What I Learned Today

A few months ago, I listened to a presentation given by a man named Carl about his struggle with addiction and his path to recovery. This included practicing meditation, and specifically participating in a local Sangha--a group of people that practices meditation together in community.

I was intrigued.

Since then, I've become convinced that a practice of meditation could be key to keeping my mind and body more connected with one another.

While I do have amazing experiences living in my body, my default setting is living in my head, disconnecting from my body.

Today I visited a local Sangha, the one Carl talked about, for the first time. Here's how the guided meditation went for me, the images coming to me without any effort beyond breathing in and breathing out.

It seems I had an epiphany. Maybe epiphanies. About myself? About the world around me? Maybe both?

We imagine ourselves as a flower.
Breathe in, flower. Breathe out, fresh.
I am one of the gazillion flowers I walked by on Teton Pass this summer.
Suddenly, I am vulnerable on the steep side of the mountain,
at the mercy of brutal elements.
Breathe in, flower, Breathe out, fresh.
I picture basking in the warmth of the sun, being nourished.
Breath in, flower, Breathe out, fresh.
I picture the relief of the rain, so cool after the hot sun,
drinking deeply at my roots, which are holding strong.
I have what I need to live.
I am fresh.

We imagine ourselves as a mountain.
Breathe in, mountain. Breathe out, solid.
I am the maiden,
lying along the top of Mt. Timpanogos with my arms crossed.
Suddenly, I am not solid.
I am vulnerable, struggling to find my balance on the narrow ridge.
Breathe in, mountain. Breathe out, solid.
I am the mountains near Thistle,
washed to the bottom of the canyon when I am too saturated with rain.
Breathe in, mountain. Breathe out, solid.
I am the scree at the base of a crag in Rock Canyon,
hoping hikers know what they are getting into if they cross over me.
Breathe in, mountain. Breathe out, solid.
I am the Wasatch Front, riddled by faults.
Breathe in, mountain. Breathe out, solid.
I am an ancient volcano, spewing ash and lava.
I breathe in; I breathe out. I breathe in; I breathe out.
But I can't imagine the mountains are solid.
Am I?

We imagine ourselves as water.
Breathe in, water. Breathe out, still.
I am floating on the surface under the moon and stars.
I am in my element.
Breathe in, water. Breathe out, still.
I am dozens of feet down in the Caribbean Sea, below the waves,
watching a sea turtle twice my size swim past without disturbing a thing.
I am still.

We imagine ourselves as the sky.
Breathe in, sky. Breathe out, free.
I am up on a cliff, the blue sky is vast.
Breathe in, sky. Breathe out, free.
I am up on the cliff, the blue sky is vast, but I am not.
Breathe in, sky. Breathe out, free.
I am up on the cliff, the blue sky is vast.
I stretch my arms wide; I refuse to stay small.
The blue sky is vast, and so am I.
I am free.

After the Wild Fires

The other day, Roger and I took a drive in our little 2002 Audi convertible (a spontaneous purchase when it came in on trade at the Volkswagen dealer I worked at selling cars this past year, and, oh, it is sweet). We drove the loop around Mt. Nebo, the tallest mountain in view from home.

Last summer, wild fires raged through the area. This was my first time on that road since, and I was curious to survey the damage.

Growing up, I didn't have experience with wildfires (though we often hiked to lookout towers in the mountains of New England, so we must have had them from time to time). When I moved west, and especially since living in our Utah neighborhood nestled near the mouth of a canyon, I've seen so many fires. I've seen every mountain around us on fire at least once.

The two things that have surprised me most as these mountain wild fires have become familiar to me are (1) it is rare for entire forests burn to the ground - the fires skip and jump and often leave many trees they pass completely unscathed, and (2) that the mountainsides and forest floors are always green the following Spring.

The past few years I've experienced some metaphorical wild fires, as have too many people I love.

Like really devastating, life-changing wild fires.

As I return to writing here, I realize that much of what I've experienced are not my stories to tell or are stories that need to be told in private, in person.

