Pandemic postcard #33: Loving the half-full of it

My sweetheart spent most of his adult life as a proud teetotaler. When asked about his aversion to booze, Tom would describe how he'd had too much to drink one night as a young man, and while it wasn't the first time, he decided it would be the last. Yet sometime in his last few years, he bought a bunch of drinkware and stashed it in the back of our bedroom closet.

Months after he died in 2018, I was still deep into the long work of sifting through Tom's stuff: dozens upon dozens of boxes of old receipts and legal papers, shelves full of compact discs (he'd made a living first in radio, then in choosing music for businesses), and bags stuffed full of promotional items, trinkets, and tchotchkes. When Tom discovered something he liked--be it a Justin Trudeau bobblehead, home plate-shaped doormat, "Enjoying My Coffee" bumper sticker, or a movie about the criminally forgotten songwriter Doc Pomus--he'd order it in bulk, keep one for himself, and give the extras as gifts, except sometimes he’d forget about them. 

That’s how I came to find the six “half-full" glasses. Designed for the eternal optimist, only the top half of the glass could be filled--the bottom half was sealed off--so it would automatically be at least half full. I wrapped up the glasses as Tom’s last gifts to us, and when Tom's children and their mother and her husband and my daughter and I gathered on Christmas morning, we drank a toast in Tom's memory.

It's been a half-full week for America. After two years and $14 billion spent, the 2020 U.S. presidential elections has essentially ended in a draw, and there's a 50 percent chance you are disappointed by the results. We've now been more or less evenly divided for decades and there's little indication how--or when--we'll break the deadlock in Washington, D.C., never mind between the blue metros and the red retros.   

For many of us, our thirst remains unslaked. We'd dreamed so long of a resounding rebuke to the mean, fear-mongering, self-centered bully who has held the presidency these past four years. Amid this year's reckoning over racism, we were sure tens of millions of Americans would turn out as never before to vote for love and justice, and we did. But anxiety and dread were on the ballot, too, and their appeal was just as powerful to folks who may be feeling more half-empty right now.

And so here we are, pretty much where we started, except the kinder candidate has apparently prevailed in the presidential contest. Given all that Joe Biden has endured in his life, it's little surprise that he's bearing this time of uncertainty with patience and calm, and that is what our battered country needs now and over the next four years. While we will not fully realize the changes many of us would like in these divided times, at least our nation can rejoin the world community and make progress on the margins at home, especially for the most marginalized.

At a post-election vespers service the other night, my minister told the story of a couple in the church he served early in his career. Long unable to have children of their own, they finally became parents, but their daughter was born with developmental disabilities. They chose to love her and raise her as if she were perfectly and fully human, and so she surpassed the life expectancy and limits she'd been dealt. Likewise, my husband spent his last decade living with multiple myeloma, yet Tom's glass was always at least half full, and often spilling over the brim as he threw himself into passion projects like launching a community radio station in the last years of his life and embracing a new romance despite previous disappointments.  

Half of America feels wounded over the election results, while the other half are saying "meh," but it doesn’t have to be that way. In this time of mingled disappointments, as we continue to deal with COVID-19 and a faltering economy, may we choose to see possibility over peril, lift repair over despair, and--knowing the infinite promise of this country--declare an end to our hostilities. Together, let's raise a glass to freedom and love the half-full out of this broken, beloved nation.  

 

Pandemic postcard #21: Summer reading report

All my life, I have dreamed of having endless time to read, and I've always figured I'd need to wait until retirement for that dream to come true. Then 2020 happened. I have had plenty of time to get lost in a book these past many months. 

Here's a selection of books I've enjoyed so far during the pandemic. All are available via The Optimist, my online independent bookstore at Bookshop.org, and if you enjoy Surely Joy, it'd mean a lot to me if you'd buy a book, any book. Your purchase will help me...and small bricks-and-mortar bookstores, too. As I write this, Bookshop.org says it has raised nearly $6 million for indie bookshops. I'm still working on my first $25. Still, every little bit helps, especially now that the CARES Act unemployment pay is gone.

So without further begging or ado ... 

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. This book captivated me from its first pages, where Odell describes one of her favorite parks in Oakland. (I know it, too.) Odell's mission is to help us pay attention, not to the endless clatter of commerce, but to our heart and soul's delight. This is my favorite book of the year so far. 

The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl is part memoir, part travelogue, part meditation on loss. We can't justify distant travel this summer, but we can travel via books. Hampl ranges widely in this volume, from Iron Curtain-era Eastern Europe to Montaigne's France, but I was most captivated by the trip she took closest to home on the upper stretches of the Mississippi River. Like Odell, Hampl understands the inherent value of day-dreaming and drift.

The Vanishing Half  by Brit Bennett. "I've been reading too much non-fiction this summer," I told my daughter. "I really want to read a novel." So this was a birthday gift from her to me, fitting because this is also a story about family love: in our families of origin, families of choice, and families lost and found. It's also timely with its themes of racial and gender identity.

The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea. This had been on my to-read list a long time, and it was the very first book I was able to check out of my local library once it reopened for curbside service last month. Urrea, who spent a few decades researching this satisfying historical novel, has a knack for creating big, well-drawn casts of characters. I look forward to reading the sequel to this, too, as well as The Devil's Highway, Urrea's nonfiction book about U.S.-Mexican border culture. The latter should be a good companion to something else I read earlier this summer, On the Plain of Snakes, a warts-and-all love letter to Mexico by Paul Theroux.

Old in Art School by Nell Irvin Painter. The author is best-known as an acclaimed historian (The History of White People), but she always wanted to paint, so she chased that dream into her 60s while also looking after her elderly parents, who lived 3,000 miles away. An inspiring, illuminating look at one woman disregarding ageism and racism.

The Cactus League by Emily Nemens. One of two fine baseball novels released this year, both written by women. Nemens turns an unassisted triple play with her debut, deftly wrangling multiple plot lines, indelible characters, and strong sense of place. I also enjoyed The Resisters, an anti-authoritarian tale by Gish Jen.

Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Art & Mystery of Living by Krista Tippett. The On Being Project created a new position this summer, Audience Editor. I wanted it so bad, but I'm sure they've hired someone brilliant to help amplify the project's mix of thoughtful voices and practical wisdom for tumultuous times. I've been an On Being fan forever, listened to this on CD when it came out a while back, and recently revisited it via a copy in a Little Free Library.

Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon. I bought this when it came out last year, then it sat on my shelf until May. It was time...and it still is.

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron. Another book that merits re-reading, with short chapters that share Buddhist wisdom on how to sit with uncertainty. 

Atlas Obscura Explorer's Journal. I used this for what turned out to be Volume One of my Pandemic Journal. (I started Volume Three last week.) It's too big to use as a travel journal, but it was perfect for documenting the weird inner journey that is 2020.

Next up on my reading list ...

