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.

Come, let's ride brightly painted inner tubes, you and I

If you have watched TV commercials for the new teeniny microscopic MacBook Air, perhaps you will recognize this song by Yael Naim. Come, let's ride brightly painted inner tubes, play cymbals in a field of sunflowers, sing with a gorgeous Israeli-French accent, and realize that there is a whole big world out there, ripe for the dancing and for the floating. That's real air.

Signal your turns

“People change and forget to tell each other.” – Lillian Hellman

My sweet, old Ford Bronco II has 172,000 miles of history in it, a broken driver’s side door that has to be opened from the outside, a passenger window stuck in one position not quite all the way up to the top (very exciting when it’s snowing), no air conditioning, and a busted driver’s seat that has to be bolstered up with a very large pillow unless you prefer driving in the blessed horizontal. Add the effluvia of a toddler (Cheerios) and a teenager (Napoleon Dynamite temporary tattoos) and you might approximate my Hot Ride. A Lamborghini Murcielago it ain’t.

Remember the green book

“Far away is only far away if you don't go there.” -O. Povo

When my friend Gay tells a story, it comes out like a hot knife through rich butter—all soft, fluid, full, with a drawl that makes you want to move to Mississippi and listen to a big bearded man in a scratchy green sweater read Faulkner out loud to you in a hot room where dust motes float heavy in the air when the faded velvet curtains dare to part ever so slightly against the hot white day.

That’s just to say that the woman can tell a story.

And here’s a childhood remembering of hers that left an image I won’t soon forget.

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.

Leave your base camp

“Money often costs too much.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last Tuesday, I found myself in the unusual position of being at the very top and very bottom of Maslow’s Happy Hierarchy of Needs at exactly the same time.

I can’t recall ever being in two places at one time like this, not since 1986 when I was in Scranton with a young Chinese man who was threatening to defect, watching him waver as he decided between two distinctly different worlds.

Own your typhoon

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” – Alfred Souza

I found that quote by Alfred Souza in the most-read magazine in my mother’s house many, many years ago – way back in the 80s, that wacky decade of my youth now depressingly the subject of retro parties on college campuses (retro! the nerve!)

Being quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, New York Times, Fortune magazine—all that fluff and business blah-blah was nothing compared to the thrill for my mother when my name appeared in print in Reader’s Digest.

Mind the gap

“Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.” –Pema Chodron, In the Gap Between Right and Wrong

In late October of 2003, I spent 12 hours a day at Mission Hospital helping my mom and stepfather reconcile in their minds and hearts and guts and bank accounts the unambiguous death sentence he had been handed, rather abruptly, by a doctor with some significant deficit of Marcus Welby, M.D.’s empathy, manners, and comforting good looks.

Let go of your legal pad

“The best things in life are not things.” – C. & J. Woods

On Sunday, August 28, 2005, as I cleaned Cheerios off the kitchen floor for the 59^th time, and just after the contents of a 12.5 fluid ounce glass bottle of maple syrup were ceremoniously unleashed onto that same floor by a 36” tall human tornado named Tess, I happened to look out the window into my backyard as I held the small of my back and stood up again. And as I straightened to a full stand and saw the orange and yellow lilies and happy zinnias and Tessie’s bright shoes and a swing set and a little red plastic chair on the deck outside—all in just the right light, that bold rounded yellow kind of light like the good people of Cadiz so often enjoy, it hit me in a rush of physical sensation: I have everything I need. I don’t need anything else, ever.

Follow the chili peppers

“how like the bumble bee I am in my work or my life
i see where i want to go
and in my panic
i forget to look for the open window”  -Marybeth Fidler

This week, I had an extraordinary experience with chili peppers, mints, a smoking cook, and big doors.