God: what are we doing here? This is boring. Lets run. Lets run so hard and so fast that our hearts beat in our throats and then let’s go to that diner on Hwy 12 and order a giant breakfast with eggs and sausage and ham. Then when we are stuffed with coffee and food lets hike up Sugarloaf and sit in the quiet of the trees and watch the world spin and spin and spin.
Trent: Now!? Right Now? The guy is in a heated talk about –
God: About what?  Honestly do you know what he is talking about? He lost me once he started quoting Deuteronomy. I mean look at the guy all red faced. I’ve never met this guy in my life.
Trent: would you keep it down?!? People are starting to look. Maybe he is just getting started, maybe the next part is going to be really good.
God: Ummmm, let me answer that right now, “No.”    It isn’t going to get better in fact it is going to go a bit like this, “bla bla bla FEAR! bla bla bla BE GOOD or God WON’T LOVE YOU! bla bla bla Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!  bla bla bla AND Pass the giving basket.”  TA DA! I just saved you an hour and half of your life. Can we go now?
Trent: You know I came here looking for you. I thought you would be happy that I showed up.
God: Can I tell you a little secret? Somehow everybody misses this…..but if you only look for me in Church then you don’t notice me everywhere and in everything else. You box your experience of me into these very stiff four walls and you box my words in the mouth of this guy…..this red faced-spittle-flying-guy…..whom I LOVE but maybe not so much when he is making that face.   I am a bit bigger than that….if you will let me. Do you understand? Can we go? Lets run!”
Trent: uhhhhh…..ok but this doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.   Isn’t it at the very least impolite to just get up and leave?
God: Polite?  Politeness is for the weak of heart and uninspired.   Plus…..What could go wrong?  I am frigging God……and I am buying.

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Could the moment of our demolition be the beginning of our renovation? Could the moments that tear us down to our very foundation, the moments that rock us to our core be a chance to rebuild ourselves closer to who we actually are?

The trash is gone

The wasted words and distractions are cried out

The false fantasies of what or who you wanted to be lie smoldering

The wasted walls and rotten floor boards are all torn down and in the rubble is a very real gift to begin again….refreshed.  To build again but now to build a home of windows and light.  One that lets the day and night wash through and each with a gift.

I know life has been hard on you.  I know it hurts.  But if you want to live, not just get by in this life than you need to let go of what was and embrace what is and start again.  All of us, All Of Us, will be gone all too soon enough (Haiti teaches us that) so lets make the brief moments we have here mean something.  I don’t mean that in the sense of adding more success or things to the world but instead adding and breathing in more beauty, love and awe into the world.  In the midst of the ashes and ruins is a gift, it is yours to find.

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The holiday season always seems to move fast. I ventured out to get a few last minute gifts and almost was killed several times, sometimes just by someone glaring at me. Yes people cut each other off, get pissed when the line is too long, or take out their frustration on some poor minimum wage clerk but also how do we treat ourselves? As we close in on Christmas how about we all go easy on ourselves this year? I know it is stressful and sometimes it can be hard to be around the family or relatives we don’t especially like all that much. Maybe, you have had a hard year and you already sense that you will feel a deep sense of absence this year. I remember after losing a loved one the sight of an empty chair made my eyes well up during the holidays. So lets go easy on ourselves. Lets not try so hard to be perfect for Mom or Dad, Lets not get angry or upset at the people we love who are not matching up to how we would like them to be, lets accept things as they come even if they do not come as planned, lets forgive and then forgive again if needed the critical comment that always seems to show up during dinner, lets welcome in some of the sadness that we feel about those not there – instead of pushing it aside lets raise a glass to their memory and tell some stories – basically lets hold things lightly. Rumi says it best when he says:

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
if it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
and expanding,
The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

So hold everything lightly this season….the criticism…the sadness……your perfectionism…your disappointment…etc. It is only when we cling or take a harsh moment or comment and dwell on it do we begin to spiral down into anger and hostility. When we cling we miss the very real joy, wonder and happiness occurring around us.

Enjoy fully the gifts you have in your life and pay no attention to what isn’t but to what is. These moments when we see loved ones around the dinner table will not always be. Enjoy the sounds of children playing even if they are knocking over the furniture and ruining their Christmas sweater. Enjoy the embrace of your Grandfather, for how many winters will he continue to be here. Enjoy the loving gaze of your wife from across the room while she sits through another painfully long story by your Uncle Charles. See the things that annoy or bother you for what they are, distractions that keep you from enjoying the moment. And when finally all the noise has quieted, the guests are gone, and the kids are asleep take a moment by yourself or with your partner….stare at the tree or the fire….and run through all that you are grateful for. Let a prayer of gratitude rise up from your chest and then gently let it go.

My prayer for you…and for me….is to hold all lightly this holiday season….allowing each moment to be fully noticed, even the hard ones, while letting all the strings that tangle us up to pass by.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Blessings.

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She has secrets; that he can see even behind her knit black cap and black jacket. She stares at the people in line as they sit across from each other sipping coffee at a busy outdoor cafe. She’s a quiet sort of girl – quiet and shy of attention. He knows this won’t last, he knows that at some point he will be gone and she will become another girl that he can’t quite remember. But for now, for right now, he is surprised to discover that he loves her.   As he explores this new found feeling he is  further shocked to find it is not because she is amazing and not because she is stunningly beautiful but simply because she is the girl right in front of him.

