Sunset Beneath and Between the Bridges

The John Anderson White is a recently refurbished sternwheeler riverboat that leisurely cruises the downtown portion of the Des Moines river. The "refurbishing" hadn't been required because of age or neglect but because close to a decade ago some vandal cut it loose one night and it crashed on a bridge down river. Then a local restaurateur with, it might have seemed, more imagination and money than sense, bought the crippled hulk and went to work. Slowly, as it turned out.

Earlier in the summer we learned that the sternwheeler was back on its feet -- so to speak. While chartered dinner cruises were a bit out of our reach, my ears pricked up when an email announced sunset cruises for we unwashed multitudes. It sounded like an opportunity.

The evening arrived and, without really knowing what to expect, we stepped aboard along with the other six passengers (it can carry up to 75). The ad had promised appetizers and music, and sure enough, a table was invitingly spread and both a guitar and banjo leaned promisingly in one corner. After a few perfunctory announcements and instructions, the paddle began to turn and we were underway.

The river, that time of the evening, was still and, for the most part, quiet. Along the way, the Captain noted points of interest; the musician -- who doubled as a deck hand -- strummed and sang. A white pelican floated leisurely at a safe distance from our path, and the sun gently settled behind the trees. The river, almost hypnotic, slid glass-like beneath us. As the Captain had previously announced, the 2nd street bridge -- too low for us to sail under -- marked the end of our forward progress and the John Anderson White gently turned itself around and began its journey home. A scant hour after we had shoved off, we were nudging our way back against the dock and stepping back onto solid ground, nourished as much by the orange sky and the placid river as by the pizza.

I could go again.

The Value of Every Last Crumb

The singing has faded, the phone calls have stopped; the dishes are washed and the leftovers put away; the cards have been lovingly read and appreciatively displayed. New this year were the Facebook greetings from people I haven't seen in years, and others who probably don't me well enough to care. All in all, it was a wonderfully indulgent day. But now the birthday is past; it is the ordinary day after with more routine necessities of its own.

That's fine because, special days notwithstanding, I like my "life as usual." Certainly among the world's fortunate, with better health than I deserve, I am privileged to engage in meaningful work, delight in an affectionate family, nest in a comfortable home, and enjoy innumerable opportunities to indulge my curiosity and creativity.

Whatever else they may afford, perhaps birthdays are precious because they don't simply make you feel special, but remind you that you are -- a favor you get to return every time you get to celebrate someone else's. It is a day, certainly, to mark your aging, but in the process to comprehend again, as the old quip puts it, that getting older is better than the alternative.

Which, in other words, is simply to be reminded that life -- your own, along with all those who surround you -- is important...

...sacred...

...transient...

...and, as with last night's cheesecake, worth forking up every last crumb.

Sleeping through the conversation of the gods

Arriving at the farm one afternoon midsummer I asked L.T. what constitutes "ripe." Is it a philosophical question, I wondered, or a horticultural one? I understood that a plant's ripeness is not defined by my appetite -- that just because I am hungry for that pepper doesn't make it ripe -- but suddenly I realized I had no better criteria by which to assess it. In one sense, the question was prompted by the jalapenos dangling beneath the leaves on our back deck that I was hesitant to pick, but looking around us, just then, at the rows and rows of various vegetables L.T. and his family were growing, my interest was also more general. "What is ripe," I asked him, "and how do you know when something is?"

He offered initially a technical answer -- regarding the maturity of the seeds inside the fruit and their readiness to reproduce -- but he knew neither of us would be satisfied leaving it at that. Besides, he laughingly acknowledged, you can't very well assess the seeds without picking and eviscerating the fruit. And so this wise physician-turned-farmer from Guyana pointed at a bank of plants and urged a more intuitive observation. Notice, he invited me, how the branches and leaves veil the growing fruit. The plant, he suggested, is trying to hide the fruit -- because it is not ready. But when its readiness arrives -- when the fruit, whose purpose it is to reproduce, is ready to fulfill its destiny -- then the plant will take itself out of the way, essentially advertising the fruit. "It is, after all, in the plant's interest for you to notice the ripened and ready fruit and pick it, and so the plant puts it on full display." I, of course, and the birds and the squirrels and the deer and anything else that may consume the fruit and distribute the seeds to continue the natural cycle. In essence, when the fruit is ready the plant will tell you. You simply have to pay attention.

