How do you get to Carnegie Hall, etc.

Our UK/IRE team started an Interfaith Council, and they asked me to record a short video for Interfaith Week, which is this week.  Here is what I said:  

Thanks very much to the team for inviting me to share a “Thought for the Day” for Interfaith Week.  I think it’s wonderful that you’ve created this forum, and in a society which so often seems to want to put up walls and emphasize the differences between faiths, it’s been such a joy to hear people talking about how many consistencies there are across different faith traditions.

So I wanted to share a thought today about the practice of faith, and how important and powerful I think faith practices are.  I think that so often when we talk about faith, we talk either about identity (like “I am a Christian, or a Muslim, or an agnostic.”) or about beliefs (like “I believe in Heaven and Hell,” or “that my God is the one true God.”)  Now, identity and beliefs have their place, but it can be problematic to talk about faith only in those terms.  Focusing on a religious identity can reduce people into camps: “these people are my people, and the rest of you are outside the tent.”  Focusing on beliefs can lead to problematic debates about which beliefs are “true,” and which aren’t.  Beliefs also have a way of evolving over time.  Most importantly, thinking about faith only through that lens of identity or beliefs keep us mired in our own subjective reality – as we focus on who we are and what do we think, we turn away from other people, and we turn away from God.

I think the practice of faith, on the other hand, is different.  When we attend a house of worship, we take time out of our weekend for quiet, and reflection, and communion.  When we pray we make ourselves humble and vulnerable before God.  When we fast, we demonstrate self-restraint, and we set our own desires aside.  Similarly, when we meditate, if we do it correctly, we intentionally turn off our monkey brains and seek a stillness which is kind of a prerequisite for experiencing the divine. 

Now, I’ve just named a few “traditional” religious practices, but I would argue that practices which bring us closer to God are not restricted to formal faith traditions, or even to people who consider themselves religious.  Doing charity work, spending time in nature, or going for a long run are all practices that help us feel a connection with something greater.  And that’s what any faith practice is about: helping us turn away from ourselves, toward God, and toward others. 

So, this week, I encourage you to think about how faith is practiced, and maybe renew your commitment to a certain practice, or try a new one.   One theme that comes through in every faith practice is one of sacrifice.  In today’s world of instant gratification, the concept of sacrifice doesn’t play so well.  But I’m reminded of a great quote from Nasim Taleb: “Love without sacrifice is theft.  Particularly the love of God.”

Out and back

Slabs of smartphone lycra’d to each outer thigh, a lithe woman in a Harvard hat smiled at me as she approached.  I didn’t have time to react before I saw that the object of her smile was not me, but a butterfly, a gold and black Platonic ideal of a monarch, which floated between us.  After we passed each other, the butterfly sailed alongside me for a moment, hovered, then executed a skittery descent into the warm grass.

Later I turned onto Huron Avenue and confronted a wild turkey on the sidewalk.  As I approached, I scanned my scarce turkey knowledge, trying to recall if they were territorial or not, and if by continuing I would risk a serious pecking from a creature around half my height.  I held my breath and kept to the right, and as I passed, the turkey averted her eyes, as if searching for something, and we continued our respective ways.  Not unlike what two humans do in similar situations.

The air became hotter and denser, and I lost a few moments.  Time and distance passed, it seemed, without me.  These long runs are good for one’s physical health, but, as I’ve mentioned before, there’s also spiritual fruit which Saturday morning mortification bears.  The early mystics talk about annihilation, but John Main (a Benedictine monk and real-life mystic himself) saw it differently: “This is why we pray to the degree that we turn away from ourselves, from the possessive self-consciousness and trivial distractedness… If this sounds like annihilation it is only because it is a description of the unified consciousness of transcendence…far from being annihilated, we are fully, wonderfully restored to ourselves…we know the wonder of our being, the beauty of life, the centrality of love.”

