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A Narrow Space

Come caving with Matt, as we explore the role of language in shaping our world.

There are nearly 500 explorable caves at Lava Beds National Monument. On a recent visit, my family managed to see six of them.

The caves are helpfully divided up into categories based on the caver’s experience and comfort with risk and narrow spaces:

Category A) You can stand and walk fully upright at all times.

Category B) You have to duck your head or bend your body around occasionally low ceilings.

Category C) You will have to crawl or ‘slither’ on your stomach for considerable sections.

Category D) There is no category D. There is no category C for me either.

Lava Beds National Monument is located just across the Oregon/California border, a National Park of nearly 47000 acres of rolling hills and desolate plains. On the long winding drive into the park, you can see fields littered with igneous rock from the eruption of nearby Medicine Lake volcano thousands of years ago. Beneath the ground, lava tubes created most of these hidden caverns, including Valentine Cave.

“Valentine Cave is a must see” said the very passionate, uniformed Ranger as he handed us a map and our massive, indestructible and un-pocketable flashlights. There was no deposit taken, only our solemn promise to return them at the end of day.

The entrance into Valentine was a short winding path with a handful of switchback stairs leading to its gaping mouth. Immediately the passage splits into two arching tunnels which later join together as the cavern narrows, descending deeper into the earth. You might imagine that the cave’s heart-like shape with bifurcating arching paths and slowly narrowing corridor might be the reason for its naming. But the cave was simply discovered on Valentine’s Day in the 1930s, it’s heart-like shape completely serendipitous.

Nearly a century later, It certainly had my heart beating faster.

As the corridor continued to turn and descend, the darkness became unfathomably hungry, completely devouring the light of both our dollar store headlamps and the flash of our phones. Only our loaned lanterns were able to shine a thin beam that reached the narrowing walls.

Our family of five walked forward slowly, shoulder to shoulder. Out of necessity we focused one flashlight beam above our heads, and one at the ground directly in front of our feet. The slow uneven drip of water gathered at the end of stalactites, and occasionally would drip onto our outstretched arm or down our neck. In sections the stalactites hung low enough to threaten to comb our hair, or strike a careless forehead. Below our feet the ground was wet, uneven, and littered with piles of rock from where sections of the roof had given way.

The cave walls continued to narrow as we delved deeper still, until the walls beside us were nearly in reach. We stared unseeingly into the distance ahead, and the sloping floor and impenetrable darkness made it appear as if we stood on the edge of a chasm. As if just ahead of us, the ground simply dropped away. Perhaps it did. We never found out. One of our children asked to turn around, and I gratefully conceded to their request.

While each step into the cave had been apprehensive and cautious, our return steps were markedly lighter, buoyed with the security of a known and previously explored path. Soon enough we could see the faint glow of reflected sunlight illuminating the edges of the narrow cave walls.

As we exited the cave, our eyes blinking blindly in the daylight, I breathed in deeply, stretched my arms wide, and sunk into the deep relief of a wide open space.

The whole road trip had been a stretch, a long slow exhale after months of holding our breath. Despite the hours spent in a cramped minivan, despite the five of us tripping over each other in hotel and motel rooms in different locations each night, it felt expansive, luxurious. It felt wide open, after a long time living in a narrow space.

Along the considerable journey we brought along Brene Brown’s newest (audio)book, “Atlas of the Heart”. I have been a fan of Brene’s research, presentations and writings for a long time now, and this might be my favorite work of her’s yet. Through mountain passes and desert plains we listened to Brene compare and contrast 87 distinct and common emotions, and the context in which we experience them. The work is thoroughly researched and easy to understand and relate to. But for me, the most interesting aspect of the book remains the ‘why’. Why write a compendium of 87 distinct emotions? Because most can only identify and reach for three: Happy, Sad, and Angry.

It doesn’t take long for Brown to argue her case. If we can only identify three emotions, it limits not only our vocabulary, but our experiences as well. In my last post I related Jonathan Merritt’s concern that ‘sacred words’ were disappearing from our common vocabulary. His concern is the same as Brown’s, that a diminished vocabulary results in a diminished life. That even if we are not religious, we need words like ‘forgiveness’ on our tongues, or we forget the very human need to regularly forgive each other. The way we think and speak changes us, and our world. Language is not only descriptive, but prescriptive as well.

I think a lot of us have been feeling like we have been living in a narrow space for a while now, corralled into these tight spaces by forces completely beyond our control. A pandemic, a threat of war, a climate emergency, an uncertain economic future. No one could fault us for feeling lost in this current darkness. For feeling claustrophobic with those walls closing in around us.

In face of this helplessness, Brown and Merrit’s work reminds me that language is agency, for good, or for ill. It is a double edged sword in each of our hands. Inadequate language and poor mental constructs have the potential to close us in just as much as external realities or a physical space. But thoughtful, precise language can open us up, lead us out of darkness and show us realities that we were previously ignorant to.

Some language makes the world bigger, while some makes it smaller. Some language reduces others into tidy groups of ‘us’ and ‘them’, while some reveals that everyone has a complex and hidden story. Some language peddles certainty, while some invites curiosity. As the Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously wrote, “words create worlds”. We have a crucial role in deciding what type of worlds we are creating.

It’s worth asking what language we are listening to, reading and repeating. Are we smaller or larger for it? Are we confining ourselves or freeing ourselves? Are we staying in any narrow spaces that we don’t have to?

The space we find ourselves in is narrow enough.

Let’s open it up a little.

Reintroduced to Resurrection

April 17, 2022 / matr / 0 Comments

Reintroduced to Resurrection

So Jesus is kind of like a zombie?”

I bite my lip a little at the unintentional irreverence and honest curiosity of my youngest child, who has his puzzled head cocked slightly to the side.

“Um… it’s a little different than that”.

It’s been a long while since we’ve been to church. Still, when my youngest asks me how Easter came to be a holiday, or what bunnies and eggs have to do with Good Friday, I attempt to give him a (mostly) complete (and age appropriate) explanation of both the Christian story of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the amalgamation of various pagan and ethnic traditions such as Ishtar and Eoster that celebrate such spring themes as light, new life and (hence the bunnies) fertility.

(Interestingly, the incorporation of chocolate is never questioned. Even my youngest knows better than to look that particular gift horse bunny in the mouth.)

The zombie comment makes me think that I may have missed the mark on my explanation, but the resurrection is hardly a standard or commonplace concept. I’m often intrigued by the strange and inconsistent marriage of western civilizations’ post-Christian culture. We are surrounded by words of great religious significance that have entered our collective lexicon, but often with frustratingly specific, incomplete or completely absent context. Perhaps because of this, these words and concepts are becoming less and less common.

The writer and theologian Jonathan Merritt has noted that as secularization has increased, the use of “sacred words” have dropped off precipitously. Language, Merritt argues, is always being reinterpreted and recontextualized. The only languages that stay static and unchanging are dead ones.