The long night and short restless sleep has left him defenseless. He feels raw and unguarded but also closer to who he really is.   She is the gift given to him on this particular morning. Out of all of the possibilities, the universe had chosen them for this place, with this strong coffee, on this cold day.

The way she moved her hand trying to hide the small scar on her cheek.

The longing her eyes betrayed when she noticed him watching.

The softness of her voice when she spoke of her childhood home.

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The Holidays are here and beneath them is this underlying tension we all have about what we are going to do, how we are going to decorate our house, who will we celebrate with, what will the family dinner be like, should we discuss politics, should we not invite certain people, what church or synagogue will we go to etc….etc….etc.   These things we all find so important because each says something about what we believe; do we have a tree or nativity or both, do we have a Menorah and Santa Claus?  What Church do I go to on Christmas Sunday?  What if it is too liberal or too conservative?  How can I express my views on gay marriage during Christmas dinner if my Uncle starts in again?  There are millions of other issues that we all get caught up in but what it comes down to is  we are very very concerned about What We Believe and What the Other-side Believes.  The other-side is anyone who disagrees with us.   We are very big on “belief” in our country.  Our televisions are filled with people arguing over what they believe as opposed to what someone else believes.  Each person screaming how their beliefs are better, more patriotic, more spiritual, more intelligent, more honorable…etc.  Do you know what I think of that?  Who gives a shit.    The thing is I have always seen this as a trap.  Once you start equating symbols as reflecting what you believe you start judging others by theirs or lack of.   I don’t care about your tree, Menorah, gifts, super Nativity or lack of all mentioned what I care about is your actions.  Our actions are what have been lost these days.  We are all so concerned with who is on our side or what article I can use to discredit the other that we have lost sight of what our beliefs USED to mean.  It used to mean something when you called yourself a Christian.  It meant you were trying….trying….to follow the lessons and life of Christ.  Now it means having a 40,000 watt nativity scene on your lawn.  You see I don’t care what you call yourself, I don’t care what you say you believe, I only care about What.  You.  Do.  If you are a person of faith….any faith….do your actions point to the one you proclaim to “believe” in or follow?

In an essay by Sister Helen Prejean her opening line  is “I watch what I do to see what I believe.”  What a beautiful way to live your life but also what a great way to keep yourself honest in life.   I have met “holy people” who made my skin crawl and so called “godless” who offered up their time, labor, home and heart without a thought.    Given the choice between the bar and the church in my life I have always chosen the bar because I felt people were more honest about who they were there.

We don’t watch what we do enough in life, we get too caught up in what we believe.  What would happen if people really paid attention to see if their actions really matched up with “love they neighbor as thy self”?  What about loving your enemy?  Not easy is it but that is why Grace is so radical, that is why the message of Jesus was so radical, that is why the message of any spiritual teacher like Rumi or Buddha or Lao Tzu because they spoke of a WAY of living….the spoke of the WAY.  They didn’t give a list of “beliefs” and say “here believe all of this and your in,” they spoke of ways of living, ways of opening your heart, ways of forgiving,  ways of loving kindness.

So here is my Christmas, holiday,  Hanukkah, festivus suggestion.  Pay less attention to your beliefs this season, pay more attention to your actions and see what that tells you about your beliefs.  Did you spend massive amounts of money on too many gifts?  Were you consumed with what is the latest and greatest new gadget and how could you get it?  Did you get pissed off if someone said Happy Holiday instead of Merry Christmas?  Did you help the less fortunate?  Where you kind even when it was hard to be kind?  Were you compassionate to even those who don’t believe as you do?   Did you give of yourself, your time or money quietly and anonymously without need of recognition? How about you and I proclaim through our actions what we are all about, what our families are about, and what our God is all about.    Let your actions point the way to what you believe.  We change nothing by loudly proclaiming our “beliefs”, we change everything….including our own hearts and the hearts of strangers by what we do.

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I recently came upon this: On his death bed St. Francis said, “I have done what was mine to do; now you must do what is yours to do.”

So many of us  concentrate on what we think we should be doing, what we think others feel we should be doing or what our culture in various ways tells us we should be doing or should have already  done.  But St. Francis comes at it a different way.  He says, you must do what is yours to do.  There is no comment about following the bible or his teaching; he simply says you must do what is yours to do. We might not like it, we might want what someone else has to do but that is the truth of it.  If we are single Mom with two kids our job is to raise our children the best we can with every breath we take.  It is not easy or glamorous but it is ours to do.   If we have a fairly solitary life but feel the tug on our heart to step in and help out after work with our neighbors, volunteer clinic or church maybe that is what is ours to do.  I don’t know, only you do but I can tell you, you have been given something that is only for you to do in this world.  It might not be what you wanted or it might not be as “sexy” as you thought it would be but it is yours and I believe once you embrace it instead of being afraid of it you will find a lightness and contentment that you haven’t known.  So many people I run into in the bars and clubs I play talk of being lost and confused about how they blinked and suddenly found themselves with a mortgage and a job they hate….I think that is what happens when you miss what is yours to do.  I think you get in a routine of getting up going to work, watching football on the weekends, and counting the days until retirement.  Your life becomes about passing the time or getting through the day.

