Superpowers

We all have at least one superpower.

One of mine is knowing when and how to connect people I love and respect with other people I love and respect. It is pure joy. Nothing to be gained on my part other than knowing that when people connect in the right place at the right time, really cool stuff happens. And I get to be part of the magic. And so do you, every time you exercise your own superpower.

The thing about them, if we’re being honest, is that we can’t take credit for having them. We come with them already baked in. Our task is to discover what they are, and put them to good use for the good of the world within our reach.

Using our superpower, we get to momentarily slip into our superhero suit and save the world just a little bit.

How fun is that?

Super fun!

Superhero: Gracie-the-Chocolate-Labradoodle

On A Whim And An Audit

A lover of all things language, early in his college experience he declared himself a German major. Already fluent in Danish after living in Denmark for his senior year in high school, and with German under his linguistic belt, he was about to take his first class in Russian. Scanning his horizon, he imagined himself on his way to a life in academia.

But then something unexpected happened.

On a whim, he signed up to audit a geology class.

He’d loved collecting rocks as a boy, and thought, “Heck. Why not? It might be fun.”

And it was.

Before the semester was even over, thanks to a quietly charismatic professor who obviously loved what he was doing, this college sophomore knew what he wanted to do with his life. He would become a geologist.

His professional career spanned 38 years, leading him to become a world renowned expert in his field. As a research scientist, his work often dropkicked him out of the office and into the natural world. He engaged in field work close to home and around the globe, finding himself in circumstances that the world of academia might have had a hard time matching. Stranded on the top of an 18,000’ Andean volcano in fog so thick that the helicopter couldn’t find them, he and his colleagues had to find their way back down on foot. In the Philippines he made his way through shoulder-high grass, home to three different species of cobras, and oh-so-many other poisonous things, and lived to tell about it. Work in anti-American rebel territory in Columbia was done under the protection of a security force armed with automatic weapons. He rafted the Grand Canyon, attended a banquet as the guest of the Sultan of Central Java, spoke at the UN in Geneva, and was momentarily mistaken for the Crown Prince of Japan.

Regardless of where we find ourselves in life, it’s easy to get stuck thinking that in order to find success we have to follow the rules, check off the right boxes, and make carefully calculated decisions. We have to stay the course and follow the route we’ve mapped out for ourselves.

But maybe not.

At least not always.

This geologist would say his professional life was more than he ever could have imagined. And it happened on a whim and an audit. Because of what seemed at the time, an inconsequential decision. It wasn’t a strategic choice, or the next step in a plan hammered out with his academic advisor. It wouldn’t add to his GPA or satisfy a course requirement. He simply thought, “Heck. Why not? It might be fun.”

And it was.

Dr. Thomas C. Pierson a.k.a. the geologist I sleep with

A Dream Come True

Start where you are.

Use what you have.

Do what you can.

~ Arthur Ashe

My husband had a dream last night where someone combined dirt and chocolate chips to create a kind of fabric that could be used as a protective covering.

If anything has been constant in our neck of the woods these days, it’s been dirt and chocolate chips.

Our daughter and her family moved in with us for what was supposed to be a two-week layover on their way to Scotland, where they will be living for the next few years as she pursues her Ph.D. We are now going on eight weeks, and everyone is going a little, or a lot depending on the day, crazy as we wait for their approved but yet to be seen travel documents to arrive.

Dirt and chocolate chips create a protective covering helping to hold our lives together. It’s like a dream come true.

Our wee grand boys, ages 5, 3, and 1 1/2, love nothing more than playing in the dirt. Some days it seems like it's what they live for. They pile dirt into small dump trucks, scoop it up by the handful, roll in it, run in it, and when no one is looking, fling it at each other. At the end of another dirt-filled day, their dirt-brown clothes piled on the floor of the mudroom ready for another whirl in the washing machine, the three of them head upstairs for a bath to get the dirt out of every nook and cranny.

Sometimes there’s nothing better than a chocolate chip cookie, so there is always another batch ready to be baked. No need to look up the Smitten Kitchen Crispy-Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, because we know it by heart. We eat them warm out of the oven after naps, grab one to go with a cup of coffee or tea, sneak one before bed, or forgo the oven and just shovel the dough straight into our mouthes.

This experience together is nothing like we ever imagined, harder than we ever expected, and yet miraculously, more than we ever could have hoped for. One day at a time, one dirt pile at a time, one more load of laundry, bath, and batch of chocolate chip cookies, we are learning in new ways what it means to stay the course, hang together, and love each other well, come what may.

So take heart.

