Something From Everything – Page 2 – reflecting on the events and ideas surrounding us to discover meaning and connections

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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.

The Shifting Season

April 6, 2022 / matr / 0 Comments

It is early March.

The sky is a blanket of grey as I hurry my son out the door at 8:15am. We walk single file by the side of the road towards his school. It is quick steps and continually prodding him forward, as I try to ensure he makes it to school before the bell. He is jabbering on about something he saw recently on YouTube, but I’m not really listening. I am lost in a hundred buzzing thoughts, none of which I can recall later I nod and say “uh huh” at the right moments. We reach the edge of the schoolyard, and I hug him tight, wish him a great day, and watch for a long while as he ascends the steps towards his class.

I turn away as his profile disappears behind a brick walled corner, and begin back down the hill, intending to return home quickly. I have only taken a few steps before I realize that something has changed. The hue of the light. The sky is the same pale grey, but beneath it, everything is illuminated differently. Those previously familiar and sterile surroundings suddenly spring to life: The scurry of movement in the bushes beside me, as a family of nervous quails takes flight into the gully below; The call and answer of two lone redwing blackbirds amidst the half frozen pond; a cluster of wild crocus peeking out between fallen grass. And the sound of water everywhere, as if mother nature had left all the water taps a quarter turn from closed. It is the sound of the thaw, more than the sight of it. It drips slowly off the trees, seeping into the ground and gathering in the gully below where I can hear it running softly under foot as I step over the culvert at the base of the hill.

The light, the sounds, even the sensation of the gentle breeze on my neck are nudging me. They are all in on the joke. I am the halfwit coming to the punchline late.

Surely the season has shifted, and I was not aware of it.

Despite my dumbfoundedness and previous ignorance to my surroundings, this is the advantage of repetition, a practice or familiarity with something, someone, or somewhere. My son’s school bell draws me to the same path, at the same time, daily for years. I have seen this exact landscape hundreds of times. Today, something has shifted. Today there is running water, the chirping of birds, and the play of the light. It is the beginning of spring, just as it is every single year, and somehow I still find myself caught off guard by it’s coming.

Of course, I haven’t been looking very closely lately.

Lately I’ve been walking only the minimum before returning quickly to home and closing the door to the outside world. I’ve been shirking the work of silence and long walks to clear my head. I’ve felt more irritable and despondent than usual, especially when I sit down and attempt to write. I feel like I am hiding from myself, endlessly wanting to turn to anything that numbs or distracts. Anything that moves the clock forward to a better time, where we are okay. It has been a while since I have felt that we are.

I don’t know why this is so important to me, this concept of our communal health. The constant tension that has been in the air had found a way into my bones. In so many obvious and obscure ways I have been convinced that we are not okay, and so neither am I.. I have been mourning the ways we talk over one another and deliberately misunderstand and diminish each other. I am haunted by the truth that we live among each other in separate and incompatible realities. That the collective “we” has never been so divided and hostile, as we sneer down our nose at our neighbor. That I am sneering and hostile, and so easily angered.

Writing, for better or worse, has always been a personal and collective assessment. How am I doing? How are we all doing? What do I need? What do we all need? For a long while I haven’t liked the answer to the first two questions, and I have had no firm answers on the last two. It feels like we have been frozen in place, unable or unwilling to move forward, and I have felt as stuck as a frozen pond.

But suddenly that which was frozen all around is beginning to thaw.

The thaw and promise of the days ahead loosens something within me as well. I reach the bottom of the hill and choose to walk a little further as I take in the sights and sounds of the path before me.

Despite the promise of oncoming spring, early March’s thaw is anything but picturesque. Trampled grey and brown grasses and dead plants line the edge of the path before me. The snow and ice are receding from the edges and pockmarked along the path by heavy footfalls, revealing all that was hidden beneath. Decomposing leaves stick together in every hue of brown and thick mud sticks to the bottom of my boots like tar. Most noticeably though, the potholes in the melting snow reveal thawing and decomposing dog feces long left unattended by their owners on countless winter walks.

It’s not much to look at, but you do watch where you step.

In time the path before me will be bursting with new life. Pale pink wild roses, golden balsamroot flowers, and endless stalks of tall grass will shoot up near the small stream. More birds will come, more quail hiding under bushes, more redwing blackbirds calling to each other amongst the dense cattails. The trail will be a mosaic of green.

I know we don’t get to that idyllic scene in April or May without the mud and feces and decomposing leaves of March. The one includes the other.