I think the second part of this is we are all guilty of idolizing in this country and by doing so we set ourselves up to fail and never really go after what is ours.    The bible speaks of false idols and we all think of a golden calf or some strange alter to Zeus but what about others?  What about Hollywood, actors, sport stars and talk show hosts?  Notice the magazines by the check out counter and how we cannot take our eyes of off mega stars?  Notice how we spend hours and hours watching analysis of Tiger Woods driving his car into a tree? Those are the false idols we deal with today.  The deeper message of not worshipping false idols is you miss what is yours to do, you miss your own life, you miss the chance that God gave you to truly live.  We have teams of young girls trying to be Hannah Montana (while she is trying to be the next Britney or Madonna) instead of being guided to find their own voice, their own beauty, and their own gifts to bring to the world.  We need to start listening and focusing our attention inward.

So what is it and how do you find it?  Luckily St. Francis gave us a hint on that also.  He spoke of going about your days and paying close attention……paying close attention to the moments you feel most alive and then, he says, do that.  Doesn’t seem like rocket science but try and do it for a day.  With the amount of distractions we all have dancing around our heads it is actually hard to clear the space to listen.  I can tell you for me where I feel alive is music, writing, being a good father and husband.  I didn’t get the stadium success I wanted and sometimes I would rather be somewhere else than dealing with my kids when they are freaking out but it is mine to do.   And when I embrace that I have joy in my life.  Yes there are moments that are hard, when everything goes wrong, when life seems unfair but I also have the peaks when I have a fantastic show, when I am hiking with my boys laughing and running.   I don’t know what the big picture is but I trust that if I continue to do what is mine, God will continue to work in me.  So let’s look at things differently today; Lets go about the world paying attention to where we feel alive and lets trust that God has placed in your heart a whisper that pulls you to what is yours to do.  Your job is to find, embrace it and let it carry you home.

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I turned the corner on to my street and something caught fire in me,  I needed to push my body as fast as it could go.  My legs stretched out before me and the world got quiet.  I could hear only my breath as I struggled to break through.  To break through what,  I don’t know.   Maybe I needed to run fast just to show myself I still could.   I passed my house and finally slowed to a stop. I walked past my house and looked through the windows.  My kids were asleep, a single light lit where my wife was quietly working on her painting.   I have always loved those moments when all is quiet and I am just an observer.  Seeing my house peaceful and still makes me smile.  I walk further down the block and sit down to stare up at the moon and steal a little more silence for myself.   As I sat on the curb panting, feeling the cool air,  I notice voices drifting through the air.  They rise then lower, then rise again but I can make nothing out.  One of my neighbors who spends all of his time in his garage avoiding his wife passes by me with a friendly, “howdy” as he walks his dog for the fourth time today.  I wonder if his marriage and life is really that bad.  I have watched his garage expand with a couch, then TV, then weight room, then hobby table, then dog bed/play area and now circling back to bigger LCD TV. Maybe a twin size bed is next followed by a queen size.  It is interesting to me that so many of us spend so much time working on our outside as our insides rot.  The further his marriage disintegrates the better physical shape he is in.

The words that were drifting through the air are now louder and rushing to my ears.  It is a young couple who recently moved into a rental.  She is pleading and accusing at the same time, “Do you remember!?  Do you?” There is a long silence and I picture him saying nothing as he sits on the couch and she paces back and forth.  ”Do you remember all the things you said to me?  Do you remember the promises you made to me!  DO YOU!”  There is some mumbling.  Whatever she wants from him, he cannot give.  At least that is clear to me as I sit in the audience quietly listening.  I feel sorry for her.  She is angry, hurt, madly in love, yearning, pushing and pulling all at the same time.  She doesn’t realize yet that it is too late to get things back to how she wanted them.  She doesn’t realize yet that those beautiful things he said to her he probably meant at the time but he made a mistake…..or maybe things just changed.  They can’t go back to the beginning, they can’t go back to the nights of long talks over wine and making love until morning.  Those times were beautiful but we can’t stay forever in those places….people change….love cannot be stagnant, love changes or dies.

He emerges from the house with keys in hand, walking slowly towards his car.  The door opens and she is now rushing out after him, “What are you doing?”
He stops in the street and turns to her, “I’m leaving, you told me to leave.” He is quiet when he speaks and seems sad and confused.
“I know but….I didn’t think you would.”
“What do you want? I don’t know what you want from me. I’m trying, but I don’t know what you want. I’m trying. I am trying.”
They stand in the middle of the street;  him looking confused, her pacing and occasionally biting her fingernail.
“I want.    I want you to keep trying…….Its cold out here……I want you to come back inside.”
“Ok.”

