Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • Bridging the Tragic Gap

      I spoke with a friend who is experiencing some PTSD after all the extremist action and rhetoric of the last few years. I don’t have anything to offer but support and faith in progress. Words, really, backed by optimism. But I know I don’t see the world the same way that someone targeted by bigotry and hate does, nor do I feel the gut punch of lost hope and lack of opportunity that the marginalized and enraged feel. I tend to reside in the middle, seeing the possibility of a future where the gaps between us disappear. But the cold reality is that won’t happen in my lifetime. And there lies the tragic gap.

      “By the tragic gap I mean the gap between the hard realities around us and what we know is possible — not because we wish it were so, but because we’ve seen it with our own eyes…
      I call it “tragic” because it’s a gap that will never close, an inevitable flaw in the human condition. No one who has stood for high values — love, truth, justice — has died being able to declare victory, once and for all. If we embrace values like those, we need to find ways to stand in the gap for the long haul, and be prepared to die without having achieved our goals…
      That means we need to change our calculus about what makes an action worth taking and get past our obsession with results. – Parker Palmer, The Sun interview, If Only We Would Listen

      There is a lot to chew on in this 2012 interview, but it’s Parker’s concept of the tragic gap that took hold. For those of us who fancy ourselves bridge-builders, it resonates. For we fill the gap with love and possibility, only to see the divide grow as more people embrace the extremes on either side. Knowing what’s possible and how far we seem to be from it are frustrating at best, tragic at worst.

      So what are we to do? Change our calculus and not obsess with results? Modify expectations and chase the small victories that get us incrementally closer? You see the friction in the world as the two sides of the gap pull away from each other and wonder if bridge-building is even possible. Seen from the lens of history progress is clear, but we never quite get all the way there before the gaps seems to grow again. But is this a trick of the mind at work, just so much amplified noise? The optimism in me believes we’re closer than we sound like we are. With much work still to do.

      “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

      It’s a tough blow to realize we will never be bridge the tragic gap in our lifetimes, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Seeing our own unarmed truth for what it is and doing our small part offers tangible, incremental progress. Each of us, small links in the chain, reaching across the chasm to find a link to a better future. Beyond us, but out there waiting.

    • Freeze and Thaw

      In the dark time of the year.
      Between melting and freezing
      The soul’s sap quivers.
      – T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

      There are more famous lines from this poem, but this is the time of sap buckets and lines run between maple trees in New England, so forgive me for straying from the popular. For these are the days of freezing and thawing – a confused mix of awakening and nature turning a cold shoulder on us. A reminder that warmer days are coming but we aren’t there just yet.

      And so it is with the vaccine and a pandemic that hasn’t quite finished its business with us, despite casual disregard and letting up of guards. We aren’t quite there, but surely we’re closer. So persevere; for we’ll get through the darkness, together in our isolation.

      Eliot wrote Little Gidding during the darkest days of the Blitz, set it aside in dissatisfaction and returned to it again to publish it during slightly brighter days in 1942. Who would ever think of 1942 as brighter days? Someone who lived through the Blitz of 1940-41 I suppose.

      So who are we to complain about a turn to colder days just as the sun began to warm us once again? Who are we to complain about wearing a mask for just a bit longer? Are we that precious and self-absorbed? Focus on the brighter days ahead, but stay the course in the meantime.

      As the snow and ice retreats for another season, the mud rises to meet our favorite footwear in a cold, gooey grip. The warmest days bring swirls of bugs celebrating their brief dance with life. And we, the comfortable masses, find reasons to complain about the mud and bugs and even the miraculously fast release of vaccines to the world that just seem a bit too slow. For all the joy of thaw, we seem to prefer the angst of freeze.

      Spring is upon us, despite it all. The sap flows with each freeze and thaw, and drips slowly into buckets. Drop by drop, the buckets fill. It’s the only way, really. You can’t very well cut the tree in half to pour out the sap. Not if you hope to have another season anyway. No, progress is slow that way. And offers lessons in patience and perseverance. Of going with the flow and staying the course.

    • Something More

      “The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.” Neil Gaiman

      This rather cheery quote by Gaiman prompts a challenge of sorts from me. For making something isn’t what makes the world brighter, making something you care about making is what brightens the world. For in the making of something in such a way you honor the world with your contribution.

      As Gaiman rightly points out, we’re lovingly placing something that wasn’t there before out in the world for it to embrace. Will it fly or get lost in the noise? It’s not up to us to decide. It’s up to us to create it and set it free. And then to get back to the business of building another beacon.

