"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
-- Emily Dickinson
A few weeks ago I stood in the foyer at College Place Presbyterian Church on Easter morning, reading a letter my mom wrote over a decade ago to our pastor and his wife, Robin & Kriss Peterson. "They thought we should have this," Mel said, handing the envelope to me. "Do you want to read it?" Mom's handwriting spread across the paper expressing her gratitude for Robin & Kriss's kindness and care, how she felt about her upcoming treatment process, her resonance with him as the two of them moved through cancer diagnoses together. Several months later he & Doug Barram together led my family down the aisle at her memorial service.
I handed the card back to my sister, thinking about him. Mom was not alone...there are thousands of people whose lives are peppered with these kinds of stories, who Robin walked with in their life and whose casket he stood by in their death...many kinds of aisles people do not want to walk alone...the moments that mean "to live."
Robin Peterson died yesterday.
Walking will continue but it does feel like the earth takes a brief pause to re-adjust itself when people die. The very lilt of a day is altered by breath, our own and others'.
I am grateful to have known this man who lived the kind of startle that is awakening...who tended hearts and animals with equal passion...who cared for his land and prayed for his community...who saw and who was with and who recalled...who spoke the language of the soul...who sang joy and whispered peace...who rained kindness and lived generously...who was honest about himself and grieved his losses...who understood and entered the story...who pursued love.
Thankful tears fall for you.
Good-bye, Robin.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
On Weddings & Asparagus & Social Convention
So I'll just come out and say it: I watched The Royal Wedding. The whole thing. I hadn't set an alarm but Jonathan woke up coughing and it woke me up and I looked at my phone and it was 1:09 am. So I chalked it up to serendipity and decided that, since I had to get up in 4 hours anyway and I was in fact interested in the wedding, I'd go ahead and put on the coffee and watch the whole thing. And so I did.
About 42 minutes into the pre-event coverage I was more sick of Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters than usual but The Today Show drives me nuts so I stuck with ABC and made the best of it. And there was a lot of the best to make of it. I thought the feeling was lovely and the dresses gorgeous and the hats phenomenal and the service beautiful and the coordination flawless. I saw an interview earlier in the week with a gentleman who works for the palace and he was asked what could go wrong. "Nothing," he replied, "Nothing will go wrong." The interviewer laughed. "Nothing?!," she asked incredulously. "Nothing," he responded. And I'm sure there were great sighs of relief back at the palace that everything did go so well. But it went deeper than that.
Later that day I was reading the wall of a college student's Facebook page....some of her peers expressing boredom and a "lack of romance" in the structure and formality of the wedding. I realize there's an individual perspective thing partly at play here, but I strongly beg to differ. In my real life, I'm not a wildly demonstrative person. But the ascot opening race sequence in My Fair Lady is one of my all-time favorite scenes in musical theater and I've watched or played in the pit through many a musical. If it weren't for the structure in that scene, the entire thing would fall apart and lose its personality. The form provides a certain vital energy. It could take over the experience but it doesn't. Events can be that way. Life is often that way. Try spending time with someone who has no boundaries or alternately who is super tightly wound, whether they are 8 years old or 80 years old. Or partner dancing. Just the right amount of tension and decision is paramount to movement. It's partly why I love salsa dancing. And why I am fascinated with fashion, details, ritual, occasion. The drama. The hats. The precision. The contrasts. It's fantastic! I love a good event.
That night Jonathan and I drove to Walla Walla for a weekend fundraising event. The evening's guest speaker was here from many time zones away. She stayed with my sister and her family for a few days so one evening J and I walked across the street (from my dad's) to have dinner at Mel's house. We sat down, toasted and said grace, and then started passing food. Both ways. They must do it differently in her country because left is right went out the window as the aspargus and the salad dressings met in the middle on one side and the meat loaf and the salad met on the other. Everything eventually got around but the asparagus got caught wondering which way to go a couple times. For all kinds of reasons it didn't matter a single bit to the experience of the evening. But it brought to mind something I think about a lot: social convention.
I grew up with a lot of them. I'll bet you did too, possibly quite different from mine. Either that or you didn't grow up with many which leaves you with an entirely different set of questions. But in either case we got messages and patterns and those affect our perceptions and behaviors and interactions and judgments. And for the rest of our lives we'll be sorting out which ones to keep, which to toss, which to re-introduce, which new ones to adopt, when and why to do that at various times, what they mean, what they hinder, how they allow, and on and on. They can be strange things, whether at royal weddings or at meals. It's sorta like Christians at Easter....where you put the emphasis is partly a matter of tradition and personal style. But we use them for reasons. Sometimes people say they don't care about how things like that go but I rarely believe them because at some point they do care...whether it's a meal or a conversation or a bike ride it's just a matter of when and about what and all of the sudden they'll care.