I've thought of that wisdom countless times since that plantside catechism; how it reminded me of scripture's differentiation in the Greek between "Chronos" -- clock and calendar time -- and "Kairos" -- the right time or God's time, and how you count the former and discern the latter. In the former you simply look at your watch and check off the minutes, while in the latter you have to patiently and expectantly pay attention. And I have thought about how difficult is this latter skill in a culture like ours where certitude has grown morbidly obese and curiosity has withered to wraith-like proportions. As long as we bluster and stomp around with the heaviness of what we know we will never manage the subtler sagacity of perceiving what might be.

And wouldn't that be a loss? In one of his Letters to a Spiritual Seeker written in 1850, Henry David Thoreau confessed, "I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is. I shall be sorry to remember that I was there, but noticed nothing remarkable, ---not so much as a prince in disguise; lived in the golden age a hired man; visited Olympus even, but fell asleep after dinner, and did not hear the conversation of the gods. I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries."

It wouldn't be a bad way, then, of spending my birthday today: waking up, listening with curiosity, and watching to see what's getting ripe.

Tim and Julia and a few recipes for life

Caught up in the summer re-fascination with Julia Child via the movie Julie and Julia, I ordered two sets of DVD's containing collections of Child's old PBS television show, The French Chef. First airing during a period of my childhood when I was more interested in Batman than boeuf bourguignon, I have only a vague recollection of her show. I'm sure I must have happened upon the broadcast from time to time -- after all, there were only four networks on the air at that time -- but I am sure I never landed there. Cooking might have been something necessary to do, but who would want to learn about it, especially from an odd-sounding woman on TV?

Now, learning about food and its manifold preparations is most of what I love and want to do. It fascinates me as a delightful field of inquiry equally deep and wide that no one will ever completely explore. It is part science, many parts art. It lends itself to following the directions, and equally well to experimentation. It is universal, but simultaneously cultural and finally intimately personal. There is room for triumph in a way that can be communally enjoyed, and soft-landing failures that might leave the diners hungry but not injured.

And so Julia has been fun to rediscover. Last month I consumed her memoir, My Life in France; this month we are devouring her TV shows. And she is a delight. If I couldn't fathom it at the time, it's easy now to understand her enduring popularity. She is at once expert and klutzy. At the same time that she is perfectly at home in front of the stove, she is awkwardly childlike in front of the camera. And she makes mistakes. In her "potato show" she was cooking a large potato pancake that was ready to flip over; she began to talk about the action of doing so. Lifting the skillet, she gave it a quick and dipping jerk. About half of the potato mixture wound up back in the pan with the rest scattered in globs around the stove top. "Well," she matter-of-factly observed, "I made a mess out of that. But no problem. You can just put all this back in the pan." And then she reflected, "it takes practice -- and the courage of your convictions."

We are only beginning our journeys with The French Chef, having learned so far about stewing beef, roasting a chicken, making French Onion Soup, using potatoes, and both cooking and eating lobsters (most people need help with both, she kindly observed). Some of it has looked easy. Some of it has looked impossible. Most of it has looked delicious. All of it has made us wish we could spend endless hours with her in the kitchen -- learning about food and its preparation, to be sure, but also a few things about life.

Who, after all, couldn't use a reminder to be willing to make mistakes, to act with the courage of one's convictions, to be at home with both one's giftedness and one's awkwardness, all with an enlarging spirit of curiosity? That's all pretty powerful, even in black and white.

Savoring the Uniqueness of the Day

Savor the day. There won't be another one like it for...well, a long time -- a hundred or a thousand years, depending on how you count it. 09/09/09. Last year the Chinese took advantage of the opportunity to celebrate their lucky number 8 by kicking off the Olympic games at 8 pm on 08/08/08. Numerologists lean toward the number 9, the climactic number of the single digits, associating it with forgiveness, compassion and success on the positive side and arrogance and self-righteousness on the negative. Interesting; and when the alarm went off this morning I thought it was merely signaling the launch of another day.

And it portends to be another busy one -- a funeral to both prepare and officiate; meetings at the beginning and the end, with a couple of others in between. Somewhere in the seams between them a sermon garden had better get some water; hopefully a meal or two to consume, as well.

But then yesterday comes to mind -- sitting with the family whose mother will be buried today, listening to their stories and their memories and their affections; checking in on a widower, only days into his grief, busying himself with thank-you notes; a lunch and conversation with a couple of church leaders giving attention to our common service; a couple of hospital visits, plus a visit to a retirement center to wish a fresh 101-year-old a happy birthday; stopping by my polling place to add my vote; a trip to the farm to pick up this week's vegetables, followed by the chopping and sizzling of a handful of the pickings for dinner. It didn't have a memorable date to set it apart, but yesterday was a precious day of its own with hours meaningfully spent and lives fruitfully intersected.

