Pixel Dance

Anyone who loves college football probably knows about Lou Holtz. He’s the former coach of places like Notre Dame and South Carolina, and we watch him on the weekends with Mark May and Reece Davis on ESPN. During the Virginia Tech-Miami game on a recent Thursday night, Coach Holtz told of a pre-game dinner prayer the Notre Dame players would say. It was so great, I thought I would repeat it here. I don’t have an original author, and forgive me if all the words aren’t correct. But this is the gist:

This is the beginning of a new day
God has given me this day to use as I will
I can waste it or use it for good
What I do today is important because
I’m exchanging a day out of my life for it
When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever
Leaving in its place that which I have traded
I want it to be gain, not loss
Good, not evil
Success, not failure
In order that I should not regret the price I paid for it
Because the future is just a whole string of nows

___

May we all enjoy the value of today, and choose accordingly. Have a great day.

It’s my favorite time in the garden. Everything’s dead. The frost has put things to rest. And there, in the dry, monochromatic landscape, hidden to all but the seeing eye, is life.

For those of us who are Christians and who tend gardens, resurrection is perhaps the easiest part of the Savior story to comprehend. Out of death, life. A seed is planted, but in its due time, bursts forth with an entirely new kind of life, a new body.

The seed is dull and small and hard, and sometimes barely visible. It has no signs of life, and oftentimes falls to the cold dirt, or rides the gusty autumn winds, with virtually no fanfare. Only those who really know what’s happening can even pick it out. To most, it is completely unrecognizable, and completely unimportant.

This is the time when all of the energy of the former plant is infused in a power-packed little pellet. Everything the plant has worked for and proven rests in the hands of this tiny bit of resurrection power. All its hopes laid to rest, with only the hope of resurrection.

Then, in the spring, when the harshness of winter has torn against the barrier of the naked seed, when the piles of snow have burdened its being, and when the rains and storms of early spring have pushed it to its limit, that tiny miracle begins to show signs of life. It breaks open, and the most delicate shoot of little green life pushes with great power through the dirt. Uncanny power. Resurrection power. Something so small, so fragile, should never have the strength to do what it does. But so it does. And to those of us watching, it is jaw-dropping.

From death, life. From cold, motionless seed, breathtaking beauty; delicious food; sustenance for a microcosmic civilization; a buffet for birds and bees feeding from the river of life in its pollen, dusting the earth with the powder of potential. Life anew. A life never imagined in the mind of the seed, but gestating there all along.

So I am out in the yard, where every year I harvest a selection of seeds for my seed collection. I leave the rest to find their way to the ground, and I wait for resurrection power — the joy that is to come.

Millie, our dalmatian, is going on 13 1/2. She’s a tough puppy. Two years ago, we had to remove her leg because of bone cancer. They said she had a small chance of living up to 2 years, (most likely it was 6 months) and if she lived longer than that, she would be a wonder dog.

Well, 2 years and 3 months later, we are still overjoyed to have our Super-Wonder-Lemon Dog with us. Here are some things I’ve learned:

Sometimes you do have to go to heck and back. Life can throw some pretty nasty stuff your way, and you have to find a way through it. You have to integrate it. You don’t get to stay there. The day Millie’s leg came off wasn’t the last day of her life. She learned to balance on three legs. She learned to find the routes without obstacles in the back yard. And she learned to bark for help when she couldn’t get up. Sometimes the only success in life is to take the next step.

It’s only bad if you act like it. Every day that dog acts like she has four legs. It rarely occurs to her that the fourth one isn’t there. And if it does, she patiently waits for one of us to figure out she needs a little assistance. She has created a runway for herself so she can make a running jump up onto the couch. And many mornings we find the couch pushed several feet out of place, an indication of the tenacity of a dog who doesn’t care what she doesn’t have, but presses into what she does have.

Love covers a multitude of pee. As I was cleaning up puppy urine at 3 am, I realized how much love really does change your attitude. I lifted Millie up, tucked my head in close to her ear, and said, “I will pick you up as many times as you fall, whenever it is, wherever you are.” Genuine love makes the disgusting into a beautiful moment. And you really come to find out who loves you when you are absolutely helpless.

Three legs can still spoon. Millie often tries to coax me to bring the laptop to the couch. And the routine is the same – as soon as she gets me settled, then she pushes me forward, wrapping herself around me. It’s as good as spooning with 4 legs. Love is love, and it’s good.

If it’s trouble, lop it off. It’s amazing what you can get by without. You can still give love and be beautiful, no matter what the circumstances bring you. In fact, most of the time you’re more beautiful with scars. Scars are life’s beauty marks, and we’d be wise to see how beautiful they are.

Sometimes I think I look a lot like Millie on the inside – a little scarred and struggling to keep my balance. But I’ve learned this: find a ramp to jump for what you want, pretend like you’re all there, and keep running with your ears flopping in the wind. Life is too exciting to focus on what’s not there.

Stop. What you’re doing. What you’re thinking. What you’re being. Stop. Take a deep breath. What do you hear? What’s around you? What’s happening in your body? Are you hungry? Do you feel sad? Frustrated? Can you hear the breath of the person nearest to you? Is it fast, short, syncopated? Is there laughter? Stop.

I am sitting here, listening to my furnace hum. My dog is breathing deeply, on the precipice of sleep. And my tiny portable printer is crankily spitting out smooth pages. The late autumn sun is streaming in the back window. I know it because I notice the angle of the sun, how it effects the blue of the sky, how it changes the shadows. I taste the bubbles of a diet drink I should have passed on. The tops of my fingers are cold, but the pads are warm against these metal keys. I have a sore stomach, and as I type this, my stress is coming down, as I breathe more purposefully, more slowly, more deeply.