He slides his keys back in his pocket and they walk back to their house with her in the lead.   As she opens the door I see him with a bowed head, place his hand on her back as she walks in.    She stops to enjoy the warmth of his hand on her back for just a moment more and then walks in.   I feel somehow lucky to have seen this;  the drama of life spinning out in front of me, these tiny moments of heartache, grace and redemption.   As the night returns to its silence I stare back up at the moon and I think of God watching us from above.   I suddenly realize that he, just like me, would love to step in to change things, to help, but he knows just as I did watching that couple that their drama had to be played out.    No wisdom I could have imparted would have helped or been heard. They needed to feel love deeply and joyfully, take it for granted, damage it, revive it, fight for it and finally learn to nurture and care for it.   Who knows what is in store for that young couple…..maybe they will make it, maybe they won’t.  The moment that mattered, the moment that matters to love and God the most is the moment when we say, “I’m trying.”    We might fail and fall over and over again but the words “I’m trying.   I’m doing the best I can.” are the words we must keep deep in our hearts.  Because if we don’t we might as well quit right now, we might as well move our hearts out of our soul and into the garage. You don’t need to be a saint.     You don’t need to be the cutest couple or parent of the year. You don’t need to have the perfect house or the perfect marriage.   You don’t need to be the best at anything.  You simply need to try and to keep trying. No matter how lost or alone you feel the only prayer you need, the only prayer God yearns for is, “I’m trying lord…..I’m trying.”

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My wife and I sit across from each other in Penny’s Diner in Dunsmuir. Our kids are happily shoveling pancakes in their mouths as they simultaneously drive their toy trucks through the syrup and up their sleeves. We had been driving through the night to take the kids to the snow and to give me some time to write but the snow got too anxious and decided to come down the mountain and meet us. Like a playful cat it batted our little Honda around until we finally wised up, pulled over, and checked into a hotel.

Six hours later the kid’s steam engine bodies are excited by fresh snow and needing fuel. My wife is staring at me intently with a willow of a smile as I take off my hat springing my hair to jump for the ceiling as I rub my eyes.

She likes the grey in my whiskers.

I guess I should be grateful but something in me is disappointed. I put down my hat and reach for my coffee. “Really?” I say. “yaaa,” she nods. I had just played a show the night before we left, “but what about when I am in my rock n roll clothes, hair slicked, sweat pouring from my face, black leather shoes pounding the stage? Lots of girls find that sexy.” She laughs and shakes her head no. “Really?” I repeat. “Yep, oh and I also like it when you climb trees. You are beautiful when you climb trees.”

My head pulls my hands up and I can’t stop rubbing my forehead. How can this be true? I look old and haggard like a trucker with a long way to go and a short time to get there. Hair unwashed, eyes sore from being up late then up early with the kids. I am cold, hungry and about an inch away from throwing Easton’s toy truck if he drives his syrup mobile one more time across my ear.   This is what she loves? This?   Easton begins to lick the snow off of his boot as Wilder tries to see if he can get his entire hand in a small glass of water (And by the way, yes we can all rest easy, he proved it can be done).    “Boys, lets let your father have a moment to finish his coffee and breakfast,” she says as she zips them up in puffy swollen jackets.    In a moment the diner is empty as she leaves and the cook/hotel clerk tells me he is going outside to snow plow the parking lot.

I sit staring out the window through the trees watching the cars on the highway as they move like dogs on tile. I wonder what it is that makes us push away and turn our head when faced with accepting love. Why are we all so skeptical when grace is offered so readily? There is a casualness – a wonderful absurdity in Grace that it seems we all are a bit disappointed in. We seem to think there must be something wrong with it to embrace us so completely without a care for gray hair or scars or hidden shame. Maybe this is why we turn to religion because so much of it seems to appeal to the places inside us that finds grace so unsettling. We want something to tell us it is not so easy to get. We nod our heads in agreement when religion speaks to us saying, “Grace does not come easy, you have to earn it and here is a list of things you must believe, say, and pretend to be to get it.”

The snow seems to be getting bored and begins to wonder off. I think to myself, maybe it is our need to believe in something sterner- less accepting that actually leads to our disbelief – our disappointment. We finally get so lost and exhausted jumping through ever shrinking hoops that we wander away. Maybe we all have a little Groucho Marx in us that says, “I will not be a part of any Club that would have me as a member.” I hope God is a patient God who is only waiting for us to fall down in a heep unable to fight or run away…..waiting for the chance to pick us up and hold us close.

The trucks and cars are now once again confident in their direction and purpose and begin to stream up the highway. The snow has gone back home to the mountains and awaits our arrival. I pick up my hat, drink a half a cup of coffee in one gulp, and walk to the door. As I put on my gloves before stepping out to the cold I see my children jumping in the snow. My wife’s loving gaze watching over them. She senses my stare and turns to me and looks at me with the brightness of a face of one who has not seen their beloved for a long time. She opens her arms wide and sticks out her tongue to catch the last of a few falling flakes. She then stretches her arms towards me and beckons me to her laughing. Something in me breaks like ice against a bridge and I feel this river inside of me begging to be let go. I can’t help but laugh and shake my head. Grace is absurd – beautiful and absurd. I let go of my disappointment, my doubt, my skepticism, and fear and open the door.

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I can see it there.  Hiding in the corner.  I finish washing the dishes in the sink and then turn to look at it.  I can see it’s big eyes staring back at me and when our eyes meet I well up with deep tears.   My shaky voice stammers “Not now, ” and then I walk outside to the garage to fix my son’s bike.

This grief has been trailing me for awhile.  It started out as a draft or push of air and when I felt it I walked the other way or shut the window in my chest.  About a week ago I awoke in the middle of the night and felt its presence like one feels the weather about to change.  I sat up and felt a deep,  almost sick feeling in my stomach.  I searched the room and found only grief’s shadow flickering against the wall, “not now” I whispered and rolled over in my bed.