And so in an irritatingly vague way, I will say this:

As my wild fires ripped through--and some are still flaming up--I have feared total devastation. I have experienced deep, personal visceral fear. I have wondered what I'm rooted in and if my roots will hold.

And yet, here I am! Here we are! There are trees still standing alive; there is green everywhere.

All is not lost. It is not.

Write Something

I'm in between again.

I'm trying to figure out my next step in my life and trying to use this time to get things in better order - house, finances, relationships, body, mind, soul, etc.

The last time I found myself in this space was after we closed our bookstore. It took me a long time to find my sea legs without it. One of my kickstart strategies back then was to practice 40 good habits every day for 40 days. I wrote about my experiences, and it was transformative.

This time my challenges are substantially different, but I again see a need to be more deliberate about creating structure. (To be honest, I'd rather hang out at the beach and read a book, which, in my opinion, isn't so bad for my body, mind and soul. Especially if I take breaks for a swim! But. Balance.)

It is not in my nature to do the same thing twice.

On Tuesday night, I made a list, a framework for a reinvented daily approach.

Organize something
Clean something
Purge something
Write something
Read something
Practice something
Stretch something
Change something

On Wednesday night, I came across this passage in Mark Manson's book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*uck, in which he is quoting his high school math teacher:

"Don't just sit there. Do something. The answer will follow."

Manson goes on to discuss the relationship between inspiration, motivation, and action and concludes with this thought: "If you lack the motivation to make an important change in your life, do something--anything, really--and then harness the reaction to that action as a way to begin motivating yourself."

It is in my nature to appreciate synchronicity.

And so on Thursday, I am all in.

Coming Down the Other Side

I don't know how old I'll be when I die, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to last until I'm 104.

I have most likely crested the hill long since.

Signs of my descent:

I find that I talk to myself with startling frequency, and, worse, I am getting lax about doing it when other people are around. People are starting to notice. So far it's nothing revealing. "I think I'll have a slice of pizza," as I poke around in the fridge, forgetting Jack has just walked in, home from school. But what if some of my crazier thoughts start falling out of my brain and coming out of my mouth?

I am forgetting things more often. I had to teach a class the other day without my reading glasses. I asked the class not to pay attention to me as I read an excerpt from a book, holding it in my hand stretched out as far as possible. And then I had to turn around and drive all the way back to campus to retrieve my phone that I'd left on the desk in the front of the room. I realized it after I'd gotten almost all the way to my other job, twenty minutes from campus.

I have realized that no one truly knows what the heck they are doing, including and especially myself. At least not the whole of it. And sometimes not even the bits and pieces. I've realized there aren't any actual grownups anywhere who have it all figured out.

This is simultaneously freeing and unsettling.

I'm feeling good about the freeing part, though.

On the way down, I've discovered I give fewer and fewer effs. I don't even really care anymore that I have to wear reading glasses. Except when I don't have them. And even then, I discover I'm okay with long arms and good lighting.

Trifecta

I've mentioned this before. I don't know if I experience synchronicity more than usual or if I just tend to notice it a lot. Here are three of my recent favorites:

The time a friend dropped by with a present - a copy of Eric Carle's classic Pancakes, Pancakes! - at the exact moment I was cooking a, wait for it, pancake!

The time I bought a fabulous handbag woven from river grass at the gift shop of the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, and the next day I saw someone post in a Facebook forum that she was looking for a new purse, something unusual. The forum has members from all over the world, but I clicked on her name anyway just to see if she lived anywhere near Charlotte, NC, so I could recommend the river grass bags. What were the chances? She actually lived in Charlotte!

The time I was teaching a new class of inmates at the jail and there were two guys who went by Tony and one by Anthony. I reminisced about the old Prince spaghetti ad where the mom yells out of the window in an old apartment in the North End of Boston for her son Anthony, who comes running home because he knows it's Wednesday and Wednesday is Prince spaghetti day. Later that day, a high school friend happened to post about Prince spaghetti day on Facebook and a bunch of us reminisced together.

That was a pretty run of the mill synchronicity for me.

Then it got a little spooky.

The very next day news broke in the Boston Globe that the actress who played Anthony's mother in that Prince spaghetti ad had passed away. Dead.

