5.27.21 … “Oh, I believe in yesterday…”

“Solvitur Ambulando” – It is solved by walking, Myers Park Baptist Church – Charlotte NC, 2021 Labyrinth Walks:

Earlier today I went to my first in person gathering in 15 months. It was a First Presbyterian book study group that meets on Thursday mornings. This was our last meeting of the spring before we take a summer break.

It was strange, I had to go through my closet and find something I thought was appropriate for a ladies coffee at 10 AM. And then, I had to go and actually interact with people. I truly felt very strange. But it was delightful to see these friends from church in person and enjoy their company for an hour. We joked that we should set each of us up in a grid/box like the Brady Bunch or Hollywood Squares so we could interact like we normally do.

And then a little later today, my son received an Amazon order of some inexpensive John Lennon-esq sunglasses. He made me put them on and took a picture. As you can see, I laughed.

Even stranger, when I returned from modeling the glasses, and I had been watching a movie called “Yesterday,” the next scene actually had John Lennon in it.

Here is a script from the scene:

Jack Malik: John?

John Lennon: Yeah?

Jack Malik: Have you had a happy life?

John Lennon: Very.

Jack Malik: But not successful.

John Lennon: I just said very happy. That means successful. I did a job I enjoyed day after day. Sailed the world. Fought for things I believed in, and won a couple of times. Found a woman I loved. Fought hard to keep her too. Lived my life with her.

Jack Malik: Fought hard for her?

John Lennon: There were complica… Sorry, what’s your name?

Jack Malik: Jack.

John Lennon: There were complications, young Jack. Loss and gain. Prejudice and pride. But it all turned out just fab.

…

John Lennon: How’s your love life?

Jack Malik: Bad. I let her slip away.

John Lennon: Try to get her back. You want a good life? It’s not complicated. Tell the girl you love that you love her. And tell the truth to everyone whenever you can.

[pause]

Jack Malik: Can I give you a hug?

John Lennon: What?

Jack Malik: It’s so good to see you. How old are you?

John Lennon: Seventy-eight.

Jack Malik: Fantastic! You made it to seventy-eight.

John Lennon: You’re a very strange man. But go ahead.

[Jack embraces him]

John Lennon: You need serious psychiatric help.

Jack Malik: Not anymore.

Yesterday Best Movie Quotes – ‘You are the world’s greatest singer-songwriter.’, https://www.moviequotesandmore.com/yesterday-best-movie-quotes/

And now I am at the labyrinth. As soon as I got out of my car, I noticed the daylilies in bloom next to the walkway to the entrance to the Cornwell Center. I had to take a picture. And then I noticed the oak leaf hydrangea and this purple one, a big leaf or French hydrangea. I also noticed what I thought from the distance was where someone had drawn a foursquare block on the labyrinth in blue chalk. But as I walked in I realize it’s not foursquare it is full square divid in half with a K on it and then 2 quarter sections with a T and J. I have no idea what that is…

It is hot, but not unbearable. Some schools let out today and I saw more kids than I usually do with moms riding bikes etc. This is early it seems for Charlotte but then it has been a very strange year.

As I walked I thought about John Lennon and this very strange movie that I found at the library. I had seen this 2019 movie advertised. The storyline intrigued me and it had Hamesh Patel and Lily James. Here is a plot summary from IMDb: “The aspirant singer Jack Malik is struggling to be a great musician with the support of his agent Ellie Appleton and his closer friends. However he is a failure and needs to work in a supermarket to survive. One day there is a blackout and Jack has an accident while riding his bicycle. When he recovers, Ellie gives a new guitar to him and Jack plays “Yesterday”. Soon he realizes that the world does not know “The Beatles” and he plays and sings their songs becoming the best musician in the world with a greedy agent. But can he afford the price he has to pay for the stolen success.”

