Photograph on the Dashboard

Pictures: Central Park

Lyrics: R.E.M.

Postscript: I may or may not have listened to this song 42 times tonight.

Deserving To Be Told

Union Square

"One of the arguments we often use for not writing is this: "I have nothing original to say. Whatever I might say, someone else has already said it, and better than I will ever be able to."  

This, however, is not a good argument for not writing. Each human person is unique and original, and nobody has lived what we have lived. Furthermore, what we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. Writing can be a very creative and invigorating way to make our lives available to ourselves and to others.  

We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. We may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them."

-Henri Nouwen

Mostly That

"Humans can't live in the present, like animals do. Humans are always thinking about the future or the past. So it's a veil of tears, man. I don't know anything that's going to benefit me now, except love. I just need an overwhelming amount of love. And a nap. Mostly a nap."

- Townes Van Zandt

I would tend to agree...


(HT Sojourners)

Shoulder to the Boulder 

“Being surrounded by creative people and 

knowing that you’re all in it together, and

you’re putting on a show, you’re all 

pushing this huge boulder together – 

every Saturday 

you do something that you’re scared to do – 

I think I will miss that feeling.”

-Kristen Wiig, discussing what
she'll miss about SNL

Those are some of the things I love most about Improv - the camaraderie, the teamwork, the group mind.  Plus, following the fear and saying "yes" to what scares you.

It's so fun.  Take an Improv class already!

Sincerely,

The Boss of You

Together in Greeneland

Once upon a time, on a train to Vienna

There was an article a couple of months ago in The Guardian, a brief tribute by author/former bishop Richard Holloway to his literary hero, Graham Greene.  Writes Holloway: "I loved him then and love him now because his art deals with the spiritual loser's lust for redemption."

Greene is a favorite of mine, as well.  His dark-but-beautiful romance The End of the Affair is one I've read several times. (Fair warning: the book is wonderful but the movie is rubbish.  Yes, it has Ralph Fiennes, but they've changed the ending and ruined the whole darn thing.  In my little opinion.)  Greene - a journalist as well as a novelist - was not a one-note wonder.  Our Man In Havana is absurd and hilarious.  The Power & The Glory is a little heart-breaking.  Monsignor Quixote is a modern fable and homage to Cervantes' classic novel. The Third Man is a tale of murder and mystery.  The Quiet American makes you think and wonder about things.

Disparate though the tones and genres of Greene's work may be, there is a unifying theme that runs throughout: most of his characters seem to wrestle with God in one way or another.  And it's this wrestling, the questioning, the searching, that I find so beautiful, that makes me want to read everything he's ever written.

The rest of that brief Guardian piece sums it up quite nicely:

"Being a broken man himself, Greene knew how to probe the pain and romance of faith and its failed practitioners better than anyone else. Even those of us who never ended up in a prison in Mexico waiting for execution, like the whisky priest in The Power and the Glory, knew what his self-disgust felt like. We knew what Greene was on about when he described the sadness of missing happiness by seconds at an appointed place. A little more self-discipline and maybe our tormented hearts would have ceased tormenting yet. But we also knew somewhere inside that it was our failures that kept us human.

Being a priesthood themselves, great writers understand this better than most. Tennessee Williams knew that if he’d exorcised his demons he’d have destroyed his angels as well. And the poet Ian Crichton Smith understood that “from our weakness only are we kind.” Greene would have agreed with them both. There was human solidarity in weakness, fellowship in failure. That’s why the spoiled priest in his greatest novel was overwhelmed with compassion for other losers. When you looked at other men and women, “you could always begin to feel pity. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.” And that had to include self-hatred. In Greeneland, in the end, everyone is forgiven because everyone is understood."

Inky

Lower East Side

There was a toner spill at work yesterday.  It was a big deal, if you wanna know.  Turquoise splotch on the carpet, an associate covered in the stuff, and excited chatter that lasted for at least 15-20 minutes.  "Oh no, what happened!?" "Did you see what happened?" "I thought you were supposed to shake the cartridge!" "Is the machine broken?" "What's going on?" "It was an accident!" "That's a special cartridge." "I have a presentation due." "Where's the nearest color printer?" "Look at the carpet."  "Uh-oh, who made the mess?"  "That's hilarious." "You're not supposed to shake the cartridge."

