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Grape Soda & Dark Chocolate
The Unfolding of a Story
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Connecting the dots
Different dots that crossed my path this week. Attempting to answer ever floating questions. How do I delight in the moment at hand? What does our history teach us? Why war? How do I find beauty in the everyday? Reaching out in constant gratitude for the plethora of daily gifts offered. +++
“From gung-ho Vietnam medic to peacenik to proud Army veteran” by Curt Brown, Star Tribune: Read , May 5, 2024 📰
Links with blog entry: Left at the Wall, July 2023 🍇🥤🍫
Learning what we need to know. Giving eyes to the past. What is it our history teaches us?
What is the transgenerational impact of war? Hacksaw Ridge (2016) speaks to that question: Trailer 🎥
The Three Questions by Jon Muth: Watch 🎥 Blog Entry: What to do with a moment , August 2016 🍇🥤🍫
TEDx Talk: The Butterfly Effect- Why what you do matters/ Andy Andrews: Watch 🎥
Squirrel Moment 🐿️: Butterflying Nicola Sweeney, violin Elena Kats-Chernin Ragtime & Blue: Listen 🎶
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Guess What???
May 1, 2024
Dearest Richard,
Happy May Day! A day to ding and dash, leaving a bouquet of plucked tulips from a neighbor’s backyard. The absconded flowers being held snug in a wallpaper sample vase, cone shaped stapled with a rick rack handle as its hung on a nearby front door. Ringing the doorbell and dashing behind some near by bush. Being out of sight but still in view of the flower bouquet adorned front door. Waiting for the door to open and able to witness the recipients look of surprise.
Did you ever do a May Day basket drop on someone’s front steps? My memory may be a bit tilted to the right of the truth. But I do remember simple garden plucked flowers and looking through a huge wallpaper sample book to pick out the base for the vase. I might have been about seven. There were Red Ball jets and pedal pushers also in that memory. The random thoughts that simply rise up, typically uninvited but enjoyed none the less.
Wishing you had been doing a tandem ride with me yesterday morning. Lordy sakes, another day when awe was clearly in charge. Bull horn announcing here: “Move over wild tom turkey, juvenile eagle, cormorants, buffleheads, wood ducks and coots”— all the other wildlife I spotted while on my ride — “the migrating pelicans are in town.“ “What?” you might ask. Yes indeed, a sight that has never caught my eye while biking Harriet before. There they were. I had just entered the bike path, passing the wooden bridge just next to the fishing dock. There I spied eight or nine puffs of fluff with long orange beaks nestled next to one another on the edge of the estuary. Bringing out the extraordinary magic of an unexpected moment as walkers and joggers magnetically are pulled to stop and take a closer look.
Yes, there truly were pelicans. They are often something I see along the Mississippi River in spring or fall. I may see them flying over 35W as I am off on an adventure day excursion or simply heading off on a random errand to Fleet Farm. I did once see hundreds of pelicans kettle as they were all gathering to continue migrating north one spring day along the Mississippi River Road in Wisconsin. It is still plain as day in my memory. Not knowing what to call what was transpiring in the sky but mesmerized by the pelicans intentional pattern of movement. Rising up higher and higher and higher and as if by sheer magic they align themselves in an order that allows them to v themselves and continue on their way. A poetic aerial dance of organized chaos and then, before I know it, they are simply out of sight, heading further north along the grand Mississippi. Nature continues to astound me, taking my breath away. Asking for my full attention. Clearly caught in the updraft of such common beauty. The rhythm that migration offers. Struck by its predictability and temporal spirit of action. The here and now and then gone. The movement. The foreseen behavior, opening a portal that says there is so much more in each moment. Demanding for a grab and hold, yet not too tightly, so that it all can be on its way again. Being simply along for the ride.
This coming alive of such exquisite beauty, knowing that you have taught me how to stand still in it. To look more deeply, appreciating what is part of my ever presence. Anticipating its arrival, the wonders of springtime. Seeing dots of dutchmen’s breeches along the lakes shady lower road as I continue my ride. So much of this has always been there but the readiness to see it has not. The importance of simply bearing witness to what is being sought often has gone unattended.