In the future the robots will care for us

 All the races are cancelled, so I perked up last week when I received the email saying that the 20km de Genève was organizing something.  Initial confusion at the subject line which read “2.0km de Genève.” I thought this was either a typo, or that perhaps they had broken down the race into 2.0km intervals, which seemed odd.  Finally I realized that they meant “2.0” as in “version 2.0,” a clever touch further over-egged in the modified logo, which had the “.” in “2.0” at the tip of the accent grave of “Genève,” like a typographical shooting star.  This year’s edition would have the usual choices of 5km/10km/20km distances.  But since we wouldn’t be able to run all together given COVID restrictions, each participant could run whenever they wanted (before Nov 22^nd), and we could follow the course and track our times via a smartphone app.  I signed up for the 10km. 

I set the alarm for 7:45, but I woke up a few minutes before it went off. I fed the cats, had coffee and toast with almond butter, drove to the other side of the lake, and parked near the finish line.  I traversed the Paquis (the closest Geneva has to a “red light district”), past a disheveled woman on a park bench speaking loudly to herself and a young African guy listening to music on his phone, which he held at ear level but looked away from.  I arrived at Rue de Lausanne just in time to catch the #15 tram, which would bring me up to the starting line at Place de Nations.  I realized that I had forgotten to bring a mask, which is obligatoire on public transportation now, so I slid the Buff I had brought with me over my head and wore it bandit-style.

Near the front gates of the United Nations, a few other runners milled around, heads bowed as they consulted their phones.  I almost never run with a phone, as I don’t listen to music or anything when I run, and I don’t like to have the extra weight on me.  I also enjoy the feeling of not knowing exactly where I am when I’m running, when the aperture of my senses seems to be at its widest.  On those rare occasions when I have brought my phone with me on a long run, it’s been stowed away in a pocket in my hydration vest, withdrawn only to take a picture if the scenery is especially nice.  I cringe whenever I see someone running with their phone in their hand, as if they were desperately chasing after it.

However, given the set-up of this race, leaving the phone behind wouldn’t be an option, especially if I wanted to “register” my time – something with no tangible value whatsoever, but one likes to be “official” and to compare times with other runners.  I wore a long-sleeve top with a phone-sized pocket over the left breast, so my plan was to put the phone in there, hoping that it wouldn’t bounce around too much.    

The blue sign marking the starting line was attached to a lamppost at the bottom of Avenue de la Paix, which curves up and around the UN headquarters.  As I approached, three fit looking guys fiddled with phones and watches as they engaged in pre-race bouncing-in-place.  They were lean and fast-looking, with close-cropped hair and red knee-high compression socks, so I figured I would let them go first, so I wouldn’t have to endure the psychological blow of watching them speed away from me.  After a few seconds, one of them said, “Okay, allez,” and off they flew, only to come tramping back down the hill around 20 seconds later, frowning and muttering that the app hadn’t started properly.  A moment later, they had sorted things out, and they disappeared around the corner for the second time.

I took out my phone and opened the race app, which required logging in with a registration number I had been emailed.  Once open, the app told me cheerily to “approach the starting point!”  I looked up and confirmed that I was standing immediately next to the start sign, but for some reason the app said I was 35 meters from the start, then 50 meters, then 10 meters, as I assume the GPS was trying to find me.  Then all of a sudden, a synthetic male voice with a British accent began counting down, calmly but very loudly: “TEN…NINE…EIGHT…”  I managed to stuff the phone back in my pocket and get the zipper closed by the time he reached “ONE,” and off I went. 

Normally at the start of a race, you feed on the excitement of the people around you, so you run faster.  This morning, there was no one around me save the stray passing car, but I still found myself breathing and stepping more quickly than I would on a normal Sunday morning. 