I've been dipping in and out of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration for the past month. I'll finish it this weekend, and I look forward to author Isabel Wilkerson's brand-new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

Next up is my library book of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, another novel I've been meaning to read for a while.

I also just ordered a copy of Jailed for Freedom: A First-Person Account of the Militant Fight for Women's Rights. This little-known book by Doris Stevens is the source material for Suffragist, a new Broadway musical that was to premiere in league with this summer's centennial of the 19th Amendment. The production is delayed now, but just hearing creator Shaina Taub describe her discovery of this book was enough to make me want to read it.

Pandemic postcard #18: Beacons in the dark

Have you been able to see Comet NEOWISE? It is visible in the Northern Hemisphere for a while longer, rising in the evening sky and coming closest to Earth on July 23. I haven't seen it yet; I was up before dawn trying to catch a glimpse last weekend, when it was close to the horizon, but city lights and hills precluded a view. (A rising Venus was amazing, though!)

I'll never forget seeing Comet Hale-Bopp in the spring of 1997 on a drive home from Salt Lake City to Twin Falls, Idaho. Motoring north through dark high desert skies on Interstate 15, then Interstate 84, I had the comet in my view for several hours, nearly the whole way home. That evening ranks with the 2017 total solar eclipse as one of the great natural phenomena I've experienced. How fitting is it that Comet NEOWISE seemingly came out of nowhere in late March, becoming visible to NASA scientists during the first pandemic surge? We need all the bright lights we can find in these dark times, and I hope to see this new comet sometime next week.

As I mentioned in last week's post, I've been "at camp" this week. It's all been online, of course, but it has been wonderful to reconnect with my Eliot friends, even over Zoom. We've been hearing timeless tales of many cultures from talented storyteller Will Hornyak. We've had a talent show, games, (including a fun offline scavenger hunt), TED Talks, worship services, small-group discussions, and much more. I will be sad to see it end. I may even sign up for the August camp, which I've never attended--but I continue to have lots of time on my hands. (More on that below.)

Camp meant a lot of screen time, but I've managed to spend this entire week away from social media, and I took in only a bit of news each day. I'll be sad to see that end, too, but as Will related in one of his programs, a vision quest can't go on forever. Ultimately, people need to return to their daily lives. Of course, this is something we're all wrestling with now. As people go back to their routines of in-person socializing, many people are getting sick and sickening others. It's an unsteady dance we're doing, and it seems we'll be doing it for another year or so, until a widespread vaccine is available. I know this is especially hard on families, as well as on people experiencing homelessness and people with little social contact of any kind.

Will told a story this week about two villages. (You can watch an earlier performance of it below.)  A natural disaster had brought the villages to the brink of war, but with imagination and creativity--and some wise grandmothers--the villagers solved their problem without bloodshed. As Will says, we need new steps, new dances, new songs, and new stories in times like these. Stories can break the spells we weave around ourselves, the narratives that sometimes keep us feeling like change is impossible.

With the end of July nigh, I am among the millions of Americans who face the end of enhanced unemployment benefits next week. Although I've freelanced much of my life, I'd love to find a full-time job that I can dig in and do until it's time to retire. I applied for one in late May that would've been perfect for me, finally learning just this week that although my resume made it through several "cuts," I will not be a finalist. I know it is no easy task to find work in one's late 50s, but I still believe something good will emerge in due time. I'll keep looking for the beacons in the dark, and I will try to be one, too. My superpower is helping people tell their stories, after all, and there's a big need for that these days.

Thanks for reading. I'm going to spend some more time away from screens next week--to go camping, look for the comet, and hopefully see my daughter (who lives 500 miles away) for the first time in 2020. I'll be back with another dispatch in two weeks. Until then, be well...and be the light.

 

Pandemic postcard #17: Expecto benignitas

Every summer but one since 2003, I have spent the second full week of July at a Unitarian Universalist family camp in Seabeck, WA, gathered with about 250 other people who long ago became dear to me. A norovirus swept through the camp the first year my family was there, sickening many of us. I got a mild case, but I had no question I'd be back the next year and the year after that and the year after that ...

Alas, the past two summers at camp have been a bit bumpy. In 2018, I arrived two weeks to the day after my sweetheart Tom died. It was a hard week, but camp was where I needed to be, especially since it was where Tom and I had fallen in love five years before--and where I had so many good people looking after me and my stepchildren and Tom's first wife, who were also there.

Last year was tough for other reasons. Our 2019 speaker had to leave part way through the week as a family member was near death. I remember with pain how, a day earlier, a young adult friend passionately and publicly called out the speaker (who had cluelessly appropriated a phrase and intonation used mostly by Black people) on his middle-age privileged white guy-ness. Later that day, I told my friend that when someone needs to be corrected, it might be kinder to do so in private rather than in the heat of the moment. One of my favorite quotes comes to mind: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

It was a wearying week in several other ways, and by the end of last year's camp, I had decided it was time to take a year off--a decision cemented by the idea that the July 2020 theme was going to be how our faith's failures to address systemic racism were failing us. My July 2019 mindset was "I've done this work. This isn't why I come to camp." Instead, I signed up for the more lighthearted August arts camp, eager for a sort of reset button.

Now we're all living through much more of a reset than we ever imagined. The 2020 arts camp was canceled altogether, the July camp is online, and I have belatedly signed up. Systemic racism is no longer the topic; as the pandemic took hold and it was still uncertain whether we could gather in person, camp leadership wisely decided to defer that topic to 2022 when we can give it the attention it merits. (Next year's speaker had already been booked.) But in light of this summer's Black Lives Matter uprising, and because this camp is filled with folks fervently seeking justice, it seems likely we'll be wrestling with racism and privilege, and that's as it should be. I just hope we can be kind, especially as we gather over Zoom in these fragile times.

I've been thinking a lot for a few years now about the problems with cancel culture. Publicly shaming people, usually online but sometimes in person, has become rampant--and the malicious person occupying the White House threw gasoline on the flames of cancel culture when he used the phrase in his speech at Mt. Rushmore last weekend, seeking to deepen the already gaping divisions among Americans.

People do and say stupid and spiteful things, often intentionally, sometimes out of ignorance, and we are losing our ability to contextualize and modulate our responses. This "hot take" culture prompted several dozen writers and public intellectuals to sign a letter to Harper's magazine this week--but the letter was dismissed by many because its signatories include J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, who has recently made several cruel statements about people who identify as women but weren't born with that gender assignment. Transgender activists and allies have tried to tell Rowling why her comments are harmful, yet she's dug in deeper.

Whether she is transphobic, mean, or simply blinkered, Rowling's motivations are increasingly suspect. At worst, she risks coming off like a version of her detestable character Dolores Umbridge--yet so do the inquisitorial people who wish to unilaterally cancel Rowling and negate her body of work. The Harry Potter books have helped millions of kids (and adults) feel more at home with themselves and with the notion of difference. As long as I've attended July camp, Harry Potter readings have been a fixture after lunch. It'll be interesting to see whether that continues this year. It may be time to retire the tradition, but if so, let's do it in love, not cancellation.