I wonder when we -- I -- got away from the sense that everyday is unique; that apart from particular designations like "Mother's Day" or birthdays or Valentines Day or Independence Day or days marked by numerical oddities like 09/09/09, days were merely...days? Day after day. Constellations of hours circumscribed by darkness. I wonder when they became routine? Perhaps lulled by their apparent abundance we cease to notice them -- as invisible as individual grains of sand on the beach, or individual blades of grass in the lawn. The reality, of course, is that their abundance is unpredictable -- more gift than guarantee.

Which is to remind myself here at the beginning of this new one that for reasons far more significant than its numerical novelty, this day, like every other one, is a day to be savored. There won't be another one like it for...ever.

The Sublimity of Lostness and Receiving

We were lost. Mid-afternoon on Labor Day Lori wished for the company of water. So we loaded into the car toward where memory knew we could find it. Maffit Reservoir was built on a tributary of the Raccoon River several decades west of town, and years ago we used to enjoy picnics there. A part of the water works system of Des Moines, it is a scenic lake that prohibits boats; hence peaceful in both sight and sound. We hadn't been back to Maffit at least since we moved across town six years ago, and in the intervening years new roads and redesigned interchanges had changed the lay of the land.

We knew the general vicinity, but as we approached the roads we vaguely remembered we discovered they were no longer there. We tracked, then backtracked, and time and again got sidetracked on countless country roads -- few of them paved. We drove through rolling hills and landscapes of corn fields, past farmsteads with sturdy, canopied trees under which families were enjoying the afternoon. We used our intuition; we tried to navigate by the trees. But finally we admitted that we couldn't find it. More to the point, we finally admitted that we were lost.

And then a funny thing happened: it dawned on us almost simultaneously that we didn't care. The drive had been and continued to be beautiful. We were enjoying the outing even if our original goal eluded us. So we drove and drunk in the countryside, turning onto this dirt road and then turning off onto that one. Utterly lost while utterly content, we noticed old houses, we noticed ancient trees, we noticed farm ponds and laughed at how unexpectedly our "water longing" was being satisfied; we noticed each other. Gently nudged along by the car's compass, we headed northwest, in the general vicinity of town; not really caring, but neither really knowing how many miles south and west we had drifted.

And then another funny thing happened: up ahead the dirt road approached a stop sign at a T-intersection. We would have to make a decision. Right seemed likely to take us generally in the direction of home, but then we noticed the name of the road transecting our path: Maffit Lake Rd. Turning left, we burst out laughing as a few miles later we turned into the familiar entry and welcomed the watery panorama opening up before us.

In our lostness was our finding. In our letting go did we gain the capacity to receive.

Funny how that happens.

Finding the Way Back to Center

In his 1937 play, Our Town, Thornton Wilder employs the endearing device of a Stage Manager who has full awareness of his audience and routinely breaks the imaginary 4th wall common in theater by directly addressing them. In that fashion I will adopt, for a moment, the Stage Manager's approach and speak directly to you, my patient and forgiving readers (trusting that it's not too presumptuous to speak of you in the plural).

This summer, in a writing workshop, folk singer Carrie Newcomer observed that "ninety percent of writing is showing up..." I haven't been showing up. I could say that I've been busy, but while true, it's nothing new. Busyness has become, I suppose, a way of life and has been for quite some time. Busyness has been less a factor than distraction -- distraction at every level of my being. Whatever effect such a centrifugal state has on my external comings and goings, as a spiritual flaw it is withering. Prayers do not rise from a soul not paying attention; neither thoughtful reflection nor words on a page or a blog. And lately I have lost my center, growing too distracted to pay attention.

But if it's true, as the title of Newcomer's workshop suggests, that writing is a spiritual discipline, perhaps I have unnecessarily taken sides in a "chicken and egg" debate. It could be, after all, that writing is less the fruit of a centered soul than the pathway leading to it, and not writing has contributed to the distraction.

Perhaps. It will be worthwhile to test the hypothesis. After all, as Lori likes to remind me of what I romantically told her on our first date, "I love words."

In the meantime I apologize to you who have been left too long with nothing but the image of tomato bottom rot to consider. I'll try to come up with something more attractive.