So do I record such a moment? Bringing my camera along for my daily ride or do I simply respond by embracing what is offered in the brief time at hand? The quandary that I realize I wanted to ask you, already guessing what your answer might be. Giving a little room for the query to make more sense to me. It is sometimes too easy to snap a photo and steady that visual in place. Or is it more about fully holding it heart close, allowing it to melt in with all the other memory snapshots I will garner as I head out in to my day, no camera in hand.
There was such exquisite peace felt as I gazed all around me as I rode. Amazed at how everyday and common it could seem. Grabbing on to the moments that offer the meaning I seek. Much like the gift of a rainbow or a mallard walking her ducklings across the road as they struggle to waddle themselves down from the curb and then back up again on to the other side. Just stopping and being. Breathing in without record or comment. The moments that help so in balancing what too often gets missed or simply ignored as being too familiar for recognition.
So, I guess what I am saying is, I don’t have a photo to show you of those huddled pelicans on my favorite lake. Instead that image is already attached to my ever expanding tapestry of connecting memories. Realizing I will have them with me forever and always. Joining me wherever I may roam. Knowing that you would totally understand.
Wishing you were here. Thanks for helping me to continue to ever widen my view towards seeing what is so ever present.
Until next write,
Your Niece 🦆
Kettle of American White Pelicans: Take a peek 🎥
Related blog entry: Listening Closely , November 2019 🍇🥤🍫
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Nature speaks-unhesitatingly
January 30, 2024
The beauty about a love offered to help one to shine. Allowing both the gift of shining brighter because of each another. When the walls are dropped, only then, can this happen. — me
Dearest Richard,
There is something profound about writing to you in the presence of this year as I also reflect back onto what transpired some eighty years ago. Not something I experienced but more what I carry. Finding my heart is perpetually storming with questions. Never abated or at a loss for more. The relevancy of your story during this point in time continues to talk to me. The necessity of allowing for an openness, a way to expand the story and not simply use only the specifics at hand. For the challenge is that I have a lot of bits and pieces of information scattered in my mind. It is about what I remember when mom spoke of you. What other family members have since offered. What was saved and kept until I arrived to pull it together in to one cache of artifacts. My historical research has led me to step more tightly into what may have been your everyday specifics. Wanting to know you more I guess is the pull. Being authentic in the process. Naming what seeks to be spoken. It is there—I know. Continuing to unfurl what it is you want shared.
Here we go. Pulling out more tissues before I proceed on to the next piece of correspondence in the line up. How to continue on this path as additional military paperwork gets into the mix. I don’t know how mom and your dad did it. The day is moving along and then another crash to the floor when they open their mail. A heart sinking into the floral cushioned chair by the window. Images that rise up in my mind as I assume their emotions grab hold, tapping them on the shoulder or simply socking them in the gut.
Flipping to this next page in your three ringed binder. The one that is holding so much of your story. Learning as I unravel more. Your Purple Heart will soon be arriving in the mail, this September 2nd, 1948 letter informs me. Or maybe it came by special delivery. I don’t rightly know but what I do know is that mom asked over and again, more to the wind than to anyone in particular, “What should I do with Richard’s Purple Heart?” It would be said in seemingly random moments. They may have seemed random to me but I would guess for mom, the fact that you were always with her, it may not have felt random at all. I am now holding that question for dear Martha Jane. Not certain about the practical answer but more the part that says you are significant and you need to be remembered. Your story is important. I will name what I can. It isn’t so much a predictable beginning and a quick end kind of story that I initially imagined it would be. It is about pulling up and out from the past what can be gleaned. What does your story teach me? Your seemingly simple single story is so much more than that. Mom’s love for you and the power that love continues to hold in place moves the narrative along.
Thank you for the love you offered to my mom. It still speaks.
Listening with intention,
Your Niece 💜
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Spring- Welcome Back
January 23, 2024
Stories: “They are the currency of human interchange, the net we cast to capture fugitive truths and the darting rabbits of emotion.” — Daniel Taylor
Dearest Richard,
I think what feels so essential to me is to keep your story moving. Not so much within the confines of my own understanding but more within the complexities of what is offered. The release that seeks to go beyond what is presently availed to me. Continuing to piece together more of the story through all that is being shared, learned, and better understood. Not having it rest in stagnate waters. I might encounter dead ends or that is how it might appear in the moment.