We need an activism that is sustainable and rooted in kindness. We need an activism that is able to sit with discomfort, engage in dialogue, and help people retain the possibility of changing their minds (and publicly admitting they have changed). I want that for J.K. Rowling when she realizes the unnecessary harm she is doing. I want it for myself when I admit I have only just begun to address my white privilege. I want it for everybody who is right now so passionate and sure in their beliefs on any number of topics, but who may come to know years from now that their thoughts, words, and deeds lacked nuance--or were even flat-out wrong. 

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Pandemic postcard #15: Turn, turn, turn ...

Tom always loved cars.

When Tom died two years ago this week, he left behind a fleet of three vehicles: a 1991 pick-up truck, a 1996 camper van, and a 2010 Prius. Tom always loved wheels of all kinds, and he had a knack for finding good deals. I'd lived without a car much of the past decade, I didn't even especially want to own a car, and all of a sudden I had three.

I had plans for the van and the truck, which I'll get to in a minute. I figured I'd keep the Prius, at least for a while--but when I went to start it a few days after Tom died, it was dead, too. I was flying to Denver the next day to see Tom's family, so I waited until I returned to call AAA. They were unable to jump the battery, so I had to have the car towed down the street to Tom's mechanic--but not until later that week, the earliest they could see it. Meanwhile, I worried and I wondered: Was this a dead 12V battery that wouldn't cost too much to replace, or was this the much more expensive hybrid battery? If it was the latter, did I want to keep the car? As it turned out, it was the 12V. The mechanic replaced it and I had him do an oil change as long as he had the car, only to learn afterward Tom had done one just 1,500 miles before. No big deal. The Prius was good to go.

At the Greenwood Car Show

Tom bought the lovingly converted Ford Aerostar camper van in the fall of 2016 shortly before he underwent a stem cell transplant to address a recurrence of multiple myeloma. He had taken a leap of faith that, come spring, we'd be able to hit the road, and we did. We took the rig to Ocean Shores, WA, a couple of times to visit our friends Marty and Cai; we went camping on Hood Canal; and we motored to Oregon to see the total solar eclipse with our friends Dale and Rebecca. Tom even ordered a special plate for the van and named it Ove. (If you understand, great. If not, this will explain. That was classic Tom.) But by the spring of 2018, Tom's brief remission had ended and he was too sick to travel.   

Before he passed away, knowing that I wasn't interested in keeping the van, Tom had arranged to sell it to Marty, who picked it up a few weeks before Tom died. On the very same day I'd finally had the Prius towed to the garage--it was Friday, July 13th, by the way--I got a text from Marty. He had been driving the van on the interstate at rush hour when the brakes and steering started to give out. I asked him to call me and--after he assured me he was OK--I told him it was fine if he didn't want to buy the van. Well, Marty did still want to buy the van. He said he'd get the repairs made and deduct the cost from the price he and Tom had agreed on. Marty is a good egg.

The pick-up truck was a short-bed manual transmission Toyota, somewhat beat up but still handy to have around. Tom had tried to sell it off and on, with no luck. It had become a communal vehicle for our household and that of Tom's first wife and her husband, who lived about a mile away. We traded it back and forth to haul stuff, so I was pretty sure that Grace and Jon would take the truck, and they did.

Which brings me back to the Prius.

Fast forward 18 months to early this year. I had moved from the suburbs back into Seattle, where I really don't need a car. The Prius stayed parked for weeks at a time. I walked to the grocery store every few days, buying only what I could carry. But I started camping again last summer so I thought, OK, I'll enjoy the car one more summer and then I'll see if either of my stepkids wants it.

And then the pandemic hit. And all of a sudden, I'm not riding buses anymore. I'm not walking to the grocery store as much; I shop less often, but I buy more when I do, so the car has come in handy. Pre-COVID, I preferred to fly or take a train than drive at vacation time, but now it seems road trips are the way we're going to travel for a while until we get a vaccine. I've taken two camping trips with the car this month and I see many more in my future this summer, at least. To everything, there is a season, and these days, the Prius is packed with my camping gear and my inflatable kayak, ready to escape as I get the time and inclination.

The car hit 100,000 miles this week. Its annual registration and insurance are due soon, and I will pay them. A Prius sips gas and is cheap to maintain, and I've learned that the hybrid battery may last another 50,000 miles, maybe more, before it must be replaced. At the rate I drive, that could be another decade.

This will probably be the last car I own, whether I decide I don't need it once the pandemic has passed or I decide to hang onto it as long as I keep driving. One way or another, I just wanted to say once again: Thank you, Tom.

Pandemic postcard #9: A shelter within the shelter

I've written before about how I began 2020 with my first-ever sabbatical, five weeks in Guadalajara, Mexico, learning how to teach English as a foreign language. I arrived back in Seattle on March 1, and it wasn't long before I realized this sabbatical might be a lot longer than I had expected. As of now, there's no end in sight. I've lost my two biggest editorial clients and my part-time job at the ballpark is on hold, too.

One thing I've done with all this extra time is spend a lot of it online. That's true for most of us. I've also become much more intentional about taking a full day away from technology every week. Writer and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain has been doing this with her family for a decade. They call the weekly pause their Tech Shabbat; on a Zoom call this week, Tiffany said that during the pandemic, the practice feels like a shelter within the sheltering that we're all doing these days.

That phrase seems right to me, too. Online connection has been lovely and sustaining in many ways over the past few months, and it will be for the foreseeable future as we continue to live much of our lives online. I've enjoyed gatherings with my family, friends, and faith community; I've been in a weekly ukulele play-along group; and I've sat in on a few virtual reunions and many worthy arts events. Still, I think we're all experiencing some degree of screen fatigue. Unplugging for a full 24 hours is one way to relieve it.

I typically start my tech sabbath at sunset on Friday and sometimes extend it all the way to Sunday morning, but it's flexible. This week, I will start it before noon on Friday because I want to see some friends via Zoom on Saturday afternoon. I stay away from news and social media, but I have streamed online music. I still carry my phone-camera-pedometer on my weekend walks and sometimes take a photo or two, but I'll refrain from posting anything until I'm back online. 

Most of us have a yearning now to think about the sort of world we'd like to live in now that the ground is shifting beneath us. A weekly tech sabbath gives us that opportunity. Much as our brains need a nightly respite to process everything we experience during the day, a weekly break from screens can give our souls a chance to catch up. In her new book* 24/6, Shlain calls it "one of the most profound ways I've found to have the time and space to think about who I am, what I value, and what I can bring to the world."

I'm a believer.

Another milestone: This past week, I filled the last blank pages in volume one of my pandemic journal and began a new one. If you don't already keep a journal, you might consider doing so now. Your future self will want to remember how you made it through these days--the ups and downs and the depths--and of course, any descendants you might have and historians will value what you have to say, too. Here are some tips on how to get started.