      The best of our work becomes accretive rather than reductive. Look around, there’s plenty of people creating hateful, mean-spirited work that divides and diminishes the world. But not us, no: we offer something more. Something that resonates across the table and across time. For the very best work becomes timeless.

      So what makes something timeless? I believe it’s the deep connection between two people that your work represents. Paint placed just so on canvas. Architecture that stirs the heart generations after the last stones were laid. Words that transcend the author or poet and connect one soul to another. This is what brightens the world. This is the shining soul beacon of the artist that keeps hope alive, like a Fresnel lens lights the distance in a turbulent dark sea:

      “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
      – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      “Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?”
      – Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

      “If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.”
      – Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

      “This above all: to thine own self be true,
      And it must follow, as the night the day,
      Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
      – William Shakespeare, Hamlet

      All words across time, offering a path through the darkness in the world. Offering hope and direction and illumination. This is something more. And this is our opportunity too. Great artists are ambassadors to the world, bridge builders to the future, and infinite soul connectors. That’s something to aspire to.

    • What You Are Not

      In order to arrive at what you are not
      You must go through the way in which you are not.
      And what you do not know is the only thing you know
      And what you own is what you do not own
      And where you are is where you are not.
      – T.S. Eliot, East Coker

      This is the way: we march on through the unknown, discovering the world and ourselves in each step. That’s part of getting older and, too infrequently, wiser. We don’t know our identity until we’ve reached beyond that which we’ve done before. Life is the sorting it all out part in between steps. Knowing with certainty that this thing is not my thing. But maybe the next thing is… or maybe not.

      I know I don’t have all the answers, but I do know that the more we learn and grow and experience, the more we recognize ourselves in the patterns and energy around us. The more we encounter that which is not us, the more we seek another way. Life is learning to navigate the channel even when it isn’t clearly marked. You experience a few bumps along the way but you don’t sink unless you’re reckless.

      If we have any freedom at all eventually we stumble into uncharted territory. Some turn right around and go back to where they came from, trusting the familiar over the uncertain. But life changes around you whether you’re a willing participant or not. So embrace the things you don’t know and revel in the discovery.

      You can’t possibly know what being a parent is like until you’ve had children. And you can’t really understand until you’ve nudged them through each stage of their own lives. I say this knowingly, but also knowing what I don’t know as they grow beyond the previously familiar. And so we learn together and embrace the unknown.

      This is just the next step in the journey for each of us. We all reached the pandemic and experienced the changes it made in us. Some grew, others crawled to darker places. But we were all transformed over twelve months and will be again as we rediscover the changes in those we once thought we knew. If it wasn’t the pandemic it would have been graduations or career changes or major life events. Change is part of the game.

      Where you were is not where you are now. And so it follows that where you are is where you are not going to be soon enough. Accept that for what it is and step boldly into the unknown. For there you’ll find yourself.

    • Trust Our Heaviness

      How surely gravity’s law,
      strong as an ocean current,
      takes hold of the smallest thing
      and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

      Each thing—
      each stone, blossom, child —
      is held in place.
      Only we, in our arrogance,
      push out beyond what we each belong to
      for some empty freedom.

      If we surrendered
      to earth’s intelligence
      we could rise up rooted, like trees.

      Instead we entangle ourselves
      in knots of our own making
      and struggle, lonely and confused.

      So like children, we begin again
      to learn from the things,
      because they are in God’s heart;
      they have never left him.

      This is what the things can teach us:
      to fall,
      patiently to trust our heaviness.
      Even a bird has to do that
      before he can fly.
      by Rainer Maria Rilke, How Surely Gravity’s Law

      It’s been a long time since I posted an entire poem, but Rilke’s demands a full reading. And if I were bolder I might just leave it there by itself, instead of injecting my own commentary on the world. But a blog (to me) necessarily demands contribution not simply reposting. And so my own words dare to follow Rilke’s, reaching for a place at the table.

      The key word in the poem is surrendered: to earth’s intelligence, to God’s heart if you will, to our own heaviness. You realize your imperfection and embrace it. In doing so you recognize the entanglements and struggles in others. You accept them for what they are as well. And learn to trust others and most of all your own voice.

      You reach a point in life where you let go of it all and to stop worrying about place and whether you’ve earned it. You stop worrying about everything, really. The work remains, but the will is stronger. You’ve rooted yourself to things tangible and true and begin to rise up.

      To push out beyond. Grounded. And anchored so, we begin to fly.