But as I realize all stories are connected I am not always certain that an end has arrived. It may have stalled. It may need to jump the fence or newly developed technology can unravel some of the snag, but more often than not, taking the risk of naming what is known at the moment needs to happen. Trusting the process has a direction and a mission. Staying with the heart of the story and it will continue its unfolding. Naming what is presently noted and allowing the rest to arrive when it needs to. Remaining with it and delighting in all of its twists and turns. Releasing it to the larger world as so many stories seek to be delivered. Allowing more souls to be witness to the gravity of what is seeking to be named.
The fall out is part of the ever after. Uncompromising in the time it takes or the hoops that must be jumped through. That is what I continue to learn. Not relenting or terminating what is sought. The light is green and it is time to go further down the road. Naming it more as I may feel it than having it fully seen and complete.
You are on my mind and in my heart—always.
Love from me to you,
Your Niece ❤️
Related read: “His father never spoke of WWII. His flight logs told the story for him” by Claire Barrett, Yahoo! News: Pincus Mansfield, April 15, 2024
Check Out:
Nerstrand State Park, my favorite spot to search for Spring
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The Shape of Time: Korean Art after 1989
Check Out:
MIA Exhibit: The Shape of Time: Korean Art after 1989: Take a peek, now through June 23, 2024 🎨
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April Begins
January 18, 2024
“Loss wasn’t-mustn’t be-an end in itself. It had to mean something. But finding out its meaning was like scaling a gigantic wall. Was it there just so I could get over it?” — Susanna Tamaro, Follow Your Heart
Dearest Richard,
You continue to help me to see everything more clearly. Putting the pedal to the metal as I drop under the table again, leaning into what this day wants me to unwrap. Not always knowing what will be next as I seek to name this continuous unfolding that has been so intentionally placed in my lap.
The next letter in the queue, dated September 6th, 1945, was not originally in your scrapbook. It was something I came across when going through Martha Jane’s house after she had passed and her spouse, John Twiss or dad, as I called him, was recently relocated to a healthcare facility. His mind was slipping more and he was totally unaware or concerned about who was tending to his house. The place he said he would never leave. Yet after another medical scare, losing more mileage under his tires, full time nursing care is what he needed. He didn’t complain, resigning instead to his inevitable mortality. That was huge for him with his life long daily exercise plan and intentional health regiment, he was going to live to be 100 —at least. It was more of a gentle switch than I would have predicted. He was a tough nut, yet he knew that the writing on the wall could not be ignored or denied. Life was packing him another punch and he took it with grace. Soon ingratiating himself to the staff and many of the residents. When he lost his bravado and self congratulating antics, more authenticity could be seen. This deeper part of him came in sparks and snippets. Actually I would have liked seeing that side of him more. Maybe I could have found more “liking” in the love in our relationship. But I digress.
This letter was another formality that confirmed you really were not coming home using numbers and facts to name that truth. It was the insurance settlement sent to your “next of kin” — your dad. The one that all new recruits were encouraged to sign up for, “just in case.” The “just in case” that all of you airmen must have carried in your back pockets—always. You were going to fight the good fight but you also were going to return to your family. That was what was being carried in all of your respective breast pockets, you and your family’s. The pocket closest to your hearts. Another part of the unsaid. The hopefulness of the inevitable return. The return that was not your story. So each month, beginning the month of your death, your dad received a check from the Veterans Administration. A monthly reminder of your never to be forgotten passing. More sadness piled upon more. Lordy Sakes. What a tough row.
What more can be said?
Loving you without words to claim,
Your Niece ❤️
Remembering:
“Lou Conter, last survivor of USS Arizona Pearl Harbor attack, dies at 102” by Audrey McAvoy, Associated Press: Read, April 1, 2024 🇺🇸
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What do I know?
I know grief can float into the room and sweep right by you. Tears can come more readily. A connection with someone in like circumstances can bring a strong feeling of empathy forward.
I know what a broken heart feels like. The true ache that is present.
I know how it feels to be connected here on earth but also experiencing a new sense of longing for what is just beyond my reach. Out there—somewhere.
I know dreams can bring forward insight.
I know many don’t like to venture in to a space of grief. Shutting the realness of the emotions away in a space like on the top shelf of an attic closet or behind a closed door with a key.
I know the heart can expand and more love can enter in after a heart is broken.
Change is hard, I know.
