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Category: perspective

Gift of Sight

Gift of Sight

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During these wide-open days of winter, I’ve been keeping a pair of binoculars on my desk. They’re fast becoming an essential element of this writer’s toolkit. 

I’m watching a fox sun himself in a sunny corner of our backyard. He paws at the snow, ambles around the hollies. Every so often he glances up with his perky ears and catlike face (a winning combination since the rest of him is doglike). Does he see me watching him? 

I marvel at the alertness of his posture, the thickness of his reddish-brown fur, his winter coat. I imagine the feel of the sun on his back, the generations of wildness in his bones. 

He is a gift, as are the woodpeckers and cardinals at the feeder. A reminder of the creatures who live among us, the natural world we inhabit. The binoculars help me see the fox and, by extension, all of creation.

Taizé Prayer

Taizé Prayer

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I’d heard about it for years but usually have a conflict on the night it happens. Last night I didn’t, so I drove to the church in the dark and walked into a shimmering, candlelit chapel that scarcely resembled its everyday self.

There were icons on the altar and candles flickering around the sanctuary, illuminating the rough-hewn brick walls. There were two tables of thin tapers for lighting to elevate your prayer intention. There were many in attendance, but a hush filled the room. 

Taizé is an ecumenical monastic community in France with worship services of repetitive chanted prayer. Its model has become popular around the world. 

We sang in Latin, we sang in English. We were accompanied by piano, organ, violin, oboe and clarinet. The melodies were like plainsong, and in their repetition was the music of the ages.  

Silence punctuated the service: a silent entrance, a silent exit, and a stretch of silence in the middle, time for quiet contemplation — “essential to discovering the heart of prayer,” the handout told me.

I left feeling renewed, inspired, quieted. 

(Photo: courtesy Arlington Catholic Herald.)

Sharing Epiphany

Sharing Epiphany

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Today is Epiphany, celebrated as Christmas by some and as a day of wonder and awe by others. I’m one of the latter. For me, this is a day to celebrate the aha moments of life.

Which brings me to an op-ed I read in yesterday’s Washington Post. In it, James Naples, a surgeon and medical residency program director, shares how he conquered the yips, an unexplained loss of skill that affects high-performing athletes, performers and, apparently, surgical residents. 

Early in his training, Naples explained, he began to struggle through even basic procedures. “My head had gotten in the way of my hands.” Then he met a new senior surgeon, Dr. E., who in the three minutes it took the two of them to scrub for an operation, totally changed the younger surgeon’s trajectory. The older doctor was warm and open and approachable. There was only one thing to avoid doing in the upcoming procedure, he said. “Everything else is fixable.” 

The effect on Naples was profound. The younger surgeon realized it was okay to make mistakes, that it was part of the learning process. Now he’s mentoring new doctors, encouraging them to share their fears and doubts. ‘

I’m not a surgical resident, but the lesson that “all mistakes are fixable” resonates with me, too. “What thing worth doing — in our jobs, families or communities — is not susceptible to the folly of perfectionism?” Naples asks. “With honesty and empathy, we all can help others find peace with fallibility.” I’m grateful that Naples had his epiphany and shared it with the rest of us.

(A photo not of surgery but of an Epiphany surprise.)

Weathering

Weathering

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I noticed it on my recent forays in Washington state but I notice it here, too:  the beauty abundant this time of year. Though it is the season of diminishment, it’s also a season of plentitude, a harvest of fluttering last leaves, a bounty of bare branches.

Leave beauty up to nature, I think, conveniently skipping tornadoes, wildfires and other natural disasters. Nature knows what to take and what to leave behind. It is seldom gaudy or superfluous, always the right amount of color or cover. 

There is a subtle reassurance this time of year. It speaks of weathering, of seeking splendor in the frail and fallen, of finding enough in what is left behind.

Rainier

Rainier

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Because I’m a visitor here, the mountains still surprise me. They appear mirage-like on the horizon, a gift after a hard climb or a long walk. 

So it was yesterday with Mount Rainier, shimmering peacefully above Lake Washington in Seward Park. I turned my head … and there it was. 

It wasn’t the clearest day or the bluest sky. But the mountain showed itself anyway. 