Understandably, those within a religious tradition are also the most concerned with safeguarding sacred language, and therefore the least willing to reinterpret and recontextualize these words and ideas. Meanwhile, outside of that tradition, these terms grow more and more irrelevant.

These days if you asked someone what a specifically religious term like ‘resurrection’ meant to them, you would likely find a striking contrast: either it holds a very specific religious meaning of great importance, or they would view it as my son did, as irrelevant, confusing, and inconceivable.

To my point, I am writing these words during the midst of Holy Week, where Christians the world over mark the betrayal, state sanctioned torture and execution of Jesus, and his unexpected and miraculous reappearance to his friends and disciples (who do not recognize him!) three days later. I am guessing that this event either means something very specific and significant to you, or nothing at all.

I am concerned by this, because I find myself in a third category.

During many years of Holy Weeks I’ve grown up with this story, considered it, watched theatrical versions of it (even performed in a few), sang songs about it, felt swells of emotion towards it and attended countless services about it. Specific meaning and interpretation was presented along with these stories. It was not simply remembering the betrayal of Jesus, but all of mankinds’ betrayal of God. Not just the death of Jesus, but that death as a God-ordained sacrifice and payment for the wickedness of all. Not just the resurrection of Jesus, but the promise of resurrection and unending life for everyone who believes this particular story, for everyone who holds to this particular faith. And for a long time, I was all in.

And then, I lost my old faith.

It was less as a defiant act of unbelief, and more an unintended consequence of abruptly seeing the world differently. After a series of personal tragedies in my immediate family, my notions of God and goodness were unexpectedly upended. All those cherished stories and their given meanings seemed suddenly incompatible with reality. Church as I knew it certainly seemed incompatible with my new grief and seething anger. The cognitive dissonance became too great to bear. I would have to deny my reality, or my old faith. Both could not survive.

I was never an ardent atheist. In fact, for the longest time, I never admitted the death of my faith to myself. One day years later, a good friend was describing a “hopeful agnostic” that he knew, and then he paused, and started to laugh at my own ignorance. I was completely unaware that he was talking about me.

It has been years since those losses that sent my world raveling. In that time, I’ve accepted and made a home for my grief. No one would ever willingly ask for such a wound, but I know that it has helped me see the wounds in so many others. Time doesn’t heal all, but perhaps it allows all.

Surprisingly, time has even allowed those old stories as well. Time and space away from the religious world I knew has decoupled those ancient stories from their specific meanings and dogmas. But instead of rendering them meaningless, I find those ancient stories, words and concepts more interesting than ever before, and occasionally, strikingly true. Removed from the pressures of judging these stories as literally true or false, precious or worthless, these stories get to breathe.

Now, when I consider the betrayal of Jesus, I think about how often people misunderstand goodness and only want power. When I think of the death of Jesus, I think about the violence we are willing to incur in the name of sanctity (and the fact that power structures do not like to be questioned). When I think about resurrection, I think about the fact that new growth includes the death of the old. That the new comes from the old, but it is not the same, and many will not recognize it.

I think about resurrection when I see plants that look nothing like the seeds I buried in the ground weeks earlier. They are the same, and they are different. I think about it when I look at old pictures of my children. Some characteristics never change, a sly smile or a glint in the eye, and yet they’ve grown and changed dramatically. They are not who they were before, and never will be again. I think about it when I look into the eyes of my love, and see a person who both is, and is not the person I married so many years ago. I think of resurrection whenever I meet an old friend whose life has changed forever. The ending of a marriage, a new career, the death of a family member, these events that divide our lives into ‘before’ and ‘after’. No one walks through great love, or great tragedy, unchanged.

And of course, I think of the unexpected resurrection of my own faith, as well. I think of the stories and meanings that guided and formed me, that served me well, until they didn’t. About how they really did die, and stayed dead for a long while. About how unexpected and precious and strange their reappearance was to me. I think of all the words and concepts and stories that are worth decoupling, worth reconsidering, worth reintroducing, reinterpreting and recontextualizing.

I know from some vantage points, this faith looks drastically different, or even unrecognizable from the one I held before. I know that many expect the new to look exactly like the old. But they shouldn’t. Death and resurrection is a part of the process. Not one living thing stays stagnant or static forever.

As I said, it’s less like a zombie.

And more like every living thing.

Bracing For Impact

January 17, 2022 / matr / 2 Comments

In the old world, the winter months were littered with parties.

Not huge, extravagant affairs, mind you. More “get-together” than event, but raucous, chaotic, life-affirming get-togethers. As the evenings grew colder and darker, we welcomed our friends indoors to share appetizers and craft brews, make a few pizzas, and gather around our long farm table. There were no caterers or bartenders but ourselves, no band but the playlist on the living room stereo and no venue but our own sweet home. And we loved it.

We might have a single family over, or as many as six. Children were ushered downstairs, except for the youngest hanging off hips, or those darting between adults to load plates with food, or excitedly interrupt adult conversation for whatever was on their mind in that precise moment. The adults would break into smaller clusters talking above the music, huddled around the couch, fireplace and bay window ledge, or drifting in and out of the kitchen. Invariably, this is where I would be, taking orders for pizzas, and basking in the warmth of the oven and friendship alike.

Then we’d sit down at that long, worn table and talk for hours. Sometimes the conversations centered around a question, subject or quote. Other times there was no form at all. Sometimes the room was filled with raucous laughter, and other times a moment would arise that was so fraught or fragile that you held your breath.

Those evenings were a lot of things. Ordinary and Extraordinary. Chaotic and cathartic. But mostly it was just being surrounded by some of those I know and love the best. And I miss it terribly.

When I think about the old world, I think about those nights, and that space. Sure, I miss travelling, and concerts, and not having my glasses fog up every time I walk indoors while wearing a mask, but mostly I miss those celebrations.

Last October my wife suggested we should plan another party. A celebration, for no reason other than that fact that we could have one. But I was wary the moment she suggested it. It felt like a relic of the old world; too much to hope for, but I couldn’t say why. For a moment, it seemed life was returning to some sense of normality. Plans and trips and events could be entertained once again. Viral cases were down. Vaccinations had been freely available for some time, and the term “Omicron” had little relevance to me or anyone I knew.

Of course, that’s not the case now.

Now, whatever wave we are currently facing (I’ve honestly lost track) is crashing down around us. It has already hit many of us, while the rest of us brace for impact.

I am bracing for impact.

I brace for impact before every shift at the hospital. Where the workload swells amidst continual staff shortages. Where the number of confirmed infections who need treatment keep rising. Where testing delays, higher transmissibility, and inadequate space, make it more and more difficult to adequately protect myself and others.