What nature offers me, especially in times of crisis or great personal unrest, is a reminder that everything can belong, my despondent and frustrated self included. In time, nature reveals and includes all. The freezing as well as the melt, the rot as well as the new shoots of grass. The death of one season to give birth to the next.

I wonder how much of my distress has been due to my unwillingness to accept things as they are right now. To accept my own grief and anger and dispondance as natural. To accept that some things are frozen, or dead, or rotting, but that they will not stay that way forever. To accept that even the parts of our communal life which seem as repulsive as rotting dog feces will be included in the life we are making together. I don’t have to condone or excuse behavior that I believe is destructive or unhelpful, but I do have to accept that it exists.

One of my teachers, Richard Rohr often remarks that “we must forgive reality for it being what it is”. Nothing remains hidden forever. Perhaps the revealing of things long hidden is always a part of the process.

Nature reminds me to be patient. Patient with myself, with others, and with these times of transition. Each and every single one of us is in process right now. Nothing stays frozen forever.

Because the season is shifting, and so are we.

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.

___

Forced Merriment

December 20, 2021 / matr / 0 Comments

ALL THINGS MERRY! ALL OF THE TIME!

It’s still snowing.

It’s just after 5 am, and I wake to make breakfast and boil water for the day’s (first) coffee. The snow is visible only as it passes under the beam of the nearby streetlight, but it is falling fast, and it has covered all the ground I can see.

As my children wake up, they make a similar trek from their bed to the window, each groaning as they peer outside to our driveway. They know the shoveling that awaits them this morning. Long gone are the days when I would leave them to the warm and peaceful indoors as I ventured out into the cold and dark with my solitary shovel.

(Frankly this was due entirely to how much effort it used to take to get them dressed and prepared for outdoors. Teaching life lessons and work habits is all well and good, but wrestling a small child into snow pants, boots, parka, mitts and toque only to have them drag tiny lines in the snow with their small shovel was hardly worth it).

Still, I make my way outside first, and finish half of the driveway before my eldest joins me. We get 90% done before her brothers venture outside. The sky is beginning to lighten as we near the end of our labour.

Our driveway is long, steep and icy, despite the previous days shoveling and salting. It’s quicker with four of us working, but by the time we finish, it is nearly time for the older kids to catch their school bus, and for me to begin walking my youngest to school.

We are halfway down our street when I hear it. “White Christmas”, ringing through the neighbourhood and slightly distorted in the way that far off sounds are. But it is clear and unmistakable, even from a few kilometers away.

My son and I trudge down the street in single file, towards the music. White Christmas is followed by Jingle Bell Rock, Here Comes Santa Claus, and Feliz Navidad. As we approach the schoolyard and I lean in to hug him tightly and wish him a great day, the school’s loudspeaker starts up “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)”.

I stand at the fence, watching my son make his way slowly towards his class, and my eyes drift to the newly built series of apartments that neighbour our school. I turn in a circle, estimating how many homes (and ears) are now being subjected to this… particular classic.

I am not sure the plan to blast holiday cheer over the school’s loud speaker is entirely well thought out. My years of shift work lead me to imagine each and every night shift worker, just now returning home, ignoring the nausea and headaches that come with being up all night, and ingesting sleep aids that never quite make up for the fact that you are spitting in the face of your body’s natural circadian rhythm. I imagine them blacking out the blinds or placing sleep masks over eyes, inserting and adjusting foam earplugs. Attempting to create their own home sensory deprivation chambers.

And then being loudly serenaded by a high pitched Chipmunk’s desire for a “Hooooola Hoooop”.

I’m in a mood, on their behalf. The blasted holiday music seems the latest in a long line of well intentioned, but not entirely thought out, ideas. One more forced celebration in a packed holiday season that seems intent on always celebrating, despite the business, and cost, and looming/ latest health crisis. As a season, Christmas is guilty of already laying it on pretty thick.

The next song is “Hippopotamus for Christmas” (an adorable song about a 10 year old girl wishing for the world’s most dangerous large land mammal…), and it is well past time for me to return home. As I cross the yard, I walk past the drop off loop near the front of my son’s school. There is a long line of cars slowly approaching, and as they arrive a teacher will wave and direct them towards their parking spot, open the door for them, and make sure the students make it safely towards their class. Today, I can see the teachers dancing and singing to each other and the kids as they open doors and direct traffic. The kids in turn are laughing at their teacher’s ridiculous antics, but I see the way they bob their head from side to side in time with the music as they walk towards their class.