A synchronicity trifecta.

We are all connected, people.

Twelve Days Going On Forever

At least that's what it feels like.

Twelve days of--how can I say it delicately?--respiratory ailment. With no end in sight. Ugh.

Foggy head, failing voice, awful fatigue, plentiful phlegm.

(I may be fighting to function, but at least my facility for alliteration hasn't faded!)

Keeping My Eye on the Ball

When I was growing up, we had a really crappy black and white television. Really. It was so bad that twice our house was broken into and twice the thieves left the television behind.

I remember sometimes a football game would be on, and I would watch the fuzzy screen and wonder how anyone could tell where the ball actually was at any given time.

Somehow I failed to become a fan.

I realized the other day just how much I don't pay attention to football when a team called the Texans was playing Kansas City on a big screen while we were having lunch at Culvers.

"The Texans?" I said. "What city are they in?"

"Houston," said Roger.

"Houston? Isn't that the Oilers?"

When I googled, I discovered the Oilers moved to Tennessee all the way back in 1999 and became the Titans. That's the same year Jack was born. He's almost 17.

I got sucked into following (though not actually watching) the playoffs this year because both the Patriots and the Panthers had a shot at making it to the Super Bowl and my Facebook feed was on fire!

The final four: the Patriots, the Broncos, the Panthers, the Cardinals. The Patriots didn't make it. Neither did the Cardinals.

"The Cardinals?" I thought. "Aren't they a baseball team?"

A little more googling.

"Ah, no. I'm confusing them with the Orioles."

I'll be rooting for the Panthers tomorrow. Hope they hit a lot of home runs!

Transcendent Synchronicity; or, Life in a Small World

On Wednesday, as I dutifully got organized for class Thursday morning, I made sure I had ready access to the link for Kathryn Schulz's classic TED Talk, On Being Wrong. I show it to my students every semester before launching them into their research project. I highly recommend it as an invitation to open ourselves up to wider views, risk, and possibility.

After I was set for class, I settled in to read several articles that comprised a minor firestorm in the literary world a few months ago about Henry David Thoreau and particularly Walden; or, Life in the Woods in preparation for a discussion with friends on Thursday evening. I'd glanced at the articles before, but wanted to wait until I'd read Walden before reading them in depth.

I started with the article that set off the firestorm. "Pond Scum" it was called, published in The New Yorker in October. An inauspicious title.

While I agreed with some of the author's points --

I'd long known, for example, how difficult Thoreau was, even for people who counted him a friend. I'd known that his mother baked cookies for him while he lived "on his own" in his cabin in the woods, but that he hadn't included them in his accounting of his experience. I'd witnessed for myself various contradictions in his views (like eschewing materialism but loving the bustling enterprise of downtown Concord). I too believe that "the mature position, and the one at the heart of the American democracy, seeks a balance between the individual and the society."

-- I found myself becoming increasingly agitated with the author's arguments against him.

That is not the way I read him! You are missing important context! What do you mean he lacks humor? I wrote LOL in the margins of his writing more than once!

I even shouted, out loud to myself, there alone in my room, probably multiple times,

"You are wrong!!"

When I got to the end of the evisceration, I wondered who wrote it.

And there I saw her name.

Kathryn Schulz.

The very same On Being Wrong Kathryn Schulz.

So glad she's open to the possibility that she is.

-------

PS: If you read "Pond Scum," I also recommend you read these articles as well: "In Defense of Thoreau" in The Atlantic and "Everybody Hates Henry" in The New Republic, which wisely asks "Literary saint or arrogant fraud--why do we need Thoreau to be one or the other?"

Going to Pot

One of the things you have to get used to if you work at a jail is waiting for someone in a remote control center to unlock doors and open sliders for you. I find it's a good exercise in patience. Inner zen and all that.

I've also discovered it's a good exercise in humility.

Here's why: The restroom is on the other side of an often closed slider, which means that when I use the restroom, people in the remote control center know it. They know when I'm done with the restroom and need to get back to the other side of the slider. Sometimes it opens before I even have a chance to press the button, which means they've had their eyes on the video monitor, waiting for me.

