Picking Up Napkins and Other Things That Upset the Applecart

Yesterday I was crossing the street and observed a gust of wind snatch up a bajillion Starbucks napkins, confetti-ing (read: littering) them along my path ahead. It was actually pretty for a minute, all those recycled-brown rectangles fluttering around airborne. But, like all wild things, it had to come to an end, and they became grounded.

I was then forced to make a choice: to leave them in my fast-paced wake or to stop and give Mother Earth a little nudge in the right direction.

You shoulda seen me dancing all over the road, alternating between hand plucking and foot-stomping the little buggers. After one multiple-stomp attempt to catch a single one (it mattered to THAT starfish), I earned a driver's reluctant grin (must've been a Charlie Chapman fan).

Do you ever get deep about napkins?

You bet your mother lovin napkins I do!

I immediately went down this thought train:

We sometimes unnecessarily take responsibility for that for which we are not responsible.

Sometimes when someone does something wrong, that someone is unnecessarily spared the consequence... 



And then, it's converse, this:

We sometimes unnecesarily share the benefit of having been responsible with those who didn't participate in earning it.

Sometimes when someone does something right, that someone unnecessarily shares the reward...

What came to mind for that one was when we went to Disney Land this past Fall and did the right thing by arriving an hour ahead of the 4:00pm afternoon parade in order to reserve front-row seats on the street's curb. We thought it through. We planned accordingly. We did the work. As it were, there were two reasons for subsets of our party to leave and come back (#1 potty, #2 ice cream if you must know) prior to the parade's start and around the time the crowd was thickening.

Each time someone asked if the gaps left behind by our temporarily absent tooshes were available for the taking, I hated having to say NOPE.

Finally, I collapsed. A young family who had positioned themselves behind us (and whose kids - even standing up - would not be able to see well over our sitting-down bodies) seemed like the perfect peeps to squeeze into our space. I didn't swap our spots for theirs. Ours were just made smaller; we made room.

Even though our actions rightfully justified our initial place and theirs theirs.

Now, I am under no illusion that we are saints for having shared a parade-side curb at Disneyland with teensy children.

I mean, now that it's in print, it sounds a little more like just behaving like decent humans.

I mention this story - rather - because not everyone in our party was in agreement with this decision (based on body language exclusively) and, at the time, it got me thinking about the same thing the recent napkin moment did:

Much of the time, there is a thinner thread connecting cause and effect than we like to think.

Because, here's what we like to think about our human behavior:

Cause                                           thick solid line                                       Effect

Degree of Effort                          thick solid line                            Degree of Achievement

Degree of Work                           thick solid line                             Degree of Success

Action                                           thick solid line                                  Outcome


It's sorta a human thing, really.

It's why, if we're going down the Bible road (and you know I love me some Christian anecdotes), the dudes and dudettes (ok, it was just dudes... the Disciples as it were) who noticed the blind man drilled Jesus about what this man's parents one generation up had done such that God would make him sightless.

We Homo sapiens like to explain things. We like correlations. We like control. We like to know what to expect. We like certainty. We like concrete. We really, really love thick solid lines.

When I took statistics in college, I was fascinated by it. A layman's introduction to statistics is as follows: correlations between one set of data and another is rated by a "correlation coefficient," a value that ranges from negative one to one. If you're trying to connect two variables to one another (smoking and lung cancer, lets say, or exercise and heart disease), what you DON'T want is a 0. A correlation of zero means your research has led you to nada conclusions, you flunked. What you'd love is to get a -1 or a 1. A perfect negative correlation (as one variable increases, the other decreases or vice versa) or a perfect positive one (both variable increase/decrease in tandem).

But the truth in statistics and in life is that perfect correlations are fairly elusive.

Our role in this life: There is a thread. Oh, yes. There's a thread, a dotted line, a rational-clue-based scavenger hunt that makes all the junk that happens in life somehow connect to how we conduct ourselves. We set shit in motion, we do. Good luck, as they say, does follow hard work around. Human behavior matters.