Soon the app’s voice (hereafter “the Voice”) switched over to synthetic British female.  She gave a plug for a breast cancer charity.  I huffed up the long hill, past the US mission and the hotel school.  The Voice then instructed me to take my next left onto Chemin de Machéry, butchering the pronunciation and making me wish I had chosen the French Voice.  I passed through the village of Pregny-Chambésy, and the Voice welcomed me, mangling its name as well. Then the grade smoothed out and the road narrowed, and I moved through the quite pretty and bucolic fields outside of town.  Ahead of me, beyond the airport, the Jura mountains hung purple as the sun strained to burn through in the morning mist.  This is one of the cooler things about living here: one can go from the center of town to farmland in a matter of minutes.  My legs felt strong and my rhythm steady as I headed downhill in the direction of the autoroute.  My km splits were under 5:00, so my rough target time of less than 50:00 (respectable for me on a hilly course like this) was still within reach.  

As I came to an intersection, the Voice instructed me to cross the street, turn into a private driveway, and follow a path into the woods.  This sounded a little suspicious, but I did as I was told, and behind a row of jumelle houses there was indeed a path, which I followed.  I checked my phone, and the little blue dot indicating me was still overlaying the red line indicating the course.  The path became a trail through thick woods, but the Voice’s commands were clear, and I negotiated a couple of turns while keeping a brisk pace.

The path hugged the edge of the woods parallel to the autoroute, then turned east, back toward the lake.  I checked my phone a couple of times to make sure I was still on course.  After another 500 meters or so, the light ahead of me started to brighten as the path neared the edge of the woods.  I emerged to find myself at a T intersection, with concrete paths the color of butter leading to the left and right of me.  In front of me on the other side of a wall were train tracks. 

I realized that I hadn’t heard the Voice in a while, and when I pulled out my phone to check, I saw that I had somehow flicked the little “silent” switch on the side.  The red line on the phone map seemed to lead to the right, so I continued that way.  I held my phone as I ran, trying to get my bearings, but the little me-dot was drifting away from the line of the course.  The Voice remained sullenly silent.

Raising my gaze, I saw figures moving quickly toward me, and as they got closer, I recognized the three fast-looking guys from the starting line.  They passed me and headed back in the direction I had come.  I paused for a moment, and then decided that I must have made a wrong turn, and that I should follow them, at least until I could figure out where I was.  I turned and ran back for another 3 minutes or so, past the T intersection, before realizing that no, this was actually the wrong direction.  The three fit guys were probably running the 20km, which starts with the 10km, but then peels off into a different direction. 

Still clutching my phone, I headed back in the other direction, past the T intersection again.  Looking down, I noticed that my screen had gone black, as my phone had locked itself.  I unlocked it, poking awkwardly with the touchscreen-sensitive tip of my gloved index finger, to find that the app itself had closed.  I reopened it, and it asked me for my password again, which I had to dig around in my email to find.  Finally, I managed to log in, and a cheery “approach the starting point!” message appeared on the screen.  The app had evidently forgotten that I had already started.  I poked around, looking for other menus that might be able to let me pick up where I left off, but there were none.

By this point, around ten minutes had passed since I had first emerged from the woods.  Fortunately, I could still see the course map on my phone, and I was able to pick my way across a bridge over the train tracks, then down a set of stairs to a paved path that ran parallel to them, alongside a cluster of houses near the lake side of Chambésy.  My pace had slowed, and finally I emerged near the gas station close to the autoroute on-ramp, a landmark I knew well, so I would be able to find my way "unofficially" to the finish line from there.

I would like to say that at some point I experienced a peaceful moment of “letting go” and giving thanks for the misty fall morning and for living in such a lovely place and for the ability to go out and run: a Zen-like realization that it’s not about how fast you get to the finish line, but the joy in the journey, etc.  I did not. Instead I just felt sour as I loped past the WTO, then down alongside the water for the final kilometer or so.  The paths next to the shimmering lake were already crowded with people, desperately clutching at the few remaining strands of fall before the arrival of the long, dark winter, whose approach this year feels especially ominous.  I passed the blue sign marking the finish line, then walked to my car and drove home, feeling the chill from the sweaty clothes clinging to me.