Now as I walk the hallway of my house I see him more clearly as the days past.  Sometimes I find him huddled in the corner staring back at me, sometimes I find him sitting next to me as I drive to work and recently I woke to find him laying next to me.  I screamed at him to leave, “NOT NOW!” I shouted and he scurried out of my bed back into the corner pulling his legs up tight.  I put my hand on the pillow where he had laid and feel the damp salty water.

It was 4 a.m. and I couldn’t sleep.  I tossed and turned trying desperately to quiet my mind.  It felt as if I had a hot ember in my throat that I was too afraid to swallow and too afraid to bring up so it stayed there burning.  I could sense the amount of effort my body spent on trying to stay in this “middle place” this grey burning…..it was time we spoke.  I sat up, “are you there” I whispered.  ”Yes” said Grief.  ”What is it you wanted to show me?” I said.  He stands and then sits next to me in bed.  He is a liquid figure with nothing I can really make out except his eyes and he smells of the sea.  He begins to hang memories like pictures on a wall but in the air in front of me.  They dance with light, movement, sound and emotions.  We sit and watch these memories laughing, crying and sometimes in quiet reverence.  Finally the memories fade back  into the night and there is only one picture left hanging, the one of those I have lost.  They smile at me as light burns in their eyes and fingers.

Grief speaks, “Do you see it?”  ”Do I see what” I reply.  ”Do you SEE it?” Grief says calmly.  ”No…..I don’t…..I’m sorry.”  Grief blows a cloud of fog from his mouth the fog reveals a river running through them…..running through them and into me.  I see all the love they poured from their hearts running through mine and then through my wife, my children, my brothers, my sisters, my friends, my music…..my life.

“Do you see it now?” says Grief.
Yes.
“Why do you try so hard trying not to look at the love given to you?  Why do you try so hard not to look at me?  It is the reminder of love that I bring, a love that is not gone.”

“Because I hurt, I miss, I long and the tears won’t stop.”  I reply.
“Yes I know, I am the one who brings the tears.  Even in your longing there is love.  Your tears add to this river between you, they don’t take away.  Yes, the are not here but they are not gone, they are just…..hmmmmm……how can I explain it to you…AH!!!…..It is like cosmic peek-a-boo.  Have you ever played or seen a toddler play peek-a-boo?  The parent pulls up a blanket covering their face and the child is confused and suddenly sad, ‘where did my Dad go?’ then the parent lets the blanket fall and the child is delighted beyond measure.  MY Father has RETURNED! their face shines with glee.  But he was never really gone was he?  It seems silly to us that the child ever thought they were gone but we are no different.  This is just  a bigger game of peek-a-boo.  You tears and sadness are real but at some point the blanket of night and stars will fall and you will see your beloved again.”

I could feel a weight lifting from my chest, “Are we done?” I say to grief.
“Yes” he replies as he opens the window in my room and climbs out, “for now”.

Everything we try and hold on to so we don’t hurt only causes more hurt. It is only in the surrender that we overcome. How does that make sense you might say. I need to surrender in order to win, to get over, to move past? That doesn’t make sense. The thing I am trying to defeat I must surrender to? The thing I am trying to push with all my might away away away from me I must embrace? This makes no sense. No, I understand that it does not but the rain falls on us all does it not? What would you say if you saw a person standing in a field swinging a sword at the rain trying to get it to retreat, or swinging their fists as the drops fall or thinking that curling up in a ball will stop them from getting wet. The rain falls on us all. Put down your sword, unclench your fist, put away your maps detailing how you will avoid the rain and let the rain wash you clean.

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I listen to the sound of waves crashing outside
I cannot sleep with such beauty so close to my door
I open the window and breathe deep the sea air

My feet can stand it no longer and carry me down the stone steps
Across the aching grass to the sand
I reach the sea and find her starring back at me
With eyes of green and fog

She looks at me with longing
She cannot sleep with such beauty at her shore
The sea air I breathed in now opens a window in my chest
The ocean calms and listens
Listens to the sound of waves crashing inside of me

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Her and I had been friends once…..really good friends but now I am not sure I know her.  She called me out of the blue her voice weak and tight;  she was in town, she wanted to meet and now here I am staring at a Guinness as we try and find some semblance of a conversation.  I can’t remember how long it has been.  As she goes on and on about her job and her rise in her career for the past 6 years I am flooded with memories as I try and place the last time I saw her.  Her hair is short now.  She constantly plays with it and pushes it back but then she leans forward and it hangs again in her face.  She is still beautiful but now there is something else she wears besides her age.   I can’t quite figure it out as she continues to talk.  She asks me about my wife, my kids, my life but as I tell her a bit I can see and sense her drift off.  I give her the Cliff’s Notes version of my life instead of the full version and she smiles and says, “great…..really great” but in that practiced polite way that we all do when someone says at a barbecue something like “how was the steak?”

I’m not good at this anymore.  I feel like over the years I just can’t do small talk anymore.  ”What is the point of this?”, I often think to myself.  I want to make a rule with any person that knows me and say, “look I don’t want to talk about the housing market, or the price of pie, or the new really funny commercial on TV or how your parents got a new RV.  I want to have real fucking conversations instead of this pap, this filler, this empty waste of time.”