On and on and on, my co-workers went about the toner spill.  They weren't mad or annoyed - people seemed really very energized by the whole thing.

My first thought was that we must have a pretty boring office, if a toner spill can make this big of a splash (bam!) in the ol' routine.  And that's not untrue.  It is a pretty boring office (sorry, folks!)

But after reading an article about tattoos on Slate, I wonder if there's something even beyond routine boredom at play in the Great Toner Shake-up.  The author of the article, Simon Doonan, presents a somewhat tongue-in-cheek hypothesis about why people get tattoos these days:

"Here is my theory: Tattooing is no longer just tattooing. It’s a culturally sanctioned form of delicate cutting. Participants, i.e. everyone on Earth apart from me, are seeking an antidote to the numbed feelings and detachment that result from their idiotically screen-centered lives. If you look at Facebook, play video games and online Scrabble, and/or scour Slate 24 hours a day, you will eventually reach a freaky plateau of desensitized unreality. You will crave the enlivening, awakening, back-to-reality release which comes from the jabbing pain of a tattoo needle. Before you know it you will be begging some dude with a pierced tongue and a shaky hand to emblazon your chest with rutting unicorns and a lunar landscape."

It's a sweeping generalization, and a facetious one at that, so obviously it doesn't adequately capture everyone's motivation for getting a tattoo.  But I think he makes an interesting point about lives that are lived ever more virtually and "screen-centered."

I don't have a tattoo, but I can relate to feeling that craving for an "enlivening, awakening, back-to-reality" experience.  I spend precious few moments away from my computer and/or phone: while running in the park, or at the gym, or...in the dentist's chair. (Really had to stretch for that last one.)  There are so few situations these days when I am really, truly unplugged from the virtual world and 100% present in the real one.

We spend hours a day 'pinning' cute craft ideas, but how much time do we actually spend making something real with our hands?  We skim through friends' 140-character quips, but how much time do we actually spend looking into their eyes, hearing their words, and letting ourselves be changed by them?  Jobs where you "push paper" - never very stimulating to begin with - have lost even their sense of tactile productivity; instead of paper we now just push buttons, moving virtual files around a virtual work environment.

Which brings me back to the Great Toner Shake-Up.  Maybe it was so exciting for people partially because it was real - something really happened.  Someone used his hands, shook a cartridge, turned the floor turquoise.  None of this happened on a screen, it happened in reality.  Our workplace was physically altered (i.e. the carpet is now blue).  "What happened?"  Something happened.  And it awoke us to the toner-mess of a moment, out of our desensitized detachment.

Didn't mean for this to be an anti-technology manifesto.  I'm not about to smash my computer screen or cancel my smart phone contract.  Just wanted to remind myself to take more frequent breaks from the "freaky plateau," and revel in reality of life lived in the moment (messes and all).

The Going Gets

Somewhere in Chinatown/Lower East Side

Real talk?  April has been rough.  

I thought it might a sweet-relief, breath-of-fresh-air sort of month (especially after the worry-fest that was March).  And to be fair - nothing particularly terrible or badly out-of-the-ordinary has happened to me.  Really - it's just been more of the same.  And we've talked the same-old, same-old to death, haven't we?  Nothing new there.  (But somehow it still has the power to break my heart on a daily basis.)

April has been the sort of month where I find myself hiding from the simple question, "How are you?"  I don't know how to answer.  Because truthfully, I am fine.  But also, I am really not fine.  Fine and not fine.  Both, at the same time.

Partly, I think I'm recovering, still overwhelmed by what's behind me.  March was no picnic; I scraped and scrambled my way through, aided by the wings of other's prayers.  And partly, I'm just overwhelmed by what's before me - the future: a giant question mark.  Certain things are in my control, but I feel direction-less.  And certain things are out of my control, and that powerless-ness is maddening, frightening.

I was reading a blog today - interesting thoughts on a drastically different topic than this one at hand - and a quote stood out to me (and not just because it was in all caps) (ok, maybe because it was in all caps):

"HOPE HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE CAN SEE A PATH FORWARD."