I brace for impact as I read yet another article online telling us to throw away our cloth masks, and highlight the need for N95 particulate respirator, I read this while knowing that those masks should be fit-tested, are impossible to find in stores right now, and that some people still don’t seem to understand that any mask is ineffective if it doesn’t cover your nose…

I brace for impact each day I send my kids to school. As they tell me about another friend who has been away sick for the past week. As they struggle to follow new rules and regulations that make it more difficult to hang out with their friends. They tell me about new desk configurations, increased sanitization schedules, how bell times are now staggered, or how they will now eat lunch in their classroom only. I brace myself as I send them with those same cloth masks that I should be throwing away, but am waiting on replacements for.

I send them knowing they need their teachers. Knowing they need their friends. Knowing that they have been flexible and resilient for the last two years, but that it has come with a high cost. Knowing that many concerned, intelligent, informed minds are working on these laudable and imperfect solutions. And I’m nearly certain that it will not be enough.

I sit my family down. Tell them to brace for impact, too. I tell them that it is likely that someone in our family will probably get sick in the next few weeks. That it will likely be this new variant of Covid, this virus we have tried so long to avoid. And that it will be okay. That the wave that is crashing around us will likely soak us, and maybe even knock us over, but it will not drag us away.

I also tell them that this might be the beginning of the end of this pandemic.

There is a lot of guarded hope being offered lately. Hope that the widespread transmission, milder symptoms and asymptomatic infections might finally lead to a significant herd or group immunity. Hope for antibodies that might neutralize the effects of each new variant. Hope for the pandemic becoming endemic. Hope for the lessening of restrictions. Hope for some return to normality.

But all of this is future hope, and I have braced myself against future hope from the beginning. From the very beginning of this pandemic, there has been plenty of unchecked optimism and fantasies about the near future. I’ve certainly caught myself talking about the “end of the pandemic” more than once, without the first clue or critical thought about how we might actually get there.

But even now, with a roadmap and compelling reasons to hope for the end, I find myself reluctant to embrace any specific and longed for hope. I find myself weary of making another plan that comes undone at the last moment. This pandemic has made many of us both weary, and wary. I find myself bracing against hope.

Hope can seem a dangerous thing when we’ve felt the disappointment of its disappearance, and hope in a particular outcome is invariably the most fragile. Who could blame any of us for feeling nervous, skeptical or cynical? There are so many ways our particular hopes and dreams and plans have had to be adjusted, revised or abandoned altogether over these past two years. It makes sense that we might want to keep our hopes at a distance, at least for now.

But we need those hopes. Those specific hopes, longings and desires pull us forward, they give us the strength to place one foot in front of the other on days like these.

Our hopes are undoubtedly risky, but we need them. Our specific hopes for that reunion, that trip, that surgery to be rescheduled, that table to be filled with friends, food and conversation once again.

If this is the storm before the calm, we brace ourselves for it and endure it by knowing what, specifically, we are hoping for.

So I’m getting my menu ready. I’m picking out the music playlist. I’m cleaning out the downstairs entertainment room. I’m thinking of how to best set up the patio when the weather warms. Because one day, that particular hope will be possible once again.

And there will be such a party.

___

The Price of Love

November 18, 2021 / matr / 1 Comment

There he is, the magnificent beast.

He stands watch, regal and perched upon his throne, the padded dog bed inset within our living room’s bay window. The Border Aussie (Border Collie/ Australian Shepherd) surveys his expansive kingdom. He stands at attention, his tail rhythmically striking the glass pane, as he guards his realm against oncoming Amazon delivery drivers, errant felines and any and all squirrels. He is absolutely, quantifiably and without exception, the best dog.

Except for the times that he isn’t.

That time that I left the barbequed steaks and chicken in the middle of the patio table and returned moments later to find an empty plate licked clean? He was not the best dog then.

Or the many times that I walk with him and our youngest to the school, and tie him up at the edge of the playground yard (because I respect the bylaws), and he whines and howls like I’ve abandoned him forever? Not the best dog then, either.

Or that time we reluctantly joined another family’s firepit when we were tobogganing, and our dog marked his territory on a stranger’s folding chair and picnic basket?

Or that one time he jumped onto the trampoline (that he knew he was not allowed on) and pooped in the middle of it?

(Yes. That really happened. I can’t make that crap up. But he did, in the middle of our trampoline.)

Truth be told, during the times when my dog is pulling on the leash or attempting to jump up excitedly on an approaching friend, stranger, or bylaw officer. I am keenly aware that my dog is not the best dog ever. At times I start to wonder if my dog really is a good dog, after all. It’s occurred to me more than once that my dog may in fact be a poor listener, a brute, and a bit of a spaz.

Still, despite the steaks and chicken and whining and peeing and the… trampoline incident…he’s still my absolute favorite.

It’s a good thing I like him, because he is always right there. Occasionally he will find himself on the wrong end of a closed door, stuck on the front lawn after we bring in the last bag of groceries, temporarily unaware of his absence. He never ventures far. Eventually we will hear a polite (or impatient) bark, and find him sitting at the front door, staring up at us. This is a dog that likes to be close. He curls up on the end of our youngest child’s bed, lying on sheets and making it difficult for my son to pull blankets up over himself. When we allow him up on the couch, he fancies himself a lapdog and splays his furry 60 pound body across our legs.

Whatever favorable features or faults he has, our dog is a member of our family. He gets included in group pictures. He’ll gladly go on any and every outing, even when we have no destination. When we go on weekend excursions or extended road trips, he is always the first into the van. We pay extra to stay in the loudest, bare-boned hotel rooms on the main floor that allow pooches. And we can be sure by the end of our trip, each and every piece of clothing we own will be covered with dog hair (and maybe a bit of slobber).

It might seem like a steep price to pay, the concessions and accommodations necessary to love a dog like that, but it’s really not. We’ve been doing this for nearly a decade now, and honestly, it feels strange on the odd occasion that we do have to leave him behind. I’ve gotten used to him being constantly underfoot. But I know he won’t always be.

Just a month ago we thought we might lose him.

Border Aussies are famously high energy dogs with well documented neurotic and obsessive behaviors, so when ours began occasionally licking his left elbow callus, we didn’t think too much of it. In time we noticed that the licking had become habitual, and the callous more inflamed. We began to wrap the leg, and when that failed, brought out the dreaded cone. Soon we noticed that the inflamed area had become its own distinct growth. By the time we got into the vet, it was roughly the size of a golf ball.

We knew that it might be cancer. Our vet agreed and booked a date for the lump to be surgically removed and examined for pathology. The vet was hopeful that the growth was not completely embedded in the leg, but that we should prepare ourselves for future surgeries or the possibility of more growths.

We would also have to tell our kids what was happening.

Suddenly, I was 16 again. Hearing the news from my dad that my childhood pet would have to be put down, driving in the car with him to the vet, saying goodbye to my best friend. I remember the heartbreak, and the white-hot ignorance infused anger I had towards my parents that they hadn’t done more.

Now it appeared it was my turn to break my children’s hearts, to shepherd them through this awful, impossible time. I had walked right into a trap that I had already seen laid bare years earlier. Why would you get a dog for your family when you know that this conversation, and the heartache that comes with it, will inevitably follow? When you know that both you and they will love that pet unreservedly? What sort of shortsighted monster would do this to their kids? To themselves?