Yesterday

All my troubles seemed so far away

Now it looks as though they’re here to stay

Oh, I believe in yesterday

Suddenly

I’m not half the man I used to be

There’s a shadow hanging over me

Oh, yesterday came suddenly

Why she had to go? I don’t know

She wouldn’t say

I said something wrong

Now I long for yesterday

Yesterday

Love was such an easy game to play

Now I need a place to hide away

Oh, I believe in yesterday

Why she had to go? I don’t know

She wouldn’t say

I said something wrong

Now I long for yesterday

Yesterday

Love was such an easy game to play

Now I need a place to hide away

Oh, I believe in yesterday

Mmm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mmm

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Paul Mccartney / John Lennon

Yesterday lyrics © Sony/atv Discos Music Publishing Llc, Fifty Two Scadoo, Flamboyan Publishing

Anyway very strange …

5.27.21

5.25.21 … “As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can”. – John Muir

“Solvitur Ambulando” – It is solved by walking, Sardis Baptist Church, 2021 Labyrinth Walks:

Earlier today I received several emails on a email string of my Davidson College friends who lived with me my senior year. And they kept talking about a package from one of the group, and I had not received mine yet. But as I went out, I checked the mailbox and there it was.

And so I saved it to read at the labyrinth.

The box was a true gift. As only my friend Betsy can do, the small box contained two simple items and a note and a little confetti. Simple and elegant. I will treasure both items, but I will treasure her note the most. I am very blessed to have a group of friends that holds space, holds liminal space, for me and me for them. When we were younger, one, possibly two of us might have a serious issue going on in our lives. But now, almost each one of us has complicated issues. And the pandemic has not made them any better.

And so I walked, as with my most recent walk, at the same location, I felt the heat of summer coming on very quickly. As before the peace of the oak tree canopy was energizing. The birds were chirping again, some singing, but I didn’t see a big bird that might be the cause of the ruckus. Maybe they are just enjoying these first days of real summer.

One of my favorite things about social media is that it shows me everything that I have posted, and admittedly, I post a lot, on a given date, i.e. today. On May 25, over the past 13 years, I have frequently been with my friend Ruth-Ann, both at the cabin and once in Louisville. I could not remember, and that scares me a bit, why I commented that I was driving from Atlanta to Louisville to Chicago this week in 2015. I still don’t remember the details except that I rented a car and drove to Chicago and then flew to New York for my nephews’s wedding. I met Molly in Chicago but she did not fly with me, and then she met me in the Berkshires at Kim’s … I am sure it has something to do with money and the fact that I just like to go on car trips and visit people. That one seems a little extreme…

But this is also the week of Memorial day and they were many posts about Memorial day, hence my being at the cabin, sometimes this was the first time in a year.

I also found this quote of Muir:

“As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can”. – John Muir

So blessings to all of you as we go into the first long weekend of the summer, and I consider this the beginning of summer, but more importantly, cherish remembering those who fought and lost their lives for us and the freedoms we have as we celebrate the joys of the North American summer.

Blessings.

5.25.21

5.22.21 … “When death is near, or when time forces us into binaries that are dangerous and ungenerous, we wish for such spaciousness, so that we continue the difficult work of preserving life in this world.”

“Solvitur Ambulando” – It is solved by walking, Sardis Baptist Church, 2021 Labyrinth Walks:

I made a Lidl run, and I just had to stop by a labyrinth on my way back. Sardis Baptist was on my return route.

Today it was 88° and tomorrow it should hit the low 90s.

At Sardis Baptist, there was heavy shade from the heavy canopy of the oak trees. I noticed that there are different types … pin oaks and white oaks, for sure.

And there was a huge bird… An owl… A hawk … I have no idea. Just big. And maybe because of the big bird, all the other birds were chirping or singing. The only other sounds to be heard were the occasional revving of engines on nearby Sardis Road

Most of the flowers were gone, but there was one Catawba Rhododendron in bloom.

What was most noticeable was the bright green from the light infused oak trees and freshly mowed grass of the lawn.

I pondered this morning’s The Pause. I almost always find something interesting in The Pause, a Saturday morning email from The On Being Project.

