Revolutionary Road

"Revolutionary Road", the film and especially the book, are haunting me. I've been awake into the night unable to put the book down. Richard Yates is a writer with a direct voice that penetrates bulls--t. The concept of the story could sound "done" yet he expresses it as fresh and unique. A tragic, depressing ending to be sure, but that's not what I come away with.

I am struck by the image of the few turning points in life when we have the chance to do something different, to not "settle" or take a safe, expected route. Not because one path versus another in and of itself is the answer but because to not make the most alive choice in any given moment is to slowly lose pieces of our truest self, of our childhood dreams that signal more about who we really are than all our adult goals and "have-to's". I think the little daily compromises are what lead to the bigger ones. Some we have to make, but they do add up over time, until we've lost so much of our true self, we cannot find it again... or it takes years of work to get back.

To stay awake and alive requires constant work and effort. Being my life's goal and mission to do just that for myself, and thus for others, I know full well it's an ongoing struggle. But what haunts in this simple story is the cost for not doing it. Not necessarily meaning the dramatized ending, but the cost to our souls. No matter the difficulties, when I am alive, even in sadness or pain, I am ultimately happy. I feel ecstasy and agony down to my fingertips, pulsing through my veins. The gift of life created in me, gives me the freedom to, in turn, create.

May I never take it for granted, settle or walk the expected path just because it is the expected path. May I fight for what is real, even when it hurts. To commit, as I have in many areas, to the reality of daily life and relationships, yes. But never to stop reaching for what my soul cries out for, what makes me come alive (as both Dan and I are committed to). To look for beauty and make it a part of my life no matter the routine. To make time to listen to the inner, deeper urgings, which I believe, come from the Creator. And, most of all, to say "yes" to them.

Currently listening: Dear Science - TV on the Radio

Hollow

Hollow is a closet-sized, darling new cafe in the Inner Sunset (Irving near 15th). I spent the morning there, journaling, staring out the window, reading as I sipped Ritual coffee and heard Sarah McLachlan playing (how's that for 'ancient' memories when I was 19-20 and couldn't get enough of "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy")!?

Later, after a sushi lunch with my dear Manka and Karen, I brought them back to Hollow for more coffee and a long, liberating talk on where we come from, why we are forever joined to that and why we are not, how we're uniquely ourselves, made for freedom. In this little nook of bird baths, candles, chocolate truffles and friendly warmth, I sensed hints of restoration... in areas I've been talking about with my Spiritual Director for ages. Restoration that heals the wounds of old days and births them into something new.

Currently watching: HBO's "John Adams" miniseries

Rooftop Cocktails

In this balmy, gorgeous January we are experiencing, Dan and I threw a spontaneous Italian pasta, lounge music, cocktail night (Negronis, anyone?) As the sun set, we lingered on our rooftop with friends, taking in the peachy hue of a warm, city night. Lights began to coyly twinkle, air inhabited our lungs and warmed our skin. Smiles on each face. Savoring the grace of Spring in the midst of Winter.







Currently watching: Fellini's "8 1/2"

Berlin and Beyond Film Festival

Last night as I went for free (thank you, work!) to the opening night of the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival to see the German film, "Kirschbluten" (or "Cherry Blossoms"), I was hit with images and emotions that stay with me, especially the image of Mt. Fuji emerging from the mist. Old age, loneliness and compromise are presented along with rebirth, restoration and awakening. The film reminds that even at an older age, it's never too late to re-awaken to your dreams, to creativity and connection... but it's also about how much we miss out on until we do.

Currently reading: Insecure at Last: A Political Memoir By Eve Ensler

I blaze forth in peace

I journaled this in Spring of 2007, but it holds true now, hinting at my state these days:

Peace invades my life of striving
in the hurried rush of my mind
comes calm

Soothing waters rolling over my turbulent sea
and I am at rest

Still
Nothing but to be
no need to prove to you or to me

Earning is not possible
measuring worth, a joke

I flow with this calming stream
realizing it was always there

But other boats ran my waters
invaded my shores
demanded right of passage

One by one
I've denied them entrance
to now make way for what I need

and thus the passageways have begun to clear
horizons, widened
all in the name of freedom

