January 28, 2006
Saturday morning. Wendy’s at work, as she usually is until two, and I’m here with Ryan and Abby.
Saturdays are hard. They always have been for me, unless I had a very, very late Friday and woke up late. I think much of it is the childhood memory of waking up to my mother vacuuming. I was asleep and the world had already started its busy little chores. But my mistake, really, being alive is full of busy little chores, and we are lucky enough to grow up in a time and place where we won’t be spending our day gathering firewood, food, or tending to the plants and animals all day. I know, odd thoughts for a man who lives in the center of Los Angeles, but there you have it. We could deny the reality all day long if we wanted to that other people pick our food and create our energy for us and all we have to do is find to enough work to pay for it, but there you have it. I’ve always been fascinated by what I used to call “those early people”, but let’s face it, those people are living less than 2,000 miles away from me in the heart of Mexico.
I guess the question I ask myself, now that I have children, a wife, and a job where I write every day, what’s next?
Like the rain cloud, I don’t think I can leap to that answer directly. And I believe I’m starting to understand again, the importance of faith. I wrote to you in the past about my attending a Presbyterian church and dong some important work on becoming a Christian. Three and a half years later, I have fallen out of Christianity. Maybe that’s no the right grouping of words. I wanted to become a Christian and attended church regularly and went to Bible studies (which were taught by a really fascinating guy from Belfast, who had a lot to say about “terrorism”), and though I respected the teachers and found my heart softening, I could never grasp the central dogma. I don’t believe either Christianity or Judaism are true to me. I wanted to say true, but that’s not fair. Though all religions have their terrible pasts, the people that really “get it” are miles ahead of the rest of us. I don’t want to belittle their faiths, anymore than I want to belittle those people in the rainforest who believe their gods live in the trees and in thunderclouds. It’s just something I couldn’t take to for a number of reasons. I feel strongly toward Buddhism, and you may know that many years ago I spent two years studying a few times a month with Zen Buddhists, but their work is difficult, and sitting for 30 minutes staring at a wall can be torture.
You probably know this feeling: part of you wants to run off and join a monastery and the other part of you wants to run away screaming.
So many people have said, I believe truly, you see things not as they are but as you are. Probably the most affecting story I’ve heard about this was from Victor Frankl (not sure about that spelling), who was tortured endlessly in a Nazi concentration camp and envisioned himself years from then, telling his pupils about it. (How is it I can’t mention the Nazis without become violently angry and at the same time sad?)
So where does that leave a husband and father of two? I realize I’m being ridiculously black and white about this. I can go a couple times a month to meditate. I don’t need to sell everything I own and go off to the mountains. I still find time to go to yoga once a week, which I love for its workout and calming effects on my crazy head, but its not enough; religious people see (and have seen since the dawn of man) something we don’t, something not only extraordinarily important, but something essential to living with joy. We both are basically non-consumers (well, within reason, right?), but to see the culture of consumerism and media and have nothing that you can hold up against it to say “see, this is what is all about” is disheartening. No, debilitating.
Other men and women have hobbies or sports to turn to. Well, the ones who haven’t turned to the 2+ hours of TV every night. And I think now that the incredibly time-consuming part of raising Ryan and Abby is over, I am ready to do something with my nights more interesting than making sure we have enough money to make it through the month on Microsoft Money.
There’s so much else, but without this essential fact, I think the rest might sound like that fluff you find in the lint filter in the dryer.
And though I, like my mother, spend much of my Saturday cleaning this place up (and starting next month, taking care of the yard in lieu of our gardener), but I thought it would be better spent kicking off with a letter to someone I find so important.
Um, that’d be you.
I miss your voice and your talks and hope one of us is smart enough this February to pick up the damn phone and call.
You know my time zone, right?
Hoping you and everyone you love is doing well,
Tim
