37days

What will it take?

Today, I feel the claustrophobic feeling I had when 9/11 occurred, when Katrina hit, when the tsunami swallowed people up, when I first toured Auschwitz as a teenager. It is the weight of knowing, the knowing we must all hold. Once we know, we can't not-know.

If my town were in Myanmar, given the new estimates of 78,000 dead, we would all of us be dead--the nice man at the Piggly Wiggly, the morally indignant dentist, the sisters who own a cupcake shop, and everyone else here. Not to mention the 56,000 still missing.

And if my town were in Sichuan province, most of us--dead.

And so, we look for what we can do. Perhaps the most significant thing we can do from where we are is  to write "Myanmar" on a slip of paper and write "Sichuan" on a slip of paper, drop them in our god box, and send an outpouring of love to all those who have lost their families, who have lost the nice man at the corner market, the morally indignant dentist, the sisters who own a noodle shop, their whole incredibly meaningful, special, fragile, beautifully mundane, human worlds.

If Prayer Would Do It

If prayer would do it
I’d pray.

If reading esteemed thinkers would do it
I’d be halfway through the Patriarchs.

If discourse would do it
I’d be sitting with His Holiness
every moment he has free.

If contemplation would do it
I’d have translated the Periodic Table
to hermit poems, converting
matter to spirit.

If even fighting would do it
I’d already be a blackbelt.

If anything other than love could do it
I’ve done it already
and left the hardest for last.

- Stephen Levine

Thanks, Lee, for sending the perfect poem for this day.

She had me at "cow town"

Oh, my.

I love to shop on Etsy. Real artists making art. I've made a conscious commitment to buy handmade.

My dream is to create a small shop at 37day.net that will include only handmade objects that relate to my blog and book (did I mention I've written a book?), so in service to that vision, I've been exploring Etsy to find artists whose work I love, then asking if they are interested in creating 37days art. (Are you interested? Please provide a link to your work in the comments!)

One day last week, I found beautiful tiles with words on them. My very favorite color. I wrote to ask.

Rachel wrote back. Turns out, that the very day I wrote to her was Day 37 of a big life change. She was struck by the synchronicity. So was I. Said she'd love to create some prototypes of tiles with the six practices for intentional living that are outlined in LIFE IS A VERB.

When she sent the photos of them, I burst into tears.

There is something about seeing art made from your words that defies description. I felt that way, too, when all the amazing art flowed in from readers around the world to illustrate the book.

I loved the tiles. Wanted to tile my kitchen so I'd see the six practices every morning when I wake up and stumble in there to make coffee. Wanted to tile my shower so I could meditate on them in the steam. Wanted to create a path of them in my garden. Wanted to carry them all in my handbag so when people irritate me as they are wont to do sometimes AND ESPECIALLY THIS WEEK FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON IS THERE A PLANET IN RETROGRADE?, I could reach in and feel the outline of the words and calm myself right down. I sent the photographs to Mr Brilliant:

"It must feel pretty good seeing your words incised in something (that isn't a tombstone). AND HEY:  speaking of tombstones, looks like she lives in the city where Oliver Loving is buried--remembered, Goodnight-Loving Trail? It was the promise Charlie G made to Oliver to carry his rotting corpse back to TX that inspired old Larry to write Lonesome Dove. So Oliver's trail ended there--she could probably drive there in 15 minutes and put a pebble on his grave if she was so inclined. Your potter lives a few miles from where the trail began for one of your favorite books. Pretty poetic. You should share with her--its a good story."

I think Larry McMurtry's novel, Lonesome Dove, is a Great American Novel. In fact, Mr Brilliant is working on a book about the series of McMurtry novels that are connected to Lonesome Dove. That's how much we like it.

I sent his story to the potter. "Yes!" she wrote back. "We DO live near where Charlie Goodnight is buried - at the Greenwood Cemetery - AND we live off of Greenwood Road. AND Lonesome Dove is one of OUR favorite books too - at LEAST once a year, we get out our Lonesome Dove CD set and watch the entire thing yet again.  We know it by heart. AND -  MY husband's name is Larry.  SO many parallels.  It is Synchronicity and  Serendipity."

She continued: "When I first read the book, Lonesome Dove, I was trail riding about once a month, living in Austin, and I grieved for an entire month when I finished it.  For Gus, AND for the book itself, that it was over.  I was so profoundly moved by that story and completely taken and emotionally involved with all of the  very colorful characters - of course, especially Gus McCrae.  And now I live here - at least 20 years later."

