Blowin' in the Wind

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain

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Dear Alex,

At your funeral, what might be the very words said of you? You spoke of them 2 years ago – again and through this day.

Who are you? The words of Mark Twain above might have alluded to something tangibly simpler about our true identity, something more nakedly elemental within our reach than epic vacations and romanticism in expressing our core values. In our final farewell, we hope to be remembered for who we are in relation with others rather than what we have or have not done.

Yesterday I threw off the bowlines that guarded my typical routine and joined for my first a new gathering of ordinary folks reflecting through Lent season in prep for Easter. The host invited listeners to become preachers by encouraging our public announcement of personalized favor to the assembly.

People started approaching the microphone in front. One by one, words were cast off as bastards and blessings to sail far from safe shore, uplifted in torrential outcries of joy and sorrow - dollars are coming in, cancer is spreading out, love thrashed, hope flashing.

I saw witnesses in contortions, in tattoos and entropy. There was a shortage of fanciful wishes, excess in mismatched reality. No one talked about twenty years from now. The needs were emergent and real in the present. No abstraction or imagination prevails here to discuss metaphor of wind or wave.

From my seat, I strained to listen because the voice within me seemed louder. What are my hands and feet doing for the other hands and feet who cannot do more? Why is my butt safely planted on this seat when another crouches two feet above gravel and grime in a lopsided makeshift home crafted creatively out of cardboard?

Who gives me this space and tongue to flirt with lofty verbs - explore, dream, discover - when beings designed for immortality have not been afforded the same access to accessories now stitched in ornamental weaves of logo on my denim back pockets?

Twain did not intend to brew guilt in me, I suppose. Even if so, his words are too gutsy, our will too flimsy to resist the gust of wind that could misdirect any sail or spirit. On his death bed when he could no longer vocalize, Twain penciled his last plea to his daughter: “Give me my glasses.” We are perpetually seeking our coordinates in the perspective of another.

I do not need to sail anywhere extravagantly to explore, dream, discover. I can charter right here in my backyard, my community, my world. What we do need is that one thing to complete our journey and fulfill us. We shall know more about it in Easter next weekend.

Yours, Kate

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Dear Kate,

I think I have a new definition of "vocation": just get off my butt and do something in the name of God.

I hope you didn't laugh, cos I didn't mean to be funny.  In fact when I started to flesh out the definition with my daily getting-off the aforementioned part of mine, I found myself engaged with people and in activities that can't be simply defined as being "fun" or not.

Which makes sense.

To say something is "fun" to do or someone is "fun" to be with is to say I find the endeavor or person engaging me.  Now this might sound like a trivial insight, but I suspect in our pursuit of "vocation" it's a deep-seated longing which we can't help but assume laudable, even dignified, but is just as brazen a self-absorption that we need to be ashamed of, may it only be latently so.

OK, I packed a lot into the last sentence.

It's actually quite simple.  It goes like this: we say to ourselves, "I am good for something."  I know it.  My mom told me so (sometimes, but not lately).  My pastor said it's in the Bible, somewhere.  But my life is humdrum.  I can't deny it.  Plain sucks.  Especially Monday to Wednesday before 2 pm.  I can see in my wife's eyes (even--especially!--when she is not looking my way), beaming over me as a way to see beyond my sorry shadow.  What friends speak between the lines speak to the lines on my face.  I need to change.  I need to make good use of what's good in me.   I need to open the gifts that God has already given me--if only!  If only I can live out the good that I am meant to be, I will then truly feel good about being Me, the world will see me for who I really am, my kids will respect me for what I have in me to give, and maybe women will again grant me that second look, something they once knew the easy rhythm to bestow upon me so generously...

I don't pretend to talk for all men--or any man.  And there are women who will need their lines (I shall leave you to that task).  I know it is a cruel way to put it but when we speak about "finding our vocation" often it sounds like we are at the center and around which the rest of the world spins, the centripetal force coming our way for us to feel the full force of living, satisfaction tensing up, pulling in elements conducive to the working out of our good destiny.

So how is my new definition different (which is actually nothing "new")?  It will take another letter and much more getting-off-butt for me to--let me use that phrase again--flesh it out.  Yes, it is about the body doing bodily things, in the here and now.

The Hebrew word for the Spirit of God is ruach, which also means wind and breath.  If you are to read this into the Mark Twain quote above, you might catch a breath of what I am throwing into the wind.

Yours, Alex