P.S. A few housekeeping notes: This week, I'd like to thank a friend who told me he subscribes to my posts via email and finds quiet time to sit and absorb each entry. Thank you, Steve, and everyone else who subscribes. If you'd like to get Surely Joy via email, you'll find a link for that near the top right-hand corner of the page. If you're reading on a mobile device, find the "view web version" link near the bottom of your screen, and that will take you to the desktop view where the email link will be visible.

Also, the starred link above to Tiffany Shlain's book goes to my online storefront at Bookshop.org, where your purchase of that book--or any other you search for--will benefit both me and small bricks-and-mortar bookstores. I'm supporting my local bookshops and hope you will, too, but if you can throw a bit of business my way, I will be grateful.

Pandemic postcard #7: May we give thanks

I have two friends, Joe and Kevin, part of a group of Ohio University alumni who reconstituted online once the Internet ramped up about a decade after we graduated. Credit for that goes to another friend, Meg, who started a list serv to loosely knit us all together. We were people who--one way or another--hung out at OU's student union, whether it was working on student government, the school newspaper, the campus radio station, the events board...or tending bar at the Frontier Room campus pub.

Ah, the Frontier Room in May. This time of year, it would be empty, because everyone would be outside on the patio, enjoying the Appalachian spring. If you got there early, you could grab a seat on the brick walls on the corner of Union and College streets, hailing friends passing below who hadn't managed to leave their class schedule blank after 3 p.m. The Frontier Room was less than a hundred steps from The Post, where I spent most of my non-class time, but I am pretty sure I whiled away at least as many hours at the bar as I did at the office. They were good times, and I made lifelong friends.

I didn't know Kevin and Joe well while we were in school, and I can count on one hand the number of times we've seen each other in person since then. But each has enriched my online life in a significant way. Let me explain.

Back in 2013, when Kevin was awaiting a kidney transplant, he started making a Facebook post the first day of each month, always starting "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" for good luck and then sharing an update from his life. The posts "were just meant to help me recalibrate during the last years of dialysis, but I'm grateful others get something from them," he tells me. Kevin always includes some words of encouragement and, once in a while, a gentle admonition. Today, he asked us all to please wear our masks. "Millions like me have a compromised immune system," he wrote. "I've beat cancer twice, please don't kill me with your sneeze. Thanks." He ends each of these monthly posts with these words, "No day but today," from the finale of Rent.

Like me, Joe walks every day. (Actually, Joe says he has only missed two days of walking since 2010. I am in awe.) Joe averaged over five miles a day last year, and every morning on his return, he posts on Facebook. He gives the weather report from Central Ohio, logs the first six selections from his music shuffle playlist, and ends each post with the words "We Can Stop It." Joe says that when he began adding that coda about a year ago, the phrase referred to gun violence, "but it does apply to COVID-19 and about anything else that we have the ability to stop."

As I've written before, Facebook has been a lifeline for many of us in these new times, but I really appreciate Kevin and Joe for their years of steadfastness, so I just wanted to let them know. If someone in your life has made a difference for you during these tough times, or anytime, be sure to tell them.

It's the little things, people. Sometimes they're not so little.

I'll conclude this post with one of the tunes from Joe's May 1 morning shuffle. Take us out, Howard Jones ...

Writing down the days

This morning, I am grateful for the wonderful day Tom and I had yesterday (and for Tom's mindfulness in mentioning several times how wonderful it was).

This is a sentence from my journal a year ago today. I mentioned a while back that although I post infrequently here, I write every day in my journal. I'm grateful that I have this practice and I can revisit where I was--physically, emotionally, and/or spiritually--at times in my past.

I've been in a grief and loss group at church this spring, and one of the other participants asked whether I could have coffee to talk about journaling, something she'd like to do more of. We haven't had a chance to do that yet, and I figure other people may be interested, too, so I'm writing some thoughts here.

Although I've kept journals off and on most of my life, I've become much more intentional about it over the past few years. I don't think your journal needs to take any special form, and mixing them up is fine. Mine is often a gratitude journal; I often write first thing in the morning and recount what I was grateful for the previous day. I know other people do the same thing just before bed--write about what they loved in the day just ending, and that seems like a lovely way to finish one's day.

In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron advocates for writing three free-form, loose-leaf "morning pages" first thing each day, basically as a way to get whatever's on your mind out of your head and onto the page so you can go about the rest of your day. I've done these occasionally, and I think they can be helpful as a creative exercise. For me, though, one of the best parts of journaling is storing my thoughts bound in a beautiful book, either one I've found that I love or one I've made. (I enjoy taking a plain old composition book and pasting stuff on it.)

Art by William S. Rice

Art by Hannah Viano

A trip journal

I have "home" journals for my everyday writing and "away" journals for when I travel; the latter are wonderful souvenirs. I always bring a glue stick when I travel so I can paste in ticket stubs and other mementos. I leave empty pages for adding other things later, such as photos or even an empty packet of seeds from Monet's garden in Giverny. (Here's a lovely essay from Rick Steves on why he journals as he travels.) I also have an especially nice journal in which I write only once a year, on or near my birthday.

Some people journal online, and if that's the best way for you, why not? Although I do most of my journaling on paper, I use my phone's notes app when I'm out and about and want to capture some thoughts. One digital journaling tool I especially love is the FutureMe website, which allows you to write a letter to yourself to be delivered via email in the future; you specify the date you'd like to receive it, whether a few months or a few years down the road. I've written about a dozen letters to myself via this site, usually when I am going through periods of transition and need to think about how things can and will get better.

Journals can be tools of optimism. In February 2018, Tom started on a clinical drug trial that we hoped would help him beat back another recurrence of cancer. That month, my Valentine's Day gift to both of us was a guided journal, One Question a Day for You & Me, with room for three years' worth of daily reflections. We only got a few months, but I treasure this book--both for what's in it and the memory of how, each night before bed, I'd ask the day's question and write down our answers.

A year ago, as Tom was caught in a swirl of medical procedures and I helplessly went along for the ride, journaling nearly every day helped me vent my fear and frustration and keep sight of what was good, even in difficult times. "I'm counting up the days and nights I get to spend with this remarkable man," I wrote a year ago today in my "everyday" journal, not knowing how much time we had left ... days, weeks, months, years?

One more thought: Although social media has its downsides, it is a record of your life. Many of us now have a decade's worth of Facebook posts documenting our days, and that is a journal of sorts, too. I try to use my social media time in this way, so if Instagram still exists 10 years from now, I'll remember this beautiful flower I saw on my way home from work one May day in 2019.

Life can be a blur, but if you take some time to write every day, you can see a bit of the shape of your life--where you've been, where you are now, where you may be going.