Synchronicity and Serendipity. Her beautiful Life is a Verb tiles will be available for sale (either individually or in a set of 6) soon in the 37 days shop. Do you like them as much as I do?

Poets teach us that darkness is a gift

It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things. -Stephen Mallarme

This one is for Trudy.

Before you read today's poem, I want you to do something for me. I want you to find a small box in your house or office, something with a lid. Perhaps even something you love--a trinket made by a child or given to you by your grandmother or that you bought in Sri Lanka that time you went to Pita Kotte. Or a shoe box or the little plastic container that strawberries come in. All are equally valid and good and right. I'll wait right here while you find it. I'll even wait while you eat all the strawberries so you can use their box.

Now that you have the box, I want you to write one word on a tiny slip of paper. That word is Trudy.

I want you to fold up that tiny slip of paper and put it in your box with a prayer, a mojo, a lighting of a candle, a dance, a bite from a Twinkie, whatever you do to make wishes come true, do it. Every day for a month at 9:00 a.m. wherever you are, if you don't mind, take out Trudy's name and read it silently to yourself, moving your lips as you read. Then tuck it away again. We're going to will this woman healthy again, yes we are. And we can do it. You know we can.

Thanks to my friend Jodi for introducing me to the concept of a god box. That's what you've just created for Trudy. You can put other generous wishes and dreams and needs in there, too. I'll see you tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m. Let's have faith in the darkness, in the night.

A poem from one of my very favorite poets, for Trudy:

You Darkness

You darkness from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence out the world,
for the fire makes a circle
for everyone
so that no one sees you anymore.

But darkness holds it all:
the shape and the flame,
the animal and myself,
how it holds them,
all powers, all sight -

and it is possible: its great strength
is breaking into my body.

I have faith in the night.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Welcome to 37days...

At some point in our lives, we’ll all just have thirty-seven days to live. Maybe that day is today. Maybe not.

There are new, interesting eyes (and, presumably, whole faces) peeking into 37days recently—many as a result of this site being newly noted as a TypePad Featured Blog.

Thanks, TypePad! What a wonderful surprise and honor...

Welcome. Look around. Poke into the archives. I hope you’ll find something of interest and, perhaps, of meaning to you and your life. Why 37days? That answer can be found here.

Arriving to a blog in progress is sometimes like entering a parlor, late, after everyone else has already arrived and is deep in a heated discussion, a conversation too hot for them to pause and catch you up, just as Kenneth Burke imagined in his gorgeous metaphor of an unending conversation. “If fact,” he writes, “the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar… However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.”

Be generous and love more

When I started writing LIFE IS A VERB, the first book to emerge from these pages of 37days, I started noticing patterns, like all of life is a pattern.

What were the organizing patterns around which these essays fell? What lessons were they teaching me?

As I sat and read them and pondered what it takes to live with more intention, and as I followed the threads from these words, I discovered that there were six core practices that ground my (and perhaps our?) leading more mindful, intentional, and authentic lives, one of which is celebrated today in the U.S.--and that is to Love More. It is related to another of those core actions: Be Generous. And so, on this Valentine's Day, below all the red boxes of candy, beyond those roses, and even behind the two little stuffed bears with magnetic hearts who hug like they are wacky out of control when they get too close to each other--underneath all that, just be generous and love more.

I'm tempted, always, to celebrate Valentine's Day with a poem by You Know Who, as I have done in the past. Perhaps one of my favorites, a true love poem, or even valentines from (gasp) another poet, or these hearts made of beets, one of the finest vegetables in our galaxy or, at the very least, in our zip code.

But I think I'll simplify this year. Let's just all walk on our tiptoes, this heart day.

Walking on Tiptoe

Long ago we quit lifting our heels

like the others—horse, dog, and tiger—

though we thrill to their speed

as they flee. Even the mouse

bearing the great weight of a nugget

of dog food is enviably graceful.

There is little spring to our walk,

we are so burdened with responsibility,

all of the disciplinary actions

that have fallen to us, the punishments,

the killings, and all with our feet

bound stiff in the skins of the conquered.

But sometimes, in the early hours,

we can feel what it must have been like

to be one of them, up on our toes,

stealing past doors where others are sleeping,

and suddenly able to see in the dark.

-Ted Kooser

[The six practices?  Say yes, Be Generous, Speak up, Love more, Trust Yourself, and Slow down...]