The final bell rings out to start the school day, and the music abruptly stops. The world is quiet once again, but it also seems strangely diminished.

There are few decisions that are ever universally loved. Everything costs something. Things considered a blessing to one, are often considered a curse to another. A decision for “nothing” is almost always the safest bet. Nothing to be upset or offended about.

My son’s school could have chosen nothing. It certainly would decrease the likeliness of an angry petition from the neighbours. But then there would also be less teachers singing to kids on cold, snowy mornings. A little less joy and merriment to start the day.

That’s the problem with nothing. It has nothing to offer. There is no risk to it, and therefore no reward.

Some things are worth it. Worth their cost. I’m not sure “The Chipmunk Song” or “Hippopotamus for Christmas” are… but a child’s joy just might be.

And in this particular case, they just happen to be wrapped up together.

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.

Truly Terrifying

October 26, 2021 / matr / 0 Comments

Matt recalls the horror (and wonder) of a monstrous animatronic clown, and investigates the misunderstood concept of evil.

The robotic clown towers above us, breathtaking and menacing. He is impossibly tall, maybe 7 or even 8 feet on top of his small stand. The stand’s speaker spews sinister circus music as the animatronic monster reaches a hand forward to ask for a volunteer for his juggling act.

“I just need a hand… and a foot… and a head… any body part will do!”. The clown breaks out in maniacal laughter, and my 7 year old presses in against my side, even closer than he had been before. His gaze flits quickly between the towering monstrosity and me. I worry momentarily that we’ve come too close, that the nightmare fuel will burn each and every bedtime this week, or maybe this month. I suppress a grin and open my eyes wide at him, acknowledging my possible failure as a parent and gatekeeper of all things inappropriate for 7 year olds. His face breaks into a giant, nervous grin.

“Dad, this is awesome”.

I couldn’t agree more. This is halloween: the wet chill and low hanging fog in the air, the glow of orange from freshly carved and lit jack o’lanterns; children running reckless from doorstep to doorstep, pillow cases pregnant and nearly unliftable, dragged or begrudgingly carried by parents; neighbours around a propane fire, offering hot chocolate from a thermos to warm kids and parents alike; and sights and sounds that teeter on the knife’s edge of terrifying and exciting.

You have to know your audience. Not every child should be subjected to maniacally laughing animatronic clowns. I certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it at his age. My youngest was drawn to the spectacle of it while we were still a long ways off. The rolling fog illuminated by brightly coloured light, the excited (and terrified) screams of children running to or away from the house. While we were slowly winding up an adjacent cul-de-sac, my youngest would crane his neck to see this particular house. He wanted to see it.

He comes by it naturally. At our house we have more Halloween decorations than all other holidays combined (those wooden gravestones and plastic skeletons take up more than their fair share of room under the stairs). And we much prefer setting up the halloween ones. When else do you get to cover the trees with cobwebs and plastic spiders, or create shallow graves out of wooden tombstones and left over planting soil?

It is, admittedly, not for everyone. Not everyone enjoys Halloween as much as I do, or even at all. But it is on offer to everyone. It demands little, but accepts much.

Want to turn all your dead summer flowers into graveyard decor? Go for it. Want to turn your entire residence into a haunted house? Have at it. Want to play “Thriller”, “Monster Mash” and “Ghostbusters” on endless repeat for all the neighbours to hear? You might get a visit from bylaw, but I won’t judge you.

If you’re feeling less in the spirit, a simply lit jack-o-lantern and a ready supply of candy is enough buy-in to be considered a full participant. Even those that give out toothbrushes, toothpaste and floss play a needed (and completely thankless) role on Halloween.

With so many participating on halloween, you notice the ones who don’t. Those who don’t appear to enjoy the spectacle. The houses that are completely dark, intentionally uninviting from the street. It’s obvious that so much of the imagery of Halloween is full of grotesquery and gore, hell and hedonism, devils and darkness.

Perhaps they can’t see past the pageantry. Perhaps all they see is evil.

It’s strange, isn’t it? How some of us see evil as real and threatening, while others see it as only a lark? Personally, I don’t think Halloween is evil in the slightest. There’s far too much goodness there. I realize that the surface of Halloween may appear grotesque, but in my experience, the heart of Halloween is communal celebration.

That’s not to say that I don’t believe in an evil that threatens us. I just don’t think it looks anything like the imagery halloween supplies.