November

I don’t hear so much about NaNoWriMo these days, if that’s even what it’s still called.  National November Writing Month.  I’m not sure if that’s because its popularity has waned, or if that’s a function of the social media circles I travel in (or not) these days.  In any case it came to mind a couple of weeks ago, and I toyed with the idea of trying to write something every day in November.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Last year I took a stab at this, and inspired by Flannery O'Connor, tried writing a prayer every day.  I didn't get very far before concluding that I was not a good writer of prayers, but I reread them recently and a few were actually okay.  Hope.

I set the alarm for 7:45 this morning, fed the cats, and drove to Gy (pronounced “zhee,” with a soft “g”), which sits at the edge of the Geneva canton on this side of the lake, around 10km ENE as the crow flies.  For some reason, I’ve done most of my running to the SSW of here, so this was relatively new territory.  I was unsure of how far out to go, as I needed to be back in time for online church at 11.  Originally, I was planning on parking in Meinier, a couple of villages closer to town.  But then I drove through Meinier and kept going to Gy, pulled by a similar desire that I suppose captures mountain climbers.  One wants to keep going.

I parked on the main street in one of those 15h disc parking spaces, close to a bus stop, which I would need later to go pick up the car.  I quickly oriented myself with my phone, then traversed the traffic circle and took the first left onto a chemin that was about wide enough for a tractor.  I was considering tracking the route on Map My Run, but I quickly decided against it once I heard the synthetic voice start talking to me.  I had my GPS watch for the distance, and anyway the whole point of runs like this is to not know exactly where you are and where you’re going.  

Sometimes, there’s a significant delta between what one thinks the terrain will look like from the map and what it’s actually like when you’re trying to navigate it.  What looks on the computer like a nice path along the river can turn out to be a parking lot next to the wastewater treatment center.  Happily, today was not one of those times, as a mile or so after departing Gy, I managed to pick up the Seymaz River, which trickles from the border with France all the way down to the Arve, and which I was hoping to follow back home.  Evidently there was some big restoration project around 10 years ago, and the trails along the entire way are well-tended.  Near Corsinge they have laid down a narrow boardwalk to span a marshy area.

Around halfway home I encountered the Prison de Champ-Dollon, which sits right along the path near Puplinge.  The contrast between the gentle stream and fall colors on the one hand, and concrete, barbed wire, and grated windows on the other, made my heart ache.  The walls of the prison have reliefed arches, which reminded me of the Reformers’ Wall in town, except these walls have prisoners behind them.

Running and Non-Being

Thank God we can still go running.  There’s nothing to train for, since all the races and tennis tournaments have been cancelled.  Nonetheless, I’ve been going for long runs on Saturdays, and I’ve found myself adding one more mile every week, up to 11 as of last Saturday.  I suppose I will keep going.

There are obvious reasons for this: trying to stay in shape, getting outdoors, etc.  Fortunately spring comes earlier in Geneva than it does in Boston.  When I was flying back and forth a lot, it seemed like the leaves would appear on the trees here all of a sudden.  But this year I’ve been able to watch its gradual encroachment.  The trees are almost full now, which softens the landscape and warms the heart.  It also suggests to me an indifferent creator who goes about her business, pandemic or not.  My friend Nicola said that she felt like the planet wanted us all to stop so it could breathe a little.

As one runs longer, a queer thing starts to happen to one’s perception of the distance.  Things start to get relative.  What seemed like a long way to run a few weeks ago doesn’t seem like such a big deal.  I’ve experienced this before when training for longer races.  I suppose there’s also a similar phenomenon going on in our collective assessment of the covid tables in the newspaper.  Not long ago, it seemed horrific that Italy would have 10,000 total cases; in the past 24 hours, more than half that number of people died from the disease.  The last time I was in an airport, I noted warily that there were eight total cases in Geneva; this morning, the local newspaper was celebrating that there were “only” ten new cases diagnosed yesterday.  We are shocked, as we should be, as the numbers get bigger.  But at the same time each individual case starts to mean less.  Each life becomes marginalized, in the economic sense of “marginal.”