I sat with that for awhile, and it seemed true.

A little while later I was reading an interview with Anne Lamott, in which she referenced an E.L. Doctorow quote on writing:

"It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

I sat with that for awhile, too, and it also seemed true.  And related.

So here is my wish, my prayer for the rest of rough-going April:  just enough light to see the next step on the path.  I'll let go of the desire to know how the story ends, if You'll shed just a little light on the next plot point.  Show me just the next foothold, just a headlight's beam worth of vision, just the next step forward that ushers in just a little hope.  And we'll take it from there.

Understanding in Stillness 

Somewhere along CPDubs

"Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence.

Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument.

Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it."

- Augustine of Hippo

Mitchin'

 
For some reason, the following Mitch Hedberg joke came to mind during my morning commute.  So I'm sharing it, along with some others.  Because it's Friday, and we should have a laugh.

"I wrote a letter to my dad - I was going to write, "I really enjoy being here," but I accidentally wrote rarely instead of really.

I still wanted to use it, though, I didn't want to cross it out. So I wrote, "I rarely drive steamboats, Dad - there's a lot of sh*t you don't know about me. Quit trying to act like I'm a steamboat operator."

This letter took a harsh turn right away..."

* * * 

"With a stop light, green means 'go' and yellow means 'slow down.' With a banana, however, it is quite the opposite. Yellow means 'go,' green means 'whoa, slow down,' and red means 'where the hell did you get that banana?'" 

* * *

"I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut... I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. To some skeptical friend, "Don't even act like I didn't buy a doughnut, I've got the documentation right here... It's in my file at home...Under 'D.'"

* * * 

"Someone handed me a picture and said, "This is a picture of me when I was younger." Every picture of you is when you were younger. "Here's a picture of me when I'm older" ... "How'd you pull that off?  Lemme see that camera!"" 

* * *

"I find a duck's opinion of me is very much influenced by whether or not I have bread."

* * * 

"I don't have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who'd be mad at me for saying that."

Funny stuff.  I miss that guy.  Don't do drugs, kids!

Humor & life lessons: you're welcome.  Happy weekending.

Keeping Watch

Riverside Park

Lately I've been watching myself, watching for Spring.  

I usually enjoy changes in seasons, but this year's watchfulness seems heightened somehow.  

Each day I monitor the changes, making mental notes:  

This week the pear trees bloomed; that week the magnolias followed.

Now, tulips in flower beds.  Still - waiting for green leaves to come in.


Here, forsythia.  There, robins in the brush.

Last week, the sun set about 30 minutes after class started.  This week, there was still a little light left when leaving my voice lesson.

Riverside Church through the trees

I'm not sure why I find each change, each shift so fascinating this season.

But, as I've caught myself in watchfulness, it's made me think about waiting, about change, about forward movement more generally.

The way I've been watching for spring is not the way I've been watching for other changes in my life.  The way I've accounted for signs of seasonal change is not the way I keep watch for other sorts of signs.

Granted, spring is an assured change.  It will come, just like it does every year.  No faith required.  The signs of spring are visible, steady, quantifiable.  It's easy to see.

In other areas of my life (and here I refer mainly to larger questions of purpose, plan, direction, vocation, relationships) the results are not guaranteed.  The signs of movement, of progress, are not always as visible as a budding magnolia tree.

And it's easy (for me, anyways) to trend towards despair: "There is no change!  It will be like this forever!  Nothing is happening!"  But rather than defaulting to despair, maybe (maybe!) I could find a way to wait better.  Or use different eyes to watch for signs of forward movement.  

Either metaphorical eyes (like "eyes of my soul" or "eyes of faith" or I dunno - something along those lines).  Or a literal different set of eyes - like the eyes of my friends, who sometimes are able to see (from their distanced vantage point) change in my life that I can't quite see myself, because I'm too close to it.

Henri Nouwen (who I'd quote ad nauseum if you'd let me) wrote often about waiting.  For Nouwen, waiting was not a passive stand-by or a bored limbo, but it had a sense of activity to it:

 "Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment."