Otherwise, every motivational poster made by humankind can be shredded. Coaches and teachers can retire. Total chaos would reign. Nothing would mean anything.

The best way to look at ourselves?

I say this: Recognize that most of where our participation in life meets life's actual play-out is, correlation coefficient speaking, about a ± 0.5.

This both ruffles the feathers of my self importance (i.e. pisses me off) and makes me feel completely and totally good (i.e. relieved).

I think we'd all be a lot more healthy if we viewed things with this ± 0.5 mentality. Cuz when I spend time with people operating under the ± 1.0 mentality, accompanying it seems to be a lot of harshness, their views towards people specifically. Actually, their views about their Source too. And, furthermore, most seem to be pretty on top of life at the time of this ± 1.0 mentality. (Goes something like this: I worked hard, I paid the price, I was responsible. This was earned.)

I ask this: Would a ± 1.0 type person pick up napkins that he didn't drop? Would she make room for someone who didn't do anything to receive it?

As a ± 0.5 thinker, I almost look for ways to make the apple cart teeter. It's fun-in-a-naughty way, really. When I find that space that's untouched by statistics...that space when it can go the expected way or not... that space where the element of surprise can affect the ho-hum assumptions about what is deserved or undeserved...

That space can be rather magical.

And here's how you know: People's response to it.

When the magic of grace fills a space that otherwise would be absolute, people show you the magic:

You get grins.

You get tense shoulders dropped.

You get laughter.

You get tight jaws loosened.

You get a glimpse of playfulness.

You get an actual affect, a change in the energy.


I call it good-will naughtiness...


We sometimes unnecessarily take responsibility for that for which we are not responsible.

Sometimes when someone does something wrong, that someone is unnecessarily spared the consequence.

MAGIC

We sometimes unnecessarily share the benefit of having been responsible with those who didn't participate in earning it.

Sometimes when someone does something right, that someone unnecessarily shares the reward.

MAGIC

This magic is called good-will naughtiness... And I'd like for all of us to have a little more of it.

A Fall Tells It All

I’m gonna be real with ya.

I go in and out of periods of wellness like it’s going out of style.

And while I’ve never much cared for the hobby of sprinting after hot fashion trends, I’m like a police dog chasing after a scent when it comes to trying to figure out my own damn trends.

This sister’s mood is not the timeless black cocktail dress hanging central in the closet. Nor the reliable beige cardigan, wearing potential ceaseless.

I’d liken my wellness more to the wacky floral print that retires after a go or two, more the unconventional clearance buy that wisps in and out of the closet faster than you can say: "GOODWILL."

Wellness in my world, despite my tenuous efforts aimed to groom and maintain and guarantee it, shows up in aggravatingly finite stints.

(to peak in on one of my homegrown gimmicks to do just this, see my Tiered Support Plan here),

I’ve just exited a particular rough spell (called Summer 2018) and out of it came a new Litmus test I’d like to share.

It has to do with tripping and falling.

I’m staying literal here, so don’t go using your figurative imagination. Literal as in: actually physically tripping.

But first, I’ll convey with brevity my particular wellness-gone-south pattern:


                            **Level/Centered**

                         Stressed/Overwhelmed

            Stressed/Overwhelmed + Anxious/Nervous

Stressed/Overwhelmed + Anxious/Nervous + Insecure/Inner Doubt

These are the layers of my swirls. Your swhirl patten looks different, no doubt. Swirls aren’t supposed to have twins. My guess, despite this, is that you might repeatedly fall into yours the way I repeatedly fall into mine: without knowledge. Slippery, Sweepy, Off-Guard-Catching things, those swirls!!! They incrementally and slowly strike. Assholes.

My second guess is that, regardless of your swirl stages, you might be able to use the same Litmus test.

Back to that:

Tripping and falling.

Do you ever do it?

Early summer I tripped on the walk from the grocery store to my van. I caught myself - thank goodness no pavement contact. For a couple tenths of a second, though, it looked like I was going down. And my reaction was this: "Dang. I almost went down. Ha! I'm glad I didn't. Whoopsie!" Within a couple additional tenths of a second I most immediately got back to humming. I even caught the eye of someone approaching and said, "That was a close one, heh?"