There is a less obvious aspect of long runs, which starts to reveal itself to me once I start going beyond 10 miles or so.  Murakami, in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, writes about how, during a 24-hour endurance run, his felt his ego begin to disintegrate.  My experience is obviously less extreme, but I get glimpses of that: at a certain point, it’s as if I were taking a hammer to my psyche which had been trapped inside a Zoom window 12 hours a day for the past month.  My thoughts become not my own.  Not like I’m hallucinating exactly (although I’ve heard that that can happen), but like they are flowing, very quickly, both from within me and from somewhere else.  This is very hard to describe.  Perhaps this is aided by the fact that I don’t listen to music or anything when I run.  Last Saturday it manifested in a torrent of thoughts which came so fast that I couldn’t even grasp them as they went by.  This feeling is both alienating and strangely pleasant.

Nowadays, we tend to think about ascetics (to the extent we think about them at all) as wackos: backward ignoramuses whose forms of self-denial – fasting, living as hermits in caves or on the tops of columns – were nothing more than strong indicators of mental illness.  I’m tempted to cut them a little slack, especially after a long run.  In 2020, we hear the term "mortification of the flesh," and it sounds like no more than self-punishment: an expression of shame and unworthiness that is both irrational and unhealthy.  But back in the day this was seen as an essential step in contemplation, in the direct experience of God.  Bonaventure’s Threefold Way lays this out quite neatly: through purgation, illumination, and perfection, you may encounter the Divine, not just as some faraway concept, but through your own direct experience.  Bernard McGinn, in the excellent Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, sums it up nicely: “Asceticism is seen as a necessary, if not sufficient, preparation for mystical grace…The divine nature in its majesty, goodness, and purity is so far removed from the imperfect world that for any created being to dare approach God implies a purification that goes beyond just overcoming the effects of sin…It becomes something like an essential condition for anyone who seeks God in this life.”

If you prefer (as I generally do) not to get too hung up on the “sin” part, note this is not far from the Buddhist concept of non-self.  If you're looking for a similar effect minus the knee damage, meditation can work just fine. The point is that self-annihilation, in one form or another, is a prerequisite for transcendence.

For a much deeper and more cogent exploration of all this, I can't recommend the classic Running and Being, by Dr. George Sheehan, highly enough.

Autumn Leaves / Late Capitalism

from October 20, 2019 – Cambridge, MA

Writing is wonderful because it forces you to pay attention (i.e., appreciate) things, and because, through the act of writing about your experience of something, it becomes in some ways richer and more concrete.

Writing is also awful because all the richness and complexity and mystery of experience is crammed into the confined space of one’s writing ability and vocabulary.

* * * *

The Geneva 20k is in a couple of weeks, and today I ran the last of my long runs (13 miles) before “tapering” which I’m not sure if you’re supposed to do for a 20k like you do for a marathon, but which is the best part of training for a marathon, so I’m allowing myself to taper.  I left the apartment around 8am, after the sun had risen and the temperature had warmed up a bit. 

This weekend is the Head of the Charles regatta, or I should say the BNY Mellon Head of the Charles, as it’s now sponsored by a bank, or, per its website, “The Investments Company for the World (sic?).”  There wasn’t much evidence that anything special was going on up near the Longfellow Bridge, but as I moved west of Mass Ave and the river started narrowing, the telltale signs of the “Head of the Chuck” started to appear.  A village of sponsors’ tents: Yakima roof racks, Peet’s Coffee, food trucks including something calling itself the “Butter’d Lobster Experience,” and, gilding the lily, Brooks Brothers.  Middle-aged couples wearing worn baseball caps and sunglasses, torsos warmed by fleece and goose down.  I lost count of the number of school lacrosse jackets I saw – each with lax sticks crossed above the wearer’s heart.  Exeter, Dartmouth, a few schools I hadn’t heard of but had compounded names (i.e., “The X and Y School”) which sounded old and rich.