I've enjoyed being in each moment of this spring, feeling that feeling that "something is happening"!  I'd like that feeling to extend into those other life areas.  Something is happening! There is a plan and it is in motion.

Elsewhere Nouwen wrote: "We are always waiting, but it is a waiting in the conviction that we have already seen God’s footsteps."

Yeah.  I want to wait like that.

Quoting Kaling

Gramercy Park

I recently finished Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns).  It's a quick and funny read, although not as funny as Tina Fey's Bossypants. You can't really hold this against Kaling, however, as she addresses it directly in the book's introduction (to the tune of "Sorry I'm not as funny as Tina.")

This collection of essays is all over the map, in terms of topics addressed. Which means that while reading it, I was able to work it into every conversation I had, because something in it applied to every conversation I had.

"I was just reading about creative success in Mindy Kaling's book..." or "Oh yeah, Mindy Kaling talks about how women characters in romantic comedies do not exist in real life..." and also "I share a similar karaoke philosophy with Mindy Kaling, as described in her book..."

My roommate poked her head into my room to discuss the difference between a certain man in her life and all the other boys, at the exact moment I was reading the chapter entitled "Men and Boys." Kaling-kismet, that's what that is.

(Apologies to people who were party to more than one of these conversations; I promise to stop quoting Mindy Kaling now.)

(Just a head's up: Next week I will be exhaustively quoting from Ronald Rolheiser. I like to mix things up, genre-wise.)

The following are various quotes I probably would have underlined in the book, had it not been a library copy:

"For example, I don't think it should be socially acceptable for people to say they are "bad with names." No one is bad with names. That is not a real thing. Not knowing people's names isn't a neurological condition; it's a choice. You choose not to make learning people's names a priority. It's like saying, "Hey, a disclaimer about me: I'm rude." For heaven's sake, if you don't know someone's name, just pretend you do. Do that thing everyone else does, where you vaguely say, "Nice to see you!" and make weak eye contact." (p. 4) 

I am a person who is good with names. On a rare occasion, I will appear to forget someone's name, but that is actually just a ruse to make myself seem less stalker-ish. In actuality, of course I remember their name. How else could I have google'd it to learn everything about them, including their alma mater and the approximate ages of their siblings??

I get that some people's minds are wired differently, and names don't seem to stick in their brains like they stick in mine. I get that, on an intellectual level. But on an emotional level, I don't get it. What I do get is annoyed, when I have to meet someone for the fourth time because they never can seem to remember my name and/or face. So I say an emotional "Amen!" to Mindy on this point.

"So things were coming together nicely for me to embark on a full-fledged depression. One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression.  It's not like if you're in Los Angeles, where everyone's so actively working on cheerfulness and mental and physical health that if they sense you're down, they shun you...In New York, even in your misery, you feel like you belong." (p. 57) 

This is very true. One of my Improv friends, when asked (in a get-to-know-you type exercise at the beginning of class) why she was doing Improv, replied, "Because my therapist thought it would be good for me. And I bet I'm not the only one!"  She was not.

Sometimes I get the feeling that most New Yorkers are in therapy, or were recently in therapy, or are currently shopping for a new therapist. And those who aren't probably maybe sorta should be. There is no stigma around therapy in this town. It is one of the things that binds us together (much like our collective hatred of Times Square, our shared terror of bed bugs, and our fondness for Shake Shack).

* * *

"That's one nice thing about being a dork about men: you can sometimes play it off as restrained and classy." (p. 74) 

Stop giving away all my secrets, Mindy Kaling.

On crying while listening to every song on the album Graceland: "The secret I learned is that albums that remind me of my childhood happiness make me incredibly sad now. I only have perfect memories of singing along to Graceland with my parents on long car rides to Virginia Beach to visit my parents' friends. It's sort of my go-to stock image of my childhood, actually. I think it has something to do with knowing I'll never be able to go back to that time that makes me cry every time I listen to it." (p. 170)

I can relate.  Certain Elton John songs, the Back to the Future soundtrack, and "Cherish" by Kool & The Gang all viscerally remind me of happy childhood car rides.  I am likely to burst into (ridiculous) involuntary tears when listening to any of this music.