Won by pain
effort
loss
and waiting
Most of all, by surrender

I see its approaching, no longer fearing, this freedom
It's claiming me for its own
and I blaze forth in peace

Currently reading:Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices - Brian D. McLaren

Acedia & Me

From my 12/19 post about favorite books of the year, this one has been the most impactful, Kathleen Norris' "Acedia and Me". Here are just some of the thought-provoking passages for me:

Chapter 7
"Simone Weil... declared that Hitler's rise to power would be inconceivable without 'the existence of millions of uprooted [people]' who could not be roused to care about anything except their immediate circumstances... our failure to acknowledge our inner blockages can make us incapable of recognizing the blockages we have created in the culture... we come to assume that these conditions - injustice, poverty, perpetual conflict - are inevitable, the only possible reality, and lose our ability to imagine that there are other ways of being, other courses of action.

Wendell Berry laments the extent to which economics has been elevated to a position that God once held... We have come to 'treat economic laws of supply & demand' as though they were' the laws of the universe'. If there is a religion that encompasses all the world, it is the pursuit of wealth.

True sloths are not revolutionaries, [but] 'the lazy guardians at the gate of the status quo'."

Chapter 8
"One great difference between these monks and today's pop psychologists is that the monks' process of discernment was likely to result in more self-knowledge, less self-consciousness. In our day, this is often reversed. People whose speech remains stuck in therapeutic jargon, for all the 'work' they are doing on themselves, often remain stubbornly unreflective. Even if they can catalogue their neuroses with great facility, they seem stuck within them.

Carmelite Ruth Burrows... regards any authentic religious experience as entailing 'a slow, demanding generosity,' one that does not short-circuit within us but flows outward naturally, until what we believe becomes what we do.

... 'What is integrity?'... 'Always to accuse [oneself]'.

By 'selfish' I do not mean observing the basic care of the self, knowing when to retreat, to hunker down in waiting out a storm... I may need 'time out'. I may need to 'cocoon'. But a cocoon is effective only as a means of change."

Chapter 9
"... my husband and I have benefited on several occasions from marriage counseling, I have found therapy to be of limited usefulness, constrained in ways that religion is not, because it consistently falls short of mystery, by which I mean a profound simplicity that allows for paradox and poetry.

Anthony of the Desert once said that a true prayer is one you don't understand."

Chapter 10
"To keep romantic relationship alive, one must be mindful enough to recognize the danger signs of inattention and sloth... Over time we found the accumulation of shared experiences provided us with a storehouse of memory that helped bear the worst of circumstances."

Chapter 11
"For me, the most basic definition of sin - to comprehend that something is wrong, and choose to do it anyway - is still the most useful. It frees me from the narcissism of fretting over my more trivial failings, even as it forces me to admit to those actions that have hurt others.

As I experience the repeated ebb and flow, the danger is that I will grow weary and more easily discouraged, unable to appreciate that grace is real, and as available to me, as acedia.

How might I be solid as a wall yet alive with movement? How might I build on all that I have learned yet not resist new challenges and transitions? Two vows that are unique to the Benedictines are of use to me here, the vows of stability and conversion.

We live our lives not at the end, but... in the interval between birth and death... There is good psychological basis for the impulse, borne out in many of the world's religions, to pray in the morning, at noon, and at night, at the hinges of time, when we might be most open to God but are also susceptible to acedia and its attendant despairs. The psalmist asks us to place our hope in a God who will not grow weary of watching over us at these risky moments, who will 'guard [our] going and coming/both now and for ever' (Psalm 121:8).

'Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,/ they shall mount up with wings like eagles'... [Hope] is an action... To hope is to make a leap, to jump from where you are to someplace better. If you can imagine it, and dare to take that leap, you can go there - no matter how hopeless your situation may appear..."

Chapter 12
"One of Saint Benedict's 'tools for good works' is to 'day by day remind yourself that you are going to die' (Rule 4:47).'

Commitment always costs, and there is a particular burden in loving another person, if for no other reason than the fact that this beloved will one day die."