When things are nothing like we ever imagined and harder than we ever expected, sometimes all we need is a little dirt and some chocolate chip cookies to form a protective covering to remind us that somehow, some way, life is miraculously more than we ever could have hoped for.

Rethinking Obedience

I’ve never loved the word obey, or any of its derivatives. They all imply submission to an authority figure, the exertion of control over my choices, and a loss of personal agency.

Not my jam.

Recently however, the phrase a long obedience in the same direction showed up in a text of encouragement from someone I love. There was something about that gathering of words that had the rich ring of a deep truth.

In a culture that lives on clicks and instant feedback, going the long haul for something that matters can be a tall order. My family and I are in the midst of one such long haul, and maybe you are too. That’s where the whole obedience thing kicks in.

It isn’t submitting to someone else’s authority. It is staying true to our own.

It’s not turning over the controls to someone else. It is continuing to stay our course.

And It’s not a loss of personal agency. It is the exercising of our will to achieve something worthwhile.

A long obedience in the same direction gives us the power to hold true to a vision worth waiting for and working for.

“The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Choosing Hard

This past Monday morning, partway up the logging road we’ve been hiking a couple of times a week for the last fifteen months, it occurred to me that every trip up that road isn’t without effort. It is always some form of hard, which is probably because we attempt to push ourselves a little harder whenever the going gets a little easier.

In other words, it is hard by choice.

Over time, all of those trips up and down that road have made us stronger, readying us for more demanding hikes and greater physical challenges.

What is true on the trail is true in every area of our lives. Doing one hard thing equips us to do other hard things. And while life is full of opportunities to choose hard over easy, many of the difficulties we encounter come our way unbidden. They land on our doorstep whether we want them to or not.

Every time we choose to do something hard, we are training ourselves to be ready for the hard that chooses us.

A few more of my thoughts on hard:

Hard

Waiting Is Hard Work

It’s Just Hard

Remembering To Say Thank You

When the seriousness of the pandemic hit, it was quickly apparent that we needed to find a new way of working out. Going to a gym was no longer an option, and we weren’t ready to put our name on the waiting list for a Peloton. A neighbor had told us about a nearby logging road a fifteen minute drive from our house that he loved to explore with his malamutes. It was rarely used and had views that were worth the effort.

On April 11, 2020 we decided to check it out

We headed uphill, our dog Gracie at our heels with her hunter’s orange vest on since she is the color and size of a small bear. Within minutes it was apparent that if a good workout was what we were looking for, we had found it in this logging road.

From the first step it heads straight uphill for 1.7 miles. 2445 steps to the top, it has an elevation gain of just under 1000 ft. Talking on the way up wasn’t much of an option, but somewhere along that 1.7 mile, 2445 step slog I managed to gasp “Thank you Tom.”

And I’ve said it every trip to the top since.

So just what am I thanking him for?

On that first trek up I was thanking him for being willing to hike this road as a way to stay strong and healthy as we weathered the Covid storm together.

But now, with well-over 100 trips to the top and back?

It’s about thanking him for living life side-by-side through the thick and thin of it all, apologizing and accepting apologies, reflecting on a conflict on the way up so that we can resolve it on the way down, creating sacred rituals one footfall at a time, making new plans and jettisoning old ones, and navigating the slippery slopes and rocky terrain of life day in and day out. And for always carrying the bear spray.

In the beginning he was hiking the logging road because it was good for us. However, over time, all those trips up and down that road have become a metaphor for a life shared, and it is for that shared life that I am thankful.

And when we are thankful, it’s good to remember to say thank you.

“Thank you Tom.”

On The Docket

What’s on your docket today?

We were sitting outside finishing breakfast the other day when my husband asked me that question.

Docket commonly refers to the calendar or schedule for pending cases in a court of law. Since I’m neither a judge nor an attorney, what he was really asking me was, “What is on your agenda for the day?”

Something about the question didn’t sit right with me.

We often tell each other the anticipated goings on of our days, share our to-do lists, and look at our calendars together. I’m good with that. There is an administrative element to sharing life with someone that helps things run more smoothly, and keeps life on track.

Knowing him as I do, his question wasn’t a way to dodge a deeper dive into matters of the heart. He’s more than willing to swim in the emotional waters that are part of any relationship. However, lately it felt like the question most often asked. It was transactional, not relational, an exchange of information rather than an expression of connection.