I know we are all uniquely designed with a gift within each one of us. A gift we are to unfold over a lifetime of living. Bringing ourselves to the spot which we were originally designed to be.
I know I am a gift bestowing a radiance that I wish to have acknowledged.
I know I wish to be heard and accepted for all that I am.
I know life is short and I want to live in its truth and beauty. +++
Words that still hold true for me. Recently found in a journal entry from over a dozen years ago. The wisdom I carry within. Continuing to uncover that which I already know.
Take a look: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit: Watch , 2019 🎥
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This Week
January 17, 2024
“The way forward, I think, is also through more dark.” — Gregory Orr
Dearest Richard,
I waffle back and forth in what I want to say to you next. Do I want to be more present in the recent timeline of events or should I slip back into 1945? Yo-yoing myself a bit. Thinking of all the good byes being shed in ’45. Tears streaming down sodden cheeks and hearts breaking as more of the end is needing to be named as jubilant service members continue flocking home en masse.
The war in the Pacific is still raging as Jean Mullen writes this last letter. The last and ever poignant one sent to your dad. Saying words that everyone among your crew’s families were thinking. Writing this at 2533 Orchard St. in Chicago just before she was to head off for her night shift at the phone company. Kevin’s memorial service was on a Saturday just two weeks before. Taking a bit of a vacation at the family cabin in Michigan, she then gets back in to the saddle, resuming her ever intensive correspondence.
This was a letter Jean sent in response to a note your dad had sent to her. Dang. So much pain being sent through the mail. I just grabbed some phrases that caught my heart as I read through this letter. She was so brave and persistent. And what was she — twenty one? She was carrying quite a load and she did it with such profound intentionality. Her love for Kevin truly was what was pushing her through as she was undertaking the unfathomable.
The power and strength of love still continues to shout.
With much of it I send on to you,
Your Niece ❤️
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Spring--here--now???
January 16, 2024
“Of course history is the humbling story of our misbegotten inflations, and truth is the corrective story of how we return to exactly who we are.” —Mark Nepo
Dearest Richard,
Our nation was honoring Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday yesterday. Most federal and state employees had the day off. A potential time for reflection on where we now ride as a country. Bringing much up close and personal for me. Finding just cause for actions taken and falling short. Leading with the right foot arcing itself towards a more perfect world. I stand here in this moment claiming the roughness of intent towards actions taken. Humility is being eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner. What is lost and continuously seeks to be gained? What can be learned from our ancestors mistakes? This is the present question riding up for me. Continuing to learn, being held accountable for what I miss and need to amend. Staying humble throughout the process. Anything that alters the “good” that is possible in a moment. It is something personal in the sense of my own responsibility in how I react. It isn’t because of somebody else, but it is about me in particular. Being personal because it is something between me and God. If I, for my entire life lean myself towards God’s divine design that is within me, then I experience a lot of writing on life’s chalkboard and then erasing. Trying again and erasing again. Not feeling shame, just feeling that I have a goal that I am working on and I need to practice more each and every day. Grounding down my innate imperfections over and again. This is what I am learning.
“Where did this all come from?” you might wonder. Getting sidetracked—yup, but please stay with me for a bit. It makes sense in my head and I am anticipating this thinking will eventually bring me back around to where I need to continue heading out from. Learning something new can be messy and with no clear map it is easy to get off road. That can be where some of the most profound understanding can be found or it might just be a way to use up more gas. To get closer to running on empty. But that is the risk. I am presently game to take it and I hope you are too. For it seems more alive and open to the expanse of what life continues to offer me when I keep my eyes wide open.
So here goes— an explanation of my brain’s thoughts, as tangle webbed as they may seem. As part of your archived papers saved by Martha Jane, I was reading through the Gethsemane Parish Visitor weekly newsletter telling of events for the week of October 5, 1945. It was where the notice of your upcoming memorial service was circled. To be held the following Sunday: “Open to all who wish to come,” the notice read. In the leaflet there was a smattering of details about the number of parishioners in the pews that previous Sunday, the schedule for an upcoming Boy Scout meeting and the next speaker for the Youth Group. Mr. John Sinykin would be speaking about his project for training seeing eye dogs. Sounds interesting. There was even an ad for a jewelry store, White & MacNaught nearby at 812 Nicollet Ave., “offering a solution for my gift problem.” Huh.