For the first few years I didn't think much of it. The people in the control center were strangers to me.

Then one day I met a deputy newly assigned to the main hall where I call inmates out to meet with them.

"I already know you," she said, "But I don't know your name or what exactly you do."

I told her then asked, "You already know me?"

"I've worked in the control center so I've seen you around."

"Oh," I said, my face reddening a little. "So, um, then you know how often I use the restroom?"

I drink a lot.

She laughed, "I might!"

"Oh," I said, laughing along because what else could I do? "Nice to meet you?"

With a Sister Like This

I wrapped up my year of actually finishing books I start and reporting on them with a novel about Louisa May Alcott's sister May.

I've long loved Louisa. She was imaginative. Gutsy. Subversive.

And imperfect.

I always knew she was imperfect. Of course she was imperfect. No matter how cool people are, they are never perfect.

I wasn't prepared, though, for what I discovered a couple of weeks ago and then confirmed this week.

While reading the novel, I learned that May Alcott had some of her drawings of literary and patriotic scenes around town published in a book called Concord Sketches. It's very rare; not many were printed. Louisa wrote the introduction, which was apparently not flattering to May at all.

I had to see it for myself. Louisa's introduction. May's drawings.

A quick search for images of the book itself on the Internet failed me. Then I discovered there existed a copy of the actual book just miles from me, deep in the heart of Special Collections at the BYU library.

I went there this past week to see it for myself.

And confirmed the worst.

Sigh.

Louisa totally thrashed May!

"These sketches," she wrote, "from a student's portfolio [May was teaching art by this time. Ouch!], claim no merit as works of art [Ouch!!], but are only valuable as souvenirs [Ouch!!!], which owe their chief charm to the associations that surround them, rather than to any success in the execution of a labor of love [Ouch!!!!], prompted by the natural desire to do honor to one's birthplace."

Maybe Louisa wrote what she wrote as a joke and never meant for it to be published? Maybe she didn't think the book would ever make it to print? The introduction did not include an attribution. Maybe Louisa didn't write it at all?

I can wish.

Because with a sister like this, who needs critics?

Disillusioned as I am, though, I won't stop loving Louisa. If we stopped loving everyone who isn't perfect, we'd have to stop loving everyone. Plus, this happened nearly 150 years ago. Time adds a mythic patina to legends like Louisa.

But still.

Poor May.

Ouch.

Recycled

I have written before about how Jack picks one of the littlest trees on the lot every Christmas. He has a good heart, that boy.

I have also written before about how we save our Christmas trees every year to burn them on Summer Solstice in our Celestial Cauldron from the Home Depot.

I can't remember why, but we didn't do that this past June. The old tree was left tucked away in the back corner of the yard.

Fast forward to the night before the night before Christmas. I was working late, making up for time I missed while I was out of town for five days. Just as I was heading home, I got a text from Jack, "Can you pick me up at Chloe's?" He had been hanging out all evening with his friends decorating Christmas cookies.

We pulled into the garage and got out of the car. Jack breathed in, "Something smells funny." We shrugged and headed into the house. 

"Wait!" Jack said, "I think I know what that smell is! Come see if I'm right!"

Back in the garage, Jack said, "He did it! He was talking about doing it and he actually did it!"

There, hanging from the ceiling, was last year's Christmas tree. While we were out, Roger had spray painted it green.

"We haven't gotten around to getting a tree yet and it's sort of late now," he said. "So I figured I'd give this a try."

We have long deferred to Jack on matters of the tree (it is his childhood after all). He thought it was hilarious. I did, too. So the next day Roger brought it into the house and decorated it, adding one new ornament he picked up at the hardware store.

It turned out to be a fine tree for the holiday, but I'm not quite sure what will happen if we put it in our Celestial Cauldron and burn it come Summer Solstice. 

Coming in for a Landing and Launching Again

Of course just as I ended my year-long project that involved finishing a book each week for 52 weeks, my nephew wrote about getting through more than 100 in a year and I saw a post about someone who read 164 books in 2015.

Isn't that the way it goes?

