37days

Retreat to move forward

Sometimes in the madness of our lives what we really need is a quiet space on 63 acres of rolling land in the mountains of North Carolina, a moment to look at our life's stories, to learn from them, and to re-story ourselves.

I'll hold only one public retreat this year, from September 26-28, 2008, near Asheville, North Carolina. I would love for you to be there. It won't be the same without you.

Participants will be the first to receive my new book, LIFE IS A VERB, which won't hit bookstore shelves until October.

We'll explore six conditions for intentional, mindful living as a small learning community in a beautiful space. We'll eat organic vegetarian food cooked on site for us by a Kitchen Goddess. We'll laugh. We'll leave refreshed and connected and more.

Information is here, including details on our 2008 full scholarship for a single parent to attend.

Unfortunately, we are limited to only 20 participants, so early registration is advised as participation is on a first-come, first-reserved, basis.

Ask for what you want

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. –Mahatma Gandhi

Months ago, poet Mary Oliver was giving a reading at a local university. I like Mary Oliver’s work, and in some cases, I even love it. Not like I love the poetry of some other poets—okay, just one, a man who shall remain nameless lest I be entered again into The Poet Stalker Database—but even so there are phrases and moments in Mary Oliver’s poetry that Speak To Me and Me Alone. Or perhaps not Me Alone, given the hundreds of other people who showed up at her reading. I love it when poets get rock star welcomes.

My friend Donna went with me. It turns out that Donna is a big Mary Oliver fan. We sat on the second row, waiting patiently. “I want you to meet a friend of mine,” Donna said to me as we were all waiting for the reading to start, a reading delayed by Mary Oliver’s desire to wait for her friend, Coleman Barks, to arrive. “I especially want Coleman to hear my poems about my dog,” Mary Oliver said, explaining the delay and asking our forbearance. And who could blame her? Well, my lord, if my friend were Coleman Barks and I had a new dog, I’d want to wait too, I thought to myself, so off we went to meet Donna’s friend who had just arrived.

I could barely focus on what Donna was saying to me, or her friend, either. I know I’ve written many times—and very recently!—about simplicity and not owning a lot of things and the evils of rampant materialism and how things keep us from being free and who we are—but honestly, you weren’t there. You cannot know how utterly and completely perfect that woman’s scarf was for me. My life would be complete, I knew in a hot blinding instant, if that scarf were around my neck and not hers. “That scarf is so gorgeous,” I gushed, plotting how to pull one end of it, twirl her out of it like a mummy, and then run screaming up the aisle for the exit. Screw Mary Oliver and her precious Rumi translating friend. I would run like the wind with that scarf blowing behind me, out into the dark, dark night.

Follow your desire lines

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the park where we play, there are nicely laid out concrete paths, leading from the swings to the picnic tables, from the castle to the soccer field, from the water fountain to the bridge, from here to there, from A to B.

And then there are the real paths, the dirt ones, the ones that shoot out from the concrete to connect where people really go, to memorialize the real actions of children playing, to acknowledge the real patterns of living, of human purpose, of some honest destination.

Find your saxophone

"Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it." -Joseph Campbell

If you’ve read 37 days before, you might have picked up on my love affair with actor Johnny Depp. Beautiful, talented Johnny. Quixotic, funny, odd, quirky Johnny. Did I mention beautiful? Ooh-la-la.

What can I say? There’s no defending it. I won’t pretend it makes sense, this long-distance obsession from North Carolina to France, this enormous, smothering, consuming disdain for that little fragile wispy twig of a French blonde he keeps taking to awards shows and having children with for some unimaginable reason. Why, I could take her out in the blink of an eye, the bat of a more well-nourished eyelash, were I the least bit inclined toward violence, which - of course - I am not, having attended a Quaker college (whose football team was paradoxically the "Fighting Quakers," but I digress).

Love unlovable people

“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.” -Albert Schweitzer

It’s easy to love people when they’re lovable. It’s harder when they’re not.

In high school, I learned intricate details of the battles of the Civil War. I knew the U.S. presidents, frontwards and backwards. I could recite the Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, and William Faulkner’s remarks when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. (Alas, age has diminished my photographic memory, once a real asset…). I could wax poetic about the drafting of the U.S. Constitution: who was there, who wasn’t (women, for example, but don’t get me started).

Why did I know so much about history?