Reading further along. Thinking about how the everyday details were interspersed in along with your memorial service notice. There was a congratulating shout out to Betty Anne Weitzel for having just, the previous Wednesday, graduated from St. Barnabas nursing school. There was a welcome home for Walter Hall who was returning from overseas following his honorable discharge from the army. Dang. There that wordless pain can thwack one in the face. I am glad Walter was returning home, but what about you? You needed to return home too. So I continue to read and on page 3 I come across this article by John Wall of Virginia. This is part two of his article. Part one was on the previous week’s bulletin, but this is the key sentences that caught my attention:
“They [African Americans] have seen a world at war over ideas and ideals. They have learned that equality of economic, educational, and social opportunities is the right of every citizen regardless of race, creed, or color. No longer will they accept a second-class citizenship role.”
That message slapped up against my more recent finding about your dad and his land development company condoning racial covenants on land he was subdividing in this city where both of us were born.
Here is the legalese from a document I had of some of his loan transactions. Selling only to the “caucasian” race. Learning more as more is uncovered. Trying to find room for what prejudicial actions look like and where we move from what is known and accepted. Or at least not spoken against to stop. So here he is, possibly sitting in a Gethsemane church pew, reading this article. Knowing there was movement that the war unlatched. Your dad, having worked in said position for decades now. Having raised a family. Moved out of the family home. Not certain if he was employed at this time or not. I don’t know what was in the mix but I just wondered if there was movement toward change for him? Was he a single bystander doing whatever everyone else was doing in the real estate business during the 20’s, 30’s and early 40’s or was he more of a ring leader? Knowing the power of silence can hold the crime of harm in place as much as overt actions can.
Just wondering. Stirring up the pot. Adding more ingredients into the mix.
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." — Martin Luther King Jr.
With deep love and incessant curiosity,
Your Niece ❤️
Related blog entry: The Imperfects: July 4th: Read , July 4, 2019 🍇🥤🍫
This Week:
Words Matter: Opinion: "The problem isn’t Biden’s ‘illegal’ gaffe" by Jose Antonio Vargas, CNN: Read, March 11, 2024 📰
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Give a hoot
January 2, 2024
“Again and again, strength and healing are found in the disclosure of the truth even when it is hard.” — Lee Roorda Schott
Dearest Richard,
2024 begins. The 80th anniversary year of so much uncoiling. The challenge of addressing the details as they would have unfolded. Christmas passes. The new year arrives. More will be told. More will come crashing to the ground on the home front. The significant part of what is often the untold story. The ones who remain after all the dust settles and “back to normal” is sought. A reality that can not or will not ever return. There is no reeling backwards to undo what has transpired. It is all for the cause, which I do not discount.
Needing to stay in place while looking all around. Giving room for what seeks to continue to be part of the reveal. Where the here and now butts up against the past. We don’t lose what can’t be accepted at the time. It simply waits. The connecting threads that link us all together remains. Not often seen or named, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t present.
Love to you from the moon and stars above,
Your Niece ❤️
Take a look: “Dear Caitlin Clark” by Asitha Jayawardena, Star Tribune Opinion Exchange: Read, March 1, 2024 📰 🏀
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The face of friendship
“Friendship: In the course of the years a close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves, to remain friends we must know the other and their difficulties and even their sins and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, the leading creative edge of their incarnation, thus subtly discouraging what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves.”
“Friendship transcends disappearance: an enduring friendship goes on after death, the exchange only transmuted by absence, the relationship advancing and maturing in a silent internal conversational way even after one half of the bond has passed on.”
"The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone."
Ramble Write: These specifics on friendship seem so elemental and yet they aren’t offered —encouragement, enduringness, and witnessing to siblings, spouses, friends. Three simple tenants of deep rooted connected friendship. I guess if we aren’t settled in our own truth it is difficult to give it outside of ourselves with any authenticity.
I look at various fall out actions dumped on me by those I have cared about and the weight of the balls they have relationally dropped. Not listening. Bringing judgment to lunch. Going silent or simply exhibiting shear crazy talk in demands for possibly reconnecting. We do friendship poorly. Exhibiting such actions that harm says “you are not connected with your honest self.” Harm can not be thrown like peanut shells at the circus. Opening what you need. Digesting what you wish and spitting the rest out on to the floor. We take such harsh actions towards one another which speaks to how low our tank must be. Friendship is a gift and it needs to be treated as such. Kindness in the offering. Holding one another up. Being witness to what is essential. Knowing it will always be present, that link, that love, that connection.
