The Guy In The Camo-Hat

We are all one family who have forgotten who we are.

~ Rhonda V. Magee - The Inner Work of Racial Justice

He walked into my favorite local farm store just as I was about to check out with my basket full of produce, birdseed, and farm-fresh eggs. Tall and imposing with a long beard fashioned into what is sometimes referred to a Viking beard, the expression on his face was anything but warm and friendly. He was dressed in khaki hunting pants and a short-sleeve t-shirt, a camo hat pulled low over his eyes. And, he was packing a semi-automatic pistol on his hip. Accompanied by a woman wearing a mask, he had a young German Shepard on a leash. The woman with him was small in stature and, to my eye, seemed timid and submissive, as if she had acquiesced any personal power and agency to him.

I was grateful that I was wearing the mask that I diligently use during these strange and scary COVID-19 times. Thankful that I can do even this simple small thing to protect my fellow citizens, yes, but also grateful that he was unable to see the look on my face—a look that would have let him know that I knew his story and was disgusted by it. Everything about this guy in the camo-hat smacked to me of white supremacy, white nationalism, an unflinching commitment to the least restrictive interpretation of Second Amendment rights, and the relegation of women to their place behind men. I could feel my anger rising up as I considered all the ways in which what this man surely stood for are undermining our country and threatening our democracy. How, with people like him on the rise, can we have a shred of hope for ever achieving “liberty and justice for all”?

Climbing back into our car my thoughts continued to unspool about why people feel the need to wear a gun in public, not to mention a semi-automatic one. What felt like low-level adrenaline coursed through my body as I continued to focus on all the things I imagined when encountering the guy in the camo-hat. This went on all afternoon as we went about our bi-weekly essential activities trip into town.

And then it dawned on me.

I knew nothing about the guy in the camo-hat.

Not his name, the cards life had dealt him, or how he has chosen to play them.

Nothing.

In the time it would have taken him to draw his weapon, I had made up a story about him based on my own stereotypes and biases, and then proceeded to believe every imaginary word. It was the kind of story that separates us from our fellow human beings. The fear-based story of Us vs Them. The weaponized story that is undermining our country and threatening our democracy.

What if his story wasn’t anything like the one I had been telling myself since I first laid eyes on him. What if he was an off-duty policeman whose family had been threatened due to an earlier arrest and conviction? What if he was veteran committed to training therapy dogs for military members who were living with trauma-induced PTSD? What if the woman he was with wore a mask because she had a compromised immune system from treatment for cancer? What if she stayed close to his side because he was the love of her life who had seen her through her illness?

What if?

I can remember the exact spot on the road when this new story made it’s way into my closed and biased heart. There was a perceptible change in my body. Everything softened and opened up. My heart made room for this man I didn’t know. Like me, is he afraid for our country, and if so, why? Like me, does he love his family and friends with a love that runs deep and wide? Like me, has he been battered and bruised by painful life experiences? Like me, does he have knee-jerk reactions to others as a way to protect himself from those he fears?

I may never learn his real story.

It is certainly possible that the story I made up has a loud ring of truth to it. Even if it does, I can only hope that my encounter with the guy in the camo-hat will help me remember what so many of us seem to have forgotten. We are family, and we belong to each other. Which is why, tomorrow when I head out on a nearby logging road for a hike, I will be sure and wear my favorite hat to help me remember.

We are family.

We belong to each other.

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Green-Screening Your Life

This morning I texted good friends a photo of us from our snowshoeing adventure on the flanks of Mt. Hood. It was a glorious Pacific NW day, with brilliant blue skies, blazing sunshine, and Wy-East, as he is known to our Native American sisters and brothers, was out in all his glory. It was the kind of day that takes your breath away and reminds you of how amazing it is to be alive, and I wanted to share it.

Almost immediately a text came zooming back.

That’s some impressive green screen work... 😂

It made me laugh out loud.

But you know…he has a point.

It can be hard to tell real from fiction when it comes to what our lives actually look like. It is tempting to put ourselves in the best light possible, not wanting others to see our private struggles. We can carefully curate our lives with a backdrop that displays only that which is Instagram worthy, fearing what others might think if they saw the unfiltered truth of our everyday lives.

I’m not talking about disclosing in public spaces that which is in need of safe haven. There is way too much of that for anyone’s good. What I am advocating is that we find our people. Those with whom we can show up raw and uncensored, and speak our unfiltered truth. People who love us not in spite of our scars and imperfections, but at least in part, because of them. In other words, we need friends who can smell our green screen bullshit a mile away and gently, but firmly, call us on it. Because if I can’t tell you the real story of my life, then you might not tell me yours, and if we can’t see ourselves in one another’s stories, then where can we?

