wonder
Weekly newsletter 3.23.2021
Friends,
Today’s will be a short reflection. Instead of the celebration of spring that I’d planned (and there is plenty to celebrate with the lengthening of days and the flourishing of gardens and allergens), I’m preoccupied with events of the last week. The murder of 8 people, including 6 women of Asian descent in Atlanta last week and the murder of 10 people in Boulder this morning have given me pause. Instead, I want to share the text that I used in this week’s meditation, an excerpt from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton. In it, Merton describes a powerful experience that he had, an almost mystical encounter when he felt deeply and irreversibly connected to the people around him, all strangers. He saw the beauty of their hearts, the core of their realities. “If only they could all see themselves as they really are,” he wrote. “If only we could see each other that way all the time.”
If only.
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream…
It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake…
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift.
UPCOMING
Guided Meditations | Mondays, 4:00pm PST, via Zoom
Good Stuff III | 4-week symposium on Mondays at 5:00pm PST begins on April 5. Sign up here!
Good habits: understanding nuns through film | 6-week symposium on Tuesdays at 5:00pm PST begins on April 6. Sign up here!
Madonna: a case study in religion & pop culture | 5-week symposium on Thursdays at 7:00pm PST begins on April 15.
UPDATES
Guided meditations via Zoom continue! Mondays at 4:00pm PST. The aim is to practice being present - to ourselves, to others, and to the world. If you or someone you know could use a 20-30 minute dose of peace and quiet on Mondays, visit the meditation page on my site to sign up.
I’m looking at expanding meditation offerings and would love your feedback. If you’ve got 47 seconds (give or take a few), please complete this brief form: Guided Meditation: quick survey.
Last week, I had a conversation about ritual with Cat Dillon that will be featured in a podcast as part of the Routines & Rituals Symposium, a free online event that will run April26-May 8. More information about that event will be coming soon!
This week, we’re wrapping up two symposia - Good Stuff II and Religious literacy. The Good Stuff group has generated engaging, joyful, sometimes serious, and always meaningful conversations, and along the way, they've gotten to know each other and to share the insights and experiences that emerged from watching, hearing, reading, and talking about interesting things. Meanwhile, in the land of Religious literacy, we’ve explored Catholicism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism through their primary practices and have both found parallels between these practices and our own and explored differences that give each tradition a unique lens for understanding and navigating the world.
Registration is open for the Good Stuff III (Mondays beginning April 5) and Good habits: understanding nuns through film (Tuesdays beginning April 6) symposia. Check out my website for more information and to sign up. Interested? More info and registration are here. Symposia are limited to 10 participants and need 4 to run - if you’ve thought about participating, please sign up!
In addition to the Good Stuff and Good habits symposia next month, I’ll be facilitating a symposium on Madonna Studies as part of Tacoma Arts Live’s Adult Conservatory. This symposium will meet on Thursdays for five weeks beginning April 15. To sign up, visit Tacoma Arts Live’s Adult Classes & Outreach page. If you know any Madonnawannabes or anyone who wants to participate in the amazing work of Tacoma Arts Live, you can point them to the symposium’s Facebook page, too.
GOOD STUFF
Listen
Paul Simon’s 1990 album Rhythm of the Saints floats Simon’s stories and melodies over West African and Brazilian percussion. It’s a brilliant and underappreciated album, probably overshadowed by his preceding Graceland that featured Ladysmith Black Mambazo and drew attention to apartheid in South Africa. “Born at the Right Time” is a meditation on the gaze of infants, people who have “Never been lonely, never been lied to, never had to scuffle in fear, nothing denied to.” For me, the song is less nostalgia for lost innocence and more of an invitation to return to wonder.
If you stream music on Spotify, I’ve started a playlist called “Bill’s Good Stuff,” including music I’ve loved for a long time as well as things I’ve come across more recently. Feel free to add the playlist to your favorites! Bill’s Good Stuff Spotify Playlist
Laugh
In I’m the One That I Want, Margaret Cho’s concert film that captures her 2000 tour, she covers all the things that make us laugh: sexism, racism, homophobia. Hilarious right? It’s not those social evils that are the stuff of comedy, but by dissecting her experiences as a “Korean-American, fag hag, shit starter, girl comic, trash talker,” she gives her audience a place to start thinking about the impact of all those -isms and holds up a mirror to understand how, in fleeting and profound ways, we can tear each other down and lift each other up. I shared this brief clip from ITOTIW in the Good Stuff symposium this week, and if you’re looking for a starting point to understand anti-Asian prejudice, give yourself a few minutes to laugh with Margaret (and maybe at yourself).
Watch
What better time than the start of spring to renew our sense of wonder, and what better time to stoke whatever embers of hope remain? The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a collection of neologisms invented by John Koenig to fill in the gaps between language and the human experience, and the video series demonstrating these ideas is a rabbit hole worth falling into. “Yu Yi: The Desire to Feel Intensely Again” invokes the wonder inherent to so many of our “firsts,” or to those moments when we surrender to beauty and joy. It’s a welcome reminder that, when we pay attention, when we give ourselves the space to be, to see, to listen, we can emerge with the simple acknowledgement, “Is it not beautiful?”