A few weeks later, I found out that I didn’t have to have that conversation. Not yet. The lump was excised and found to be non-Cancerous. We were only out the (not insignificant) cost of the surgery, and a few weeks of watching the wound carefully as it heals. Our neurotic, barking, underfoot, steak stealing, hair shedding, leash pulling dog gets to continue being the best dog ever, at least to us. We were extremely lucky. But I know that that conversation, and the grief that comes with it, is still coming.

And there are a lot harder conversations still coming.

It’s tempting to want to minimize our risks, protect our heart against the grief that threatens to swallow us whole, especially when we have insight into how much it will hurt. But it’s impossible, because grief is the price of love. We don’t get to experience one without the other. We only grieve that which we have loved, and everything and everyone we love now, we will also grieve one day. They are two sides of the same coin.

This is true for whoever and whatever we are grieving. I know there are griefs both great and small, both personal and communal. Some mourn the loss of a career, or a friendship that is no longer close. Some of us have mourned the loss of friends, spouses, or family. Some have lost hope that the future will be better than today, or that there even will be a future for our children or grandchildren. All of us mourn some form of the world that has changed forever. Whatever we have experienced, whatever we are experiencing, we don’t need to compare our grief. There is more than enough grief to go around.

But our grief should also encourage us.

Our grief shows us that our hearts are still in it. That we have what it takes to love, because we have what it takes to mourn. That despite all the troubles we face, we are not half-hearted, or calloused or indifferent. We are courageous, each and every one of us who loves, knowing the price we will one day have to pay.

Those who are willing to be brokenhearted are wholehearted. And the wholehearted know that the price of love is steep.

But they also know it’s worth it.

Wrong Answers Only

August 21, 2021 / matr / 0 Comments

“Five minutes, that’s all I’m asking for”.

I speak the words to myself, to the air, to whatever deity or saint might be listening and willing to help me out a bit. There’s more than a note of desperation to it.

I’ve made my way to the most secluded room in the house. The desk in front of me is as clear as it ever is. The laptop is closed, the monitor pushed back and the keyboard moved aside. In their usual place sits only my phone, a large play button visible on the screen.

A few minutes ago I was listening to a podcast about meditation and contemplation. I’ve paused it and retreated to this room for the final few minutes. This is the moment where the host of the podcast is inviting the listener to become a participant, to enter into five minutes of silence and breath meditation.

“Five minutes, that’s all I’m asking for”.

It might be a lot, this day.

On any given day, this ritual might be relaxing. But not this day. On this day I feel only desperation. I’ve chosen a breath meditation because I feel like I can’t get a full breath in. I woke with my chest tight, the weight of grief and anxiety pressing down on me. Even as I stretch and move about the house, it feels like there is an elastic band around my chest. Breathing feels like a chore, rather than a birthright.

I close my eyes, and begin to focus on my breath anyway.

The meditation begins, and the silence turns out to be anything but. In the dead space after the invitation to begin, I hear the host lean back into his chair, hear the scratching of beard hairs. I hear each time he swallows, coughs or clears his throat. I can hear the distant muffled sound of his neighbors laughing.

I hear similar sounds in my silence as well. I hear my children running across the floors above me. I can hear my own chair creak and rub with my every movement. And mostly, I hear the sound of my own shallow, laboured breathing.

As soon as I start to become accustomed to the various noises and sounds, I begin to notice my anxious thoughts. The silence reveals them, as they encircle my head like a swarm of mosquitoes, buzzing and non-descript in the distance, and then alighting on me, whispering their high pitched interruptions.

“Maybe I can’t breathe because it’s Covid”.

“I can’t breathe because of the smoke. It’s probably only going to get worse”

“The kids have hardly been biking at all this year. Is this what it’s going to be like every summer?”

“When was the last time I changed my air filter? Maybe it’s time to buy some better ones”

“Even at work it smells like smoke. I wonder how short work will be today?”

“I’m still breathing fast. How many times am I breathing in a minute? Should I count? If it’s 18, how many breaths is that in five minut…”

My interrupting thoughts break off, dissipating into the air as quickly as they came. The five minutes of silence has been anything but. The podcast host strikes his bell, a Tibetan singing bowl, signalling the end of the meditation.

Even through the tiny, tinny phone speaker the sound immediately quiets me. I momentarily forget about my thoughts, forget about my breathing, and am at peace, feeling it’s resonance. The wavering note of it hangs in the air a long time, as the meditation host lets it fade into obscurity.

Then without invitation, my thoughts return. “I wonder if they sell those singing bowls on Amazon?”.

And I start to laugh.

It really is laughable. You have to laugh, or else cry over how ridiculous it all is. Searching Amazon for enlightenment. Seeing if they have a deal on inner peace. Seeing what other shoppers who purchased tranquility also put into their virtual carts.

The whole scene is suddenly satirical. The day’s utterly failed meditation becomes comical. My constant turning to commerce to sooth me. My distractible and anxious mind. My inability to shut up for even five minutes. I’m reminded of Blaise Pascal’s assertion that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”. The laughter is somehow freeing. At least it is honest. My breathing starts to come a little deeper.

I can see myself in that moment from a distance. Earnest, but hopelessly lost. Overwhelmed from widespread work burnout, a crashing fourth wave of Covid, the terror of watching young healthy people struggling for breath or sent to the ICU. I’m reeling from the death of two children I briefly cared for, from the sound of their parents’ wretched cries. I’m feeling trapped by the constant smoke, and the encroaching fires. I’m feeling hopeless as climate scientists raise louder and louder alarms of a point of no return, and humanity seems incapable of responding.

This is a moment of crisis, and one I feel completely unprepared for. Whatever wisdom, beauty and hope usually inspires me or buoys my spirits, it is not working this morning. I have no right answers. I have wrong answers only.

Perhaps there is a grace to finding the wrong answers.

I have a love/hate relationship with spiritual, religious or wisdom traditions. I love that they offer a place to ask the deepest questions and speak to our deepest needs.. I believe they are at their best when they ground us in a story much larger and and more ancient than ourselves.But many times, these traditions can be presented and sold in a manner that is shallow, superficial or even outright deceitful. Little more than self-serving posturing, posing and pretending. Sometimes, you can’t immediately tell the difference.

Maybe a Tibetan singing bowl seems like it will bring you inner peace (and look great on your instagram feed!), until it arrives in that Amazon box and you still feel unsettled. Maybe a mindfulness meditation promises to calm and ground you, until you realize that it is a practice, and practice includes even frustrating and failed attempts. Maybe all these practices and wisdom teachings promise to make you a more resilient and self-sufficient person, but in your most miserable moments you realize the need for a community to hold you when you fall apart.