Reel life: My take on the 2019 Oscar nominations

Although I'm a major movie buff, it's a rare year when I've seen all the Best Picture nominees before the Oscar nods are announced. That was the case for 2018-2019, though, and I saw them all on the big screen. Here are my brief impressions of the nominations announced today.

Black Panther: Great storytelling and the year's best ensemble cast. It's gratifying to see a superhero/fantasy film finally make the cut. I saw this with Tom at a packed Rose Theatre in Port Townsend--the only one of the nominees we saw together, on our last real weekend getaway. It was actually our second choice that day; we'd been hoping to get tickets to the documentary California Typewriter playing at the Rose's tiny Starlight Room, but it was sold out. We agreed we were happy it worked out that way. This is the only Best Picture nominee that came out before Tom died in June. I'll miss watching the Oscars with him this year.

BlacKkKlansman: Lots of stylish and suspenseful fun, with an unexpectedly but appropriately sobering end. So glad to see Spike Lee get a directing nod and Adam Driver land the acting nomination he should have had for Paterson. I saw this with my daughter Natalie in Boise at the Edwards 21 on a 100+ plus degree August day that was made for sitting in a cool theater.

Bohemian Rhapsody: Really? It was enjoyable and definitely a crowd-pleaser, with moviegoers rating it far higher than the critics. I'm not sure how it slipped into the Best Picture ranks, though. I saw Bohemian Rhapsody twice, first at Regal Thornton Creek in Seattle with the gimmicky ScreenX treatment (admittedly a good fit for this movie) and again with Natalie at the big Edwards in Boise.

The Favourite: Yorgos Lanthimos' aggressively weird world view is about 180 degrees from my own, and I hated The Lobster--but I have to admit his latest mindbender belongs in the running for Best Pic. (I'll be pissed if it wins, though.) Olivia Colman's Best Actress nomination is deserved, and Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz seemed to have the time of their lives. I saw this at the AMC Oak Tree in Seattle.

Green Book:  I liked this a lot, though--as with Bohemian Rhapsody--I'm a little surprised to see it crack the Best Picture ranks. Viggo Mortensen showed great range for his second Best Actor nomination in three years, though this wasn't the equal of his astounding turn in Captain Fantastic. Mahershala Ali was such a presence, rising far above supporting status, so it is good to see his nomination. I saw this with my brother Jeff and his husband Kevin at the Metreon in San Francisco.

Roma: Hands down my favorite movie of the year, gorgeous to look at, with an engrossing story and packed with memorable characters--though none as luminous as Yalitza Aparicio's Cleo. I am absolutely thrilled to see Roma get a Best Picture nod; I thought it'd be relegated to the Best Foreign Film category, where it actually is nominated, too. I've seen Roma twice at the Landmark Crest in Shoreline, one of a few places where it's had a theatrical release, and I may get back for a third viewing before it leaves. Viva Mexico, in all its beauty and complexity, and thank you Alfonso Cuaron.

A Star is Born: As manipulative as Roma is meditative, this movie ripped me to shreds in the best way. Bradley Cooper knew what he wanted to do and he did it very well. It'll be fun to watch where Lady Gaga goes from here as an actress (though I'd have given her nomination for this to Thomasin McKenzie, in Leave No Trace). I saw A Star is Born alone at Regal Thornton Creek not so long after Tom passed away, thus its emotional punch--but I think it would stand up as strong on another viewing

Vice: I really loved The Big Short, eagerly awaited this, and finally saw it Sunday at the Mountlake Terrace Cinebarre. Christian Bale is so good depicting Dick Cheney from his misspent youth to his Machiavellian prime, and Vice makes a compelling argument that Cheney was an even more destructive force to democracy than the current occupant of the White House. It's a sledgehammer of a movie, but director Adam McKay's creativity and several great performances (Amy Adams and Sam Rockwell are super, too) earn it a Best Picture nod.

What's going to win? I have no idea, but I'll be cheering for Roma, which soars above the rest of the nominees for its artistry and humanity. And on those grounds, I'd be happy with a Black Panther win, too.

A few more notes:

What a great crop of animated features we had this year. I found Incredibles 2, Isle of Dogs, and especially Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse all fantastic fun.

I just saw If Beale Street Could Talk the other day and am a bit surprised to see it get only a few nominations. Its cinematography was especially lovely.

The year's most overlooked feature was the understated, little-seen Leave No Trace, which suffered from a summer not-so-wide release. Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie were brilliant as a father and daughter onscreen together in nearly every scene, and--although I haven't seen the Best Director-nominated Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski), I wonder whether his nod--or actually anyone's but Cuaron's--could have gone to Debra Granik. As usual, women filmmakers have a rough time getting noticed by Oscar voters. This was a Best Picture candidate in my book and may have made the cut had it come out in the fall.

Also, how did Won't You Be My Neighbor? miss out for Best Documentary? I need to get busy with the documentary nods--RBG is the only one I've seen--but it's hard to believe they're all better than this timely and gentle film about the life of Fred Rogers.

Mind the gaps

My sweetheart Tom used to tell a story about a near-death experience he had shortly after his diagnosis with multiple myeloma. To paraphrase: He was on his way to an oncology appointment, driving on Interstate 5 near downtown Seattle, when his windshield shattered. He still made it to his appointment; he was a get-it-done guy. But later that day, a police officer examining the vehicle handed Tom a metal rod, several inches long. It had flown off a truck into Tom's car--and had its trajectory been just a little different, it would have struck Tom's head after it hit the windshield. Yet it didn't, and Tom didn't die that day. His cancer went into remission, he saw his kids graduate from high school, he helped launch a new radio station while working his day job in music, and he fell in love with me.

I've spent much of this year since June 30 cleaning out Tom's stuff, and I came across a longer, written account of that day that he gave as a talk at Toastmasters shortly before Thanksgiving a year or two after it happened. His message, of course, was that you never know when something might fly through your windshield and kill you, so be happy and grateful--and Tom usually was.

Five years ago this morning, I met Tom at the Oakland airport. He'd flown down from Seattle on Thanksgiving morning to spend the holiday with my brother and his husband and me. The next day, we packed up a small rental truck and set off for Seattle, where I'd decided to move to be closer to Tom. We'd only been together a few months at that point, but when you fall in love with someone who has cancer, you don't want to waste a lot of time.

Tom and I had another four-and-a-half years together. It would be more than two years before his cancer returned in early 2016. We spent Thanksgiving that year in a hospital room, three weeks after his autologous stem cell transplant and four days after Tom's oxygen dropped and his temperature spiked to 106.8 as his body briefly rebelled against his re-infused cells. He'd nearly died again, but with quick action from his medical team, Tom pulled through--and a few days later, we noshed on a not-bad hospital Thanksgiving meal while listening to Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant and Paul Simon's The Boy in the Bubble. Two days later, we were home.

"... these are the days of miracles and wonders ..."