We can get caught up in the emphatic, that's very true -- emphasizing order can stifle engagement, not attending to it can mean engagement doesn't happen cuz we're super hungry but no one's passing the asparagus. If no one passes the asparagus it just sits there on the table. But even in cultures where the food does just sit in the middle, they have ways of doing it -- people know how to go about having some and if you don't know you want to find out. Or you go without asparagus. But who would want to do that?! Hopefully we aim for the middle, taking care of what needs to be taken care of, in ways that allow for the most life possible. You figure it out. Each lends life to the other. Any fan of Dr. Seuss will tell you that.
Honestly, it doesn't probably matter to the asparagus whether it goes left or right. It's only asparagus. But not all of life is asparagus. Like royal weddings.
Ok, that's all.
©2011 Mindy Danylak
About 42 minutes into the pre-event coverage I was more sick of Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters than usual but The Today Show drives me nuts so I stuck with ABC and made the best of it. And there was a lot of the best to make of it. I thought the feeling was lovely and the dresses gorgeous and the hats phenomenal and the service beautiful and the coordination flawless. I saw an interview earlier in the week with a gentleman who works for the palace and he was asked what could go wrong. "Nothing," he replied, "Nothing will go wrong." The interviewer laughed. "Nothing?!," she asked incredulously. "Nothing," he responded. And I'm sure there were great sighs of relief back at the palace that everything did go so well. But it went deeper than that.
Later that day I was reading the wall of a college student's Facebook page....some of her peers expressing boredom and a "lack of romance" in the structure and formality of the wedding. I realize there's an individual perspective thing partly at play here, but I strongly beg to differ. In my real life, I'm not a wildly demonstrative person. But the ascot opening race sequence in My Fair Lady is one of my all-time favorite scenes in musical theater and I've watched or played in the pit through many a musical. If it weren't for the structure in that scene, the entire thing would fall apart and lose its personality. The form provides a certain vital energy. It could take over the experience but it doesn't. Events can be that way. Life is often that way. Try spending time with someone who has no boundaries or alternately who is super tightly wound, whether they are 8 years old or 80 years old. Or partner dancing. Just the right amount of tension and decision is paramount to movement. It's partly why I love salsa dancing. And why I am fascinated with fashion, details, ritual, occasion. The drama. The hats. The precision. The contrasts. It's fantastic! I love a good event.
That night Jonathan and I drove to Walla Walla for a weekend fundraising event. The evening's guest speaker was here from many time zones away. She stayed with my sister and her family for a few days so one evening J and I walked across the street (from my dad's) to have dinner at Mel's house. We sat down, toasted and said grace, and then started passing food. Both ways. They must do it differently in her country because left is right went out the window as the aspargus and the salad dressings met in the middle on one side and the meat loaf and the salad met on the other. Everything eventually got around but the asparagus got caught wondering which way to go a couple times. For all kinds of reasons it didn't matter a single bit to the experience of the evening. But it brought to mind something I think about a lot: social convention.
I grew up with a lot of them. I'll bet you did too, possibly quite different from mine. Either that or you didn't grow up with many which leaves you with an entirely different set of questions. But in either case we got messages and patterns and those affect our perceptions and behaviors and interactions and judgments. And for the rest of our lives we'll be sorting out which ones to keep, which to toss, which to re-introduce, which new ones to adopt, when and why to do that at various times, what they mean, what they hinder, how they allow, and on and on. They can be strange things, whether at royal weddings or at meals. It's sorta like Christians at Easter....where you put the emphasis is partly a matter of tradition and personal style. But we use them for reasons. Sometimes people say they don't care about how things like that go but I rarely believe them because at some point they do care...whether it's a meal or a conversation or a bike ride it's just a matter of when and about what and all of the sudden they'll care.
We can get caught up in the emphatic, that's very true -- emphasizing order can stifle engagement, not attending to it can mean engagement doesn't happen cuz we're super hungry but no one's passing the asparagus. If no one passes the asparagus it just sits there on the table. But even in cultures where the food does just sit in the middle, they have ways of doing it -- people know how to go about having some and if you don't know you want to find out. Or you go without asparagus. But who would want to do that?! Hopefully we aim for the middle, taking care of what needs to be taken care of, in ways that allow for the most life possible. You figure it out. Each lends life to the other. Any fan of Dr. Seuss will tell you that.
Honestly, it doesn't probably matter to the asparagus whether it goes left or right. It's only asparagus. But not all of life is asparagus. Like royal weddings.
Ok, that's all.
©2011 Mindy Danylak
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