She asks me how “my San Diego Chargers are doing.”  I almost walk out.  I have absolutely no patience sometimes…..well…..actually all the time.  You see, I can’t live that way anymore.  Something in me says, “this life is short my friends so lets talk about real things, lets eat real food, lets focus our energy towards a life that feeds our souls!”  I am not interested in this person who used to be alive, I want to dig underneath all the dirt and find her again.

She takes out her iphone and looks at it as the waitress talks to me.  I order a whiskey to go with my Guinness, I feel I am going to need it.  ”oh my God this is so funny!  Have you seen this!”  She turns her phone to me to show a video of a baby sneezing and scaring a cat that jumps into a lamp.  ”ya, that is pretty funny” I say with forced smile.  A part of me is beginning to push forward and I think to myself, “uh oh.  Take it easy Trent.  Be nice, have your drink, smile, wave and go home.  You don’t need to do this.”

She stares at her phone some more and then says, “Oh my God!  Have you seen this commercial?  It is so wild!  Watch this guy.”  She turns her phone to me to show me another youtube video. “oh shit” I think. Here it comes.Something in me can’t stand it anymore and is now in front.  After an hour and a half of politeness; I lose it.

“Ya I have seen it Mandy and the one with the babies rollerskating and the one of the dancing wedding and whatever else you have on your phone. Look are we going to talk about anything real or what? Why am I here? Why did you call me?  Are we really going to watch youtube all night and pretend we are talking?”
She stares back at me stunned and slowly puts down her phone, “I just thought we could………I don’t know”
“Yes, what? You thought what?” softening my voice, suddenly aware that I have totally snapped at her.
“I just thought we could talk. You know about the old days.”
“Why? What is there to say about those time? They were great Mandy but they are gone. What is going on with you right now?”
“I already told you, you know work and….”
“Ya I know but what is going on with YOU right now. That is what I am interested in. Not work. Not your finances. You.”
“You’ve changed. I thought we could have a drink and catch up but…”
“I know but seriously Mandy what is going on with you. Last time we talked you were married. You followed him to the east coast, you left your career, your family and everything else to make it work. What happened?”
“Nothing, I mean, he just changed and I tried to make it work but….well you know”
“No I don’t know, but what? But what Mandy? What happened?”
She pushes her hair back and stares up at the ceiling and lets out a long exhale. Her gaze comes back down and gently looks back at me. Whatever I noticed on her face before is now gone for the moment. Tears are there now but still distant.
“I tried really hard to be what he wanted. It was a full time job, believe me. I just woke up one morning and…”
She looks down at her drink and suddenly drinks it all in one gulp.
“Fuck this,” she says with a small quiet smile. She shakes her head, takes a deep breath, straightens her hair and runs her hands down her face as if smoothing out a wrinkle on a bed sheet.
“It was good to see you.” She then gets up and walks out of the bar.

I scramble to find some money to pay our bill and finally throw it on the table and run after her. She is walking fast towards her car.
“you woke up one morning and what!” I call out to her.
“What?” She spins and snaps her face to me, “what!?”
“You woke up one morning and what?” I say gently and out of breath as I catch up to her.
“You know, what the fuck, I haven’t seen you in how many years and now we are going to do this? I’m getting a headache. I don’t….”
Suddenly it comes to me when I last saw her, “Your wedding. You last saw me at your wedding.”
We both stare at each other for awhile after a flood of memories roll through us both.
“You woke up one morning and what?” I say to her again as I move to make eye contact with her.
“You don’t stop do you! Shit. Shit.” She is pacing back and forth in the parking lot now. “Goddamn it, Trent,” she says pushing her hair back with both hands tightly against her head as she stares up at the moon.
“HE FUCKING LEFT ME! OKAY! Are you happy now!?!”
The night is quiet now and I suddenly feel very sorry that I have pushed so hard, that I have opened up a window that can’t be shut now but then I think, “how else can any air get in.”
“No I am not happy Mandy. I am really sorry that happened. I really am.  Look at me, I am really sorry.”
“ya well, what the fuck are you going to do.” She says this as she tries to smooth her skirt but tears start to fall and she covers her face.

“You woke up one morning and what? You were going to answer that and then something stopped you. Go back to that part of you that wanted to say something. Can you do that? Just be quiet for a moment and then answer that question from the same place from where it came.”
“Jesus…what the….I just said he fucking left me isn’t that enough?”
“Just be quiet for a moment and then answer….trust me.”

She is glaring at me with eyes like splinters. A man walks up and says, “is everything ok here?” I tell him we are fine. He asks her directly and she actually takes an uncomfortable amount of time to answer. Finally he leaves. I turn back to her after he leaves and both of her hands are on her stomach now. She gasps and then doubles over wrapping both arms around her stomach and falling to the curb. Tears are coming in waves now. I wait a long time for all the grief, shame and hurt she has been carrying to spill out before she speaks again.