The Head of the Charles is known in some circles as the signature autumn event in Boston, and today was tailor-made: leaves in golden mid-explosion, crisp air warmed by acutely angled rays of sunlight.  Part of me can appreciate and enjoy all this, and applaud the kids in the boats, rowing away, working as a team, etc.  But the symbolism here hits you dead in the face: a celebration of (overwhelmingly white) wealth and power, cheering itself on as the next generation straps itself in (facing backward) to the vessels that will carry them along the calm waters, while they execute repetitive, uncreative motions to power the machine. 

By the time I got back to the Mass Ave Bridge, they were preparing for the “8s,” and the wide part of the river was dappled with dozens of boats.  From a small inflatable dinghy out in the middle of the river, a woman with a bullhorn was trying to keep them all organized in the staging areas as they approached the starting line.  The sight of all those boats on the water was truly impressive, in the way that I imagine the ships approaching Normandy on D-Day must have been.

Easter

We spent Easter weekend in South Tyrol, also known as Trento/Alto Adige, a semi-autonomous region in northern Italy.  It had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until World War I, when the Allies handed it over to Italy as a thank-you gift for coming to their war.  Later, when the Fascists stepped onto the scene, they attempted a full-on “Italianization” of the region, banning the teaching of German in schools and assigning Latinized (and often goofy-sounding) names onto all of the towns – hence Salthaus, the town where we stayed, is recognized by my GPS as “Saltusio.”  As you might imagine, the locals didn’t (and still don’t) have a lot of love for their Roman landlords, but things have evolved into a sort of equilibrium: the dominant language is now German, but all the signs are in both German and Italian.  Almost all of the tax revenue stays within the region.  According to a guy I know from Siena, jobs in Alto Adige pay very well and are highly coveted, the catch being that you need to speak German to work there.  All that being said, if you ever find yourself in conversation with a Südtirolese, you probably shouldn’t refer to them as “Italian.”

We left Geneva around 2pm on Maundy Thursday.  There are two ways you can get there from here: up and over the Alps, taking a right at Zürich and crossing one of the mountain passes; or down and under the Alps, through the Mont Blanc Tunnel, past Milan and then hanging a left a Lago di Garda.  We opted for the latter, which is less scenic but usually a little faster.   I was on teleconferences for the first two hours of the trip, so time passed in that choppy, disoriented way that happens when you’re on the phone and driving at the same time.  East of Milan we stopped for dinner at an Autogrill, an Italian chain of highway-rest-stop restaurants which are prevalent in this part of Europe, and superior to most restaurants you will find anywhere in the United States.  It’s cafeteria style, but there are always different sections – a salad bar, a pasta station, a meat station, dessert.  Even though they’re cooking for hundreds of people, somehow they manage to get the pasta al dente.  The silverware is actual silverware.  Out where you sit and eat, a collection of glass bottles of olive oil and vinegar are waiting.  We split a tortelloni with spinach and a bowl of clementines.  I saw a guy in his 20s with a plate of grilled zucchini in front of him.

At the cashier, the woman asks you if you want a coffee (I do).  This is added to your bill, and after you eat, you carry the receipt down to the coffee bar where they serve you your coffee.  The server then executes some kind of personalized ritual – tearing the top half of the receipt or marking it with a thumbnail – to note that they’ve processed your order.   You drink your coffee standing up at the bar.

As it got dark and we drove north toward Trent/Trento, we listened to a Fresh Air interview with Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest who left her church to go teach religion to college students, and who has since found some modest interviewed-by-Oprah-level of notoriety.  Terry Gross bubbled with excitement every time she said “ePIScopal PRIEST,” suggesting that interviewing a member of the clergy on NPR is some kind of subversive act these days.    In the interview, Barbara Brown Taylor gave one of the best descriptions of God that I’ve ever heard¹.  She also said how she felt like she couldn’t go to Good Friday services anymore, because of things said about the killers of Jesus in the Good Friday gospel readings which she thought might be hurtful to her Jewish friends.  I’m certainly not qualified to debate scripture with Barbara Brown Taylor, but I think she might have seen one too many Mel Gibson movies.  As I read it, the point of the Good Friday story is not at all that one group of people was good and another was evil.  It’s that all people were unwilling to see that God was right there among them (“…He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him (Jn1:11)).”  It’s that, when push came to shove, some of JC’s own disciples were more interested in saving their own asses than in recognizing the son of God (Mk 14:66-72).  And it’s that Pilate himself, generally considered the villain in this drama, and scorned from the Apostles’ Creed to Telly Savalas, wasn’t convinced that Jesus had done anything wrong; it was the crowd who in the end called for his crucifixion (Mt 27:23).