I wanted this project to be about more than reading, though. I wanted it to be about thinking and writing and seeing how all of it both reflected our world and shaped my life over the course of the year.

So many threads wove through the books I chose and also wove through real life, sometimes in simple or unexpected ways.

Like how this passage from A House in Corfu was exquisitely refracted through the stories of Syrian refugees being welcomed on the island of Lesbos: ". . . my father, stretchered up the path by strong young men, spoke in a way that was as typical of him as the efforts by the doctor to help him had been of a Greek to a suffering stranger."

And how Margo Jefferson (Negroland) reluctantly realized that she was probably most like Amy March in Little Women and how May Alcott (Little Woman in Blue) resented the way her sister Louisa had portrayed her as Amy.

And how we ended up spending a week exploring in the Pacific Northwest as a direct result of reading The Curve of Time.

What was the book that I can't stop thinking about?

I am actually very surprised. Frankenstein. Sure it's one of the more recent books I read, but it illuminated so many of my ongoing explorations in earlier books (addiction, race, gender, criminal justice, disconnection, marginalization and, importantly, love) by offering such a powerful metaphor for thinking through both how people respond to being thought of as "monsters" by becoming monsters and how becoming monsters is not inevitable.

We have more power and responsibility than we realize when it comes to how we see one another (and ourselves) and how we react to the way we are seen. We need to realize it!

This is something I work on personally. It is something I think about in my work. It is something I think about as I watch such destructive judgment and fear play out in our communities, our nations, our world.

Frankenstein. Go figure.

And on a lighter note, I was very pleased at how often pots bursting with colorful geraniums appeared in the books I read. I don't think that is a coincidence and I am now, non-gardener that I am, obsessed with planting geraniums in pots for our front steps in a few months.

So that was 2015. For 2016?

Because I have a tendency to be far too earnest, I'm going to shove myself into shallower water and write something funny every week. Funny is an excellent challenge, both in life and in writing, and I'm going to experiment with various types of funny and various types of writing funny. Because I can. Be funny, I mean.

I think (she says with great earnestness) that a focus on the funny will be good medicine in the coming year. Especially this particular coming year.

Book #52: Little Woman in Blue

I was planning to finish Thoreau's Walden this week - a book I have never read in its entirety despite growing up within miles of the site where he lived his life in the woods. We're going to be discussing it in book club in a few weeks.

But, I got sidetracked when my sister gave me this novel based on May Alcott's life for Christmas.

I figured it was an appropriate book to read in the middle of reading Walden. The Alcotts were Thoreau's transcendental contemporaries and neighbors in Concord. He even turns up on page four of the novel (though he's dead by page 16).

While this is a novel, author Jeannine Atkins drew heavily on writings from the era, including May Alcott's letters and diaries.

It would be nice to separate fact from fiction in this account, but I trust that Atkins reflected the overall spirit of who May Alcott was and how her life unfolded accurately (which, by the way, was not exactly how Amy March's story unfolded in Little Women).

Two key themes emerged, which are consistent with everything I've learned over the years about her family, her geography, and her era, and to which I very much relate.

One, Alcott grapples with the tension between wanting to live a finer and larger life and being raised with the belief that there is virtue in poverty and sacrifice for others and that nature can provide all the beauty one needs.

Two, she grapples with the tension between wanting to pursue her life as an artist (her passion, though she is not so confident in her ability and receives little encouragement early on, surprisingly not even from her sister Louisa!) and also to have a husband and children.

I'm looking forward to finishing Walden with this book fresh in my mind.

Book #51: Essays of E.B. White

I bought this book at Shakespeare & Company a few years ago while I was traveling with my sister and it disappeared into Roger's reading stack when I got home. He turned it up for me a month or so ago and I've been reading a few essays here and there since then.

Coincidentally, I'm sitting in a hotel room with the same sister as I write this. Traveling again, though in Charlotte, NC, not in Paris.

E.B. White, who is probably most well known for writing Charlotte's Web, wrote many essays on a wide variety of topics and was often published in magazines like The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's.

Most of the essays in this collection were written in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Basically, he wrote about the world my generation was born into.

