because we all need more love
The artists Christo and his late wife Jeanne-Claude created some of the most extraordinary pieces of art in the world. Running Fence, Surrounded Islands, Wrapped Trees, and The Gates are some of the best known. They are enormous environmental projects that take up to 25 years to plan and create. None of their exhibits are permanent.
Continue reading “The Beauty of Transience: Our Collective Wisdom”
As I’ve been making my way through the ridiculous 43 Eternal Truths, on the verge of giving up and moving on to something else, several kind people have suggested asking readers to write in with their thoughts on a given topic. So let’s try that and see what happens!*
Eternal Truth #5 is: “Nothing lasts.” One thing I’ve learned about these stupid “truths” is that it’s best not to approach them head-on; that makes you angry and doesn’t leave room for much creativity. So, for example, it’s not a good idea to ask yourself, “Is that true?” because the answer will always be, “Yes and no,” and then there is nothing else to say.
So here are some things I’m curious about, and would love to hear your thoughts on:
So feel free to comment or to email me (lesliesrajek@gmail.com) if you don’t want your comments to be public and I will post them without your name. Also, if you are photographically inclined, send me some pictures and let me know how they relate to this topic.
*[Please write in. I’ll be really embarrassed if you don’t. And for everyone who has wanted to make a comment but doesn’t because you’re self-conscious and think you don’t have anything worthwhile to say, trust me when I tell you that (1) you do, (2) one of the main reasons people blog is because they are comment hogs, so you are doing me a favor by commenting, and, more seriously, (3) the most rewarding and fun part of writing is connection and conversation, and feeling like you are part of something. That includes you. Always.
I’ll be here!
If you suffered through my sorry apology post, you may recall that #4 of the “43 Eternal Truths” is: “We are all already dying and we are going to be dead for a long time.” If I had been considering abandoning ship on this project before I got to that one, well, there’s no “considering” about it anymore. I mean, yes, I will write about depression and other difficult things, and I am not, in general, a naturally happy person, but for God’s SAKE.
The thing is, though, I have this friend…
Continue reading “Getting By With a Little Help From My Friends”
Regular readers know that, inspired by Summer Pierre’s Artist in the Office, I’ve been doing an ongoing project at work called “Being a Secret Messenger for Good.” This is my third update, and well, let me say, quite an unanticipated development.
Because I wanted to reach both male and female coworkers with this little project, a male colleague has been helping with the placement of the inspirational quotations (in the men’s bathroom). The method is this: I put a quotation in a brown inter-office envelope and leave it in his mailbox, and he hangs it up. Then he returns the previous quote to me.
But last week, when I opened the brown return envelope, I found the quotation that I asked him to hang up with a Post-it Note stuck on it. He was RETURNING it.
Continue reading “Project Spread Cheer @ Work: Unexpected Kickback & a Useful Reminder”
“No hidden meanings” is #2 of the “43 Eternal Truths” in Sheldon Kopp’s Eschatological Laundry List. I have no idea what it means. None at all. I do have a vague sense that to say there are “no hidden meanings” oversimplifies the reality of life, diminishes the complexities of our experiences and of the divine, and way, way overestimates our poor abilities to truly grasp how spirit works, and why things happen the way that they do. But I could be wrong.
And anyway, this is my blog and I get to write whatever I want. So I’m going to tell you a story which may or may not have something to do with hidden meanings. I’ll let you decide what you think it means. Maybe you’ll even write in and let me know.
A few years ago in our community, a woman who was drunk got into a car and got onto the highway. She drove, in the wrong direction, into a van of people and killed them. She survived and was sent to prison. She was vilified.
Sometime later, I was talking with a friend of mine named Lynn who has struggled for many years with alcohol and drug use, and is tentatively feeling her way through a stretch of sobriety. She had gotten drunk, drove, was arrested, and because of her record, put in jail. “The addiction counselor asked me why I went back out after so long,” she told me in her raspy smoker’s voice (“went back out” is AA speak for relapsing). “I said, ‘I have no idea.’ He looked at me and said, ‘That’s actually the best answer you can give. Most of the time there is no reason.'”
Lynn’s cell mate was the woman who had killed the people in the van. Lynn told me that after talking to this woman, hearing her story, she knew, then and there, that she was finished with alcohol and drugs. That she could have been this woman, that they were no different. She promised herself that she would never use again. And she hasn’t.
“She saved your life,” I said, when she told me this story. “She saved my life,” she agreed quietly. “She saved my life.”
Oscar Wilde wrote, “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” It’s one of the most reassuring quotations I know. Our God is the God of the second chance.
Hidden meanings? I have no idea. Maybe you can write in and let me know. I would love to hear what you think.
Happy May! And welcome to a new once-a-month feature at From the Heart! It’s called Heart of the Month. Once a month, I will share a story of someone I’ve met, encountered or know that I think you’d like to know about too. Today I invite you to join me in sending May’s Heart of the Month to a man named Ed Probst. Here’s why.
Continue reading “Heart of the Month: The Poet in the Post Office”
The thought of writing about this topic, #1 of the “43 Eternal Truths,” has been plaguing me since I decided to do it. No inspiration. No insight. Just confusion, that dull, awful feeling when the gears in your brain keep getting stuck at the same place, over and over. The dilemma was this: I feel that I should agree with the statement, “This is it!” because what it seems to be saying are things like, “This is your life! Be here now! Moments are all we have!” And that’s fine. That’s good. I get it.