Here I stand and I think “Lordy sakes”, when my voice isn’t accepted. Or judgement is in control. Or fear or shame or ego is yanking my chain. I can state with more clarity what has run a foul. What smells like a dirty old rat or a dank and musty basement. Being there as a form of support. Being there as a witness to someone’s life. Knowing that friendship never ends, settles my spirit. It seems so easy and yet I know it’s not. Old patterns die hard. Kindness isn’t typically the first point of action. I am learning. Feeling so often when such truth, such simple truth rises up it feels as if a weight has been lifted. My shoulders feel less constricted. The light is brighter, the air is cleaner, the birds chirping out my bedroom window are more symphonic than simply offering an annoying cacophony of distressed cawing. It is easy to do right. So why don’t we?
The everlasting part of love and friendship is significant. I don’t think I could have named it. I most likely felt it first. Not sure what was transpiring and yet its power would not rest. It pushed through the ground of my preconceived notions of what is “life” and what is “death.” Love and loss. I see love and friendship’s strength in helping me to experience more authentic connections. Offering more profound meaning in my days. The things we all seek but are often afraid to uncover. My mom’s death popped my eyes wide open and I have continued to peel away more of the truth that she has sought to teach me or at least offer to me as a greater form of understanding.
As I learn more about death I also learn more about life. As I hold fast to meaning. The conversation loss wants to have with me, I reveal a lineage of linking that goes beyond the veil in a way I had not surmised before. Giving space for the truth of its inevitability I can stretch out my hand in acceptance of what can’t be changed instead of holding fast with such a tight grip to what has been. Speaking it out loud. Feeling it with more intentionality. Death and grief, loss and love — continuing to spread a peace of understanding about what this finite world offers me. This understanding has brought me back and around to where I believe I began. Catching more dust mites as I have moved in this ever present circle. Understanding more about death and its side kicks initially stumped me. For my internal understanding was constantly clashing with what was externally offered. How is it that so many of us get it wrong? My guess is fear knows the reason why. Patterns are also sitting in the booth offering their two cents worth while straw slurping on a thick chocolate banana malt. Shame is in the restroom along with Ego, making sure their hair is just so and that nothing is out of place. The company death keeps. The ones always by its side until it gets to be more accurately named. Learning more each stumble trip step I take. +++
Resource: Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte
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Find Me: Loneliness
Focus: Loneliness
“Our latest public health crisis impacts our health in surprising ways. But it has an antidote: social connection.” by Erica Pearson, Star Tribune: Begin , February 2, 2024 📰
“Yes, you should talk to strangers, because small talk has big benefits.” by Richard Chinn, Star Tribune: Continue, February 9, 2024 📰
Unlocking Us podcast with “Loneliness and Connection” with Vivek Murthy, Moving right along, April 21, 2020 🎙️
On Being podcast with Vivek Murthy and Richard Davidson: Don't stop now , December 2, 2021🎙️
On Being podcast “To Be a Healer” with Vivek Murthy: More wisdom to absorb , April 13, 2023 🎙️
Together by Vivek Murthy 📕
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SPAM i am
A study in contrasts. Trying to make sense of the non-sensical. Driving south along US 218 heading to Austin Minnesota and the SPAM museum on a bright shiny day. Feeling the sun’s warmth and optimism. My eyes are always on the prowl for what will be in the mix for this weekly adventure day. Intrigued with whatever catches my eye or draws in my attention. A miniature raceway just on the edge of town in Blooming Prairie has piqued my curiosity. Requesting to take a closer look on our return. The car stops and out I pop to investigate. Trying to make sense of the little dirt track. The concession stands. The bleachers. Reading the signs on the grounds I discern it is a miniature track for remote control cars. There are clear safety directions so all can have an enjoyable time. The sign “It’s all about respect” is clear and hard to miss.
I am excited about the idea of a track for kids to race their cars. There are guidelines about how to engage so all could enjoy the experience. Leaving the mini raceway grounds I spy a 2016 presidential political sign in the Southern Minnesota Raceway hobby shop on the grounds. A sign that represents a candidate who has not shown respect towards so many. Regardless of his political platform, his behavior is not abiding by the oath he would have sworn to as he entered his four year term. An oath to put others above self.