All right, enough quoting!  If you want to read more, go buy the book yourself.  Or better yet, check it out from your trusty public library.  (You pay taxes, don't you?  Reap what you sow and go check out a funny book for free.)

The Allure of the 'Burbs

I've been a city-dweller for over 10 years.

And I love it, mostly.  I love not having a car, I love the pace, the adrenaline, the ever-available distractions, the bragging rights (look, I made it here so I can make it anywhere, or so I've been told), the diversity, the history, the bagels, the bars, the street carts, the characters, the sights, and the sounds.

Except...maybe not the sounds.  Maybe I'm not as immune to the sirens and horn-honks and shouts and calls and clanks as I'd like to think.  And maybe the bright lights of Broadway are exciting, but there's also something to be said for the dark stillness of that street where I grew up.

Stephen Colbert once remarked "If you can’t get it at midnight in New York, it probably doesn’t exist."

He's mostly correct, with the possible exceptions of "quiet" and "dark."  Those two commodities are awfully hard to come by at midnight in the city.

All this to say: I slept amazingly well in the suburbs this week.

And I may be in the market for blackout curtains and a white noise machine.

Hidden Hearts Made Known

"There is a twilight zone in our own hearts that we ourselves cannot see. Even when we know quite a lot about ourselves - our gifts and weaknesses, our ambitions and aspirations, our motives and drives - large parts of ourselves remain in the shadow of consciousness. 

This is a very good thing. We always will remain partially hidden to ourselves. Other people, especially those who love us, can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That's a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility but also to a deep trust in those who love us. It is in the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born."   

-Henri Nouwen

I've been thinking about this recently - the discrepancies between how I see myself, and how others see me.

Plus, I just like to quote Nouwen, like nobody's business.  That man...man.  He got it.

Here's to getting it - here's to true friendships - here's to learning our hearts - here's to letting our hearts be learned - here's to needing others to become more fully ourselves - here's to being broken pieces that jig-saw together to make a functioning whole.

On Caring

Motivation provided by Dr. Seuss, on his birthday.

 

Creating Space

Office building in East Midtown

"It is important, however, to realize that discipline in the spiritual life is not the same as discipline in sports. Discipline in sports is the concentrated effort to master the body so that it can obey the mind better. Discipline in the spiritual life is the concentrated effort to create the space and time where God can become our master and where we can respond freely to God's guidance.

Thus, discipline is the creation of boundaries that keep time and space open for God. Solitude requires discipline, worship requires discipline, caring for others requires discipline. They all ask us to set apart a time and a place where God's gracious presence can be acknowledged and responded to."

-Henri Nouwen

Still mulling over how to make space in my schedule for things that matter most...

Amen, Amen

An Ash Wednesday Prayer

"How often have I lived through these weeks without paying much attention to penance, fasting, and prayer? How often have I missed the spiritual fruits of the season without even being aware of it? But how can I ever really celebrate Easter without observing Lent? How can I rejoice fully in your Resurrection when I have avoided participating in your death?

Yes, Lord, I have to die - with you, through you, and in you - and thus become ready to recognize you when you appear to me in your Resurrection. There is so much in me that needs to die: false attachments, greed and anger, impatience and stinginess...I see clearly now how little I have died with you, really gone your way and been faithful to it.

O Lord, make this Lenten season different from the other ones. Let me find you again."

 -Henri Nouwen, from A Cry for Mercy: Prayers from the Genesee

Free Us from Self-Fascination 

"Lord Almighty, we say we want to serve you, we say we want to help others less fortunate than ourselves, we say we want justice. But the truth is, we want power and status because we so desperately need to be loved. Free us from our self-fascination and the anxious activity it breeds, so that we might be what we say we want to be – loved by you and thus capable of unselfish service."

- Stanley M. Hauerwas, from Prayers Plainly Spoken

Lent

"In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year's income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year's days. After being baptized by John in the River Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves.

•  If you had to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn't, which side would get your money and why? 
• When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore? 
• If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less? 
• Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember? 
• Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for? 
• If this were your last day of your life, what would you do with it?

To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end."