What struck me as I read is how the more things change, the more things stay the same. Nature. Technology. World peace. Progress. Resistance to progress. Gentle nostalgia. Harsh reality.

Seriously. The details may be different, but we're repeating the conversations.

"All I ever hope to say in books is that I love the world," White once said. "I guess you can find it in there, if you dig around." 

I wish we still had E.B. White around to add his reasonable and often delightful two bits.

Book #50: Jim the Boy

This week's selection comes with a confession: This is not my book. I have a copy lent to me by my sister-in-law years ago and that I unearthed from my Grammie's old desk in our front hall.

It doesn't happen all the time, but once in a while I become a black hole, and it can be risky lending something to me. Beware.

It's serendipitous that this particular book caught my attention this week. It's a gentle novel about a boy being raised by his mom and three uncles on a farm in North Carolina in the 1930s. In the first chapter he turns ten, and bit by bit as the story unfolds over the course of a year, his world gets a little bigger.

It's serendipitous because I happen to be leaving Jack and Roger behind and heading to North Carolina in a few days. Not only that, the reason I'm heading there is my cousin's daughter's Bat Mitzvah, which will mark her coming of age in her Jewish community.

Her world (and all of ours) is getting a bit bigger.

In a moment he was lost amid the uncles, who swarmed around the table and hustled him to the door, their voices combining into a single, unintelligible din of laughter and teasing. Mama handed him his notebook and his ball glove as the uncles jostled him across the porch and down the steps.

When Jim reached the state highway, he turned and looked back. Mama and the uncles waved from the porch.

"Be good, Doc," called Uncle Zeno.

"Study hard," said Mama.

"Pay attention," said Uncle Al.

"Don't get a paddling," said Uncle Coran.

"'Bye," yelled Jim, waving back. "'Bye, everybody."

And when he turned and looked up the hill toward the school, he wished for a moment that he did not have to take another step, that he could stay right where he was and never have to leave again.

It's nice, this idea of staying wrapped up in a safe, comfortable place. Growing up can be hard, sometimes scary, even painful. And it doesn't actually ever end, not that I know.

But, honestly, the widening world of experience? Even when it's hard? Maybe especially when it's hard? It's amazing.

Book #49: Frankenstein

A little over two years ago, I invited my friend Boyd to talk about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at a library lecture series I used to host called "So You Want To Read." I meant to read it then, but didn't.

Last year, Jack read Frankenstein for his sophomore English class, and I started reading it in solidarity. I meant to finish it then, but didn't.

A couple of months ago, Roger reviewed this edition of Frankenstein, illustrated by Gris Grimly, for BYU's Children's Book and Media Review. I meant to read it then, but didn't.

This week, though, I was in a bit of a funk and a horror story seemed like good medicine. So I picked it up and read it (and thoroughly enjoyed Grimly's fabulous steampunk illustrations).

My timing ended up being just right, at least in terms of maximizing the impact of the Rorschach test that is Frankenstein and his creation on me. The past few months have been tough, and now I have a few new metaphors I can use to help process it all.

At times I saw myself and others in Frankenstein, who misunderstood what he created, who wanted to ignore the consequences, and who never realized that he actually held the power (love) to reverse the course he had set.

At times I saw myself and others in the monster, who, when he revealed himself, could not be seen for who he truly was. People feared him, and in his resentment and isolation, he became something he regretted.

At times I saw myself and others in the ship captain, who rescued Frankenstein in the frozen north and who took on the weight of Frankenstein's tale.

Several times I was startled by how much I saw myself and others in both Frankenstein's cousin, who became his unwitting bride, and the unrealized female monster he started to create as a companion to the first, but ended up destroying because she would dangerously have a mind of her own.

I'm quite sure I saw all sorts of things in the text that Shelley never dreamed of, as I viewed her work through the lens of modern day politics and the history that informs our struggles to see "the other" as fully human, the uneasy relationship between organized religion and people who do not fit in prescribed boxes, and, of course, the challenges I create for my own self that would not be so destructive if I faced them head on and made peace with them.

But that is the mark of a good universal and enduring (and cautionary) tale.