Sometimes the wrong answers reveal our deepest needs. There’s little wrong with occasional retail therapy, magical thinking or the desire for self sufficiency, but in moments of true crisis and desperation, I don’t need the superficial or deceitful. I need practices, community and wisdom that feeds me, quiets me, grounds me, and ultimately prepares me for the realities that I will continue to face. We all need those things, regardless of how we acquire them.

Real crisis separates some of the trash from the treasure, fools gold from the real stuff. Thank goodness for the wrong answers. May they lead us to better ones.

Beautiful and Terrible and Fragile (2021 edition)

June 21, 2021 / matr / 0 Comments

We live in a beautiful, and terrifying world. What are we missing when we forget this? What beauty and terror and fragility is hiding in plain sight? Click above for the audio, taken from the Something From Everything Podcast, Episode 13

The hike up to Gold Creek Falls is well worn, appropriately marked, family friendly, and safe.

In fact, the word ‘hike’ hardly seems appropriate. The path to the falls is only a little over two kilometers and on any given weekend in the summer you will find it crowded with tourists and locals alike. The route can be easily traversed in inclement weather, with minimal preparation, and with any manner of footwear (both Crocs and thong sandals have made this trek).

The falls reside within Golden Ears Provincial Park, just outside of Maple Ridge, British Columbia. Sitting in the shadow of the Alouette and Golden Ears twin mountain ranges, the park is home to old growth Hemlock forests and ancient Western Red Cedars and Douglas Firs. Within the park is a large campground where the tops of the trees create a patchy canopy and young kids can be seen running with abandon, hiding among the gnarled and ancient roots, and building makeshift forts and lean-tos with the soft moss and fallen branches that litter the forest floor.

We have camped a number of times in Golden Ears Park, and each time we do, we traverse the well worn path to the falls. On our most recent visit, our family diverged from the crowded path at the midway point, following the river to the base of the falls. We splashed in shallow water running over smooth river stones, and leapt across large boulders scattered near the base of the falls. We baked in the scorching July sun, and then plunged ourselves into the icy pools of runoff some 30 feet from the falls. We would return to the rocks to dry off, clinging like starfish to their surfaces and absorbing their heat, our lips purple, skin pale and teeth chattering.

Then we ventured closer to the mouth of the falls themselves.

The immediate basin of the falls was above us, and partially obstructed from where we were swimming and suntanning. I led the way with my children, scrambling up nearby boulders and edging my way around the largest rock surface, until the basin was in front of me. Only as you turn that final corner do you realize how powerful the falls really are. The same large rocks that had obstructed our view had also obscured the sound of it. A deafening tumult of sound, the force of the water pummeling down endlessly into the basin. The temperature drops immediately, the mist and spray from the falls suddenly everywhere, making each surface surrounding it slick. The torrent creates its own private windstorm, the wind surrounding and encircling you.

I became terrified. It was suddenly unnerving how near the edge I was, and how my eldest child was only a few feet behind me, beginning to turn the corner towards the basin herself. We were entirely too close to something so great and terrible. I yelled for her and her brother to turn around, but my voice was nearly inaudible in that storm. I pointed back the way we came, and held their hands as we edged back away from the falls, and returned to our onlooking family at the edge of the river.

As we returned to the security of the onlooking path, somebody screamed. Continued screaming. A small white dog had been playing with her owner at the top of the falls when it ventured too far and got carried away by the current and pulled over the edge. The owner of the dog continued to scream as she hastily scrambled down the ledge. I returned to the basin I had just left and found her staring wildly and screaming at the roiling surface. I grabbed the largest nearby stick I could find nearby, at least five feet in length, and began prodding the water. I don’t know what I expected, but as I plunged the stick as deep as it could go, I met no resistance. I pushed the stick around the edge of the basin, and it was wider than I anticipated. There was a shelf of rock underneath and all around the edge of the pool. The constant tumult had ebbed and eroded the smooth rock deeper than I could plumb, and wider than I could see from the surface.

We stayed at the edge of that basin for a long while, and eventually the screaming subsided, but we never found that dog. I don’t know if they ever did. A quick online search reveals multiple stories of those who underestimated their proximity to danger. As I write this, four people have died in as many years. I discover a story of a woman who fell over the falls trying to rescue a friend who had also been swept up by the current. I read a story of a 24 year old male who was presumed dead after falling over the falls, search and rescue teams being unable to ever locate his body.

The falls are beautiful, but they are not safe.

I have a picture of my kids and I near the edge of the basin that day. The photo was captured by my wife from a distance, before any of this occured. It is a stunning picture, but to this day it makes me shudder. The scene appears still and serene, completely devoid of the awesome terror of standing at the edge of such brutal force. That day, and the picture of it reminds me how beautiful and terrible and fragile everything was, without my awareness. All at once together, and inseparable.

It’s worth noting that you don’t need to go down to the mouth of the falls to appreciate them. Most do not. You can see the entirety of the falls from atop the high lookout at the end of the well worn path. You can hear the muted sound of it, a low roar that blends seamlessly with the chatter of the onlookers. You might even feel some of the light spray. The lookout is a fine place to take in the beauty of the falls, but it might be easy to forget how powerful they are, or how fragile you are, from such a distance. Indeed, that forgetting might be the greatest danger of all.

Perhaps sometimes we need to be uncomfortably close to see things as they really are. To shock us, to wake us up. To remind us that some things look safe and predictable, only from a distance. That things may appear simple at first glance, and intricately complex up close.

Perhaps when we draw near, quite a few things will reveal themselves as beautiful and terrible and fragile. And worth a closer, trembling look.

February’s Trickery

February 16, 2021 / matr / 0 Comments

Make with the clicking, and Matt will explain why February is the trickiest of all months (though March is pretty shady, too…)

“But I thought it was spring”

On our brief walk to his school, my seven year old mouths these words to me. I can hardly make them out as he’s layered beneath shirt, sweater, scarf and fully zipped up parka. His toque is pulled down past his eyebrows, so that only a thin line of upper nose, cheek and eyes are exposed to the elements.

“All the snow was melting”, he continues. “I thought it was the end of winter”.

It doesn’t feel like the end of winter as we brace ourselves against the gust of frigid air blowing hard against us. I’ve left us just enough time for our walk to school, with few minutes to spare. I don’t want to subject my son to extra time freezing outside on the playground before that first bell mercifully beacons the children inside. But it also means I have to keep us moving.

“Come on”, I reply, a sly smile spreading across my lips. “Let me tell you about February”

My son doesn’t know about February. About how it’s a trickster.

For as long as I’ve lived here, February has tried to trick me. While only the second month of the calendar year, February is first month where I begin to notice the days growing longer. The shortest, darkest days of winter are begin to leave us. And so our mind turns to spring. Maybe we experience a day or two of unusually temperate weather. This is a feign, but we are emboldened. We might brave a walk to the mailbox without a toque or gloves. The most hopeful (or foolhardy) among us may have even begun to move our heaviest winter items to the back or the closet in favor of lighter spring jackets.

“Spring is around the corner”, we tell ourselves. “I can feel it”.