An old familiar voice emerges from her “It was never enough. I was never enough. I thought if I could just always keep him happy he would always love me.  I never stood up for myself. I spent all my time doing whatever he wanted or needed or felt was right. I kidded myself by saying relationships were about compromising but I was the only one compromising. The truth was I was too scared to say the truth or stand up for myself. I didn’t want him to be disappointed in me or angry with me. Shit, I do that with everyone in my life; my dad, my work, my brother…everyone.   It is the only way I feel important or cared for or loved.”
Her voice is calm now, her face is clear and bright and I see my old friend again for the first time.
“I just kept stuffing myself down even when I knew I was right, I kept stuffing and stuffing until……..I woke up….. I woke up one morning and I didn’t know who I was anymore. My whole life was about stuffing down and distracting myself. I was so lost, so numb. He left me anyways. [she laughs] He wanted someone who was more ‘full of life’ he said.”
I sit next to her on the curb for awhile and we both stare at the moon.
“This isn’t who I am Trent. Not really. You know that right?”
“Yes I do. I remember the girl who wasn’t so worried about pleasing everyone all the time. Who was confident and loved to dance. Remember when you were going out with Martin and I was with Anna and after dinner you danced in that fountain and we had to bribe that cop to let you go?”
She thinks for a moment, her eyes light up and then begins to laugh again, “ya….ya I do. Oh my god, I forgot about that.”
She smiles at me, “I liked that girl.”
“Now we can talk,” I say as I pull her up from the curb.
“Jerk.”
“Ya, I know.”

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She was drunk and I was drunk on her perfume, her eyes, the curve of her back.  Together we were a very volatile combination.  We ran through the closed state park along the dirt path with a child’s flashlight we bought at the mini-mart.  The light it gave was damp and yellow.

“Do you love me?” she laughed as we ran past the bay tree.
“yes!” I shouted as she passed me by leaping over the dried creek bed.

“Where are we going!” I yelled up to her as she ducked under a low branch and disappeared in the dark again
“Does it matter!” I heard a distant voice shout back.
I see a flash of white in the air and then I find her shirt lying in the grass.
“NO!” I yell with renewed energy. “No it does not matter at all!”
I whoosh by her as we run past the blackberry bushes. She reaches and catches my shirt and pulls me back. We stumble and stop on the path as the dust swirls around us. She is panting and giggling as she pulls my lips to hers, I am both lost and found at the same time and then….darkness. She has pulled my shirt over my head and is off.

“Goddamn it!” I shout as my shirt falls to the road and I stumble off after her grinning as I gain speed.
I hear her feet crunching up the leaves on my right as she cut through the maple trees.
“Where are we GOING!” I shout.
I see her bra hanging from a branch.
“Does it matter?” She calls back to me. She is close now.
“NO!” I yell bounding over a rock to see her skin beautiful and pale as she turns to look back at me.
We cross over a ridge and the moon is rising in front of her as the tall grass washes by us like water.    At the top of the hill she has stopped and she is bent over taking deep breathes. She looks up at me, wild eyed and delighted with herself as I rush towards her and sweep her up in my arms. She kisses my head, my neck and mouth and then turns my head to look at the moon. It is shinning full and bright like a grey gentle sun.

“My God that is beautiful” I whisper.
“Ya, you can almost touch it” she whispers back as she reaches her hand to the sky.
She turns back to me kisses my lips, then chest and then….my shorts are on my ankles and she is off again laughing.
“Damn it! HEY!” I kick off my shorts and start running.
I can see her moving like a gazelle as she leaps and dodges between the earth, the trees, the rocks and night sky. I have never seen anything as beautiful as this. I am no longer tired and all I can do is laugh as my legs stretch out to eat up the ground. My heart is running ahead like a dog in the hunt. I could run forever with her, through the valleys and up that distant mountain. I could run after her and never grow tired.

She disappears around a cluster of oak trees. As I get around them I come to a river and she is emerging from the other side. She turns to me shimmering in the moonlight.
I yell out to her “Where are we going!? How are we going to get back!!!?”
She smiles at me, lets the remainder of her clothes fall to the river’s edge and calls back
“Does it matter?”

I jump in.

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Last weekend I went to the garage to finish up an art project the wife and I have been working on.  As I was looking for some materials I noticed some camping gear laying around that I had been meaning to put up on the high shelving.  I sorted through it and climbed the ladder and put it up.  As I did I noticed 4 or 5 boxes of stuff I have been carrying around since college so I took them down and thought, “I should go through this and clean this out.”  I had boxes of my old college papers.  At one point I was going to be a teacher so I kept all my papers, notes, tests…etc.  As I began recycling all that paper I began to notice my scribblings in the margins of my class notes.  In one class I was talking to the girl next to me, making jokes about the professor, asking what she was up to during the weekend.  As the class went on I was clearly trying to get a date.  In another class the margins had songs, poems, thoughts all scribbled along the margins.  There were love notes to a girlfriend, lyrics from a band I was in to at the time, doodles of a chair being thrown at my Russian History professor, lists of supplies I needed to get for a date night with Italian cooking, more comments between me and someone else in Geology class about life, the weekend…etc.  As I thumbed through what was interesting to me – what felt alive to me was the margins.  That is where I was living; all the stuff in the middle seemed relatively pointless.

