Please, take a few minutes to write something beautiful today – and, if you wish, send it to me.
Such writing shifts things within us, sets our heart on seeing beauty.
Uplifts.
I discovered this in a moment of desperation.
My sons were preteens when multiple pressures demanded I land a part-time job teaching writing at a local community college.
Mostly, it was a pleasant, inspiring experience. The adult students were often late, arriving after work by public transportation, sometimes after a second job..
One evening a married couple entered the room while engaging in a raging vicious and rather abusive domestic argument.
Once the couple was seated I knew I had to do something to ease the tension.
“Welcome,” I said, “I am glad you are here.”
Where I got this from I don’t know:
“Everybody, please, take a blank sheet of lined paper and let’s take 7 minutes to write something beautiful. Anything. A short poem, a vivid joyful memory, perhaps something about a gift you gave or received. I am also going to write. You will have an opportunity to read what you have written to the class if you would like to.”
Within 15 minutes there was widespread healing, weeping as students volunteered to read their writing.
Strangers were kind. Friends were friendly. I met people from at least 9 countries. Some wore outfits revealing their country of origin because it’s how they routinely dress.
Perhaps the most encouraging letter I’ve ever received…..
Rod,
I was thinking of you today at lunch. I happened to have snagged a C.S. Lewis book on my way out the door to catch the train to work, and I was reading it at my favorite Indian place. I’d snatched the book just for train-reading, but I’ve noticed with Lewis that after you’ve put him on the shelf for awhile, when you pick him back up he blows your mind all over again. And, I suppose, somehow, you and C.S. Lewis and Anthony Hopkins are all jumbled up and associated with each other in the movie-theater in my head.
The trinity of associations probably grows out of the fact that Anthony Hopkins played C.S. Lewis in ‘The Shadowlands.’ And then you sort of look like Anthony Hopkins, or at least I’ve always thought so. There is, too, the British accent and cadence that thrums in my head when I read the words on the page. But then there is also a deeper connection between you and C.S. Lewis, insofar as you both have played similar, particular and transformative roles. C.S. Lewis having done so passively and abstractly, and you having played a more active, concrete, and engaged role. At any rate, when I came back to the office, I looked you up. I read some things you’ve written recently. I looked at pictures of you and your boys. The boys are quite handsome these days, and they appear happy in the photographs, which made me happy in turn.
The letter I’m always meaning to write you, Rod, has grown and grown in my mind as time has passed, until by now it’s an epistle of such out-sized proportions I don’t think I could ever commit it to paper, or put the majority of it into words in any sequence that would make sense, even if I was just talking to myself.
So instead, I thought, I’ll just write Rod a little note. To tell you that I think of you often, and that things that you once said to me–some of these ideas and principles that you tried to explain to me so long ago– have continued to save me in times of trouble, loosen my anxiety in tight spots, strengthen me when strength has been needed. So, I guess: thank you. A thousand times. The way I’ve lived my life Rod, if you could speed it up it up and stream it together into a single image, has been like a man pulling the trigger to blow his brains out and instead of dying his life is saved.
And, indeed, you did get through to me, Rod. Though it took awhile.
A decade and change, if I’m doing my accounting correctly. By which time, of course, we’d fallen out of touch.
Also, I’ve had occasion to think of you some of these late nights at the office. Recently, it’s become a kind of professional necessity for me to immerse myself in and commit to memory the recent history of Africa. And that gets me thinking about you, too. Both you and your boys.
I just wanted to touch base and let you know that I’m thinking about you, old man. That I love you, that in the body of Christ you are close to me always, feeding me, reanimating me, and reminding me to get my shit together. I love you, Rod.
Please read the following stanza 4 or 5 times, preferably out loud.
O memory of painful time,
Are you seed or stone?
A dark and deadly tomb,
Or seed with life to bloom?
Only if I say, “I want you,”
Will I really know.”
(Poet Unknown)
I’m caught (enriched, inspired, motivated) by “seed or stone.” Will you, will I, respond to life-challenges and permit them to make us hard, angry, lifeless, indifferent – and be as stones?
My new SA ID and passport are in hand. I applied for both several months ago when I was visiting for a week. I went to an Home Affairs location in the late afternoon and was overwhelmed with the service.
This morning the line was at least 100 strong (and that was outside the building).
I’ve witnessed several times over the years that Safricans tend to greet each other as long lost friends once they assemble at the departure gate for the flight home.
Dulles International’s Gate 8 became a reunion of sorts as South Africans of all ages merged after their separate but shared experience of ‘Merika.
I heard the chatter, even joined in.
“Whole neighborhoods with no fences or even security,” says one.
“My sister doesn’t even lock her house,” brags another.
Then, after the 14 hour flight, I found it rather beautiful when “Drift Away” played on the walkway speaker system and several over-tired travelers sang along as we entered the airport building.
I confess I did a little “wanna get lost in your rock and roll” myself.
Talked my ear off. And, I loved it. And, well, I confess, I did my fair share, too.
[I can hear Morey in 10th Grade English yelling at me for starting not one, but two sentences with “and” and I whisper mind your own business.]
Topics covered: insurance industry (he’s off to Rhode Island); having a new grandson (he has one); adoption (he’s adopted); rearing boys (he has two, both of whom are “launched”); Memphis (a city he associates with fabulous memories and he met his wife there, one son was born there); car trips, Sedona, Harry Potter, The Hobbit, to name a few……
I told this fabulous interesting man a few things too.
As my mother would sing, “a stranger is just a friend you do not know…..”
On a practical note Dulles is huge and it’s not uncommon to land at a gate that’s miles from your next departure gate. Not this time. Landed at C21 and departing from C8…….. just down a short drag.
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