As tempted as I am with every passing year to use one of those nifty little apps that smoothe away my hard-earned lines and wrinkles, I sent this one off as is. What was great about this little text exchange today is that it came from a friend who already knows the real-meal-deal of who I am and what I struggle with. I guess you might call it the kind of friendship that is picture post card worthy. No green screen required.

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AFTERWORD

 We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God. ~ Martha Graham

For the past month I’ve been writing about the words that found their way on to my list at the beginning of the year. Each word represents some aspect of who I aspire to be, and of how I intend to show up in the world.

These words? I want to embody these words. I want my life to be a tangible expression of each and every one of them as consistently as is humanly possible. And, it is doubtful that I will ever master each word perfectly, which is but one reason I am grateful that grace was the first word to appear on my list.

Bringing these words to life in the life that is mine is a practice, for if I know anything, it is that what we practice, we become.

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Word Of The Day: CONNECTED

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

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According to the New Oxford English Dictionary, a connection is the action of linking one thing to another. If that is so, then it seems first and foremost that it is important to know what to attach to what. Especially when it comes to crafting a meaningful life.

When launching my business, it took me awhile to come up with a concise statement that would capture both the philosophy behind, as well as the purpose of, my work as a writer, speaker, and coach. It also needed to be the guiding philosophy behind how I endeavor to live my own life. See if what I came up with connects for you like it did for me.

Connect who you are with how you live.

Word Of The Day: RESILIENT 2.0

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

Good writing, but a little too “self congratulatory” was my husband’s response after reading RESILIENT. In it I told the story of summiting and surviving an unexpected night on Mt. Adams. Tom is one of my most trusted feedback providers, and as such I work to listen with more curiosity than defensiveness. Always a growing edge for me.

This morning over coffee in the pre-dawn light, defensiveness won the first round. As a female, I was raised to keep my strengths, intelligence, and strong opinions under wraps. His comments about the tone of my post smacked of that early upbringing. He was told from his earliest years never to toot his own horn, and the tenor of my words sounded like boasting. Our morning heart-to-heart was a convergence of our early messaging. Curiosity eventually won the match, and our conversation evolved into all of the ways resilience can manifest in our lives, including the willingness to receive and reflect on feedback when it is of the more “constructive” nature.

Divorce, death of loved ones, financial hardship, broken trust, the loss of a job, unrealized dreams, failure in front of our peers, being passed over for a promotion, fighting injustice, crafting meaningful lives, taking on our own inner demons, fostering authentic relationships, strenuous exercise, living with debilitating health conditions, or the Seattle Seahawks losing a game they fought relentlessly to win. We are all daily surrounded with opportunities to practice being resilient. Some small, some large, and some that feel insurmountable. When we practice being resilient in the face of the small, the more equipped we are for the large, which is what readies us when faced with the seemingly insurmountable.

Onward.

(And for the recored, I am pretty damn proud of summiting and surviving an unexpected night on a mountain. Just sayin’)

Photo by Suliman Sallehi on Pexels.com

Photo by Suliman Sallehi on Pexels.com

Word Of The Day: RESILIENT

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

RESILIENT

Standing on the top of Mt. Adams, the 12,283 ft. high volcano we see out our window every day, the sense of accomplishment of having made it to the top was diminished by the overwhelming sense of how small I am in the bigger scheme of things. I am a tiny blip on the radar screen of the very long arc of time. I do however like to think that I’m a resilient blip.

We had arrived at the summit late in the afternoon, several hours after we should have been making our decent to pack up our tent and gear before continuing on down to our car at the trailhead. It was quickly obvious that we wouldn’t make it, and would have to spend another night on the mountain. Not the worst thing in the world to spend another night in our tent that we had left at our basecamp the night before.

When climbing up a mountain, it’s hard to lose your way as all trails converge at the top It’s a little trickier on the way back down. It is easy to get on the wrong ridge and miss your intended trail down. We obviously hadn’t paid close enough attention to our route on the way up, and as night fell it was clear that we were lost. The only option was to find a wind break and hunker down for the night. Choosing a flat spot ringed with a low stone wall erected by former climbers, we put on every piece of clothing we had, rested our heads on our packs, and pulled the space blanket (think tin foil) over us. Imagine trying to sleep in your driveway on a cold night and you get a pretty good idea of our predicament.