A few weeks after that Thanksgiving, Tom would watch his son graduate from college via a streaming site on the Internet. He'd live another 19 months, regain his strength to work hard (mostly from home) and travel several more times, launch another radio station, see his daughter turn 21, and marry me on his 62nd birthday.

Eleven days after that, he was gone.

I'm tempted to say I've written off this Thanksgiving--and likely the whole holiday season. But that's not really true. Last weekend, I joined in an early celebration with my daughter and her dad and my brother and his husband. Later today, I'll volunteer on the reception team for Thanksgiving dinner at the Union Gospel Mission homeless shelter. At this point in my life, it's often easier to be with strangers than grieve with kin, though I look forward to spending time with family and friends, too.

After Tom's death, I started experiencing some serious health challenges. I don't find it useful to post about such things online; some people gain strength from sharing, but I find it draining, so I've kept the details mostly to myself and a few friends and family. Suffice it to say, I'm feeling better now than I did a few months ago and I'm doing what I need to do to address the remaining issues--even as I do the work of settling Tom's estate and as much paid editorial work as I can manage. (I'm lucky to manage four hours a day of the latter, but for now, that's enough.)

Next Thanksgiving, I hope I'll be doing something similar to what I did on Thanksgiving in 2000, when I sat enjoying a plate of pasta at a waterfront restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, ahead of Lonely Planet's Authors Week. Maybe I'll be in Mexico; maybe I'll be in Vietnam. I'll have no fixed address, living nowhere and everywhere (though I'll get back to the Northwest for Christmas). I plan to travel for at least a few years with my portable editing and writing career, and I hope to teach English as a foreign language, too. I've started the process to learn TEFL and will ramp up that plan in the new year once I've concluded my estate duties.

Meanwhile, this is a season of living while we wait to resume life. I have low expectations for myself and everyone around me. We all still miss Tom. Good days and bad. Yes, I'm shedding a few tears as I write this. Mostly, I'm giving thanks for what we had.

____

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Living with death

Halloween has never been my favorite holiday. I don't like to play dress up and I'm not drawn to the macabre; when my daughter and I visited Paris, the catacombs were high on her to-see list and I couldn't have cared less--so I skipped them, took a walk while she waited in the two-hour line, then sat in a sunny park and read a book.

I tried to go back to church in August for the first time since Tom died. I was doing OK until a woman wearing a black-and-white skull motif sweater materialized in front of me and suddenly I had to follow her along the narrow path--a person going to church, in August, wearing a sweater with skulls. Some people really like Halloween.

But not me. So I didn't plan to watch A Ghost Story last night. But I did, and I'm glad, and if you miss someone you loved very much, you might like it, too.

A 2017 release, A Ghost Story is directed by David Lowery and stars Casey Affleck; the two of them teamed up again this year on The Old Man & The Gun, which I saw earlier this week. There's a lot to like about The Old Man & The Gun: its attention to detail, its occasional meandering talkiness (since the character played by star Robert Redford is the taciturn sort, sidekick Tom Waits gets to deliver the movie's best monologue), and above all its meditative quality--yes, a movie that's ostensibly about robbing banks is really about knowing what makes life worth living.

I looked up what else Lowery has made, and I remembered hearing that there was more to A Ghost Story than its title and Halloween-costumed title character. I decided to watch, and I fell into it immediately. Imagine the most perfect moments you ever had with the person you loved, and how those perfect moments lived in an imperfect love that was still far more than enough. Imagine trying to reclaim those moments and--along the way--being of comfort as your beloved deals with your loss. This is what A Ghost Story seems to be about.

I went to bed right after watching A Ghost Story. A soft Seattle rain fell outside the window, and I could imagine having Tom there with me, curled up together as we had been so many times, just like that.

It'll never happen again. What matters is that it happened.

'Melancholy: A Way to Happiness'

That's the title of a chapter I read this morning in Ageless Soul: The Lifelong Journey Toward Meaning and Joy by Thomas Moore. I'm enjoying this book. In it, Moore notes how we age throughout our lives--and about how it's natural for melancholy to increase as we get older and see more illness and death in our lives.

Mom, me, Dad

Today marks the sixth anniversary of my dad's death, so it's naturally a melancholy time of year--especially since my mom also died in early spring. As difficult as it is to face the loss of loved ones, I've always felt grateful that my parents both passed from this Earth in its time of rebirth. Spring softened the blow in both cases, even though their deaths could not have been more different. I was just 25 when I suddenly lost my mom; I was 50 when my dad died after years of decline. Both deaths helped prepare me for future losses, but my father's much more gradual passage was much more profound to me because I was old enough to process it in all its complexity.

I remember how, when I was living through my dad's difficult final months, I sometimes referred to the experience as my "holy days of obligation." As his daughter, of course I felt bound to help him through his final days as he and my mom cared for me as a child. That was the obligatory part, the often-difficult work of tending to the ever-shifting needs of someone wrestling with cognitive decline and physical pain he frequently could not articulate.

But it was an unbelievably holy time, too. I remember one evening when I wearily left Dad's apartment, crossing the parking lot to catch my bus on a nearby corner. A full moon had risen and I spontaneously broke into song:

Spirit of life, come unto me, sing in my heart, all the stirrings of compassion ... *

It was a preview of even more profound times to come, culminating in the day Dad said goodbye, three days before Easter 2012. On that day, as my brother and I sat vigil knowing the end was near, the stirrings of compassion became more real. With the help of an angel from hospice, we learned what it means to have a good death.

Moore writes how sadness is part of growing older. We don't need to rage against it; in fact, if we can sit with our melancholy, it need not turn into existential dread or depression "but instead only one strand of mood among others." And that is how I feel this rainy April day: As the best-laid plans sometimes shift and some long-held dreams recede, we learn acceptance and perspective. Or, as Moore says, "If you can allow melancholy its place, you have a better chance to be deeply happy."

* Spirit of Life, a beloved Unitarian Universalist hymn. Words and music by Carolyn Dade.

In the name of love

Today is the day we honor the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, born January 15, 1929. What would he make of what we've made of our country?

Winter's dark days give us ample time for reflection, and an excuse to make the most of the light. Here in Seattle, we've had a spectacular holiday weekend: dry, clear, warm all three days. Such a gift.

For a long time, Tom and I have wanted to make the short trip to Whidbey Island to hear our friend the Rev. Dennis Reynolds preach at the Unitarian Universalist congregation he serves there. Yesterday was the day we finally made it, and it felt like we were meant to be there. Dennis was likely not the only minister who'd planned a sermon about Dr. King and found himself rewriting it late last week in the wake of words spoken in the White House.

But the bones of Dennis' message remained intact, and they were the bones and sinew and soul of Dr. King and other prophets, ancient and modern, who tell the truth. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that," King wrote. More than ever, King's words urge us on toward commitment, and Dennis spoke of modern prophets, including the Rev. William J. Barber, who continue to carry a message of nonviolence, justice, and advocacy for the poor. Dennis finished his sermon with the entirety of Langston Hughes' "Let America Be America Again." Starkly juxtaposed against the past week -- but in fact the past year, the past decade, our entire history as a nation -- the 1935 poem is as relevant as ever.