Meanwhile, back in Boston.

I realize that I didn’t say much earlier about giving up sugar for Lent.  At first, it was more difficult than last year, when I didn’t eat meat.  I can’t think of too many circumstances in which I’ve been “craving” a hamburger, but I realized this year that I was eating, and craving, sugar every day.  A little chocolate in my muesli at breakfast (or a pain au chocolat at the airport), some dark chocolate with after-lunch coffee, and some kind of dessert after dinner.  When traveling and eating out, I would never refuse dessert; the cupboard in my apartment in Cambridge usually contained a bag or two of those fiendish² Tate’s cookies you find at Whole Foods.  I wouldn’t call my eating behavior out-of-control (or unusual), but when I consciously stopped eating sugar, it made me more aware of the difference between feeding myself and feeding a craving.  It drove a kind of wedge between my “self,” which is me, and my desire, which is something I feel but which is not me.  This is hard to describe without sounding flaky.  Paul gives it a shot in Romans 7:15:   “For I do not understand my own actions…For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out…Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who does it, but sin that dwells within me.”  The Buddha serves up more or less the same dish, hold the guilt: the origin of suffering is “craving, desire, or attachment.”    

Meanwhile, back in Salthaus, I celebrated Easter with a piece of cake, layered with dark and white chocolate and whipped cream, topped with a layer of passion fruit jelly.  It was delicious, and I savored it like someone who hadn’t eaten any sugar for 6 weeks, but I didn’t find myself mindlessly shoveling it into my face.

I think I was hoping for some kind of Easter revelation at the end of all this.  It didn’t really come, as holiday trips are always busier than you think they’ll be, with driving around and doing things.  Also, there were a couple of work emergencies that I had to deal with, and my sense is that one’s opportunities to experience the mystical are inversely proportional to the number of PowerPoint slides one encounters in any given week.

Still, there is something unavoidably divine about South Tyrol.  The way that the mountains seem to rise vertically from the pool-table-flat valley, and thus how, when you’re in the valley, your field of vision is completely occupied by earth tones, or rather by earth itself, and a mysterious calm comes over you.  The way that the farms are perched high up on the mountains, with plowed rows gripping onto the steep grade, and you feel like some kind of harmony between man and nature has been realized here.  The way the smell of the apple blossoms overtook us as we hiked the Schildhöfenweg.  The white noise that the Passer river makes as it flows over rocks that seem so perfectly placed as to be man-made.  In Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor talks about the Irish concept of a “thin place,” where the membrane between the mundane and the mystical seems to dissolve into almost nothing.  This is one of those places.

Late afternoon on Easter Sunday I went running, out and back along the Passer River, and then up the steep hill past our hotel.  I crossed the street and walked over to St. Michael’s Church in Salthaus, which I’ve never seen in service, but whose doors always seem to be open whenever I try to go in.  It’s a newer church with a modern design, built to complement the surrounding landscape.  A wide window to the right of the altar affords a view of the mountains; the ceiling is wavy parallel slats of wood.  I sat alone and said a prayer of thanks, and drops of my sweat made a little slapping sound as they fell onto the vinyl kneeler in front of my pew.