Calling it out as it is felt. Naming what is truly a contradiction. Aligning with behavior that is offensive and dismantling. Feeling a total deflate as I leave the parking lot and head back north on 218. Leaving Blooming Prairie in my rear view mirror. Allegiance to such behavior does not mix with respect. So close, but no cigars. Bummer. +++
Confession by David Whyte
Confession is a stripping away of protection, the telling of a truth which might once have seemed like a humiliation, become suddenly a gateway, an entrance to new territory; even a first step home. To confess is to free oneself, not only by admitting a sin or an omission but to profess a deeper allegiance, a greater dedication to something beyond the mere threat of immediate punishment or the desolation of being shunned. To confess is to declare oneself ready for a more courageous road, one in which a previously defended identity might not only be shorn away, but be seen to be irrelevant, a distraction, a working delusion that kept us busy over the years and held us unaccountable to the real question.
Freedom from deception may be the goal but no confessions without consequences. Our fears about the result of confessing are well grounded; the old identity the secret was protecting almost never survives the revelation. We begin the new life in isolation; perhaps indeed shunned by those who we have wronged or even by those unable to understand our need to tell. Confession implicitly calls for carrying on the journey newly alone, unaccompanied by the familiar company have kept until now.
Deathbed confessions happen so frequently because in the light of our imminent demise and disappearance, preserving the old fearful identity that kept the secret is seen to be absurd, almost laughable, we are suddenly not and never have been, the thing we have been defending all along. In the shadow of our disappearance we come to understand that the preservation of our name and our identity have taken enormous effort and willpower to sustain for a mere temporary and provisional sense of personhood. In leaving the stasis of secrecy we must commit to a new fidelity - and fluidity – a river flow of arrival - and not just on a temporary basis while the revelation is new, but shaped around a different life that calls for a deeper discipline.
Confession, therefore is not passive; is not the simple ability to face up to past wrongs - an active dynamic is foundational to the original meaning. Traditionally, Confession meant the avowal and declaration of one’s religion, to confess was to discover what one believed to be true by speaking it out loud before witnesses – often unsympathetic - to confess, was to enter an axis of vulnerability and visibility - and sometimes to place oneself at the mercy of those who did not fully understand us in our struggle.
Declaring a new dispensation by confession we see our trespasses against others in a new light, initiated by something we were hiding, not only from the world but from ourselves. Holding the secret was not only a defense against punishment but also a holding back from a next courageous step. To separate the confusion of punishment with revelation we first of all confess to ourselves, step onto solid ground in the privacy and spaciousness of our own hearts and minds and then translate it into the best speech we have to represent it in the world, and by doing so attempt to meld two previously irreconcilable words. To confess is to integrate the offending with the offended, inside and out.
To confess is not only to acknowledge a truth we have held from ourselves all along, breathing quietly, alone and in secret what we could not initially give a voice, but a hopeful dedication to a larger power that might make us powerless to commit the selfsame sin again.
Resource: Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte +++
Related Blog Entry: “History Talks”: Read, January 2020 🍇🥤🍫
“No one can drive us crazy unless we give them the keys.” — Doug Horton
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Crossing my path
Anger by David Whyte
Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our body’s incapacity to hold it, or the limits of our understanding. What we name as anger is actually only the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.
What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness, a powerlessness connected to such a profound sense of rawness and care that it can find no proper outer body or identity or voice, or way of life to hold it. What we call anger is often simply the unwillingness to live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing, in the face of our love for a wife, in the depth of our caring for a son, in our wanting the best, in the face of simply being alive and loving those with whom we live.
Our anger breaks to the surface most often through our feeling there is something profoundly wrong with this powerlessness and vulnerability; anger too often finds its voice strangely, through our incoherence and through our inability to speak, but anger in its pure state is the measure of the way we are implicated in the world and made vulnerable through love in all its specifics: a daughter, a house, a family, an enterprise, a land or a colleague.