I am quiet. Are you quiet? Maybe not yet. Maybe now. It’s not very often that we are quiet. That we are feeling and seeing only what’s happening now. Right now. Therapists will commonly tell patients to “stay in the moment.” It’s a reference to a coping mechanism that we often use to escape our pain. We’re not here. We’re in our past, trying to justify it, re-spin it, fix it. Or we’re in our future, planning ahead, evaluating a next move, hoping for something new, planning for one day. But now is often not so appealing. Now is bills, problems, lack of control. So we add noise. Distraction. Vicarious living. We jump out of the moment, and into the noise.

But think about quiet. Quiet, right here, right now.

Quiet is gratefulness. An inventory of what is, an acknowledgement of all. A point of view that sees past the noise that is clammering for attention. A look beyond what needs you right now, to see what you really have. A thankful knowledge of breathing, being, loving. Being loved.

Quiet is confidence. It is a sense that I don’t have to move. The opposite is anxiety. Hurry is anxiety. Unmet expectations. Not good enough. More. Quiet is fine right now. Unmoved. Unreactionary. Although noise and action might seem in control, I think when you are quiet, you are really most in control. Not acting out of defense mechanisms, and concocted manipulations. Quiet puts you in touch with who you really are deep within – the person who makes the right choices, with the right motives.

Quiet is honesty. Noise fools. Crowds drag you along with them, give you a large stick and a torch on the way to the uproar. Quiet decides knowingly, separately. Quiet listens to you, respects your opinion.

Quiet is reality. The way it is, with no dressings. No need to make it fancier. You are who you are, and the good and the bad live together, forging a soul, a spirit, an experience. A life. A precious, precious life. No matter what the noise says, you are to be commended. You’ve done well. And maybe you are to be corrected. But it’s welcome here. It’s right. There’s no fear, no disappointment. There is reality, and it is an independent voter.

Quiet is discovery. The things you secretly hope for. The things you know about yourself that you don’t let out into the open. The parts you forgot were there – the talents, the joys, the philosophies. The things you’re too old for, like dancing and coloring. But just stretch out your arm – it’s still there. It’s always been there.

Quiet is love. There’s no side to persuade you to. No hidden agendas, subversive intentions. Quiet waits to make you safe. To give you power. To let you decide. It holds your voice in its hand. It wants the best for you. Quiet is you spending time with you, getting to know you, believing the best about you. Giving you what you need.

Imagine if we all stopped. Right now. Got quiet. Lived life from here. I want to.

I hope you’ve been able to stop, to be quiet. Come back any time you need to. Quiet always waits for you.

Most of our days melt away, not really leaving memorable moments, watershed monuments. And then, there are those days that burn like branding irons into our skull. The feelings, the lessons are going to stick. I had the privilege of that experience this last weekend.

I’m currently in the 5th year of a 6-month journey of self-evaluation. I originally began with a sense that I had a few things to clean up in my innards – a little bit of a dirty cup on the inside. Well, be careful what you dig for. The vastness, intensity and array of epiphanies I’ve encountered has blown me away. And even more mind-blowing is my new sense that this long, deep journey is now complete. And in the quintessential “didn’t see that coming” kind of way.

Some of you know I’m a Christian, and I take that pretty seriously. I have a constant conversation going with God most of the time, some of which consists of what pants to wear. But there are those moments when you just know He’s paying attention. And I apparently hit the heavenly radar.

This past spring, one of my dear friend’s daughters died of adrenal cancer. She was 27. One morning just a few days after the funeral my eyes opened with a start as this line went through my head: “Megan’s gone. You’re not.” And so I felt compelled to live a better life, honor Megan by doing what was in my heart. I enrolled in three conferences for the summer. Each topic was one of those things tucked in the back pocket, that I was always going to do later. Learning fiction. Eating disorders. Songwriting. And so I embarked on this journey to explore my talents – to pour myself into being all I could be. Only a strange thing happened on the way to the talent agent – it seemed that instead of embracing, I was giving each thing up. My sense was each time I was supposed to embrace, then surrender. So I did.

Well, Saturday was the end of my conferences, and the last session was about saying yes to your art. They gave away small blank canvasses that would sit in the palm of your hand. And I took mine, happy for the message, feeling pretty fine. That night, we went to church. As we were finishing the last song of the night, preparing to leave, I had this sense that the work I’d been doing is now finished, and that I am now the blank canvas that God has been waiting for. The canvas wasn’t for me – it was me.

I realized that these back-pocket dreams were keeping me from putting my hope in the right place. I was using them to keep from depending on God. And when I gave the last one up, it was like I got a “good job” from the heavens. I can’t explain it – it’s not like it happens all of the time. But I just knew I had done it. And in a pile of tears and nasty Kleenexes, I was gloriously clean. Not perfect, not finished, but ready for the next layer of color, light and texture.

I’m not sure where a blank canvas goes from here. But I can’t wait to see what He does.

By the way, the wonderful conferences I attended were part of the Glen Eyrie conference center. It’s a beautiful 100-year-old castle in Colorado Springs. They have conferences almost every weekend, on a variety of topics. They are open to all, and the list can be perused at www.gleneyrie.com. It is the best kept secret around, and you won’t believe the big horn sheep that roam by, or the red rocks and waterfall canyons that are free for the basking. The prices are also generally fair, and I have found it to be worth every cent, every moment. I hope you’ll find something that suits you. If you have, or if you do, please comment. We’d all love to hear about it.