¹ “When I use the word God, I do not envision a large person with two arms, two legs, a nose, and two eyes.  I envision, instead, some presence so beyond my being, a presence that both knows the stars by name and knows me by name, as well, that is not here to be useful to me, that is not here to give me things as much as to ask me to give myself away for love…(W)hen I say I believe in God, I mean I trust.  I trust in the goodness of life, of being.  I trust that beyond all reason.  I trust that with my life.  And that’s what I mean by God.”

²  It’s not insignificant that we often use diabolical metaphors like this to describe food.   

Serenissima

The Popula kids have published another one of my "Me Today" columns, about a Sunday last winter.  Spoiler alert: nothing remotely dramatic happens.

Out of Dodge

A few Saturdays ago, I spent the weekend at my father’s in Asbury Park, and I took advantage of the jet lag to go running on the boardwalk early Saturday morning.  Around Belmar, I noticed a few people starting to assemble on the beach, around my age, or maybe a little younger, in typical American “casual fitness” gear:  some species of stretchy black pants for the women, cargo shorts, baseball hat, and functionless vest-like-thing for the men.  They didn’t really register as I passed them; I thought it might have been a yoga class starting to coalesce, or (much more unlikely) a seaside church group congregating.  Though there is that outdoor chapel on the boardwalk up in Ocean Grove, so that last thought is not completely out of the realm. 

 

Anyway, after turning around in Spring Lake and heading back north, there they were again, now on the beach, arranged in a square marked off by blue smooth-edged garbage cans, around 20-25 people on either side, like a chessboard set up by a hyperactive 5-year-old with a tenuous grasp on the rules.  For an instant I thought this arrangement confirmed my earlier yoga hypothesis, but then someone blew a whistle.  A couple of the more athletic guys on either side sprinted out to the middle of the square, and the scene revealed itself: a dodgeball game.  One of the athletic guys pegged another guy, who yelled at him, “DUDE! I’m on your TEAM!”

A quick recap:  It’s 7am.  Sunday morning.  50 or so young people have woken up, gotten dressed, driven to the beach, and assembled in formation, in order to engage in an activity typically seen on a middle school playground during recess.  Someone brought a whistle. 

Questions for discussion:

1. What conclusions (if any) about American culture and priorities can one draw from this scene? Does the concept of Sunday morning as the Sabbath,* a time of rest, contemplation, and thanks-giving, have any relevance or significance anymore?
2. Hang on a minute: what’s wrong with a group of young, healthy people gathering on a Sunday morning to engage in some harmless, mildly competitive physical activity?  Certainly this is more admirable than sleeping in, or watching infomercials, or lying in bed flicking through one’s Twitter feed, right?  And, after all, how do you know that everybody, after a few quick games, didn’t pile into their cars and head to the nearest church for 9am services? 
3. Okay, fair enough.  But might it also be beneficial to examine the role and importance that one’s culture assigns to “fun?”  Might it be worth considering the possible relationship between the American desire for constant stimulus, entertainment, and pleasure on the one hand, and the current political state of affairs on the other?**
4. Jeez, lighten up, old man.  Now you’re going to try to blame Trump’s election on a Sunday morning kickball game (in New Jersey of all places, which, I don’t need to remind you, went heavily for Clinton)?  And it’s not like you spent your Sunday morning at home praying the rosary.  At least the people on the beach were doing something remotely social.
5. All right, fine.  But back to my first point: is it worth considering the place of rest, contemplation, and thanks-giving in American life at the moment?  Where are the structures or rituals that encourage this?  As a thoughtful American, how do you reconcile the elements of American culture on display here, both “good” (community-oriented, active, physical, healthily competitive) and “bad” (hyper-stimulated, overly competitive, immature, irreverent) ?  Or perhaps it’s all good, so to speak, and there’s nothing that needs reconciling?

* Yes, I realize that I’m making assumptions here about the religious demographics of the dodgeballers.   For the sake of argument, let’s agree that a) there was at least one person out of this group who would self-identify as Christian, and/or b) you would be just as likely to see a similar scene on a Sabbath day for any of the other major faiths one might encounter in Monmouth County, 

** The short answer is yes, and it's been done already, at considerable length.