A Trip to Town

A Trip to Town

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Yesterday, I went for groceries. If this sounds like some sort of Old West expedition, coming down the mountain for coffee and sugar and flour, that wouldn’t be too far off the mark. Because it was an adventure, the adventure of public transport in a place I barely know. 

I walked into town, but thought it would be better not to walk back, given the heaviness of my load. No problem. I’d studied the bus route, thought I knew what I was doing. 

The first sign of difficulty was the road closure in front of the grocery store. I thought I’d accounted for it when I found a temporary stop, but actually I hadn’t. The bus that finally arrived wasn’t going my way. Instead, I had a lovely tour of Port Townsend from a bus driver who reminded me of Paul Giamatti. 

“You missed the #2,” he said. “Best go back to the Transit Center and get the #3. I can take you there.” He did that, then I waited … and waited. As Paul was pulling out for another loop and there was still no sign of the #3 bus, he opened his window and shouted, “He’ll be here soon; he’s just fixing his bus.” 

Uh oh. Fixing his bus? This didn’t sound good. But in fact the #3 did arrive minutes later, and a colorful cast of character hopped on, all with various forms of bag and baggage: shopping bags, sleeping bags, backpacks. Eventually, I was dropped off at the stop Paul suggested, walked another half mile or so, and was glad to see the barracks of the fort park where I’m staying finally swing into view.

I’m thinking now about those few hours in town, knowing no one, carless, dependent on strangers. I think about the kindness of the driver, and of my fellow riders. They remind me how much some people carry — and how little I do.

(The mossy roof of home.)

Accumulation of Misery

Accumulation of Misery

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There is something to be said for writing these posts early in the morning, before I’ve fully inhabited the day or, especially these last two weeks, read the newspaper. 

This morning’s news was no more disheartening or sad than any other day of the last two weeks. 

It’s just the accumulation of misery that’s making it hard to concentrate on the golden leaves of the witch hazel tree, the last few blooms of the climbing rose. 

Shoulder Seasons

Shoulder Seasons

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What is it about shoulder seasons? Are spring and fall truly more poetic or do they just seem that way? 

“Margaret are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?” wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem “Spring and Fall to a Young Child.”

Autumn and spring are times of great beauty, times when it’s easier to notice the underpinnings of things: the uncoiling of a fern, the thinning of leaves. 

I wonder, too, if spring and fall aren’t times of greater yearning, when we see outside our small worlds to what lies beyond. 

Author Susan Cain would call these seasons bittersweet, “a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world.” 

Vintage

Vintage

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It just dawned on me that my blog is like my kitchen: both are vintage. Although I cook on a gas stove  manufactured in this century, the cabinetry, Formica and wallpaper hail from the 1970s. 

The template I use for A Walker in the Suburbs isn’t that old (it couldn’t be!), but in tech terms it’s a woolly mammoth, held together by random HTML code and the good will of Google (ahem). 

In both cases, I’m playing for time, hoping that if I hang on long enough, what’s old will become classic.

(Apparently, I take no pictures of my own kitchen. This is from a house we rented at the lake. It’s dated, but not as old as mine.)

A World Without …

A World Without …

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I was driving down the road, a crowded highway that required my (almost) undivided attention, when Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony came on the radio.

This is the warhorse of all warhorses, the world’s most famous symphony, whose opening notes — dot, dot, dot, daaaaasssshhhh — became associated with victory in World War II, the short, short, short, long of the letter V in Morse code corresponding with Churchill’s two-finger V for victory sign.

It’s not my favorite Beethoven piece. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that would be: The second movement of the Seventh Symphony, which first came to life for me in the basement of the University of Kentucky’s performing arts building?  One of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, which I have tortured for decades with my amateur playing? Or maybe the magisterial Ninth Symphony?  That’s a logical candidate.

But no. It was his work in toto I considered as I drove, pondering what the world would be like without Beethoven, which is unimaginable. How many other artists have similarly enriched our lives? We all have our lists, whether they contain de Kooning or Flaubert, Springsteen or Brahms. There is an endless supply of artist names to list, of course. I just randomly chose these, except for Brahms, of course. 

(Brahms portrait by Hadi Karimi)