Let Me Think About It Before I Say It

Let Me Think About It Before I Say It

Some years ago now I heard a Chinese novelist who grew up in China but writes in English, say that one his favorite English words was solitude. In Mandarin there is no word for solitude, though there are words for alone or lonely. But the word solitude tells a story about an aloneness that is not loneliness, but a sense of wholeness or completion when we are alone. “Without a word for it,” he said, “the experience itself was known to me but elusive. With the word it was possible to be with the experience and name what I knew to be true. “

Someone also recently talked about how the Chinese do not use words such as please and thank you and excuse me. These are taught to our children as required words with family, friends or strangers. But in China these words are seen as words that distance one another and instead need to be read in the actions of people together, especially in a family context. The father serving the children and his wife first at the table is living please, and the children’s faces as they receive their food hold the thank you for their father’s kindness. The turning away after embarrassment or shame says, excuse me, more clearly than words could express.

People whose native language is Arabic use the word enshalla—“If God wills”—when any plan is made for the future, whether near or far. They will say, “I will see you at 2pm enshalla.” In this word is a letting go of the control that we westerners are so sure of. It is an embracing of the true uncertainty of our lives and the possibility that what we know now, may be undone a half an hour from now. Sometimes, Christians say, “I’ll be there, God willing.” But the if-ness of the Arabic phrase turns everything into question in a way that makes it more meaningful than the familiar Christian cliché. And it brings a God-centeredness to the world that our secular rational mindset does not.

In Senegal the word poli is nearly as common as Arabic’s enshalla. Though the English translation is I’m sorry, the meaning extends far beyond this to include feeling another person’s sorrow or pain. This is what we want to express to the surviving spouse at the memorial service, or parents who experience the death of a child, or even a child facing the first reality of death or loss or betrayal. Instead we have to settle for the thin and wan, I’m sorry, the same English words we use when we inadvertently bump into someone with our shopping cart at the Fred Meyer.

Among the Eskimo native community the word most commonly heard is quyana. Recently, I received at quyana back from a native woman, she calls herself a First Alaskan, and I had the sense of its deeper meaning even in the virtual context of email. It felt like the positive sense of the Senegalese poli with the same sense of being with, but this time sharing another’s joy. Again, it seems deeper to me than our limp, wow, that’s great. English seems to have a paucity of words for celebrating with someone. The thanks of quyana go to deeper more rooted place of togetherness. When Yu’pik elder Katherine stands up in church and says (and sometimes sings) her quyana to God, she is witnessing to her daily experience of God’s loving Presence.

Someone told me recently that in their family they say poor baby for hard times. Without any sarcastic inflection they simply say they need or notice that someone needs a poor baby when things go awry in their life. It solves nothing except acknowledging the difficulty and being with the person who holds the dilemma in their lives. My own wise daughter told me once that she realized that the phrase, that sounds really hard, works in a multitude of circumstances. And keeps her from her tendency either to fix a friend or judge someone for their foolish behavior.

All of this makes me realize that the shape and meaning of words brings shape and meaning to my life, to all of our lives together and alone. Or words not known or spoken limit the ways that we are with ourselves or with others. I wonder, can we live into what we say or can we only say something about how we live?

In AK---or Not

All that has happened so far is nothing less than what is needed for all that is to be.

Outside my office window four men are taking shingles off of my neighbor’s roof. They are working hard and quickly, removing first the old so that they can add the new. They take a pitchfork and poke under the pieces, pull them up with gloved hands and throw the pieces in the waiting truck. The roof is steep and peaked but they walk easily and quickly. In just a couple of hours the roof is laid bare to its tar paper covering.

I’m working too this morning, sending messages to students in Illinois and Colorado, Rhode Island and California, Minnesota and Missouri. I’ve placed them into small groups where they will meet one another in virtual communities. I’ve reminded them of deadlines, checked on rosters, made appointments to see people on Skype. My work moves across the distance that separates me from much of the rest of the world. But it does not lessen the actual space. This fall I find myself struggling with living on the great land island of Alaska—so vast, so incredibly beautiful and yet so isolated.

Something of me longs to be like those roofers who know the immediate work that is here in this place—in Anchorage, Alaska—tearing the roof off of a log house—and finding it to be enough. I know that true Alaskans do not yearn for the outside but find the satisfaction of the work to be done here on the inside.

An Alaskan friend told me that she and her husband thought for a long time that their stay in Alaska was temporary, that they would surely move to Washington sometime soon. But the sometime soon never happened and they raised children and now grandchildren who are native Alaskans. Now they wouldn’t think of living anywhere else, knowing that their place here inside is home. “When my husband and I realized that we were not going anywhere but staying here for good,” she said, “our attitude shifted not just about where we were, but who we were.”

This week my sister is visiting Alaska. And I talk to her as if I am someone who has been here always. I warn her about the mudflats and the bore tide. I tell her about the moose that I see on my bike rides on the Chester Creek trail and the Tony Knowles. I talk about the relentless light of summer and the slow lessening of light as the sun hangs lower in the sky during the five hours it is out at all. I name for her the five types of salmon as we watch the reds travel slowly upstream, and the tired maluksuks find a resting place.

But this is a second language affected for the sake of the one who visits. Impressive in its own way, it says nothing about where my soul rests. Even though I wear the kuspuk and it fits me well, it is an outer garment. It says something about where I am, but not so much yet about who I am. Like the salmon who swim upstream, l fight a current that pulls me backward at the same time that I want to move forward and find a place to give birth to what will be.