Book #48: Shakespeare Saved My Life

A while back, I put this on my reading list upon the recommendation of a friend, then I was inspired to pick it up after attending a staged reading of a new play about Shakespeare's later years, written by my niece's husband, this past Monday evening.

The book is by a college professor who drew high-security prison inmates, particularly one lifer named Larry Newton, eventually her teaching assistant, into a deep study of Shakespeare's works over the course of ten years.

The stories she tells embody truths that I believe, made manifest in real life:

(1) That reading well written fiction enables us to develop empathy for others and to look squarely at our own selves.

(2) That someone who commits crimes is not simply a criminal and nothing else.

(3) That people generally respond favorably to being treated like adults who are capable of learning, growth, and positive change and to being given substantive, challenging opportunities to do just that.

Here are two excerpts that give a little hint about the journey:

And then [Newton] threw out his curve ball: "But why do you think [Hamlet's] seeking revenge?"

I held my breath. The group did not outright reject his question, but no one, not even Green, had an answer. This group consisted of seven men who were serving murder convictions; the eighth was convicted of attempted murder. To these prisoners, it was a no-brainer: murder requires revenge, and revenge requires murder. Duh!

"This guy killed his father, so Hamlet should kill him?" Newton prompted them.

"That's right!"

"Sure!"

"That's what you do!"

"So, what? It's the 'honorable' thing to do?" he nudged them a bit more.

"Hell, yeah, it's honorable!" said Bentley, taking the bait.

"But why is it honorable?" he challenged them now. "What makes it honorable? And what is honor anyway?"

The group went quiet, thinking. No one had ever asked them to question such fundamental concepts that drove their lives and motivated their criminal choices. No one, that is, until Shakespeare--and Newton. Through the cuff port, he turned to me and gave me a wink. I nodded. We both knew the Shakespeare program was entering a whole new dimension. We were going to be changing lives back here.

Then a few years later Newton says this during an introduction to a performance the inmates gave of some scenes they had adapted from Romeo and Juliet.

"So the last few years that I was in segregation I spent analyzing and discussing Shakespeare through a hole in a steel door with a group of other prisoners. We'd discuss what we read, and everything would come up for discussion. We'd try to define these terms like honor, integrity, etc. It really forced me to find some kind of substance to these terms that shape our lives. I was forced to look in the mirror, basically, at myself, to give these things real meaning. That changed the way I felt about everything, about others, about myself. I was literally digging into the very root of myself while digging into Shakespeare's characters. For instance, I couldn't say that Hamlet's impulse for revenge was honorable if I couldn't tell you what honor is, and I couldn't. I still can't tell you what honor is, but I can tell you some of the things that it's not, and Hamlet's revenge is one of them."

Book #47: Just Mercy

This week's book club selection was actually not at my recommendation, but I seconded the motion because I had a copy already on my nightstand.

If we don't look too closely, we can easily go through life assuming that our criminal justice system is working well, administering punishment objectively and fairly.

In too many cases, though, it's not.

Bryan Stevenson, the attorney who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, recounts, among others, the case of Walter McMillian, an innocent black man who was sentenced to die for the murder of a white woman. Ironically, the crime occurred in Monroeville, Alabama, hometown of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird.

I think we are waking up as a nation to at least the worst of the injustice--people on death row being found innocent, our disproportionate and unsustainable incarceration rates, heavy handed law enforcement in certain towns and cities, the destructiveness of solitary confinement, etc.

I think we are starting to respond, if tentatively.

I think we've got a long way to go.

While I have not been privy to gross injustice here in Utah, I have definitely witnessed uneven justice, and that uneven justice is typically connected to financial resources and legal representation.

A bit of evidence for this from the recent October 2015 report on the right to counsel prepared by the Sixth Amendment Center: "more people accused of misdemeanors are processed through Utah's justice courts without a lawyer than are represented by counsel - upwards of 62 percent of defendants statewide, according to the state Administrative Office of Courts' data."

I know many people, including myself, are big fans of our Constitution.

We've got work to do.

Watching this TED talk by author Bryan Stevenson can be a good place to start galvanizing ourselves to get to it.