America will be, but we're not there yet.

And yet hopeful signs abound. Here are a few others I've found just in the past week:

I read the Rolling Stone interview with Bono, then sat down to listen to Songs of Experience. My favorite song on the new U2 record remains the first single, "Get Out of Your Own Way." It starts as a plea for a woman to leave her abuser; it ends (in the segue to "American Soul") as a call for a singular country to fulfill its destiny. It's #metoo meets man-splaining, perhaps, but it's also the world begging America to become America.

Rick Steves has a new blog post about how his own family immigrated to America from Norway--at the time, "a miserable place to live...a land without promise." They arrived in Duluth, Minnesota, with $20 and thought of it as the Promised Land. We are and always have been a nation of immigrants, Rick adds, noting that while we may have a leader who fears and loathes immigrants, "I believe America is more American than that -- and that we're waking up." (Disclosure: I am a contract editor for Rick's guidebook division, and I feel blessed to be aligned with his company and his world view. Travel is the best way to trump ignorance and fear.)

Finally, after seeing it on so many Best-of-2017 lists, Tom and I watched the movie Mudbound last week. Based on a novel by Hillary Jordan and directed by Dee Rees, this Netflix original film is the story of two families living in the Mississippi Delta in the middle of the 20th century. I loved it on many levels, but especially for its rich detail of the inherent worth and dignity of nearly all of its many characters--and for how it shows us the possibility of leaving our bondage, not just the shackles of slavery, but the chains of thought and habit that keep us spiritually enslaved.

On this MLK Day, I believe we can rise up. I believe we can keep bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice. I believe that together, we can help America be America again.

The new year dawning

I love odd, meandering dreams. I don't have (or remember) them often enough, but I woke up from one today just as a minor plot point had been revealed: There was a new "Wayne"--that is, Mike Myers was no longer the affable cable-access show host in Aurora, Illinois. Someone else would play him.

As if! I'm not sure where that came from, but my waking mind moved next to the idea of shedding one's skin. That's as apt a metaphor as any for the last day of 2017, and it's when I knew I needed to get up and write something.

New Year's Day is often a time when we commit to something new. I've recently begun a new practice I plan to continue in the new year: reading an essay on paper (not online) first thing most mornings, then writing a bit (also on paper) about what I've read, and maybe just a bit about what's happening in my life, too. I've mostly been reading works at random from The Best American Essays 2017. I'll recount a few themes from memory:

A woman pieces together the fragments of the worst industrial disaster in U.S. history, at Hawk's Nest, West Virginia, where hundreds of men digging a tunnel died slow deaths.

A man with cerebral palsy recounts acting in The Wizard of Oz as a boy, and meeting one of the Munchkins from the famous film.

A woman works a low-wage job in a hospital ER while paying off the five-figure debt she incurred  trying to take her own life.

Two young men in Harare, Zimbabwe, try to raise money to come to college in America. They have scholarships, but they need travel funds and living expenses.

A woman and her two daughters abandon their life in California to seek a new one, with new identities, in Colorado. (This one had me at its early mention of that kid-lit classic The Monster at the End of this Book.)

A young couple from the Midwest leave their hipster town for life in a very cheap backwater along the Great Lakes.

I dream of someday reading for fun many hours each day. But since I must read--and read closely--for my work as an editor, I rarely take time each day for leisure reading. These early-morning sessions are my attempt to do that, and I love how the essays give me glimpses of how other people are living--and often how they're shedding their skins to do or be or see something new. To grow.

In last night's dream, I also remember recounting to someone the blogs I've written over the years. Well, today actually is the third anniversary of Surely Joy. I started it as a resolution of sorts with two posts at the tail end of 2014, and while I don't write here all that often, I'm grateful to have somewhere to write.

Happy new year, and may 2018 be a year of new insights, growth, and of course joy for us all.





via GIPHY

'How not to make everything worse'

Those were the all-capped words on the opening slide of Karen Yin's keynote talk earlier this fall at the Northwest Independent Editors Guild's Red Pencil Conference. "Thank you to the Guild for asking me to come talk about everything that's wrong with the world," said Yin, founder of the Conscious Style Guide, noting that life today seems like one horrific event after another. "There's no give and we're all getting crushed," she added.

Yin is also the creator of the AP vs. Chicago website, which hashes over how different sources treat things like spaces with em dashes and whether or not to use an apostrophe after a proper noun ending in "s." Yet as Editors Guild president Jill Walters noted in introducing Yin, "Nobody's really going to care if you split an infinitive on Twitter." Larger things than grammar are at stake in our world right now, and Yin offered ideas on how editors can conscientiously foster compassion and healing in a world that seems set on rage autopilot.

Among what she said: Toxins in our communication enter our system and create trauma. Handling language mindfully is part of our job. Yin proposed this four-point set of guidelines: Tell the truth. Don't exaggerate. Be consistent. Use peaceful language.

It is so easy to be pissed off all the time these days. I used to think of anger as righteous. Now I see the ability to keep my rage in check as its own form of resistance, not to mention a robust spiritual practice. It's the best I can do. Call out injustice, then cultivate calm.

It's heartening to see signs that the tide may be turning -- and of course the light is coming back soon, too. As Karen Yin told our editors' gathering, we can choose not to make everything worse.  We can choose compassion and kindness, even as we share truths that must be told.

Successful failure

Today's #UULent word is failure. A joke about UUs is that we read ahead in the hymnal to make sure we agree with the words we're about to sing. Well, I've been reading ahead on the list of words we've been asked to ponder, and today's is one I'd rather skip. (Especially coming a mere five days after mistakes last Friday. But we learn from our mistakes. Failure seems less noble, somehow. And isn't this a blog about joy?)

Still, I know it's spiritually useful to face the things we'd rather ignore. So this morning, as I consider failure, I'm thinking about two things: baseball and politics. Spring training opened yesterday, and my team won 7-0. Exciting! Success! Being an 18th-century Brit, Alexander Pope surely didn't have baseball in mind when he penned the phrase "hope springs eternal," yet it's perfect for a pastime that makes its annual debut in sync with this sublime season of newness.

I know that my team will lose 80 games or so this year. Everyone wants to win the World Series, but honestly, finishing over .500 is a more attainable goal. Along the way, the best hitters will succeed only a third of the time, and the best pitchers will lose at least a handful of games. But it's OK. Even the worst team in baseball will delight its fans 60 times or so before the boys of summer head home this fall. In sports, even amid failure, there's plenty of success. (Take it from Michael Jordan.)

Ten years ago, I was working as one of the nation's first paid Congressional campaign bloggers. On Election Night 2006, my candidate lost, as Democrats almost always do in Idaho -- but we had fun along the way, as this button attests. (I also remember walking in many small-town parades that summer as part of the Grant for Congress Clean-Up Crew, with our mops and brooms.)