Then it comes. Winter gets its second wind, and it’s a cold one. A new dump of snow when you thought you were finished shoveling. Gusts of frigid air that blow through you, regardless of how many layers you have on. This year it was a ‘polar vortex’, but a quick search of highs and lows from February 2020, or 2019, or 2018 all tell a similar story. Spring may be around the corner, but we never turn that corner in February.

Maybe it’s not February that is tricking us. Maybe we are the ones tricking ourselves.

Hope springs eternal, and hope for spring, annual. It doesn’t take much after a long, cold, dark winter to get us excited for the coming season. We anticipate the smells of spring, look forward to seeing the new buds emerging from the trees. Spring means new, and by each and every February, we are ready it, salivating at the prospect of it.

We long for spring. Perhaps that is why we are so easily fooled, year after year. Maybe that is why we don’t know better, even after so many Februarys. Each year, we continue to look ahead, continue to eagerly anticipate winter’s retreat into spring. And each year we are left waiting, huddled against the cold, impatient and disillusioned, for a little while longer.

Impatient and disillusioned describes a lot of us these days, myself included. We are ready for the new. We are waiting on spring and warmer days, but we are also waiting on our world to return to some sense of normal. Waiting on restrictions to lessen, waiting to gather friends around tables, waiting on traveling to locations beyond our workplaces and grocery stores, and waiting to embrace those loved ones who don’t live under our same roof.

We are waiting, impatiently.

Certainly, we’ve been patient for a long, long time. We have been watching numbers and adjusting our lives for nearly a year now. Kept strangers and loved ones alike at a distance. Our first batch of cloth masks are beginning to wear thin, and now we’re facing the prospect of replacing them anew. My friend lamented the other day that his eight year old daughter, who was born in March, was protesting the prospect of a second Covid Birthday without friends around.

We have been patient. And now? Our patience has run thin. Now we are mostly tired.

This moment feels like the long, slow wait for spring. And just as we are fooled into believing that the first temperate week in February marks the end of winter, we have been fooling ourselves into believing that the next health order, or the next vaccine, or the next downturn in cases will return the world we have been missing for over a year.

Then we are faced with a cold snap. Then, the a new threat of highly spreadable variants that our current vaccines may not adequately protect against. Then, restrictions are held, or heightened, when we had hoped they would be lessened or eliminated. To each, we feel frustrated and betrayed.

It is our hope and anticipation that trick us. It is our longing for spring that tells us that this February will be warmer than those past. It is our longing for our ‘pre-Covid’ world that suggests that we can travel, embrace our friends and return to normal. But none of these hopes or desires are true, yet.

We keep wanting the season to change, and we become frustrated when all that passes are the days. But all seasons are made up of days.

Each passing, freezing day in February brings us closer to spring, even if we cannot see it. Likewise, we can see signs of our way forward, see some of the progress around us. Vaccine technologies which had only been dreamed about and theorized for years are now injecting into deltoid muscles. New vaccines (including those that are effective against new variants) continue to be developed and considered for widespread use. Outbreaks in care homes are decreasing in both severity and number.

Each of these events is worth being grateful for. Each of these, a step closer to the world we anticipate and long for.

But right now, it’s still February. It’s still winter. Spring is closer, but it is still a ways off.

So bundle up. Keep that spring jacket in the back of the closet for now. Those mitts and toques are not going anywhere this month.

The thaw, and green shoots, the adventures travelling, friends around table and loved ones held near are all yet to come.

Just not yet.

Interiors and Exteriors (2021 edition)

February 4, 2021 / matr / 0 Comments

I have been spending hours fixing a single drawer.

It’s our tupperware drawer, which means its use is second only to our cutlery drawer in the kitchen. And it’s been broken for months. The drawer is composed of two components: the rectangular box that holds our tupperware, and the drawer face, made from laminated particle board. The two pieces were held together by two tiny screws. I say “were” because one evening the drawer was closed too vigorously, and those tiny screws held on with all their might, ripping the particle board around them, and causing the damaged face of the drawer to clatter to the ground.

Some of my friends have drawers that you can not slam. No matter how hard you push that drawer, no matter how quickly it initially begins to close, at the end it slows down, nestling peacefully into its home.

I fantisize about those drawers all the time. Especially when my drawer breaks… again.

See, I have attempted to repair this broken drawer multiple times, but a combination of my ineptitude and poor design have undone my efforts each time. I have attempted to fix it with different screws, then with wood glue, then with different adhesives. Each time, I get a little better at repairing this drawer. But each time, it eventually breaks again.

And then I stopped attempting to repair it. We’ve just lived with broken tupperware drawer.

Even without the broken drawer, our kitchen is constantly in need of work. The table in the corner is consistently home to items carelessly dropped upon it, or laundry needing folding, until it becomes nearly unusable for it’s given purpose. Clean and empty counterspace is quickly filled with dishes and used cutting boards. Crumbs, vegetable cuttings and coffee grinds find their way to corners. The kitchen floor becomes filthy mere minutes after it has been swept and washed.

So it goes.

On a bad day, everywhere I look in the kitchen, there is chaos. Other rooms tell similar stories: walls needing repainting, stair nosing that is splitting, clutter needing organization or removal.

Disrepair and entropy on full display.

There is a short story by the author Sherman Alexie entitled “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” that I’ve been thinking about recently. In the story, there is a romantic couple that fought regularly. Their fights were epic, and brutal. Huge altercations with the sharpest of words both whispered and yelled. And lamp throwing. Regularly the protagonist would pick up a lamp in the midst of their fights and drop it, or throw it against the wall. After each fight they would pick up a new lamp to replace it. At first from fancy boutiques, then thrift stores and garage sales. Eventually the couple stopped replacing the lamps. Their home was dark. They lived and fought in darkness.

That story is about a lot of things, but one of its central themes is the subtle and even unintentional ways in which a person gives up. Our slow, unintentional descent into entropy. When we stop replacing that which is broken. When we simply accept and live in brokenness.

Now no one in our house is throwing lamps. But is a continually broken drawer really that different? Or a table consistently covered in clutter?

Of course, all of these things are just exteriors, right? Just decoration, just aesthetics.

But what if they’re not?

In Alexie’s short story, the chaotic and destructive nature of the couple’s relationship is mirrored in the broken items, the unadorned areas, the darkened, lampless home. Perhaps in our story, our external environments mirror our internal states as well.

What if a cluttered desk really does reflect a cluttered mind? Or an usable table?

Of course we’re busy. Of course we are tired. Of course I have fixed that drawer before. Of course we have cleared that table and those counters before, only to see them fall into disarray again.

Things seem to fall into chaos so easily some days. Cleaning up after three kids and a large dog can feel like our own personal sand mandala ritual. Sometimes you stop pushing back against the chaos. Sometimes you let the dishes stay on the counter. Or let the drawer stay broken. Or stop replacing the lamps.

As the owner of spaces that are frequently cluttered, dirty or needing repair, I don’t always like what my exteriors would say about my interior life. I would like my interiors and exteriors to be completely divided things, thank you very much.

