Frequently Asked Questions

I cannot seem to post an entry from my journal from May 2000. Check out this link for the entry:  http://heyoverbey.tumblr.com/

It is entitled: Frequently Asked Questions. It starts out with these quotes...

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. (Voltaire)

Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Who questions much, shall learn much… (Francis Bacon)

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.  (Ursula K. LeGuin)

Thoughts On Writing...

"The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don’t necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners…"

Natalie Goldberg: Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir

A Meditation Among the Trees

I just settled in from a meditation retreat this weekend, "Sacred Spaces". One of the ideas was to meet with like-minded people to meditate over the weekend and increase conscious awareness. We covered six principles and did a lot of meditating in various form to facilitate this. Amazing.

One part of my weekend was following a trail on the land that we retreated on. Getting away from the busy city life was challenging at first. Once I quieted inside and focused on the woods and all of nature around me I forgot about work and duties and frenetic things and acknowledged quite a lot. Someone wise advised me to write out short bursts of what that was. Here they are:

+ At first, my mind and my chest pined for the confusion of the hectic city. How comfortable that chaos can be. I'm surprised how easy I let it go and walked on.

+ Wind just stirred up a bit of ways behind me. Catching up to me now. I'm gonna stand still. It is here with me right now. Loud - but quiet. Moves past me. It's like a wave. It's alive like me.

+ Some brush is a light, hazy purple. I thank it out loud for being purple. Felt odd and right all at once.

+ The Earth is wet and sloppy. My shoes are bright white. They mingle. Who cares today? It is okay. It is good even.

+ I see a Jack Rabbit. Whoa. Hey, there! He didn't say hi back. But he didn't ignore me like the city ignores me. Oh, look! He has a trail he is on, too. He's gone.

+ I can hear the gang behind me. I speak then walk off to the side. They pass. I stay out with this field that is open and wide and I stand with intermittent sun.

+ Walking          + Breathing       + Pausing       + Walking
+ Breathing        + Pausing         + Stretching

+ I stopped and "sent" some of this stillness and wholeness to the inner city and to twitter and to Wall Street and to the Middle East. Hope I bring some back in me.

+ I see some dew on a thorny branch. I touched it. I tasted it. I rubbed some on my face and neck.

+ The birds are having a choir practice up top. A lot of 'em showed up for rehearsal. I can pick out the sopranos and the altos. The woodpecker is on percussion. I nod my head a bit to the beat.

+ The air is so clean at first it burns.

+ I thought of work. That's none of my business now. I let it go.

+ Twigs crunch and snap from my weight.

+ I have no sense of time out here. Huh.

+ I am home now. I still smell the woods on me. I hope I smell it for a long time.

"Show" and "Tell"

An admonsihment for writers: "Show, don't tell."

An axiom among gurus: "Teach always. Use words when necessary."

Street vibe: "I can show you better than I can tell you."  (Often followed by, "Fool!")

Age-old cliche: "Actions speak louder than words."

Ancient Chinese proverb: "Talk doesn't cook rice."

Among many professions: "Those who can't do, teach."

I get the point. I am sure we can increase the list ad infinitum (add yours in comments below). And... I buy it. I believe it. It makes that identifier go off in my truth detector. Ding! In fact, I want to live by these. I'd like to think I do. No, I mean, I would like to think that I "do". That I am a do-er.

And, of course, here it comes...

But! I am left contemplating today, "Why can't I show and tell?" After all, I learned that in kindergarten. We all know what "they" say about learning things in kindergarten: it's everything I need to know.

After all, I am a purveyor of words. A trader whose wares are ideas. A manciple of communications, if you will (I think I will). Admittedly, I read the dictionary for fun! I am a speaker and a writer. In business I work more on the telephone than with any other tool. So I also buy into the idea that the pen is mightier than the sword, that wise men speak because they have something to say, that a man can be convinced to action by the confidence of a conversation. (I cannot count how many people I have persuaded to turn in a car they were hiding for repossession by a stirring exchange in conversation.)

Here...

Joseph Conrad: "Words have set whole nations in motion. Give me the right word and I will move the world."

Mark Twain: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."

Proverbs 18:21 "Death and life are in the power of the tongue."

"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an acho sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all."   Richard Wright

And I read this by the adored Anne Lamott today in Bird by Bird, "We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out."

Since I was a child I have known a part of me that, almost desperately, longs to reach out and connect with other people through the spoken and written word. My whole life path has been a development of communicating through the written and spoken word. Through poetry. Through singing. Preaching. Teaching. Conversing. Praying. Writing. Listening. Reading. Pausing. Gesturing. Talking. Editing. Through writing some more. Speaking. Dreaming. Thinking. Telling. Showing.

M. Scott Peck. I'm a big fan. He taught a lot about reality being revealed in paradox. "Para" meaning along side and "dox" meaning opinion. He showed us in The Road Less Traveled and Beyond: "When you get to the root of things, virtually all truth is paradoxical... to understand paradox ultimately means being able to grasp two contradictory concepts in one's mind without going crazy."

I get it now. I do not have to choose. I do not have to either be a shower or a teller. I do not have to be either a doer or a speaker.

I will show and tell!

Some Words...

ALACRITY 1. Cheerful willingness; eagerness 2. Speed or quickness
VITIATE 1. To reduce the value or impair the quality of 2. Debase
SUSURRUS 1. A soft whispering or rustling sound; a murmor
SOIGNE (swan-YA) 1. Showing sophisticated elegance; fashionable 2. Polished
BAILIWICK 1. One's particular area of activity, interest or authority

EFFUSIVE 1. Unrestrainedm or expressive in emotional expression 2. Overflowing

I Desire!

We are not "supposed" to have desire. It is an expression of lack when we are full as we are. We are really to just "be".  Yet, this journal entry I found from October 23, 2005, is more of a prayer or a form of poetry. I read it tonight and fell in love with an old self that wanted to be different than he was that chilly and rainy Sunday. I know tonight I am. Here it is:

"Desire.

It is my desire to move forward. It is my desire to gain wisdom and to gain understanding. It's my desire to love myself wholly. It is my desire to be spiritual, to have spiritual authority. I desire to lead. I desire to communicate. I desire and I have intention to meet people who are healthy for me, who synchronically fit into a network that "I" am developing.

I desire to write.
I desire to read.
And I desire to write more. To publish. To teach. To record. To disseminate. To read and write some more.

I desire to read more: poetry, essays, great literature, the WORD of God, news, independent authors, plays, even current fiction... to read ME, to read nature, to read people, to read the water and read the clouds. Oh, to read a child!

I desire to sing. Loud.

I desire to take photos. I desire to travel. I want to interview fascinating and engaging people. I desire to hear your story. I long to commune with spiritual people and beings. I desire to learn, to engage the mysterious, to unturn more and more and even more stones - boulders and mountains even. I will unturn a mountain. I desire to study language, read the dictionary for "fun", board a military vessel, run my fingers across the edge of aging manuscripts, to study the lines of a dying man's face. I desire to feel the music beat hard in my flesh.

I desire, ever increasingly, to be more fully alive and wholly present in every moment that I step into.

I desire to live."

Sometimes reading over an old journal entry is the best gift I get. Do yourself a favor: WRITE! BLOG! SHARE!