Anger turns to violence and violent speech when the mind refuses to countenance the vulnerability of the body in its love for all these outer things – we are often abused or have been abused by those who love us but have no vehicle to carry its understanding, who have no outer emblems of their inner care or even their own wanting to be wanted. Lacking any outer vehicle for the expression of this inner rawness they are simply overwhelmed by the elemental nature of love’s vulnerability. In their helplessness they turn their violence on the very people who are the outer representation of this inner lack of control.
But anger truly felt at its center is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here, it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be tended, and an invitation to finding a way to bring that source fully into the world through making the mind clearer and more generous, the heart more compassionate and the body larger and strong enough to hold it. What we call anger on the surface only serves to define its true underlying quality by being a complete and absolute mirror-opposite of its true internal essence. +++
Resource: Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte
Take a look:
PBS Frontline: Democracy on Trial: Watch, January 30, 2024 📺
“Claims that Jan. 6 rioters are ‘political prisoners’ endure. Judges want to set the record straight” by Michael Kunzelman and Alanna Durbin Richer, Associated Press, Read, February 4, 2024 📰
“4 takeaways from Trump’s loss in his immunity case” by Aaron Blake, Washington Post, Read, February 6, 2024 📰
On a lighter note:
La La Land (2016) - Audition (The Fools Who Dream) Scene Watch 🎥 🎶
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Scrabble words sought--daily
December 26, 2023
“Sometimes we only need a single star to follow, one point of light to unite and guide us, showing us in the darkness something greater than ourselves.” — Call the Midwife
Dearest Richard,
I continue moving along. Thinking. What do I want to chat with you about today? What is on my mind? What has gotten caught and what seeks to be more fully known? How to best honor what you have placed before me? How to be honest without an intent to harm? How to learn from missteps taken? How to offer more kindness in the opportunities placed before me?
I do feel a bit befuddled. Not knowing if the Christmas holiday happenings have gotten me off my game of thought or not. Realizing that you have offered to me such a clear and honest path, other actions seem to catch in my craw or really tug at my nerves. It might be named intolerance for ungracious actions. I just don’t feel like I have the band width to deal with it. The space to hold what only takes away from the grander possibilities at hand. You are my truth seeker. The better angel of my nature. You help me identify the essential beauty that I seek.
I want to thank you for that.
Love with an ever expanding heart,
Your Niece ❤️
P.S. Off to eat some more humble pie. 🥧
🐿️ Squirrel Moment: The Water Is Wide - Taryn Harbridge: Listen 🎻🎥 🎶
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Catching the beauty in the everyday
December 18, 2023
“It isn’t enough to love my family. It isn’t enough to connect with friends. It needs to be done with passion, abandon, love, and light. There is not time to hold grudges, be afraid, and not forgive. There is no time for games. There really are places to go, people to see, and things to do, and time is wasting. There is a gift of joy and passion, love with abandon, friends who aren’t afraid to say, ‘I love you.’ I just don’t have time for bullshit anymore. That is the gift of urgency, and I am thankful for it. “ — Bruce Kramer, We Know How this Ends
Dearest Richard,
Christmas songs filter through the air everywhere I roam. Shopping for groceries or waiting in line at the post office. Buying cleaning supplies at Menard’s or getting a medium dark hot chocolate at Caribou with no whipped cream. Christmas seeps in to the everything at this time of the year.
Thinking of what would also have been present for Martha Jane back in ‘43. Hearing bits and pieces of where you might be and what could be transpiring for you. Being in the thick of it all. I don’t know the extent of what she knew except that you were now overseas flying those B-24’s. You were fighting for the cause the country was backing and yet the reality of what that meant for the families was more complex and nuanced. The everyday families doing their everyday tasks infused with supporting the war effort.
How to celebrate with gifts and good cheer when much was ominously looming for so many. Do you hold one another closer? Say what demands to be said and take action without delay? How was it that Christmas?
Questions. Always streaming with questions. Till next write.
Sending the gift of love off to you,
Your Niece 🎁
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Bee Ewe and Eye'll Bee Me
Bee ewe—
Naming it as it flies. Why is that avoided like the plague? If you are taking a phone call, of the non emergency kind, and we are out for lunch. Not naming to the caller that it is an interruption and I wait until you complete your call.
I need to name the rudeness in the moment. My time has value as does yours.
How can we be kinder, more thoughtful and generous with our words and actions? Needing to hold myself and others accountable for choices made.
And eye’ll bee me!!!
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