In the margins my long term girlfriend and I were breaking up, getting back together, forgiving, falling in love again…etc.  In the margins I was struggling to write lyrics, to find my voice, to try and say something beautiful.  In the margins I seemed to be constantly searching for who I was.  In the margins I was going on dates under the stars, playing guitar at a coffee shop for the first time, getting frustrated with feeling stuck, cracking jokes about a night spent drinking and Howling at the moon, laughing about dancing like a fool at the local bar….all of this was happening in the margins as I was trying very hard to live….well….in the middle.  The middle was important to me or at least I was told it should be important to me,  and I believed it.  I liked that guy in the margins, he was far more interesting more full of life, more in touch with passion.  If I could go back I would tell him to forget the middle.  The middle is where passionate and wild hearts go to die bogged down in an ocean of false “have to’s” masquerading as real life.  At some point I learned this the hard way and gave up the middle and jumped into the margins.

I speak to people and dear friends all the time who just can’t do it.  The real parts of them are still left in the margins as they let job, responsibilities, bills, …etc take up the majority.  They are all so tired – so worn down it makes me sad.  When I touch a nerve they often shout back at me, “it is not so easy okay!  I have a family and bills to pay.”  Yes, I know, of course I know but if our children only see us as tired people living tired lives what is the lesson we teach them about life?  We can say all we want, “You should follow your heart!, follow your dreams!, Enjoy your life!” what is the real message we are sending to them when they see us day after day selling our own life so cheaply?  Our actions say having a mediocre job or a “secure” life in the middle is more important than passion, more important than taking risks or living at high volume.   What do your actions say?  What parts of your life are in the margins?   Start looking at what your soul scribbles in the margins of your life, just pay it some kind attention, and it will lead you home.

Blog note: Thanks to all for the kind emails and encouragement about this blog.  When things get quiet sometimes it is just because the muse isn’t there.  It doesn’t always mean I am depressed or closing the blog down.  I often take walks and then sit down at the keyboard to work on my book or a post but the muse is nowhere to be found so I pick up my guitar, cook something on the stove, wrestle with the boys, or read a book.  Recently that has been alot of what I have been doing.  For some reason since August I haven’t felt like writing or I guess, more honestly, I just didn’t have anything to say.  Sometimes the soul needs a little downtime.  Anyways thanks for the emails but nothing to worry over.  More importantly to me is the point that this blog means something to many of you, enough to write me about it, post a comment, or miss it when there hasn’t been a post in awhile so many thanks to you all.  ~ T

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I have recently taken to talking to my soul. 

I talk to it as if it is a fragile wise friend who walks beside me.  I found that my soul likes silence and staring at cloud formations. I laughed when I found this out but he didn’t take offense he just laughed with me.   It likes cooking Italian food with my sons…alot.  It likes beer but only one at the end of the night and only the good stuff.  It likes the sound of old pianos sparsely played as if each note where a falling leaf.  This makes my soul cry and smile at the same time.  When people speak from their center my soul listens with clarity and kind attention.  It has told me that this is how souls are fed.  My soul doesn’t care about any of my accomplishments or plans for accomplishments.  He told me he prefers watching the beauty of my wife working in the garden right now than hearing ”busy-talk” about future plans for success.  As I sat watching Ondrejka water her small patch of earth it turns out I like the same thing. 

The thing about my soul is it notices things I never did.  It notices the wandering eyes when a question hits too close, it notices the distracted looks when a conversation starts to sink too deep, it notices distant tears in the curve of someone’s mouth, it notices the anguish so many of us walk around with but most of all it notices other souls: lost, ignored, hurting, and peaking out from behind so many of us patiently waiting for our kind attention.

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There is something beautiful inside of us all.  Something stronger than we think.  For some of us we have seen it, we hit bottom at some point and found ourselves lost, broken, confused and feeling alone but in the midst of that we found there was still light……there was still something more.   Grace?  God?  Love?  Buddha?  Jesus?  Allah?  Whatever you want to call it, it really doesn’t matter, they are just feeble words trying to describe the indescribable.   I recently saw it, felt it, sunk into it on the floor of a cabin in the woods as I let every terrible thing I had ever felt or done rush through me like a wild fire.  Once the fire past I found something more, I found I could take it all, I found I could rise up. I learned that there was something bigger in me, in everything, that can welcome it all and wash it clean.

Underneath us all is an ocean.  If we trust in it, if we give ourselves to it, if we finally let go of this exhausting pace of trying to appear perfect while choking down every emotion that makes us human, then it will, I promise you….I promise you, carry you home.

Dedicated to the beautiful people at the OE who helped me find my way (Doug, Frank, Nancy) and to the hardest drinking contemplatives Lincoln, OR has ever seen.  “Lets do it again in 0′10″.

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I stand here on this highway
Seems years since I saw your face
I feel lost I feel forgotten
But I know inside of me is a tiny seed of grace

And it sings
My love is like an ocean
My love can carry you home
My love can heal your tired, broken heart
My love, my love can carry you home
My love, my love can carry you home

I feel this darkness around me
Sometimes I don’t want to hear my name
I want to open my arms like a child
Let the tears fall and drink only rain

And sing
My love is like an ocean
My love can carry you home
My love can heal your tired, broken heart
My love, my love can carry you home
My love, my love can carry you home

Maybe all we have in this world
Is to lend a hand when one of us falls
So in the silence of this moment
I hope you hear the song that runs through us all

And it sings
My love is like an ocean
My love can carry you home
My love can heal your tired, broken heart
My love, my love can carry you home
Your love, your love can carry you home
Our love, our love can carry us home

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