It was a long night.

For 7 hours I turned from one side to the other, only able to last about 10 minutes on a side before the ache in that shoulder and hip needed a rest. As cold and miserable as it was on the one hand, it was breathtakingly wondrous on the other. A chance to watch the Milky Way rotate in the sky, the fireworks of the Perseid meteor shower, and eventually the miracle of the sun touching the top of the mountain.

At first light we were up and out to find our way down. (We didn’t find our tent and gear, but that’s a whole other miraculous story to be explored another day.) By 4pm we were back home. After 36 hours with no sleep, a shower and a strong cup of coffee to go we were on our way to my brother’s 70th birthday celebration.

It’s no small thing to summit and survive an unexpected night on a mountain, just like it is no small thing to reach seventy years of age, having survived all the unexpected things that have happened along the way. Both call upon us to be resilient. To recover from difficult conditions and challenges. To spring back into shape after being bent by life’s storms. It is those same challenges, difficulties, and storms that create resilient souls. A willingness to get up and go at it, whatever it is, again, and again, and again.

Yes, we’d summited a mountain.

No, we hadn’t gotten any sleep.

Yes, we were tired.

And no, we weren’t about to miss that party.

To be resilient is both a practice and a choice. We were able to make our way to the top of the mountain because of the endurance and strength we’d trained so hard to develop. We weathered a night of aches and shivers by focusing on the miracles unfolding in the night sky above. We made it to the party because after making it back home, the option to crash for the night couldn’t compare to the chance to celebrate the life of someone we loved.

To be resilient is to remember what has brought us thus far. It is to call upon the best in ourselves in the face of the unexpected challenges, losses, and heartaches that life can throw at us. Which it has, and does, and will.

Onward.

Photo by Suliman Sallehi on Pexels.com

Photo by Suliman Sallehi on Pexels.com

Word Of The Day: WHOLEHEARTED

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

WHOLEHEARTED

One of my core beliefs is that we are all called to live wholehearted lives. I aspire to live into that truth every day with varying degrees of success, and with sometimes slow but always steady progress. In my work, through speaking, writing and teaching, I invite others to aspire to the same.

It is a way of living that on the surface is hard to disagree with. I mean who would admit to wanting to live halfheartedly? And yet, what does it really mean to live with our whole heart? Our entire heart? All of it?

A friend recently reminded me of the truth found, but potentially overlooked, in the very title of David Whyte’s poem, Everything Is Waiting For You. The good news is that everything is waiting for us. The harder news is that everything is waiting for us. Everything. The good and the bad, the easy and the hard, the energizing and the exhausting, what we welcome and search for and what we dread and avoid. A whole heart has space for it all. (Hear David Whyte read Everything Is Waiting For You in his interview with Krista Tippett.)

In Autumn: A Season of Paradox, Parker Palmer, the educator, activist, and founder of The Center For Courage & Renewal puts it this way—“Split off from each other, neither darkness nor light is fit for human habitation. The moment we say “yes” to both of them and join their paradoxical dance, the two conspire to make us healthy and whole.” To live wholeheartedly means to encounter and engage with the truth of our lives, the whole of which can only be found by welcoming the dark as much as the light.

There are no two ways about it. Living a wholehearted life is not for the faint of heart. It is the most challenging, and the most exhilarating, work we will ever do. It’s why we are here.

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Word Of The Day: REPLENISHED

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

REPLENISHED

To be replenished is to be refilled, to replace what has been used up, to be restored after having exhausted our inner resources. I know what replenished feels like, and as I discovered recently, what it does not.

One night not too long ago I found myself on the closet floor in tears, being spooned by Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle who refused to leave my side. I had hit the wall. It wasn’t a choice. I had used up all I had, and there simply wasn’t any more to give.

I spent the better part of the next day napping, and woke up the following morning no longer flattened against the wall. It would have been easy to just pick up life where I’d left off, thinking that I'd refilled my tank. That I was replenished.

I wasn’t.

Functional? Yes.

Replenished? No.

About that time my husband came down with the real-meal-deal flu, and was down for the long count. Basically sequestered for a week, it was no fun for him. He felt so lousy. For me however, those days under house arrest were a gift. His time to recover became mine to be replenished. To replace what had been used up.