Chapter 14
"... the word transition cannot convey my struggle with the rigors of grief, a residual exhaustion from years of steadily increasing adversity, and the promptings of acedia to respond to all of this by not caring...

The monks and mystics of my faith all teach that persevering in a spiritual discipline, especially when it seem futile, is the key to growth.

... it is one thing to pray when you feel like it, and another to make it as much a part of you as breathing... 'we don't always have to say a prayer, we can live out a prayer'.

'... God is trying to get us to accept a state where we have no assurance within that all is well... where no clear path lies before us, where there is no way...' Only when we admit that have 'no way' do we have any hope of finding one. Out of what seems desolate a newly vigorous faith can arise, a certainty that is not subject to change in moods or feelings, or the vicissitudes of life.

People often remark that they would write, or paint, or sculpt, if only they had the time. But this is pure fantasy: the artist does whatever is necessary to arrange her life so that she will have the time to write.

... my sadness increases as I am less able to see the world as I know it to be: ablaze with significance, potent with meaning. Yet I know that even if I am too exhausted to see them, the images, correspondences, connections, and metaphors that would free me are there, to be discovered, and to live as a poet means not to abandon my search for them. Such insights may come as gifts, but it is the prepared and fertile heart not the one dulled by acedia, that is best able to receive them."

Kierkegaard in "Either/Or": "I would wish not for wealth or power but for the passion of possibility, for the eye, eternally young, eternally ardent, that sees possibility everywhere."

Currently watching: Young@Heart (2008)

the way of incarnation and transformation

Some good thoughts in Brian McLaren's recent, "Finding Our Way Again"...

p. 58 "Had I been forced to choose between remaining a traditional member of the Plymouth Brethren plus nothing for the rest of my whole life or dropping out of church, I would probably be a dropout today, because as grateful as I am for my heritage, it lacked breathing room. As I drifted away from the brethren nest, I went through a few experiences of what I call a 'lateral conversion', meaning I became a card-carrying Calvinist for a while, and then an amalgam of both, holding to each tradition's practices with the same proprietary zeal with which the Brethren had taught me to hold to Brethrenism, with no learning or borrowing from others. Eventually, I felt the same claustrophobia in my new traditions, so instead of converting to yet another tradition to which I would adhere in the same way I adhered to my original tradition, I converted to a different way of holding traditions in general."

p. 69-71 "...the kind of person who wants to participate in the healing of the world is very different from the kind of person who wants to leave this world behind so she can go to a better one... by making heaven after this life the destination of our way, we are spiritually forming people who run away from fire, disease, and the violence of our world. That's certainly a major step up from forming pyromaniacs, disease vectors, or violent delinquents. But it's not as good as what Jesus set out to do... Jesus was more like a firefighter or doctor or social worker who walks boldly into the danger in order to try to stop it. If a healed and healthy earth is your destination, the way to that goal promotes involvement, engagement, risk, and participation. If the earth is a lost cause to you, then you will... choose the way of withdrawal, isolation, self-protection, and self-distancing. By choosing one destination, you will follow the way of incarnation and transformation; by choosing the other... you choose evacuation and abdication."

p. 126 "The rising numbers of church dropouts don't want to be part of a flat spiritual malformation community. In a sense, they agree with the apostles Paul & James, whom we quoted earlier: it's simply better for aspiring disciples not to gather with those who have lost their way, because by joining them and unconsciously learning from their misguided example, aspiring disciples learn malpractices that take them further and further away from the way of Jesus Christ."

p. 134 [In referring to all the Christians who fought for abolition of slavery despite the church's universal acceptance of it at the time - "most churches defended slavery as being God-ordained"] "... Margaret Middleton, wife of a naval officer... She was a consummate networker, an undervalued hero in Christian history. This circle became safe space to think, dream, and conspire for justice regarding the slave trade. Their little circle connected with a larger circle of Quakers who had heard God call them, in a time of contemplative silence, to oppose slavery... Their fledgling movement grew in the spaces between the institutional structures of their day, not within the structures themselves."