-Frederick Buechner, from Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary 

In The Manic Whirlwind

Grand Central, last month

This is an older article, but new to me: writer Anne Lamott discusses how to find the time to live a significant, lovely life.

The parts I found most convicting?

"...you have to grasp that your manic forms of connectivity—cell phone, email, text, Twitter—steal most chances of lasting connection or amazement. That multitasking can argue a wasted life. That a close friendship is worth more than material success."

and

"They look at me bitterly now—they don’t think I understand. But I do—I know how addictive busyness and mania are. But I ask them whether, if their children grow up to become adults who spend this one precious life in a spin of multitasking, stress, and achievement, and then work out four times a week, will they be pleased that their kids also pursued this kind of whirlwind life? 

If not, if they want much more for their kids, lives well spent in hard work & savoring all that is lovely, why are they living this manic way?"

Voices

Self-portrait. Kinda.

From Henri Nouwen's Bread for the Journey:

"The Still, Small Voice of Love 

Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, “Prove that you are a good person.” Another voice says, “You’d better be ashamed of yourself.” There also is a voice that says, “Nobody really cares about you,” and one that says, “Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful.” 

But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, “You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you.” That’s the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen. 

That’s what prayer is. It is listening to the voice that calls us “my Beloved.”"

All other goals aside, this is maybe my most fervent heart-hope for this winter season. Or, really, year. Or, really, life.  To determinedly seek that solitude and silence necessary to hear that still, small voice.  To stop listening to the "you should be's" and pay closer attention to the "you already are's."

And So Can You

Lower East Side

If you've missed the NY Times piece on Stephen Colbert that's been making recent rounds on the internet, check it out!  Or don't.  I'm not the boss of you.

The article is long-ish (or is it? I'm so ADHD-addled by social networking that I no longer have a good frame of reference for what constitutes "long."  In any case, it's over 140 characters) but it's a worthwhile read, as it offers interesting insight on Colbert's career arc, his political machinations, and his studies in Chicago with the shadowy character Del Close, father of long-form Improv.

Admittedly, that last part might not interest you as much as it interests me.

But here's something that might appeal to a broader audience - arriving in the second half of the article, amid a biographical sketch, Colbert reveals the lesson his mother taught him on framing tragedy and rising above it:

"In 1974, when Colbert was 10, his father, a doctor, and his brothers Peter and Paul, the two closest to him in age, died in a plane crash while flying to a prep school in New England. 

“There’s a common explanation that profound sadness leads to someone’s becoming a comedian, but I’m not sure that’s a proven equation in my case,” he told me. “I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so.” 

He added, in a tone so humble and sincere that his character would never have used it: “She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain — it’s that the pain is actually a gift. What’s the option? God doesn’t really give you another choice.”"

Interesting thoughts from a funny, funny man.

Quoting Yo-Yo

Tiffany's 5th Ave storefront, with the UNICEF Snowflake reflected

Did you happen to catch the Kennedy Center Honors last month?  I love watching this show.  This year's honorees included Meryl Streep, Sonny Rollins, Barbara Cook, Neil Diamond, and Yo-Yo Ma. 

In honoring them and their many achievements, the show didn't shy away from mentioning some of the stars' darker moments - the drugs, depression, incarceration, professional failure, etc.  I thought that was so interesting and important - to acknowledge both the light and dark, the ups and downs, the hard stuff that gives birth to shining moments of success.  You know - life.

Yo-Yo Ma was particularly adorable to watch during the broadcast.  He was so un-jaded, so enthusiastic - at one point you could see him turn to Meryl Streep (Meryl Frickin' Streep!) and exclaim, "OhmyGod!!" as they brought out another musical act to pay homage to Mr. Ma's achievements.

Watching the prior interviews with Yo-Yo, a couple of things he said stuck out to me:

On Exploring / Goals:

"Every day I make an effort to go toward what I don't understand." 

On Fear:

"I'm not brave; I'm actually pretty scared a lot of the time. But I must like being scared, because I keep doing things that scare me."

I'd like more of both in this new year - to go towards what I don't understand and do things that scare me.

Thanks, Yo-Yo, for the inspiration and the music.