From: The On Being Project newsletter@onbeing.org
Date: May 22, 2021 at 6:52:05 AM EDT
…
Subject: Are we alone?

From: The On Being Project <newsletter@onbeing.org>

Date: May 22, 2021 at 6:52:05 AM EDT

…

Subject: Are we alone?

The On Being Project

Dear friends,

My favorite (read: only) word in Russian is остранение. It’s translated into English as defamiliarization. One time, I was in a bar in New York City, and heard a man with an Irish accent next to me ordering a drink. I asked him where he was from, and pretty soon my friends were wondering why I was taking so long. He lived in New York, working as a French and Russian translator for the UN. He had good Irish too, so we moved between Irish and English as we spoke. I asked him what some of the etymology of остранение was. The heart of the word is something like other-country-ized, he said.

Defamiliarization is one of the functions I hope for in good conversation. I hear something and it makes me look at their world in a new way, and change my actions correspondingly. I hope for moments to see old ideas in a new light, where the familiar feels less familiar. However, it’s not all transcendence: defamiliarization can cause loyalties to be stretched, can cause profound change and it can also be used as a weapon to exile someone, from their people or place.

All of this is an introduction to this week’s On Being episode, a conversation between Krista and Jill Tarter, the multiple award-winning astronomer who is one of the founders of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute. Now nearing her 80s, Jill has spent a lifetime considering what the conditions for life — and intelligent life, with communications systems — on other planets might be. She was the inspiration for the character played by Jodie Foster in the film adaptation of Carl Sagan’s novel, Contact, and has had a fascination with earthlings’ place in the vast universe since she was a child.

She invites her students to call themselves earthlings, because it locates us, as a species, on a particular planet. Jill has spent her career casting her eye and intelligence across vast distances of space. Far from dislocating her from her own particular planetary location, it locates her here, on earth, and she takes this locatedness with all its political ramifications.

Novelists and politicians have long imagined an alien takeover; many assuming that such a takeover would unite humanity in the face of a planetary threat. However, Jill Tarter says to Krista that our fragile planet is already under environmental threat, and urges practices that are not waiting for aliens to come, but rather that read the signs of the times. She’s keen for our ecosystem of life on planet Earth to survive long enough to make contact with other ecosystems — and that involves tending for the environment as well as our neighbors. And this is what brings us back to neighborliness. Over and over throughout Krista and Jill Tarter’s conversation, I found myself thinking about here while Jill speaks about out there. Her clarity about what a universe-wide perspective can give to a community-wide politic has arrested me, stopped me, made me think.

Krista asks Jill Tarter how she’d sum up her life’s work, and she does it in a three-word question that is as expansive as it is profound: Are we alone? She obviously asks this of the universes, but we can also hear it in our neighbourhoods, communities, cities. Perhaps defamiliarizing the question of location might help us see the here as well as the out-there in ways that affect our politics, policies and public lives.

Our two poems from this week’s episodes of Poetry Unbound also function as invitations into reconsidering place. On Monday, we shared a reflection on Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo’s poem, “Battleground.” As the poet-in-residence at Gettysburg National Military Park, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo wanders around looking for evidence of graves honoring Mexican soldiers. Finding none, she conducts a ritual to honor them — the known and the unknown. The poem then shifts scenes and she is on the southern border of the U.S., leaving offerings of water bottles for those whose lives are worthy of respecting, welcoming and saving. Li-Young Lee’s poem, “From Blossoms,” reads like a piece of music, a hymn even. He’s remembering a particular day where he and a companion bought peaches from a boy at a stand at the turn of a road. You can’t make a person taste peaches through a poem but Li-Young Lee comes close. The perfection of this simple day is, perhaps, unrepeatable, which is why it’s so invaluable.

When death is near, or when time forces us into binaries that are dangerous and ungenerous, we wish for such spaciousness, so that we continue the difficult work of preserving life in this world.