p. 145 "The Gospels weren't written until decades after the events they described transpired-perhaps because Jesus created such vitality and foment that it took decades for anyone to have time to catch their breath and write down what had gone on. Similarly, the Epistles are hardly histories of the early church, but rather literary artifacts of the early church, most of them written by a fellow who was constantly on the move and couldn't slow down enough to write until he got shipwrecked for the winter or thrown into jail. There's a breathlessness about the whole affair... How different is a breathless, history-changing learning community from a placid or contentious panel of scholars and experts who are less interested in learning anything than they are in defending what they already think they know and attacking what other experts think they know."

p. 128-129 "How do we break the cycle into which we've fallen? Is it better to try to reform our existing faith communities that have lost their way, or simply to leave and start new ones? Do we work for reformation and renewal on one hand, or for revolution and refounding on the other? My answer, as you might expect, is both... Those unwilling to be silenced, domesticated, or marginalized are thus forced to engage in dramatic revolution rather than the gradual evolution of renewal and reform... By getting distance from the groups that are not ready for them, they get space and time to experiment, learn, fail, and learn some more. Eventually, some of their experiments prove healthy and viable, and before long, the very group that rejected the reformers starts learning from them. But meanwhile - this is so predictable and universal that I can't think of a single exception - the very zeal that propelled the rejected-reformers-turned-revolutionaries to bold innovation wears out, and their courage hardens into pride and defensiveness that renders them invulnerable to the next wave of reformation and renewal. They become exactly what they reacted against."

Currently watching: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Best Reads of the Year

I read so many books in any given year that it's nearly impossible to narrow down favorites, but I thought, as I've been keeping lists of books I read for some years now, that I'd pick out a few that were highlights for me in 2008 for whatever reason. So without further ado (and in no particular order)...

NOVELS

• The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty - Though I read Faulkner, Kafka and Waugh this year, one simple (though Pulitzer Prize-Winning) book rose above the greats... this gentle of Southern writers and her heartrending picture of loss in a middle-aged woman's heart - I was teary more than once
  
• The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James - How I connected with the brilliantly depicted heroine of this engrossing masterpiece... and how I grieved at her demise under the false illusion of conformity and "security"
  
• The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton - Cloaked passion underlies restraint, not with the usual British reserve, rather, as an American novel (from one of our female greats), as a sign of times in turmoil, where old clashes with new, the past with the future
  
• The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger - I'm mortified to say, as a literature lover, that I'd never read it before now; there is nothing new to say but that I couldn't put it down... perfection
  

POETRY

• Thirst, Mary Oliver - Her conversion and great loss expressed tenderly, beautifully
  

ESSAY

• Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion - The great Joan... loved her essays on life in Northern California in the '60's, on New York, her cultural insight

POLITICS

• Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, Adam Hamilton - Not so much a well-written book, or even one in which everything is presented as well as it is a hundred other places, but the constant beat of his drum for balance, acceptance and middle ground is a voice much needed now

FOOD

• A Stew and a Story, M.F.K. Fisher - Who can compare to the master? And she is. This collection contains many revelations, which is a common occurrence when reading the great M.F.K.
• Straight Up or on the Rocks, William Grimes - This book changed it all... not only for the cocktail literary world in the '90's when the book was first released, telling the exquisite, long-forgotten history of drink and bartending in its days of glory, creativity and elegance, but for Dan & I, ushering us fully into the cocktilian revival and renaissance we've been participating in for years
  
• The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten - WASPish and technical, this at times, factual, dry book made me smile as his detailed knowledge of food reveals insight into his profound passion... I love what he has to say about the fallacy of food allergies and the unadventurous eater!
  

FAITH/RELIGION

• Surprised by God, Danya Ruttenberg - An atheist becomes a fully practicing Jew... but this isn't sensational writing milking a religious conversion, rather an honest, heartfelt awakening to God written as engaging memoir
• The Shack, William P. Young - I'm reluctant to list this one as it's poorly written compared to the rest... but the heart and message of it need to be heard
• Acedia & Me, Kathleen Norris - My dear Kathleen's book was probably the most impactful for me this year; hard to read both in content and occasional dryness (Dan and I joked about coming down with Acedia in trying to get through it), but it actually left the biggest imprint and awakened rigorously honest self-examination

Currently listening : 20th Century Masters: The Best of the Mills Brothers