered people, all of us, onions (to shift the food metaphor) that need to be peeled away if we’re ever going to get at our centers.
Today’s Word: Lunacy
In his book “Peculiar Treasures,” Frederick Buechner calls the story of Jesus and Zaccheus in Luke’s gospel, “the best and oldest joke in the world,” and it’s always been one of my favorites.
Chief among those reasons is a short little ditty of a song that I (and so many others who grew up in Protestant traditions) learned as children:
Zaccheus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.
And as the savior passed that way he looked up in the tree,
AND HE SAID: “Zaccheus, you come down!” (at this we shook our little pointer fingers)
“For I’m going to your house today. For I’m going to your house today.”
I loved the song for its simple melody (If you know it, it’s now stuck in your head for the rest of the day. You’re welcome.) and for its simple hand motions that helped us learn it and bring the story alive in our young hearts. At the time, I think it resonated because I was always short for my age and always quick to climb the plum tree in my backyard in North St. Louis to get a better view of my surroundings. I could relate.
Today’s Word: Acceptance
“For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I awoke the other morning with every intention of getting an early walk in around a local lake before the heat of St. Louis summer kicked into high gear. Alas, as I came into consciousness, I heard the pounding of rain on the roof and deck outside my window, the steady drum of thunder somewhere off in the distance. Dang. The best laid plans of mice and men and all that…
There are two ways to respond when life gives us rain when all we want to do is get out in the world and walk. We can pound our pillows in exasperation, pull the covers over our heads and go back to sleep. Or we can get out of bed, thank God for gift of his gentle and good rain, and see what else he has for us to do.