Beir bua,
Pádraig Ó Tuama
host of Poetry Unbound

The last paragraph has so many thoughts that have monopolized my thinking for the past few years: death, binaries, ungenerous, spaciousness, preserving life in this world …

On my return, I noticed signs up at Charlotte Country Day for graduation. Just think, last year all was cancelled. I found this post from a graduation I attended on May 22, 2015:

“Jim Rash spoke at CLS graduation. … one of the most fun graduation speeches ever … Loved laughing frequently, but the takeaway was three pronged: When going into the unknown, 1) just start 2) follow your joy and 3) do not be afraid to say, “I do not know.” … So my mantra for today is FOLLOW YOUR JOY!”

Yes, even when there is death and ungenerous beings, if I seek to preserve life in this world, even if I do not know the future, I will be following joy …

5.22.21

5.1.21 … “When you allow yourself to be led into awe and wonder, when you find yourself in an aha! moment and you savor it consciously (remember that joy and happiness take a minimum of fifteen conscious seconds to imprint on your neurons), then you can have a genuinely new experience; otherwise, you will fit everything back into your old paradigm, and it won’t really be an experience at all. It will at best be a passing diversion, a momentary distraction from your common “cruise control” of thoughts and feelings. That’s all. Awe and wonder are terms that are often correlative with mystery. All fundamentalist religion is terribly uncomfortable with mystery … “

“Solvitur Ambulando” – It is solved by walking, Avondale Presbyterian Church – Charlotte NC, 2021 Labyrinth Walks, World Labyrinth Day:

It is 1 PM on World Labyrinth Day… We walk as one at one. Well, there are other people across the world walking and on the eastern time zone as United States walking as I walked, but no one is walking with me at Avondale. And I can only blame myself. I should’ve asked people to join me.

This is a walk for peace.

It was 70° and clear. There was a slight breeze. The birds were chirping, chirping loudly. But the most notable thing about the day was that there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a perfect Carolina blue sky day.

And then I thought about komorebi, the Japanese word I saw recently which means the light shining through trees. And I got to experience that today.

As I wandered on the path, I felt my breathing slow and my seeing and hearing perk up. Be still …

Earlier today, I shared a post on social media:

Saturday musings …

Last night, when I was enjoying my new book, Jill Steenhuis’ “Art, Soul & Destiny,” I had an epiphany moment. Jill commented about the significance of Cézanne to her development as an artist.

I remembered from my trip to France in 2011, standing on the banks of Lake Annecy and realizing that I was looking at the exact same view that Cezanne had painted in his “The Lac D Annecy” and at the moment, I sensed a certain energy that came with that realization. Although I cannot create such an image, I can experience it at the same level by being at the same point in space albeit separated by 100+ years in time.

And then that took me to the thought of many awe inspiring moments and the realization that there is some creator, and for lack of a better word I will call that creator God, that I am allowed to see the world for just a moment through the creator’s eyes.

And maybe it is the collapsing of time that is part of this God moment.

I’m going to ponder this one.

Thin places, Art, beauty, God …

I realize that placing myself on the labyrinth allows me to experience a thin place and to have such epiphanies more routinely. It is a spiritual practice that works for me.

And I think this pulls some of my thoughts together.

“Through I might be oversimplifying, but I think there are basically two paths that allow people to have a genuinely new experience: the path of wonder and the path of suffering. When you allow yourself to be led into awe and wonder, when you find yourself in an aha! moment and you savor it consciously (remember that joy and happiness take a minimum of fifteen conscious seconds to imprint on your neurons), then you can have a genuinely new experience; otherwise, you will fit everything back into your old paradigm, and it won’t really be an experience at all. It will at best be a passing diversion, a momentary distraction from your common “cruise control” of thoughts and feelings. That’s all. Awe and wonder are terms that are often correlative with mystery. All fundamentalist religion is terribly uncomfortable with mystery;

SOURCE: “The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation” by Richard Rohr

5.1.21