So I was supposed to go to Minnesota for a wedding this past weekend. For weeks, months maybe even, I had lots of fun telling people I had to go to a wedding in Minnie-soda in late May. Jessie Diggins’ wedding, which was sure to be something. With my love, even better. Guaranteed to be lots of fun.
It meant I got to take a Sunday off from church, which, if you’ve ever been a pastor you know is a great thing, getting a break from prepping a service and writing a sermon.
Then Delta canceled our flight, so it was off to church, after all.
The thing is I was really feeling relieved that I didn’t have to get up in front of everyone and talk, this week in particular, because of what happened in Uvalde.
On top of Ukraine, Buffalo, Austin.
But, you know, the show must go on, so I stood up there on Sunday and basically said, I’ve got nothing, I’m so tired of humans pointing guns at each other. I’m all out of things to say.
And, of course, it was Memorial Day, which actually made me feel kind of more angry, because what is war if not organized, sanctioned, gun-shooting brutality?
I had to think really hard because I couldn’t actually stand up there on Sunday and say nothing. So I looked back over my week and pulled out two good things that happened: one was that my friend Tim, a person I’ve known for a long time, but didn’t really know all that well, told me about how he writes haiku. And also how he’s planning to build himself a little painting studio. I want to work with watercolors, was what he said. Which almost didn’t even make it into my ear canal or whatever thing in there collects sounds because the Tim I’ve always known is a builder and hockey player and listening to him talk about poetry and painting made me a little woozy.
So there was that.
Then there was the morning when I was riding in the car with Bill Koch (the nordic skier, not the dastardly billionaire) and he told me about how he picks special, specific rocks and then figures out how to balance them. Like this is a thing. You have to be in the flow, you can’t be in a hurry or have anywhere to go, he said. Which, given how long it would probably take me to balance a rock upright, would be years before I could schedule anything. Bill Koch, master athlete, Olympic medalist, the guy who figured out you could ski on sand … is a Zen rock balancer.
Those were the bright spots in my week. I mean, the asparagus and arugula coming up in the garden are delish and the longer days have been nice. But nothing much, really, to counterbalance the horror of the slaying of school children at close range by a deranged maniac who entered a school that had spent $650,000 on security measures through a propped-open door, carrying a semi-automatic rifle while all the men who had been specifically trained to stop a guy like that did nothing.
The stories Bill and Tim told me, about their creative endeavors, which are really about their spiritual journeys, about how they’re working through life’s bullshit with poetry and painting and rocks, made me feel momentary joy. And I’m guessing that’s how we get through this little hell we have created here on Ye Olden Planet Earthe. Making stuff, paying attention to nature, being quiet, committing to some kind of path of growth.
I don’t know.
My friend Mark read the names of all the babies who got murdered out loud in church on Sunday. He knows how to speak Spanish and so he read their names so beautifully. It sounded like music. Everyone cried.
Do I believe in humans?
I want to. But I find myself more and more these days slipping away, into the ether, to visit with my friends in the spirit realm. They are calm, peaceful, free.
What a mysteral morning as your friend speaks about coming out with poety and art and the fog lifts.