You see, I was formed in a religious tradition that talked about evil all the time. We believed in evil, were on the watch for evil, and praying to be delivered from evil. And when I felt I had grown apart from that tradition, I realized that I didn’t know what to do with a lot of religious concepts, including the concept of evil. What once I considered evil, I began to see as actions that are explainable as self serving, ignorant, or misguided. And now? I’m starting to examine a lot of the concepts that I previously discarded.

I think this is the case for a lot of us. That either we believe evil is concrete, obvious and identifiable, or that we think of it as a concept that is outdated, antiquated, and either useless, or perhaps, harmful. Unfortunately, I think both of these views miss the mark. I don’t think most of us believe in, or understand much about the nature of evil at all.

The Franciscan friar Richard Rohr says as much in his recent book, “What Do We Do WIth Evil?”. Obviously, as an identified Catholic Franciscan, Rohr belongs to a very old and religious tradition, but I find his words on evil accurate and contemporary. Rohr argues that evil is not overt and obvious, but is subtle and insidious. It’s less the stories of demon-clowns devouring children, and more the true stories of children being devoured and traumatized by institutions of power and privilege that we esteem, trust and support (and even belong to). It is less about the spectacle of the monstrous and inhuman, and more about the devastation of dehumanizing those who are ‘other’ from us. While Rohr’ draws on the biblical language of “principalities and powers” of darkness, he states that these might be more familiar in our context as ideologies, organizations, corporations or institutions.

Here is a recent example from a well known corporation that we are all very much aware of: A few weeks ago Frances Haugen stepped forward as a whistleblower against Facebook, stating that the company had repeatedly prioritized profits over the safety and well being of its patrons. She claims that Facebook repeatedly hid or ignored information of their role in promoting misinformation, of not removing hate speech, and ignoring links between consistent use of Instagram and suicidal ideation in young girls.

As time has passed, and further investigations have been launched, these have become only the initial allegations. And if any of these allegations turn out to be true, what do you call actions and decisions like that? I think we need to call those actions ‘evil’.

I know that ‘evil’ is a loaded term. A term that many of us relegate only to the religious and superstitious. Maybe some would argue that Facebook is only guilty of being self-interested and self sustaining. That they are merely acting in ways that countless other organizations and corporations do.

But that sounds pretty evil to me. I have no doubt that we could explain away any organization’s harmful actions as originating in that which is self serving, ignorant or misguided. But what emerges seems greater than the sum of its parts. If we argue that the term ‘evil’ is antiquated and outdated, we need an appropriately weighty term to take its place. To explain these actions as simply a “corporate oversight”, or “misstep”, seems woefully inadequate. They don’t do the harm justice.

Of course, we’re talking about more than Facebook. We could be talking about any ideology, institution, organization or corporation that gets a pass from us, that we even find ourselves defending when we know they’re doing harm. It’s all the ways that we are both willingly and thoughtlessly bound up with it.

Perhaps that is evil’s greatest trick: that it does not come to us as a devil or monster, but as that which is commonplace and accepted. It’s not only the ways that a company chooses profits at the expense of people, but it also exists in the ways I find myself enmeshed in, and dependent on that same institution, company, or organization when I believe they are doing evil.

Evil isn’t announcing itself with pitchforks and horns, it’s hiding in the places we excuse or even expect it.

We need to think, and re-think about evil, especially in these days when many of us no longer believe in it. Imagine if we always expected evil to be either a hideous, monstrous demon, or an unnecessary, outdated notion. Imagine if we never developed the awareness to see evil working in plain sight.

Now that would be truly terrifying.

Showing Up

September 20, 2021 / matr / 4 Comments

How do we show up for our work, for each other, and for ourselves when we are exhausted, grieving and angry?

The patient in front of me tells me he has been having chest pain for the past ten hours, sore throat, headache and shortness of breath for the past week. “Last night, it was really bad around 2am. I could hardly breathe”.

His skin looks terrible. He’s pale and breathing fast, beads of sweat visible across his forehead.

I am standing in front of him, at a distance. My eyes alone are barely visible as I am covered in gown, mask, face shield and scrub cap. I am stoic and silent between pointed questions, thinking. I am already far beyond this moment. I’m weighing his risk factors. I’m thinking of the fact that we are once again short staffed, and that each room in the main department is already full.

I close the distance between us and reach for his wrist to feel his pulse through my own gloved hand. His heart is racing too fast for me to determine its rhythm. I ask him if he’s received any Covid vaccines. He shakes his head.

And at the moment I’m holding his wrist, staring at the clock beside him and attempting to count beats, he looks into my eyes and says “I’m just really scared”.