But I know they’re not.

I know the joy of an open space and unobstructed views to the outside when trying to write. How even the small act of a made bed can make you feel more settled. How a clean sink and countertops can fill you with a simple pride. Even if it’s just for a little while.

Conversely, when my focus and energy levels drop off, the house reflects it. Laundry piles up just a little more. The small acts of tidying up after myself (and others) gets neglected.

The truth is, our exteriors both reflect and affect our interior life.

This is great when it works in our favor. When we enter a space that calms us, such as a walk in nature, or a favorite sun soaked chair where we like to read. But it can also utterly undo us when we’re not doing so well. When I feel anxious, or scattered and distracted, a table full of clutter can feel like more than just an assortment of items to be put away. It can feel like I’m failing at the very basics of life. When you are surrounded by everyday household items in disrepair, it can feel as if your very home is falling apart.

See, the problem is, once we begin to see our exteriors as intertwined with our interior life, we can be left with a very important, and very long, to do list. Once you begin to see yourself as an integrated person, you may feel a great deal of judgement towards yourself. You might be left feeling as if you are not merely repairing a broken item, but your very brokenness. Suddenly, the worn off paint, the overflowing cutlery drawer, the messy vehicle interior begin to feel like character flaws. That there is something very wrong with you.

And if, (hypothetically speaking), you find the prospect of repairing that one acursed drawer again overwhelming, the prospect of attempting to repair and structure your interior life may just make you want to lay down in the fetal position. That to-do list is crushing. And you may not even know where to start.

So start, with both acceptance and gratitude.

We all arrive at this moment through different paths. Some of our interiors and exteriors are more cluttered than others. So be it. This is your home, your interior and exterior, and no one else’s. Accept that this home is yours, replete with all that a home comes with. Warm baths and leaking pipes. Delicious food around a table, and the dishes afterward. Desks on which to imagine and write, and cluttered notes and half finished thoughts. Projects completed and many projects yet to do.

Accept that a life’s work may just take a lifetime. It might be enough (for now) to see this. To look at ourselves soberly, but without too much judgement. Seeing is a gift, after all. Noticing that which we were too tired or overwhelmed to see before, is progress. To buy one more lamp, when you’ve smashed so many before, is courage.There is no easy fix for the way we are. But it is still good. We can desire change without hating who we are in this present moment.

So sweep away the new mess, clear off that table and counters once again. And break out the adhesives, and screws, and clamps, and attempt to fix that which is broken once more.

Clear those exteriors, and be kind to your interior life.

This is hard, good work, making a home.

Doing It Wrong

December 19, 2020 / matr / 2 Comments

It’s the 2020 Holiday Special Extravaganza! I promise this audio will be both more meaningful and (mercifully) shorter than most of the specials you’ve been subjected to…

I’ve been ~~starting fires~~ … er, lighting candles.

This year, I’ve been observing and celebrating the Advent season. Starting on the last Sunday in November, we’ve gathered our immediate family around a glass lantern, and lighting candles placed within it. By December 25th, we will have lit five candles, each candle representing a different theme.

Advent simply refers to the arrival of something prominent. In the wide Christian tradition that I am most familiar with, people have gathered together for generations to light candles, reflecting on the themes of hope, peace, love and joy. Within this tradition, many have developed a very specific way of observing this. Specialty advent candle holders, specific colors of candles, an order to the themes with accompanying readings and prayers.

Like many before me, this season’s Advent has become a special and sacred time to me.

Also, by all accounts, I’m doing it wrong.

We have no specialty advent holder. We even forgo the different colored candles (purple and pink don’t match the rest of our holiday decorations). Instead we place uncoloured beeswax candles into our lantern, and each Sunday, we complete a hurriedly internet search to ensure that we are focused on the correct theme.

While Advent is not a new tradition, it is new to me. For much of my life, Advent has been much more about chocolate calendars than Christ. Even now, I have a complicated relationship with faith. In a household that does not attend church services, reading from the Bible feels awkward and forced. But we take our place in the tradition anyway. We discuss each theme with a wide and generous description. When my son says that getting Taco Time on Tuesdays brings him joy, I don’t correct him (why would I? There are few things in life more joy-giving than tacos).

It took me a long time to take part in this tradition I’m uncertain I belong to. To light the wrong candles. To gather my family around and discuss themes with no wrong answers. To read passages that give me both joy and doubt. It took a long time to feel comfortable doing it wrong.

When it comes to the winter holiday season, there are a lot of expectations. If you belong to a religious tradition, you may feel required to observe: the lighting of advent candles, kinara, or menorah; the decorating of a ficus tree; and the attending of nativity plays or Christmas eve services. But even if you are not religious, this is a season loaded with traditions both personal and corporate: Christmas vacation (both the excursion and the movie!), baked goods, cookie exchanges, holiday staff parties, card and gift exchanges, pictures with Santa, family gatherings and huge, extravagant meals together.

This year, nearly every event I’ve just mentioned has had to be tailored, adjusted, or cancelled outright. When so many of our long held traditions are suddenly and unwantedly upended, we might feel like we are “doing it wrong”. We may even feel nostalgic for the events that we dreaded in years previous (here’s looking at you, spouses’ staff Christmas party…).

The winter traditions we celebrate have a power to ground and centre us. But like all traditions, they have a rhythm, a certain order, a correct way to observe them. If you always celebrate Christmas Eve in a church, or always join your extended family for turkey dinner on the 25th, this season is going to feel off. It’s going to feel less traditional. It’s going to feel like you’re doing it wrong.

But you can do it. Ask the person who works out of town. Ask the person who works at the restaurant open on Christmas day. Ask your local shift worker.

As a health professional working shift work, I’ve been ‘doing it wrong’ for years. Long before I lit my first advent candle. For more than 20 years, I’ve been a shift worker. That means I’ve repeatedly been an inconsistent plus one at my partner’s staff parties. My children often have only one parent cheering them on at elementary school Christmas concerts. I’ve left a seat empty at numerous family meals. I’ve woken my children up at 5am so I can hurriedly watch them open gifts before heading into work, or asked them to (impatiently) wait until 8am if I’m just finishing up a night shift.

And all those Christmases? All those modified holidays traditions? Still memorable, still meaningful.

These days, I’ve come to appreciate the grounding gift that tradition is. A rhythm that I can fall in step with. This candle, this theme, this reading.

But that gift given should not become a weighty, cumbersome thing. The winter traditions we have participated in are for our grounding, our belonging, our adoration and enjoyment. At times when these traditions have to be adjusted or abandoned all together, then we make peace with ‘doing it wrong’. We accept them for the gift they are. We take what works. We leave the rest.

And we acknowledge and allow our discomfort. Our longing for rhythm.

If you’re feeling like you’re missing out, that’s okay. If you feel exhausted doing half of what you normally do this time of year, that’s okay. If a season without seeing family and friends leaves mourning, that’s okay.