From the candidate on down, we were a team of talented amateurs who'd suddenly turned pro. We really didn't know how to play the game, so we made a lot of mistakes. Yet on Election Night, we came within 5 percent of winning (in a district where the Dem is routinely beaten by 20 percent or more), and we helped pave the way for another, better-funded candidate with more Machiavellian management to win the next cycle.

I worked in politics for another six years, and it usually wasn't so fun. I experienced moral failure even amid victory, and many failures of imagination. I got out of the political game for good three years ago, blessed with an opportunity to return to journalism, and I won't be going back because I know that (for me, anyway), it is not soulful work.

Today, as I think about failure, I'm also thinking about a podcast I heard a few months ago with Elizabeth Gilbert and Brene Brown in which they tackled the topic at length. Brown mentions how her question used to be "What would I do if I knew I couldn't fail?" but it had evolved to "What's worth doing even if I fail?" Gilbert agrees and says we ought to let go of the idea of "it worked or it didn't work; it was a success or it wasn't a success." Of the creative life -- which of course is all of life -- Gilbert also suggests that it's better to be a trickster than a martyr. (That's another post ... or five.)

I know this baseball season will be a success because we'll all have fun along the way. I feel the same way about my return to independent writing.

My life has been a lot more joyful when I've been a trickster -- and when I've understood and embraced the concept of successful failure -- than when I've taken things way too damn seriously. I wish the same for you.

Giving life the shape of justice

Spirit of Life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea;
Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice
Roots hold me close; wings set me free
Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.  

-- Spirit of Life,  from Singing the Living Tradition
words and music by Carolyn McDade  

Today's #UULent word is justice. Life is pretty random, yet it has an arc, and sometimes we can see and feel that arc bend toward justice. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was one such time. We have at least two progressive epochs unfolding in our own era: the slow-then-rapid realization of marriage equality, and now the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Who, or what, gives life the shape of justice? All weekend, I've been hearing passages from To Kill A Mockingbird read in tribute to Harper Lee, who passed away Friday. The reclusive Alabama author helped give shape to a burgeoning civil rights movement when her novel came out in 1960. Inspired by his white ally Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind and snubbed at a Holiday Inn, Sam Cooke risked his career for the same cause with A Change is Gonna Come.

And the beat goes on: Macklemore, Ryan Lewis and Mary Lambert helped advance marriage equality with Same Love. Kendrick Lamar's Alright and Beyonce's Formation are high-profile musical manifestations of black pride circa 2015-2016. Lin-Manuel Miranda is the toast of Broadway with Hamilton, of which Miranda says, "Our cast looks like America looks now."

Black artists and topics were snubbed by the Oscars this year, but 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture in 2014. The mere nominations of Spotlight and The Big Short as Best Picture nominees for next week's Oscars are victories for justice, with the latter film an especially smart and gleeful blow against the empire, far more bracing than anything that's happening in our savagely dysfunctional politics.

Justice sometimes happens in the courtroom and the corridors of power. But first, it moves in the hands and the hearts and the heads of our artists, our writers, our musicians, and filmmakers -- and then it moves us: to laughter, tears and applause, and then to commitment and action.

Own your story

I've been a fan of Austin Kleon since Steal Like an Artist, and I've been having a lot of fun with The Steal Like an Artist Journal, which he released last year. This month, Austin is posting a page a day of people using the journal on his Instagram, so this is my shot at glory, at least among fellow Austin Kleon acolytes.

This post says a lot about me:

I'm up crazy early today. Deadlines.
I'm procrastinating from the work I'm supposed to be doing.
I'm not afraid of much.
Life is good.
A leap is nigh.

(A) few words about prayer

Since September, I've been part of a UU Wellspring class -- and a big point of this post is to say that if you are a Unitarian Universalist interested in spiritual deepening, you may want to consider Wellspring, too.

Last night's topic was prayer. I am not going to say much about the session because in Wellspring, we create circles of trust, and I will invoke that for myself as much as for my fellow Wellspring travelers. I'll say this much: I arrived at the session with a full and somewhat heavy heart, grateful that prayer was the topic.

I pray daily, never kneeling, sometimes with my eyes closed, but more often with them wide open in wonder. And because I spend so much of my life working with words, for me, words in prayer are often beside the point.

So it was harder than I'd have expected when we were asked to take a few minutes and write a prayer during our session. Still, because "I am who I am," I wrote three. The first:

I pray because
I pray because it helps me find the stillness
I pray because I am too much with myself
I pray because I am thankful
I pray because I want to pay attention 
I pray for strength
I pray for peace
I pray because

Looking at that, the poet in me liked the repetition, but the editor in me thought, "too many I's."

My next one:

Spirit of life
give me stillness
give me strength
give me reason
give me love

Then my editor went back and changed the gives to grants. You see how it can be terribly difficult to be an editor, to continually be getting in my own way ... even in prayer, for god's sake.

Here's what I finally came up with:

Prayer is something 
when words fail me
when I finally get out of
my head and into 
my heart.
It's an experience
of gratitude ... and longing
and love.
Sometimes it's my senses
working overtime.
Sometimes it's me sitting still. 
It is marvelous.
It is essential. 
It is enough. 

We took turns reading our prayers. One of the prayers was sung. One had exactly one word.

Wow. 

Exactly.

Amen.


UU Wellspring

https://twitter.com/MUTTScomics/status/668444536121786368

Make time for magic

At  the Cineplex Odeon theaters in Canada, they've been showing this short video before feature films. I caught it on a visit to Vancouver last weekend. Take 2 minutes to watch it. You might want to keep a few Kleenex handy.

Beautiful, yes? Thanks to everyone who made this little reminder to take time for things (and people) we love. Special thanks to vocalist Adaline for breathing new life into the classic Genesis song. (Here's a short "making of" clip.)

One of my life's greatest pleasures is going to the movies, and I especially love going with my sweetheart. Last year, we went to 42 movies together. I know because we kept track on a calendar. (Here's part of the page from August.) 

We like smart movies, movies that tell stories, movies where we recognize bits of our better selves, as well as the struggles and heartbreaks -- but mostly the joys -- of being alive.* And while watching movies at home is great, too, there's nothing like sitting in the dark with a bunch of strangers and watching the magic unfold, larger than life. (I also love this clip for the Regal chain, even if it's selling Coke.) 

Here's to magic, and another great year at the movies.

*Some of my favorites from 2015, in alphabetical order: 

The Big Short, Brooklyn, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Dope, The End of the Tour, Grandma, I'll See You in My Dreams, Inside Out,  The Martian,  McFarland, Mistress America, Room, Seoul Searching, Seymour: An Introduction,  Shaun the Sheep, Spotlight, Steve Jobs

(We haven't seen The Force Awakens yet!)