    • Incrementally Better

      “A mistake repeated more than once is a decision” – Paulo Coelho

      “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.” – Richard Rohr

      When you live long enough you start to lose some of the hard edge that once defined you. That sarcasm you voice to others was nothing like the self-talk you once gave yourself. Quite simply, you stop worrying about the chase for perfection and start living with who you are.

      The Coelho quote above once tortured me for the patterns of decisions I’d made over time that didn’t help me. Eating the wrong food, opting out of exercise, not making the call you know you needed to make, not following through when you should have, and then not following through the next time either. Decisions made, not mistakes. This quote can eat you alive if you let it.

      And then I stumbled upon the Rohr quote, and recognized the incremental improvement in myself over time. When things aren’t going well in some area that self-talk amplifies the worst traits, making it more of who you are. Once you’ve recognized and completely own past decisions, what do you do with them now?

      You work to reduce their impact in your life. You get better each day at the things you once avoided. Slowly, surely, you incrementally grow better and the bad shrinks to memories of the way you once were. Still a part of you, always, but not who you are.

      Freud would rightly point to the Id, Ego and Superego at this point in the game. As you get a couple of years older you recognize each for what they are inside you. When you’re young and wild you run with one voice (Id) and just eat the chips with abandon. A bit later another voice (Ego) will start pointing towards the weight loss goals on your list and tell you to stop eating those chips. The Superego makes you feel guilty for eating the chips or proud for not eating them and working out. (This moment of pop-psychology brought to you by Pringles).

      Today, I’m just trying to be a bit better than I was yesterday so that tomorrow I’m proud of the progress made. It’s not that the Superego cuts me more slack, more that I choose not to wallow in self-criticism. The best way to diminish that critical voice is to show it progress towards the person you’re trying to become. Because that identity you’re aiming for is impressive. And even if you don’t reach it, “close enough” is still pretty good.

    • The Newfield Covered Bridge

      The 1853 Newfield covered bridge is a survivor. Wooden bridges were usually torn down when they grew old. New York State once boasted of 250 such bridges, now there are only 24. And Newfield’s is the only remaining covered bridge in Tompkins County, New York. As with any survival tale, it comes with a story of perseverance and a battle of beliefs.

      If you aren’t from places where they build such things, you may wonder about the reason for covered bridges. It was simply a matter of economics. Wood was plentiful, but you couldn’t realistically leave a wooden deck exposed to the elements in northern climates without having to close and replace parts of it every few years. So the builders would simply put a roof over it. It was a lot cheaper to replace a roof every twenty years than the bridge itself every few years. And once you had a winner, other communities would copy the design and soon these timber tunnels were commonplace in the northeast United States.

      But soon steel bridges were the rage, quickly replacing older wooden bridges as they aged. It was another case of economics – a steel bridge would last far longer than any wooden bridge, and could be built longer and wider – allowing for more cars and taller trucks. Progress trumped timeless beauty. And so the wooden bridges were taken down one-by-one as they grew weary.

      And then the engineers came to Newfield in 1969 and declared that this bridge too would be replaced with modern steel and concrete. And a woman named Marie Musser said “Over my dead body” and dug in her heels to fight progress. She and her husband Grant fought the county over the fate of the bridge and eventually won the right to preserve it.

      Three years later they oversaw the restoration of the bridge, and again in 1998 when it was reinforced and raised to support modern vehicular traffic. And so it was that the Newfield Covered Bridge survived and today looks as good as she ever did. It’s now the oldest active bridge of its kind in the area. Driving through it feels like time travel. In a way it is.

      Marie Musser died the year after that 1998 restoration, and her husband Grant died the year after that in 2000. Their old bridge survived them both, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 25, 2000. I imagine they both knew in their last days that their bridge would make it. I hope so anyway.

      And this story informs. What are we willing to fight for, as the Muller’s fought for this old neglected bridge, resurrecting it to a sparkling example of the possibility of purpose? What is our own contribution to the future? It only takes one of us to stand up and say “Not on my watch.” If the Newfield Covered Bridge tells us anything, it’s that we are the bridge between the past and future. And where there’s a will there’s a way.

    • The Eternal Makes You Urgent

      “Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent.” – John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

      O’Donohue picked the name of his book with purpose. “Anam cara”, or “soul mate”, suggests that the timeless wisdom buried within might offer the kind of guidance you would get from a cherished friend or spouse. Google it and you’ll find coffee mugs and spiritual retreats and other such things. It would also be a great boat name. And it stirs something in you whether you have one or long for one.