End of summer - as the tripping gods would have it - I tripped in that same cockadoodee parking lot in the same cockadoodee spot. Nothing was more or less severe about this one than the inaugural trip two months previous. This time, however: "SON OF A BITCH. WHY AM I SUCH A KLUTZ? I AM AN IDIOT. WHO SAW THIS DISPLAY OF NON-GRACE?  HOW COME EVERYONE ELSE ISN'T SCREWING UP NEARLY AS MUCH AS I AM? STUPID! I'VE GOT TO BE BETTER." Insert an embarrassed blush, eyes averting from any passerby, a heart rate increase that extended well beyond what the momentary panic warranted, and an attitude of self-criticism that underpinned the whole thing and was supported by the whole thing.

I don't have to draw a line from my parking lot trip experiences to which swirl stage I was in each of these times.

I think you know.

One says, "Whoopsie" and one basically says "Son of a Bitch, you Stupid Klutz." Who knew a simple, benign act of physical imperfection could do such different things to my inner psyche?

Oh, but dear Tricia... it's the other way around. The trip wasn't the problem, of course.

My inner psyche, at the August juncture, was already to its final stage in the swirl pattern: overwhelmed, anxious, and fully insecure.

And it took a near fall for me to see it so plainly. Damn you, asshole swirl!!!

The trip was the revealer, the measuring stick, that which yanked the curtain back from the wizard’s control center,

the Litmus Test.

Too bad we can’t manufacture periodical near-falls to serve as mirrors reflecting our inner wellness. What we can do, I'd say, is to use our imagination to conduct the test. Here's the question that I've decided to ask myself from time to time in my quiet moments: "If I were to make a mistake right now - big or small - what would my inner dialogue say about it? What would my body say about it? How would it ruffle my feathers? How would it not?

Because tripping on this trip of a life is a built-in guarantee. How I translate the trips has to do with the type of relationship I have with myself and that's where my own magic enters... it's not up to the uneven curb.

It's up to me.

Birthing in 2019

So I’m at the elementary school where my kids attend for an event recently and I find myself – early for once - lingering in the hallway. In-between my date’s (read: 3 yr old daughter’s) demands, I discovered a message whose content demanded my attention more… It was in black construction paper letters on one of the teacher’s doors for all who enter it every day to see: 

"This year we will do what has not been before."

Right there. I felt something.

Here’s what I felt.

I felt that what I knew to be true was being posted in elementary school speak:

Life is the business of creating. 

Who knows this better than teachers? Who year after year conduct a series of similar lessons with similar assignments and expectations and ways of doing business and yet whose years look wildly different (asks their spouses) – no two alike.

The quote itself unearthed in me a sense of wonder at the time – a wonder about my very day…  what would I be privy to experiencing over the next 15 minutes? The next 5? The next 1? The mystery it provoked was a teensy bit intoxicating, and I promise the only bevy options at this school event were hot tea and coffee. 

I don’t know if this makes any sense, but my mind went to one of those play doh pusher-outer things, that you schmoosh playdoh into and then it spews out the other side… and then from there I went more grotesque: pork coming out of a meat grinder.

Why don’t I just go ahead and say the human manifestation of my playdoh and pork imagery:

A slimy lil thing being brought into this world from its momma.

Something being born.

What if we looked at ever aspect of life in this way? That each moment is a moment being actively born into existence that has never been before? 

What was brought to mind was last Saturday when my fam was invited to our cousins’ home for a holiday gathering. In addition to the ornament exchange and prime rib scrumptiousness, there was another pinnacle of focus for those gathered: The Broncos game. (In fact, Scott had a much more dialed-in experience than the rest of us: he departed the family festivities to mozie on down to the stadium containing the action itself.) 

What we found ourselves talking about, overlooking the game on the TV while sipping our beer/wine, was that in a world when almost everything can be damn well near predicted (weather, stocks, baby genders), never will there be a way to take away the unpredictability of the live-ness of sporting competitions. Nobody… NOBODY… can know how a football game will go, what will have us holding our breaths, what will have us with our heads in our hands, what will have us maniacally jumping on couches like madmen and women. Which players will perform above their perceived talent threshold. Which will flop. Which team will win, how they will win. 

