Sharing Inspiration
Dear friends,
This is a simple offering this week, my gift forward of the inspiration, joy, and yes, even peace that I was given this past week.
On Tuesday of this past week, I drove with one of my dearest friends (another gift, road trips with friends) to DC to a wonderful old synagogue that now is a center and gathering space for the arts called Sixth and I. My longtime writer / speaker / theologian love, Kate Bowler, was here speaking about loneliness, love, turning down the dial on our anxious fear just a little, the way we get sacred moments of vocation throughout our life, forgiveness. So much goodness in that short hour. She came in part to introduce her beautiful new book of poems and blessings called Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day, and she spoke from a combined contemplative and comedic presence on the ways we are always living between the beautiful and the terrible. All of us. Our fragility, she reminded us, is what we all have in common.
700 people were held together under a giant lit dome. And while we were likely there with a multitude of differences, for the hour that we sat and listened and soaked in our fragility, our vulnerability, our mutual connection to a woman who candidly, humorously, and reverantly speaks of the way life is always moving like the arm on the Smokey the Bear fire guage between the green safety of ease and the red danger of a raging fire, we were friends. It’s most often the yellow zone we’re living in, she said, feeling glimmers of green rest and waiting on alert for another fire. She is so cadidly honest and delightfully real and hysterical, that through it all I cried and snort-laughed alongside the rest of the room. For a time, those 700 people and I were kin, not one of us alone.
Toward the end we discovered that Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General of the US, was in the audience as Kate’sbeloved guest. After spending time traveling and speaking to people around the country, Vivek realized that one of the greatest epidemics and health risks of our time is loneliness. He speaks about it regularly now and has written a book of his own called Together: The Healing Power of Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World. Later in the week, Kate’s newest podcast was released along with a special bonus episode in which Dr. Murthy speaks of exactly this and offers a special contemplative practice, an opportunity to remember your best self.
I have found myself recently contemplating borders and the resource of bridges as those things that can cross borders and create connections. So often, I find myself squaring my heart against someone with whom I disagree or against life when I feel overwhelmed and I need something to help me see my way toward a bridge. This bonus epidose with Dr. Murthy, short as it is at 8 minutes, is just what my heart needed this week.
So, friends, I offer you this for today. Simply a passing onward. Inspiration I received that I sense might be a gift to you, too. Take just this bit of time to listen here Bonus Episode of Everything Happens Podcast.
And once you’ve had a chance to consider the way you are a gift to others, take a moment right now to close your eyes and remember someone who is a gift to you. How this person enhances your life, brings humor or a listening presence or strength or hot meals just when you need them. Sit with the gratitude that this person exists and is part of your life. Then send a voicemail or a text or an email and let them know. Just a tiny bridge that might make a big difference in how your heart feels today (or at least right now).
from Kate Bowler’s new book “when you judge everyone” Kids are mucking about on the playground but why hasn't anyone asked who they voted for? Someone needs to tell them that they should already know what to think and who to listen to and whether they deserve compassion if they fall and cry and bleed. I want to love what is good and act justly and love mercy and walk humbly and whatnot. But every soft opionion I've ever had has been calicified into someone else'e certainty. All our bones are on the outside now. Save me from disdain and disgust and algorithms that sort all my friends into demographics. Spur me to swift action when I see broken systems that break people for profit. Quicken my rage when it directs my best efforts, but never, ever let me forget that, our deepest story is love. As I inventory others with ruthless efficiency, sorting through their many, obvious faults, let me pause. Remind me again how we were kids not so long ago before I forged my heart with iron.
Friends, may you have a beautiful, terrible day. And may you know you are not at all alone.