      This idea of the soul awakening isn’t new to us. If this awakening happens at all, it might not be thought of as soul, but as passion or purpose or calling. Some of us steer clear of words like soul. It almost feels intrusive for me to be writing about such things. Not skating my lane, you might say. But I understand eternity, and urgency, and this idea that the things that matter most to us require immediate attention. For our time in eternity isn’t the moments on this side of the turf.

      My own urgency started burning inside of me when I started writing again. It served as a catalyst for exploration and deeper thinking. And when you have it yourself you quickly see the urgency in others. Hikers hiking every available moment, landlocked sailors scrambling to be ready for the warmer days ahead, small business owners pouring every bit of available energy into standing up something special, artists creating brilliant mirrors that reflect back on the rest of us. Urgency senses its kind out in the wild.

      The trick is finding and awakening that soul. And you only find it by trying and doing, tossing aside and finding something else to do. If you’re lucky you find it quickly and embrace it. Or you see it and follow a different path, only to have it pull at you until you finally listen or die embittered at the path you took instead. That’s no way to begin eternity. Is it?

    • We Must Be Still and Still Moving

      Old men ought to be explorers
      Here and there does not matter
      We must be still and still moving
      Into another intensity
      For a further union, a deeper communion
      Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
      The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
      Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
      – T.S. Eliot, East Coker

      Beginning at the end as I do in quoting this masterpiece is admittedly the easy path, but seems appropriate given the context. I’m roughly where TS Eliot was when he wrote East Coker – middle of life (hopefully). Or maybe just past the middle. But who’s counting? Days are days, and here and there does not matter. Time will tell, as it always does.

      This blogger has settled into this rhythm of still and still moving. Moments of quiet contemplation, deep reading and exploration interspersed too infrequently with mountaintop adventures and faraway places. Thoughts of past exploration and schemes of future possibility fill the mind, and are betrayed by more than a few posts. We aren’t sharks, always moving, but humans immersed in life in all its complexity. The thoughtful wrestle with the same ideas, the masses distract themselves with media and games.

      Old folks ought to be explorers. And us not-so-old folks too. We ought to be out seeing the world, exploring vast waters and rounding bends. Bridging gaps in language and understanding and toasting the folly of it all with old and newfound friends. Catching a sideways glance and throwing it back. Dancing in celebration and settling into deep conversations. We will again, we see that now. Where will you go? What will you do with the time you’re given?

      This human journey leads to another, more intense place, or perhaps merely to stillness. Who are we to know, really? Do you choose logic or faith? Which is the real leap? Our path is one of tapping our potential, to struggle and explore the darkest and brightest days alike. To make the best we can of ourselves. To turn it all over and understand where we came from. This seems to me the way, for the end is the beginning. In some ways, we’ve known that all along, haven’t we?

      Beginning

    • A Visit with Benjamin Church

      A seasonably warm Sunday lured me from a visit with friends in Mattapoiset, Massachusetts to Little Compton, Rhode Island to finally meet Benjamin Church. Church was appointed Captain of the first Ranger force in America in 1675 by the Governor Josiah Winslow of Plymouth Colony. He was famous for being the guy leading friendly Native Americans that finally killed Metacomet (King Philip). His greatest innovation was in imitation: adopting the Native American style of fighting to allow his forces to survive and find success in battles with the French and hostile native population.

      What made Church honorable was his respect for the native population and his desire to coexist with them. While many around him were inclined to encroach and eventually push aside native tribes, Church wanted to coexist and work with them. This led to recruiting friendly tribes to assist in King Philip’s War and in later battles with the Abenaki and French in Acadia. War is a dirty business, and there was plenty of atrocity committed on both sides, but Church seemed to live by a code of honor untarnished by historical perspective.

      Today Church lies in rest in a quiet triangle-shaped graveyard in the middle of Little Compton with his wife buried next to him. A monument honoring him stands at his feet, and someone glued an Army Ranger tab just above his engraved name. That engraving is fading away now, barely legible after 300 years of exposure to the elements. If you asked a thousand people in New England who Benjamin Church was, maybe one or two would know. Time fades memory faster than it does engraved stone.

      Here lyeth interred the [body]
      of the Honorable
      Col. Benjamin Church, Esq.,
      who departed this life, January 17, 1717-8 in
      the 78 yeare of his age.’

      On a beautiful Sunday afternoon I was the only visitor, but a group of teenagers were playing basketball nearby. I wondered if they knew the story of the soldier buried nearby? Does their local school teach children about the war that happened right across the river, or about the man quietly marking eternity in a faded grave in the middle of town? I hope so.

      Fading history