There is no satisfying substitute for watching the art of something we anticipate unfolding.

That’s sort of WHAT LIFE IS EVERY SINGLE SLIVER OF IT… art unfolding. Moments being birthed one after the other. A painting evolving into existence, brushstroke by brushstroke.

If this is true. Could we maybe gift the birth of each unfolding second with more anticipation?  

I’m reading a book right now called, “The Artist’s Way.” It’s been around for fifteen plus year and sorta famous in many circles, I’m learning, for helping folks “unblock” their creative potential; many have found their callings through the author, Jullia Cameron’s, tutelage.  

She’s damn deep, and I love her. She opened me up to a whole new premise: 

Our creator encourages creativity.

Just as our Source authored us, we get to join in similar authorship; with each moment, we are actively creating.

She says this: “If you think of the universe as a vast electrical sea in which you are immersed and from which you are formed, opening to your creativity changes you from something bobbing in that sea to a more fully functioning, more conscious, more cooperative part of that ecosystem.

This ups the ante: Cameron is saying that not only are we – regardless of consciously knowing we are or not – leaving a creation in our wake just by being alive, there’s something wacky-cool that happens when we intentionally unearth our individual creative gifts and channel them into the universe's synchronicity. 

In other words, there's living (creating) and then there's living (creating).

I don’t know about you, but if I had to say where I’d like to be on our electrical sea, I’d prefer to exist as a creature who contributes to its good than as a piece of purposeless pollutant floating on its surface. 

So, even though that elementary school teacher probably put those letters up in August, to set the stage for her students walking in for a new school season, I am choosing to make the message the focus for the many millions of moments of my 2019:

"This year we will do what has not been before."

This year I will do what has not been before.

Life is the business of creating.

Heck, I'm not gonna wait until the ball drops, even. I'm paying increased attention and anticipation to this unfolding masterpiece of mine....

starting...

NOW. 

And I'm already intoxicated, without the New Years champagne.

Happy New Year, friends.

How What Threw Me Has Wound Up Affirming Me

When I was a kid, I thought my Dad was a Christian. I mean, it wasn’t my fault I was clueless about his agnosticism: he led my parents’ freakin Sunday School class at our Christian church. He appeared by all measures to be all in. Apparently, my parents at the onset of their marriage had hashed out a deal that my dad would be closeted about his lukewarm feelings towards Jesus’s presumed divinity with us kids and loyal to the church my mother was deeply devoted to. All she really asked was for him to show up. But, the perpetual joiner, he couldn’t help himself but to go and be involved.

Even though I didn’t find out about his agnosticism until my early teen years, I credit my dad for his authenticity with the Christian church itself. I think most of the adults, including the pastor, he was upfront with took great comfort in hearing his refreshingly raw honesty: Dad didn’t know about Jesus’s Christ-ness and he wasn’t afraid to admit it.

But when I learned, I wasn’t comforted. 

I was straight-up confused.

How could he go each week? How could he fake it? How could I have shared a house for a baker’s dozen number of years with someone who didn’t share this BIG thing with rest of us (and not know it).

There are two things, in long conversations I remember having late into the night during those years while in the house and a few back for college breaks after I left it, I remember penetrating my thought process at the time the most. Hell, they’ve penetrated it ever since.

#1) Dad used this word often, when I asked how he could be SO Christian and yet not one: 

TRAPPINGS.

He said that he chose to be part of a faith community because he stood for the same things it stood for: the values, the focus on contributing to common good, the priority to care for our community/world in a collective way. But that he would not assume the title, because he could not subscribe to all the “trappings.” 

Trappings.

It made me think he was worried about getting “caught.” Like Christians were out to get him.

(P.S. Lots of Christian ARE out to get people. Thankfully, we didn’t surround ourselves with those).