There is something about it that jarrs me, wakes me up to his perspective. It feels like a plea to see him for the first time. And I do. Of course he is scared.

“Of course you are, but you’re in the right place”, I tell him. “We’ll take care of you”.

And we do.

This is the work I show up for, my work as a nurse in the Emergency Department, and it is as stretched and strained as I’ve ever seen it. Showing up for work in the height of a pandemic means regularly working short, missing breaks, and increasingly working without some of our most experienced staff who are no longer picking up extra, or simply decided to transfer to a different hospital floor, a different focus, or even a whole new career.

These are the days when I find myself in discussions with my peers about what constitutes unsafe practices and patient abandonment. These are the days when even our professional college acknowledges our shared challenges, and that our previous standards of care may not always be possible.

These are also the days of greatest frustration. Days of seeing the young and previously healthy gasping for air. These are days of protests outside of hospitals and downtown health offices. These are days of division and resentment, even among colleagues. When long friendships are strained or broken because of beliefs around Covid, vaccinations, or vaccine passports/ immunization records.

These are the days when it seems hardest to hang on to your humanity. It is hard to see a hundred patients presenting in the same way, and not reduce them to their decisions or disease. If you are not very careful, your anger and grief can settle into your bones, metastasizing into resentment towards the very person you are there to help.

You’ve doubtlessly read an article (or ten) recently about the widespread nursing shortage. It is real, for all the reasons I mentioned above and more. It is the same stories played out in countless hospitals across health districts, provinces and even countries. I don’t blame a single colleague who has simply had enough. In the midst of a pandemic which has reached on for more than a year and a half, and is somehow getting worse, many have abandoned the career that they had previously loved.

I’m speaking about nursing, but there are many of us who are finding it harder than ever to keep showing up in a variety of contexts. There are many of us who are overwhelmed and exhausted, re-establishing boundaries or quitting altogether. Some of us are quitting our careers, some of us are quitting people. Some are unfriending or unfollowing aquaintences on social media and others are ending friendships that had previously survived for years. Some of us are simply too tired to keep having the same arguments. I know how exhausting it is to stay in dialogue when it feels like everyone is shouting. We’ve never been more willing to draw lines in the sand and say “this far, but no further”. Admittedly, the stakes have never been higher. The subject matter that we are disagreeing about is literally life and death.

Ultimately, no matter how we justify it, our quitting is a matter of self preservation. Like the worker who decides that they just can’t go in for one more shift, we intuitively know that we can’t carry every burden of this moment. Between the grief and the anger and the uncertainty of this moment, it all is too much to bear.

Perhaps this moment feels like too much, simply because it is. We need to learn how to care without carrying the whole weight of the world. Even when the outcomes are uncertain. Even in a pandemic.

Recently I’ve been both comforted and challenged by a popular quote attributed to Rabbi Tarfon, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it”.

If you have felt overwhelmed by the impossible challenge of this moment, this truth is for you. And if you have felt like quitting everything and everyone, this truth is also for you. This is a truth that frees us, as well as binding us.

There is a lot of work in this moment. I am not obligated to complete the work. The factors that have brought us to this moment are complex and multifaceted. They will not be easily undone by any one of us. I don’t have to fix or carry all the bitterness and resentfulness I see around me, but I do have to guard my heart against it. I don’t have to have the perfect, measured opinion on every new policy announced or implemented. That is some else’ (very good and important) work to do. I don’t have to attempt to control others through any means necessary, and I don’t have to become resentful when they act in a way different than I would choose for them.

But neither am I free to abandon the work. It is up to each of us to determine what work is ours to do. Our share of the weight. That work, we are bound to, as it is to us. We don’t get to quit that which we are here to do, even when we are tired. I am not free to abandon my humanity, even in the face of a pandemic. It matters that I am able see the patient, or friend, or stranger in front of me with compassion and curiosity, as well as (sound) judgement. It matters that I bring both my heart, and my head, to my practice. And It matters that I take care of myself so that I can keep coming into a workplace that is strained under the weight of this pandemic.

It matters that each of us keeps showing up. Wherever and whenever and however we can, we show up for our work, we show up for ourselves, and we show up for each other.

Sometimes, all you can do is just keep showing up.

And sometimes, that is enough.

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.

You Don’t Know What This Is Yet

July 20, 2021 / matr / 2 Comments

Click above and Matt will tell you a story about bewilderment and wild conjecture!

On March 25th, I was staring at the sky, and I didn’t know what I was seeing.

