With thanks to my friend Roq, with whom I discover many of the depths of a healthy masculine and what that means historically and in this day and age.
Silence & Son
OK, I did something quite satisfying with my 12 year-old son yesterday.
It was Sunday. He’s a regular church goer with his Mom, who was out of town. I offered to go with him. For his sake. And out of my own interest. Spiritual life matters. I’m glad to have many expressions of it.
“I don’t want to go,” he said.
Hmm…. “What’s up?” I asked.
“I like church but I don’t like listening to everyone speaking.” That’s an honest answer that I appreciated and related to.
“Want to do ‘home church?'” I asked. I was a bit reluctant to give up so quickly on the communal experience, but I’m not the one that will push too hard on this, and we’ve done some home church before.
My son agreed. I quickly came up with 30 minutes worth of design.
I placed five books on the table and invited him to choose one that felt most interesting. I assured him there were no wrong answers. The books were Mary Oliver’s “Dreamwork,” John O’Donohue’s “To Bless The Space Between Us,” Ladinsky’s “Love Poems From God” (12 Sacred Voices From The East and West), Robert Sardello’s “Silence,” and Integrator and Scribner’s collection of poems in “Teaching with Heart.” I told him I would share three passages from the book he chose and ask a few questions.
My son chose Silence. Hmm…. Good choice. But aren’t they all. I’ve blogged a bit about this one previously.
After sharing passages, I then asked for 12 minutes of silence. We’ve done this before. One minute for each year of his age. It’s not just “not talking.” And it isn’t laying on the couch. I did require sitting up.
After the chimes rang from my timer, I then asked him to share one insight. And I shared one. The content was good. However, it was the engagement that I was going for.
And then we were done. Thirty minutes. Easy peasy. Meaningful. Not too long. Not too short. I encouraged him to think of being able to be silent as a king of muscle. Exercise it and it will be healthy or even grow in helping to hear and see what isn’t so obvious.
The gold of all of this, beyond the moment, was when I tucked him in for bed last night. We often do highlights of the day as a way of capping the day. My son’s shared it this way as he referenced home church — “Well…, I hate to admit it, but home church was pretty good.”
Good to have these moments of meaning with those that we love, isn’t it.
Singularity of Premise
When you are a kid, you believe things in very simple manners. “It was Wendy’s fault (my older sister).” I’d proclaim this when asked by my parents what all the noise was about. This was one of those simple manners for me. To be fair, Wendy had several assertions of cause about me too. I’m glad that she and I are close in our adult lives — she is someone that I respect dearly.
Such certainty goes with that developmental stage — we were five and seven. You hold on to a belief (without ever calling it that), not because it is a true expressions of what is really going on, but because it comforts. It is convenient. Or it just gets you out of trouble.
When you grow up, which I believe is a process that extends well past puberty and early adult life, you start to see the complexity of things. You start to see that many factors contribute to not just a description of a static occurrence, but to a dynamic of something that is ever evolving. Why do we have climate change — there are many contributing factors. Or, in retrospect, why were Wendy and I making a lot of noise — we both contributed to it, not to mention some of the environment that was our home.
I continue to observe in myself and in others, personally and professionally, that increasing complexity requires all of us to expand the premises of causality and relational dynamics that are in play at any one time. It’s easy to attribute sole fault to another person, but that’s usually just emotional laziness. Or complacency. Or manipulative convenience.
It takes some skill to hold multiple contrasting views at one time. It takes some humility to recognize when we are just speaking louder with hopes of cajoling or bullying people into what is really one of many stories that we are trying to sell as a singular story and premise.
This is not easy work. And not what I would expect our five or seven year-old selves to do. But when your in your 50s, wow — this becomes really important in contributing to a peaceful world and community. It becomes essential to navigate the noise that has gone way past “who took my bubble gum.”
I have hopes for all of us in this. Fears too. Doubts too. And I recognize we need friends to grow into our grown selves, past the time when reductionism protected us (or at least we thought it did) to the imperative of inter-weaving multiple premises at one time. Singularity of premise masquerades as clarity, but masquerades often end at the chime of midnight.
It’s midnight, and time to get to the pluralities essential for our sanity, survival, and evolution. As a species. As communities. As families. And as individual navigating such complex times.
Dads & Sons
This week, along with friend Roq Gareau, I hiked to Kanarraville Falls with my son Isaac, shown above. Yes, he’s taller than me now — that happened a few years ago. Isaac is going to school in Cedar City, Utah, about three hours south of where I live.
When I speak of what it is like to live in Utah, I often speak of it’s geography. The red rock is something I have not known or experienced in other places. It’s wild. It’s inviting. It’s rugged. It’s beautiful.
I love it that this was a hike that my son has taken before and that he wanted to show to me and Roq. We followed a trail, crossing a very chilly creek 8-10 times, eventually climbing next to falls cascading through the slot canyon. The red rock walls were 80 feet tall.
It’s something we’ll all remember.