But it wasn’t his control or independence he was afraid to lose… it wasn’t that he was reticent to belong to something, get swept away by something… it wasn’t that he was too stubborn (although, it’s only fair to note that he most definitely was). He wasn’t avoiding Christianity to make a statement, to be different.

All of these seemed to me to be likely reasons for my dad to have chosen heathen-ship.

Here’s what it really was: doctrine and theological belief – at least in the Christian culture I was raised in – was as necessary to the decision to be a Christian as eating no meat is to the decision to be a vegetarian. And so… if Dad couldn’t look in the mirror and say that he had accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior, then he couldn’t say he was a Christian.

And, to him, all that doctrinal jargon was fluff. Unnecessary. Getting in the way. Man made. 

Trapping.

Like there is this artificial shroud of thick, foggy air wisping around Jesus that we people made ourselves and bore into existence between us and him, and that as a result we have to penetrate through all this dense religiosity to get to who he actually is, and that the thicker and more oppressive and less see-through the fog of religiosity gets, the higher Jesus gets elevated into something he’s not.

Dad was saying that it wasn’t himself he was worried would get trapped.

It’s Jesus.

And we did it to him. 

And then, #2) “Have you ever thought of this, Tricia: How would your life, my life, anyone’s life be different if Jesus hadn’t come along?” 

Trishie may not have gotten much sleep that night.

Or the next.

I felt stumped. And it made me mad that, as a person who took her faith so seriously, I didn’t have some semblance of confidence about how the world as a whole would be different were it not for Jesus.

The best I could come up with was kinda canned and chinsy, “Then we wouldn’t be saved?”

To be fair to myself, it was sorta a stupid question… if we are using Christian speak and operating within the Christian framework then it’s obvious that God would have fulfilled his prophesy somehow, if not by the guy from Nazareth. My answer shoulda been, “If Jesus didn’t exist with the whole virgin birth thing and cross thing and stone-rolled-away thing, then it woulda been Fred (with a cloud elevator entrance, then golden dagger death, then mystical pigeon rebirth) or Gina (by way of a clamshell reveal, then circle of fire exit, then invisible mermaid appearance). 

I mean: WHO CARES. 

And that’s just it. That’s JUST what I think Dad was getting at – whether he meant to or not. (Perhaps a more accurate statement is that it’s what I’M getting at these some-many years later as a result of Dad’s provocation):

It’s not the package that matters.

I choose the package of Jesus, because It’s the best-known manifestation of the God I have come to know.

Would I have known this God without the package of Jesus? I say yes. I find my God everywhere.
But at some point ya gotta hitch your wagon to something concrete. And Jesus, I argue, is the most concrete package that demonstrates, incarnates if you will, the God I know… the God with whom not many were familiar at the time.

Which is to say:
a) He is loving (not judgmental)
b) He is peaceful (not violent)
c) He is forgiving (not vengeful)
d) He is humble (not boastful)
e) He works for the poor (not the powerful)
f) He relies on Bigger Understanding (not human understanding)
g) He is accessible to everyone (not just some)
h) He provides a spirit of calm (not fear)
i) He is personal and experience-able (not distant and unavailable)
j) He says we are fully worthy (not 99% or ¾ or ½ or UN)

And lastly:
k) He makes my life simultaneously harder and better

I don’t hide the fact that I get super reflective at Easter-time and Christmas-time about this Jesus guy. I turn him over and around and upside down in my head. Hope he doesn’t get dizzy. I know the process for me is dizzying. 

I guess I just wanna be pretty darn sure He’s the guy for me.

This Christmas season, I turn to my dad for that answer…

..whose surprising admittance to me that he was not a Christian has turned out to be a powerful clarity-maker:

I choose Jesus for the same reasons Dad wasn’t so sure:

#1) I follow the Jesus who is untrapped by our human bells and whistles.
#2) I follow the Jesus who is a concrete package to make better known the God in my heart.

Turns out, that man I shared a house with the first half of my life and I had a lot more in common than we realized. 

(Except the stubborn part… I completely and wholly refuse to believe that I am ever stubborn...like, ever.)