Book #46: Lila

Marilynne Robinson is a good author to turn to when one is in need of spiritual contemplation and renewal, and so, this week, Lila.

Lila tells the story of the second wife of minister John Ames, the main character in Robinson's earlier novel Gilead. Until Lila meets and marries John, she lives a life of basic survival, without the context or the language to explore any larger sense of who she is or meaning in life.

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Once, when they were out walking, he asked her what was on her mind, because she had been so quiet, and she said, "Nothing, really. Existence," which made him laugh with surprise and then apologize for laughing. He said, "I'd be interested to know your thoughts on it."
 
"I just don't know what to think about it at all sometimes."

He nodded. "It's remarkable, whatever else."

"Remarkable," she said, considering the word. . . . It had begun to seem to her that if she had more words she might understand things better. "You should be teaching me. . . . I had to learn that word 'existence.' You was talking about it all the time. It took me a while to figure out what you even meant by it."

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Sometimes I contemplate this passage in the Bible and its relationship to the development of human consciousness: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

In a very real sense, words create the universe. We use language to describe that universe as we see it, our own known universe. Language defines but also elevates us, enabling us to transcend what we knew before. Language is key to understanding who we are, what it means to exist, what it means to exist together.

It is all of a process, an evolution, an ongoing creation.

The Word is with us.

We are in the middle of all of it, grappling, imperfectly conveying our perspective, imperfectly receiving from others. This past week especially. What is peace. What is moral. What is just. What is obedience, freedom, opportunity, equality, solidarity, truth, pain, safety, grace. What is love.

It can be so damn hard to figure out how to speak our own meaning, how to hear another's. Excruciating even.

But whenever we do, whenever we truly do, our known universe expands.

And that is remarkable, whatever else.

Book #45: No More Goodbyes

How ironic it was to be in the middle of reading this book when the news came out a few days ago that the LDS Church has new policies for how they will be handling membership decisions for same-sex couples and their children.

It was not ironic in an entertaining or thought-provoking way. It was deeply, painfully ironic.

I thought about reading a different book to write about today, but then I thought, no. This is too important.

The whole premise of No More Goodbyes, written by well-known LDS poet and playwright Carol Lynn Pearson, is that across religions, people of faith should be circling the wagons around our gay loved ones, not circling the wagons against them.

I do not want to write about the LDS Church's policies here, other than to say that the implications of them are much more far reaching than readily appear, and that it has been difficult to watch so many faithful Mormons share posts on social media that have minimized and even mocked the pain of their brothers and sisters who have been grappling with it all.

I do want to write about two experiences.

The first one I learned about over lunch with a dear friend of mine who is LDS and who has a gay son. She's very involved in the USGA group at BYU and had recently attended a meeting in which all the participants filled out a survey anonymously. The papers were gathered up and redistributed so that everyone ended up with a survey reflecting another person's answers. When each statement was read aloud, people silently stood if it was marked on their paper.

"I have considered committing suicide."

More than 90% of the 200 or so people in the room stood up. More than 90%.

Just sit with that a moment.

The second experience happened a month or so ago. I was honored to participate in a program at a local bookstore for a group called the Mama Dragons. These are LDS women who have LGBTQ children, and who are fiercely and lovingly navigating unknown and difficult paths with them.

After inspiring talks by author Carol Lynn Pearson and Tom Christofferson, a gay man who is also a brother of prominent LDS church leader D. Todd Christofferson, several Mama Dragons read essays about their experiences. These essays will be published in a book along with beautiful portraits of them by local photographer Kimberly Anderson.

Then I read the essay I was asked to share. It was written by a Mama Dragon who can't reveal her identity because her son is still closeted outside the family and is serving a mission for the LDS Church. The agony in her words was palpable.

"No one can see me because I am invisible," she wrote. "I still have to protect my son from the church that will eventually tear him apart. This is my darkness and my loneliness. This is being the Mormon mother of a gay son."

"No one can see me because I am invisible."

Please, please do not minimize or mock the pain. It is real. You may not see it, but it is there. Circle the wagons around.