But in my heart, I don’t actually agree that this is IT, that this is all we get or have. And I don’t agree with the message that you shouldn’t hold onto things, or project into the future, or care too much about outcomes, or that living in the present is the ultimate goal.
I am a big advocate of mindfulness, of presence, of paying attention.
However, wrestling with these three little words–this is it–has made me realize that I am also an advocate of allowing ourselves to live in the past, present, future, or our own imaginations, to project whatever desires we want onto our lives, to be strongly attached to whatever really, really matters to us, to care as much as we possibly can about whatever we want, knowing of course that none of this guarantees anything. Anything, that is, except a life of deep passion and commitment, self-permission and the chance to let your longing and desire become visible enough, powerful enough, that you cannot help but follow it.
There are one or two new projects in the works here at From the Heart and I’m excited to share the first one with you! Some time ago, a friend shared with me something called “An Eschatological Laundry List: A Partial Register of the 927 (or was it 928?) Eternal Truths.” This is a list created by author and psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp, and is printed as an epilogue in his book, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him. Shortly afterwards, my husband taped a copy of this list, which has 43 items, onto our refrigerator.
I ignored it, partly because I did not know what “eschatological” meant, partly because it’s in tiny little print, and partly because one or two Eternal Truths feel like enough for me, let alone 43 of them. Then I started to see the list in various places on the web. The items on it are things like, “Love is not enough, but it sure helps,” and “We may have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that’s all there is,” and “How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.”
But I noticed that no one really talked about the list when they posted it in different places, they just put it out there like, “Hey, isn’t this cool?” And seeing it stuck on my refrigerator between the Champaign-Danville Overhead Doors magnet and an orange Post-It note warning from Gabe that says, “No bad dinos in the house,” made me wonder, what is one supposed to do with something like this list? It seems cool and enlightened, but what does it actually mean? How does it help you live your life better? Are these Eternal Truths really true?
In my research on Sheldon Kopp and his laundry list, I’ve learned two useful things so far: 1) “eschatological” means “concerned with the ultimate or final things, such as death, the destiny of humanity, the future state, etc.” 2) Sheldon Kopp seems to have had a sense of humor. Here is how he described the list: “The subject of this particular letter was the foolishness of our professional pontificating….This was to be a zany private spoof, a way of tenderly making fun of myself. Instead, what emerged was a fragment of a cosmic joke, a visionary list of the truths which, at best, shape my life, provide answers to unasked questions, and give insights too powerfully simple to be grasped finally and forever.”
I love this attitude. It is very un-list like, in fact, because lists typically do not show you the connections between things; lists contain discrete, potentially unrelated items, and don’t lend themselves to deeper understanding. I love the playfulness of combining a word like “eschatological,” so weighty and doomsday-sounding, with the words “laundry list,” so mundane, everyday-ish, and non-threatening.
All this is to say that this has inspired me to take these 43 Eternal Truths one by one and see what they have to tell us. So our poetic Lenten journey of 40 Days in the Wilderness will continue on with an exploration of these 43 Eternal Truths (incorporating poetry whenever possible, of course!). The first ET is simply, “This is it!” On the surface this sounds like a call for presence in the here and now, which is good and important. But it’s not that simple; from a Christian perspective, for example, “this” is not really “it.” One’s perspective on how one lives their life now is profoundly shaped by how one understands, relates to, believes in the idea of everlasting life.
It feels a little scary to me to go down this road, but I’m going to give it a try. I hope you’ll be here too, and I hope you’ll write in with your thoughts along the way because I know they’ll be fabulous. So stay tuned because coming up next is: “Is this IT?”
What do you think?
[Note: Not an in-depth post, but a happy, joyful one in gratitude for all the love I received on my birthday, and for being alive in this good, sweet life. Never perfect, always blessed.]
A Birthday
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a daïs of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
Christina Rossetti
A year or so ago, I decided to teach myself to memorize poems so that I could recite instead of read them when I do workshops, because it’s much more powerful, and it makes the poems more accessible. The first time I did this I was scared to death, because it was awkward and slightly weird, and I was afraid that I was going to look ridiculous. I may have indeed looked ridiculous, but it was also very exciting, like speaking a new language, which in fact it was. Now I love it.
I recited Yeats’ “The Song of Wandering Angus,” when a colleague asked me to come talk to his class about writing, and it was a lot of fun because that poem rhymes. Today’s poem by Christina Rossetti is one of the first ones that I learned, also because it rhymes, which makes it much easier to remember. And it is exquisitely sweet and joyful. I feel happy every single time I say this poem, which I once did while walking with a friend on hard, crunchy winter ground (now that I’ve started I can’t stop myself).
But today it is spring, full-on and bounteous. I promise that if you say this poem out loud a few times, your heart will lift up. I promise. [note: “vair” is a kind of fur that was used to trim cloaks; don’t feel weird saying it.] Give it a try! And let me know how it makes you feel! It doesn’t have to be your birthday in order to celebrate your one sweet and precious life. As always, my heart is glad to know that you are here!
Here’s some of what my birthday looked like:
from the heart 