We talked about it the next day. His question was a wakeup call. A reminder of how easily we can slide into a pattern of simply making it through our days and checking things off of our lists. Whatever else might be on our docket, checking in on how we are doing on any given day matters a whole lot more than what we are going to get done.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

Empty Space

There is a story in the gospel of Matthew that is often referred to as the parable of the empty house. The upshot of the story is that there was a man possessed by a demon. The evil spirit is cast out and goes in search of a new place to call home and cause mayhem. Finding no place to lay its evil little head, it decides to go back from whence it came, and finds the house swept clean and empty. And empty space just begs to be filled.

The story continues.

Not only does the demon move back in, it goes and finds seven others more evil than itself to live there too, causing even more harm, distress, and ruin.

Regardless of one’s faith, this story seems especially relevant as the pandemic moves into our rearview mirror. We all have our own inner demons and causers of mayhem, and if you are like me, this has been a year of casting out and sweeping clean. Whether cleaning out closets or casting out old ways of thinking, clearing my calendar or curbing my consumption, there is empty space, And empty space just begs to be filled.

What that empty space gets filled with is up to me.

Are the thoughts, beliefs, habits, and activities that filled my life before the pandemic the ones I want to fill it with today?

If not, now is the time to choose. Before those causers of mayhem decide to move back in.

Minus The Nitrous Oxide

Between many years that have included many hours of writing, and plenty of trips around the sun, my hands have developed enough arthritis to make it more difficult, and painful, to do many of the things I love. Rather than ignore the pain, mask it with drugs, or wait for it to get unbearable, I decided to take matters into my own hands by turning them over to someone skilled at treating them.

In my initial appointment with the doctor, who specializes in non-surgical treatments for pain management, we reviewed my X-rays and discussed options, landing on Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy— PRP—as a good approach. It uses healing growth components from my own blood to stimulate healing and repair.

Here is my laywoman’s description of the treatment.

Monday morning at 8:30 I arrived at the clinic and checked in for the first of two appointments. During the first appointment a wonderful nurse—who has clearly mastered the art of painless blood draws—withdrew a dozen, yes that’s right, 12 vials of blood, and then sent me on my way for a few hours. At the second appointment, as I happily inhaled nitrous oxide, the doctor, guided by ultrasound imaging, injected my own platelets back into the injured thumb joints. In our post-procedure conversation he reminded me that my pain level would be greater than normal for awhile, and that I wouldn’t be thrilled to have had this done for about 12 weeks. “Will I be pissed off for that entire 12 weeks until I’m thrilled?”, I asked. “No”, he replied. “You’ll probably be pissed off for a few days, and then things will slowly begin to improve.”

The pain was definitely worse the rest of the day, and I was ready for a nap when I got home. Over the course of the next three months I am to avoid taking any anti-inflammatory drugs or the use of ice, both of which would interfere with my body’s natural ability to heal and repair itself. In other words, for healing to take place takes time, and some pain and discomfort is to be expected. Which, in the overall scheme of things, seems like a worthwhile tradeoff.

The reason I both love and need to write, is that it is how I process life. Writing helps me make sense of things, and sometimes, my writing helps other people make sense of things too. Putting words on the page connects the dots of life out in the world. Writing helps me see big implications found in small everyday things:

• Some of the essential matter required for healing is found within.

• Healing usually requires the help of a skilled professional.

• Temporarily masking the pain gets in the way of lasting repair.

• It might very well hurt worse before it gets better.

• Healing takes time, and doesn’t happen without some level of pain and discomfort.

• The healing process will probably piss us off in the short-term.

• And, enduring temporary discomfort for the sake of long-term healing is a worthwhile tradeoff.

What is true for the healing of my hands is true for the healing of our hearts—minus the nitrous oxide.

A Gathering Of Words

Life is nothing if not a maze of grace.

I’ve loved that gathering of words ever since it appeared on my page. Hanging together like good friends, they are at ease in one another’s company. Each word separate but intimately connected, the meaning greater than the sum of the its parts.

Life is the condition that distinguishes us as animate beings, it includes the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change, signifies our existence as a human being, and refers to our time here from birth until death.

In other words, life is kind of a big deal.

A maze is a complex, and sometimes confusing network of paths and hedges designed as a puzzle.

In other words, a maze challenges us to find our way through.

Grace is courteous goodwill, an extended period of time granted as a special favor, and unmerited or unearned favor.

In other words, grace is what helps us transcend our blunders.

Our time on the planet is our shot at becoming who we are meant to be and doing what we are here to do. There will be dead ends, unexpected detours, and wrong turns along the way. Treating ourselves and others with kindness and goodwill smooths the way for everyone.

In other words, life is nothing if not a maze of grace.

No wonder these words found their way to one another.