Yesterday I wrote about being in rhythm with our lives. Being replenished is part of that rhythm. We are meant to give ourselves away, to go out into the world and return back home, to empty out and to fill back up. I know what my replenishment essentials are, and my guess is that you do too. It would be nice if we didn’t have to find ourselves on the closet floor in tears in order to remember what they are. Although being spooned by a chocolate labradoodle is pretty pretty great.

Photo: Aaron Burden on Pexels

Photo: Aaron Burden on Pexels

Word Of The Day: TRUSTING 2.0

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

TRUSTING

To trust is to put one’s trust in, have faith in, have every confidence in, believe in, pin one’s hope on, something or someone. It is a choice made in the here and now, without knowing what will happen in the there and then. Trusting is an act of faith.

This is what trusting looks like.

When I was twelve years old my parents, sister and I took a trip to Mexico. We spent a few days in Puerta Vallarta, but the real prize was a week in the then—and kind of still—undiscovered tiny village of Yelapa. At that time there was only one small “hotel”, a tiny village on the nearby cliffs, and the only way to get there was by boat. Prior to our trip, and trusting in the recommendation of a family member, my dad made arrangements with Andres, a well known commercial fisherman, to ferry us from the pier in Puerta Vallarta to Yelapa. We had no reason to believe that those arrangements would do anything but work out as promised.

Once in Puerta Vallarta, Dad attempted to contact Andreas to finalize the details of our trip, only to discover that Andreas had left a few days earlier on a fishing trip and wasn’t expected back anytime soon. Just because we trust something to work out is no guarantee that it will, but just because something doesn’t isn’t a reason to stop trusting. Not one to give up on a much anticipated adventure easily, the next day Dad and my sister Margie (who spoke more Spanish than the rest of us combined) headed down to the fishing pier to see if there might be someone who would be willing to transport us to Yelapa. That’s where they met El Pedio, who would be happy, he said, to transport us to Yelapa.

El Pedio was a fisherman too, but not of the fancy, commercial, well-known sort like Andreas. He fished from a small wooden vessel he built himself that looked more akin to a canoe than a commercial fishing boat, and in which we, along with our luggage, would ride on the two hour trip. (Today it takes less than 30 minutes by water taxi.)

El Pedio’s boat sat so low, we were able to dip our hands in the clear blue water, as hand on the tiller he pointed out sea creatures, and motoring close enough to a manta-ray that we could see every detail as it slowly sank deeper below the surface.

Eventually we rounded the low rocky shoreline, entered a small quiet cove, and caught our first glimpse of Yelapa. We unloaded our luggage on the beach and waved goodbye to El Pedio who had agreed to return 7 days later to pick us up for the return trip. Watching him until he disappeared from view, our only option was to trust in the word of a small, quiet fisherman.

For a week we slept in grass huts at the Hotel Lagunitas, woke up to the sound of a fire fueled by coconut shells to heat water for our showers, swam in the warm waters, made friends with the locals from the village who also provided much of the fresh seafood we ate at almost every meal, and tried to imagine all of the wildlife that called the jungle behind the village home.

Seven days later we stood on the beach, our luggage ready and waiting for the trip that would eventually take us back home. More than 50 years later I can still remember the moment when that small wooden vessel, more akin to a canoe than a commercial fishing boat rounded the rocky point. As it turned out, El Pedio, who was anything but a fancy, commercial, well-known fisherman, was a man upon whom one could pin one’s twelve year old hopes.

That’s what trusting looks like.

Photo from the Hotel Lagunitas website

Photo from the Hotel Lagunitas website

Word Of The Day: TRUSTING

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

TRUSTING

An adjective that describes one who has a belief in the honesty and sincerity of others, and in the underlying goodness of the world. Trusting is how we arrive on the planet, confident that we will be seen, loved and cared for. But somewhere along the way, through our encounters with disappointment, heartache, loss, and sometimes overt trauma, our trust can give way to wariness and fear, suspicion and cynicism. Not the way I want to live.

To be trusting is a commitment to both curiosity and caution. Curiosity leads to the discovery of new insights and information, helping us make more enlightened and knowledgable choices. Caution implies a willingness to be attentive and alert to the reality around us, leading to better decisions and more meaningful actions.

To be trusting is to look beyond the immediacy of life and put it into the context of the bigger picture. It is to remember that we have internal and external resources upon which to call to meet what life brings our way.

To be trusting is not the same as being naive, which is blind faith without thought. Rather it is a commitment to live with eyes wide open, embrace what is true, and bring the best of what we have to the life that is ours, and trusting that it will be enough.

Photo: Pexels

Photo: Pexels