The Yup'ik have a story mask called the Snow-maker, Qanifciurtaa. The mask had a small figure on it and was placed in the center of the qusgiq (the large men's building) suspended by a cord. Above the three foot fgiure were three bentwood hopps with white feather of various sizes representing snow. During the dance the song leader would pull the figure up and down to the rhythm of the drums. The Snow-maker symbolically rose from the ground up to the powers of wind and sky above, bringing good snow.

Someone please tell the Snow-maker to stop
bid him come down.
The snow has already covered the earth enough
for sweet plump berries
in the late summer.
If I cannot have spring in April
at least let me have
break-up
melt
mud
water
that flows
and pools.
Someone please tell the Snowmaker he must
cease from dancing
silence the drums
tell the tuunri--
powers in the sky,
water, clouds, wind
sun, moon--to agree
No more snow in April.

Assignment: Half-Empty/Half-Full
"All of life has emptiness at its core; it is the quiet hollow reed through which the wind of God blows and makes the music that is our life" (from Sabbath by Wayne Mueller)

I used to have a postcard with a figure drawn on the front, sitting at a desk her head down on the surface of the desk. Underneath was written: "When you come down to it, I'm just not up to it." I remember and sometimes still feell the sense of myself faced by pressures insisting that enoughis not enough. I kept that card as emblematic of myself until it seemed senselessly depressing.

The half empty stare at the drain not seeing its solidity but the way the water can be sucked to an unknown bottom. They are stingy not out of hatefulness, but out of survival of the least. For if this money is given away, or this idea passed along, this possession shared ot this love offered then there will be even less and inevitable loss of heart or mind or life. Sometimes mistaken for meanness, instead their meagerness hides the deathly certainty of the half empty to being depeleted, destitute and desolate. Living in a world of fear, anxiety and restless agitation their search for rest is elusive because rst demands a loosening of the grip, a letting go, an opening of the hands and heart and mind to possibilites beyond the half empty glasses.

When they took the bandages and cast off of my leg, I stepped into a half emptytub of water after months of not bathing and it seemed so full, with water all around me, more than half full, full to overflowing. I felt an odd fuzzy fear as I settled my body into the warm water wondering if this half full tub was just too much. But I never forgot the way my body settled into the water's depth and relaxed into its warm, comforting surrounding presence.

The half full who have seen the bottom have no need for defensiveness because there is nothing left ot defend. out of what is seen and unseen comes gerosity without demand, plety without singeness, exuberance without temperance, fulfillment without envy. Not fearing rest, the half full relax into laughter and love--the joie de vivre of blessing. The truly half full may still fear emptiness but choose to embrace its presence not as threat but unexpected spaciousness--enough and more. Emptiness now not a tomb of sorrow, but emptiness reborn into the ein sof of God Everlasting--a place completely full and yet utterly empty.

Another lifestyle change

I have a writing group here in Anchorage and most of the members are much older than me. Which is saying something because I'm already 58 years old, as you can read from my profile (do they have to add the astrological sign?!) Anyway, the oldest member of the group, and one of the sharpest and best writers is ninety-two. I know this because we share the same birthday and celebrated together this year. The new picture on my profile is a picture of me at the party. I have another great one of Arne (my birthday twin.)

This week's writing assignment was from Arne as well. We were each given a phrase to write about and either use the phrase in our writing or hide it and have everyone guess. My phrase was "lighting the candle at both ends" a phrase that dates to 1611. But it brought to mind a time more around 1984 (0minous) when my own life was particularly incendiary with so many responsibilties and commitments that I just burned out. As I say in the poem, I only pulled my kids (two then) and my marriage out of the fire. If we all have a false self that masks our true self, I'd have to say that "lighting the candle at both ends" qualifies in my life. Here in Alaska though, I'm much more inner than outer directed and that is good for someone who is attracted to this false self. But it is hard because my outer commitments are not like children who are around all the time, but things that are in the future, but no less real. And I have to find the motivation in myself to follow through on things that are happening in the middle of January but will be here sooner rather than later.

I don't want to "burn the candle at both ends" anymore. Wierd sort of image with no place for the candle except destruction. Maybe what I am after is to be a lit candle with a wick at my center that is the Spirit's indwelling. But I don't feel that so much today. No, not so much.

Alaska winter reflection

So unexpectedly I find myself in the big wide open where

Winter is not just a season to be endured but a state of mind, a way of living

Each day the sun ebbs and then recedes sooner and more quickly than the day before

leaving behind the pitchy black of night and a deep, profound cold.

Still and always, it is the Alaska sky, the space above me that amazes.

Just this afternoon, the sun, a great orange orb refused to go gentle into the night

without setting the whole sky on fire,

even after the sun's face fell down, slipping below the horizon.

And now this morning the sun shyly insinuates itself behind the mountains

Luminescence kindling toward a sun not yet there, still to arise.

I met a woman who lived in Palmer, just an hour from Anchorage but up on a mountain plateau surrounded by even larger mountains. Both of us were enjoying the sunset together when she said that living there is not only about beautiful sunsets. "You know," she said, "the wind blows so strong up here that you have to be careful. Last winter when the wind was blowing and there was ice on the doorstep, I pulled up to the house with my six year old twins. I managed to get into the house with a sack of groceries, but I forgot to tell my sons to remain in the car until I could come and get them. So together they jumped out of the car and blew away! Yes, just like tumbleweed they blew around to the other side of the house and down the gravel driveway. They were pretty beat-up with cuts and bruises, crying and all. But they are fine now." Who knew it was even possible for children (other than Dorothy from Kansas) to blow away?