We were staying at a remote cabin, a campfire in front of us, the gathering darkness pressing in on us, our silhouettes illuminated by licking flames. We were hours from any city or artificial light and the stars were brilliant, scattershot against the infinite and inky black heavens.

Then we saw it.

A single, illuminated object was crossing the night sky. I thought it was a plane, but it was impossibly large and gleaming. Behind it, a trail of fire. The fire was small at first, and then grew, engulfing the whole. Suddenly pieces were breaking away, falling to the ground, consumed by flashes of light. Each piece glittered as it fell, creating the image of an expanding constellation, complete with connecting lines. Eventually these too were consumed, the brilliant display winking out of existence mere seconds after it had appeared.

While the event was occurring, my partner was fast enough to capture a brief video with her phone. We alternated between staring at the sky, and squinting at the small recording of that event for a long time. I didn’t know what it was, but it was a spectacular sight. One that was visible for mere seconds, but left a lasting imprint. One of us remarked that we were incredibly lucky to see such a sight.

Were we though? It depended entirely on what the object we just witnessed was.

We attempted to search for updates and breaking news but as remote as we were, we had little to no cell service. Our search attempts were met with the images of endlessly scrolling wheels as pages failed to load. In the absence of outside information we began to speculate. My brain latched onto the idea of an aircraft, and saw a giant plane on fire, the craft engulfed in flame as it was torn apart and fell into darkness. My partner’s thoughts were less morbid, suggesting that it looked more like a meteor shower, but it was more spectacular and strange then any meteor shower we had ever seen.

If it was a meteor, we were indeed very fortunate to witness it’s dazzling end. If it was a plane, we had just witnessed an event that didn’t allow for any survivors. Wild conjecture and discussions of what we had witnessed continued through that night and into the next day. We wanted to know what we had seen, but we also wanted to know how to see it; how to categorize it. Was it good or bad, blessing or curse, fortune or misfortune. We didn’t know. And we wouldn’t know for a long while.

The next day we drove into town and our phones were once again connected with the outside world. The second stage of a SpaceX rocket had failed to make it’s deorbit burn, and had been orbiting earth for 21 days. The event we had seen was its reentry into our upper atmosphere, where it briefly lit up the night sky for onlookers across British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Some of the remains landed on a remote Washington farm, and the rest disintegrated upon re-entry.

All of our best guesses and conjectures of the event were incorrect. In the end, it was neither a meteor or (thankfully) an aircraft full of passengers. In retrospect, I can admit that the event didn’t really resemble a plane at all. It was merely the label my mind supplied, and in absence of a better one, I accepted it. Neither of us remembers reading of the rocket launch weeks earlier, or it’s failed deorbit. We had no clear label for this spectacular and novel sight. We were (literally and figuratively) in the dark. We didn’t know what we were seeing, and we certainly didn’t know what to do with it. Not yet, anyway.

“You don’t know what this is yet” is a phrase I repeat to myself often. I offer it to you as well. There are a lot of times that I have found myself in (varying degrees of) the dark, both before that night and afterwards. I repeat it to myself when I feel like I’m receiving only the initial, incomplete information. I utter it when I feel like wild conjecture is given more attention span than it should be. I whisper it to myself when I hear shouting and harsh voices speaking of a compex, nuanced and evolving issue as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

We may not witness a mysterious celestial event everyday, but we are regularly surrounded by the unknown, the unfamiliar, and that which is only partially understood. The more we see and experience, the more things are going to fail to fit into our established categories and judgements. As we grow and learn, our world does as well.

We can expect a resistance to this ambiguity, both from outside and within. The last year and a half has been the most uncertain time many of us have ever experienced, but you might never know it from the certainty being peddled, both then and now. Repeated bold and certain predictions based on partial information and conjecture. A chorus of voices telling us how to immediately identify, categorize and react to information. I’ve been guilty of it too. Us humans like categories and labels that are familiar, clean, and certain. But certainty kills curiosity and inquiry. A familiar and well worn label allows the brain to sort quickly and move on, but at the cost of accuracy and wonder.

Some things are worth a little more time. Worth the uncertainty. Worth the benefit of doubt. Time, curiosity, and the uncovering of context are all often necessary before we can see the larger shape of a thing. There are bewildering moments when what you witness does not fit neatly with the well worn labels, categories and judgements. When there is the temptation to make the world smaller and simpler, there is also the grace to let things remain in unresolved tension.

You have the freedom to remind yourself that you don’t know what this is yet.

Maybe the responsibility to, as well.

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