That’s okay, that’s okay, that’s okay. Repeat it as often as you need until it’s true. Permission slips, all around.

You can do it wrong, and still participate in a tradition.

You can do this wrong, and still enjoy it.

You can do this wrong, and still make it memorable and meaningful.

You can do this.

Of Parts and the Whole

December 10, 2020 / matr / 0 Comments

“He’s your friend… he’s your friend… he’s your friend”.

I repeat the phrase to myself like a mantra. Familiar words that have lost all meaning in the present moment. I’m trying to remember them.

It’s late at night, and I’m a few beers in, staring at my phone and the latest graphic my friend has uploaded to his social feed. Something about the ridiculousness of our latest restrictions, or how the virus has a stunningly low mortality rate. About how this is all blown out of proportion.

It’s the third post from him that evening to similar effect. He’s obviously on a tear. And I, like a moth to a flame, like a dog to vomit, keep returning. My hand hovers on the reply button. I’m just uninhibited enough to start a fight. Or rise to one.

My wife takes away my phone.

“You’re drunk. And he’s our friend”.

She’s right of course, on both counts.

The next day I return with clearer eyes, and my mood isn’t much better. In my absence, others (whose partners did not physically remove their phones) had responded to my friends’ assertions. A back and forth had developed, these stats versus those, this infringement of rights versus that benefit, all of it loaded, all of it tense.

It’s tense for me too. It’s personal. I’ve been witnessing increasing numbers of confirmed cases return to the hospital with shortness of breath. And I had just received an email from my child’s school informing me that a student there is infected. That was our first email, but for many of my friends, this has been occurring regularly. It’s become personal for all of us. The once distant threat is more real than ever. Here now, and revealing itself daily.

So too our anxiety and fear is showing itself daily. Each conversation stubbornly fixated upon this virus, the new governmental restrictions, or the uncertain near future. My online social feeds are shouting. Most of the shouting reinforces my echo chamber. Memes that show what an intubation procedure looks like, in case someone finds a cloth mask uncomfortable. Stories of those who have unexpectedly lost loved ones during this pandemic, and could not be at their beside. Doctors and nurses, pleading with their friends, families and communities to follow the precautions outlined or mandated for their safety.

But occasionally, a break in the echo chamber comes through. And in a world of shouted agreement, these posts are especially abrasive. Posts that imply that all my worry, caution, and potential danger to myself and my family is overblown.

I respond to my friend’s post. As rationally and empathetically as I am able in that moment. A back and forth of our own develops, but after multiple exchanges, we are no closer to agreement. Even with my best arguments, he’s not miraculously converted to my line of thinking.

(Makes you wonder the point of all this shouting and shaming, when we intuitively know it will not change minds and hearts).

I text my friend, “we should go for a walk”. My friend agrees. A little fresh air and sunlight could do us both a world of good.

I’m nervous before going on the walk, but we don’t immediately discuss our views on the virus or his recent posts. That’s not how real life works. It’s been a few months since we’ve seen each other face to face. We talk about our partners and children. We talk about our jobs. We talk about how we miss seeing groups of people. We talk about how it is heartbreaking to find a community to belong to, and suddenly be unable to meet face to face. We talked about how the use of sanitizer in schools causes both of our children to develop sores and inflammation on their hands. We talk about what fear does to a culture, how hard it is to connect with another when you are suspicious that they (or yourself), might have a deadly virus in tow. We talk about how keeping people at a physical distance creates a mental distance as well. We talk about how “hope deferred makes the heart sick”.

We find a great deal that we connect on. Eventually, we discuss his posts, our viewpoints on the virus and our responses to it. In talking with him, I am able to realize how raw and exposed I feel, how personally I took those posts. There is a lot that I disagree with. We come from incompatible starting points, and therefore expect wildly different outcomes. We both place reliance on data that we can not, individually, prove and authenticate. We differ greatly on who we trust and whose data we can rely upon.

We do not come to complete agreement. But the walk was never about that. The walk, I realize, has far less to do with convincing my friend that he is wrong than it does convincing myself that we are still good friends.

And we are still good friends. Because for a bright, sunlit December morning traipsing around the back hills of Mission Creek, I saw my whole friend.

Now, this is obvious, and you probably don’t need me reminding you, but what we see online of each other is not a full person. These are snapshots, curated by creator and platform alike, and removed from the context of real life.

Lots of people more intelligent and articulate than myself have explored this phenomenon. Long before we ever heard of Coronavirus or Covid-19, those who study human behavior have been raising the alarm that social media often creates unrealistic, false, and socially destructive images of each other. That it leaves us feeling more isolated and disconnected, not less.

And in our isolation right now, it can feel like all we have.

Compounding this, we are all desperately focused on a singular, complex and unfolding event. Our newsfeeds and socials are saturated with posts about a virus with unprecedented spread and death toll in our lifetime. We are reading about and discussing new vaccine technologies which the world has never seen. We are debating the credibility of data we have never before considered. We are posting our opinions on how we are collectively incurring deficits in the billions.

Some of us are acting as if we are covertly trained economists, politicians, epidemiologists, virologists, pharmacologists, or health officers. But even those of us who begrudgingly admit our ignorance in these matters are still ready and willing to shout our opinions on social media.

On my long walk with my friend it occurred to me that what we are currently discussing is no less than “life, liberty and the security of person”. The stakes are that high, for me, and for my friend, despite our very different take on this present moment. It is natural that we would all want a say in these matters, even when they are well out of our depth. This can be infuriating when we read opinions and conclusions that are contrary to our own, or discount our own first hand experience. But it is not unexpected.

So many of the critiques of policy I have come across highlight a perceived failure of balance. A focus on a particular part, at the expense of the whole: Small businessnesses that are shuttered while big box stores continue to operate, resulting in a future economy further monopolized by the biggest players; Restrictions and reductions on elective surgeries allow redeployment of resources, but come at the cost of personal pain and complications from the delay; A government offers emergency funds, but saddles billions of dollars of debt with our children and grandchildren (and so on).

“It’s difficult to convey the whole of a thing online. We don’t tend to I haven’t seen a whole lot of memes that convey the difficulty of balancing both life and liberty. The whole is less about shouting, more about dialogue. I can agree with these restrictions, and still be aware of the overall cost of them. In fact, I should. We should all be able to live with some complexity and nuance. The whole of a thing is always messy, complicated, and full of contradictions and compromises.

But so are we. And in a moment where we are only seeing a part of each other, it’s easy to mistake it for the whole. We are not our most recent Facebook post or Instagram story. Those that we have invited into our lives, we have invited for a reason. Their whole person is important to us, as we are to them.

Remembering a person’s wholeness does not mean that truth matters less, or that boundaries are not important. It is simply the refusal to reduce someone to their sharpest edges. It is the generous humility of remembering our common struggles. It is being gracious with another as to allow disagreement and complexity.

And humility, generosity and grace are exactly what we need right now.

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