Afleveringen
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āLetās talk awhile about Repair.
I am at work. I am looking around at the things I have repaired over the years, just here, in this room, and itās a pretty long list.
āI broke a stainless bolt off the foot of my effluent scrubber. I was so frustrated. It happened while I was uncrating it. It was brand-stinkinā-new! And I broke the foot off.
I had to drill it out (no small feat, it was stainless!) and then re-tap, re-cut threads, and manufacture a new foot with all-thread I found at the hardware store.
I did that.
āI have patched holes in the roof. I have re-soldered circuitry on my bag filler.
I have repaired and maintained my roasting machine a number of times. Everything from replacing burners to rewiring for data-logging software.
āAnd this is my current roaster! A beautiful San Franciscan SF-25, built by hand in Nevada of largely American made parts and pieces, which I prefer and appreciate mostly because of the easy availability of replacement parts.
The machine I began my career on, the machine that built this business, is resting in pieces in a storage unit.
I will not go into great detail here and now, but it was also built by hand, a one-off fabrication some dude built in a garage in Olympia. I repaired, and repaired, and rewired, and rebuilt that roaster endlessly.
It was maddening in its need for attention. Like a toddler, that thing demanded my constant supervision. And like some toddlers Iāve known, if left to its own devices, that roaster would surely have burnt the house down. That thing knew how to throw a proper spark.
āI have repaired espresso machines and I have repaired coffee brewers from various manufacturers and with varying degrees of competency. Iāve been to trainings and Iāve learned on the job.
Iāve glued things back together out of sheer need, and Iāve paid dearly for new parts to swap in.
āI think of my home.
My tractor wonāt start right now. Itās a fuel issue, Iām fairly certain, but I havenāt cracked into it yet. Itās cold out there! But Iāll get to it, and itāll run.
āI am, in truth, stalling.
Right now, here, as I write these words.
The toilet and shower are backed up in my home.
I know exactly what the problem isāitās a way the pipes were set up improperly in the first place, and itād be a monumental challenge to tear them out and replace them properly now.
So when I get home, I will address the issue, without fixing the underlying cause. Cāest la vie.
āWhen I think of repair, I think of Thrift.
And I think of the why behind repair.
Itās not just money. Itās not just that I couldnāt possibly afford to buy my way out of a given repair project in my life.
It is, for me, a value.
āA value for avoiding superfluous resource spending, and a value for having my hands on my life.
I do not want to go under my house today. I do not want to get the contents of my sewer pipes all over myself.
But I do want to have the job done, and I want it done correctly, and Iād prefer it be done expediently.
And, as we established in capability, I am capable of many things. So I do them.
āI appreciate peopleās work and I appreciate people who work with their hands.
Because look at the alternative.
āWe live in a world of cheap consumer goods. We live in a world of inexpensive landfills. I just put stuff in a special can and a person comes and makes my hassles disappear into nowhere.
We live in a world where we ship bales of fast fashion castoffs to faraway locales for people to sort through endlessly in their quest out of poverty.
We live in a world where children in other countries work at sorting our e-waste, scrapping for bits of conductive metals to sell back to us in the form of even more cheap consumer goods.
āAnd I am repulsed. I am alarmed.
I am making choices in my own life that hopefully reduce my impact on these systems, but I feel so small. I feel so insignificant.
āI buy durable shoes. I have my blue jeans repaired when they tear. I attempt to buy high-quality shirts, preferably ones produced in a responsible fashion in a country with high standards of laborer compensation.
This means I spend more money on fewer t-shirts. I spend money on jean repair. I spend more money on shoes less frequently.
I am not sure Iām saving money. And I know Iām not personally saving the Earth.
āSo why am I doing this stuff?
Itās something about Agency.
Itās something about living a life that I can be proud of and satisfied with. For and within my own self.
ā(...A few hours later...)
āI have taken a break from writing and fixed my septic backup.
It was a relatively disgusting and straightforward procedure, and one of my kids helped me.
āWe learned how to do it better next time, and discussed strategies for managing the problem with the plumbing in the future.
We did save a little money.
But more importantly to me, we lived our lives together.
We were not on our phones. We were not sectioned off from one another. We were knee-deep in the problem, together.
āI showed my kid that a thing could be done, and in the process, I learned the same lesson myself.
It makes us feel brave. We can do hard things.
We saved money, we saved the gasoline needed for a repair person to come deal with the situation, and we saved a lot of time.
We were in and outta there in less than an hour. We mightāve waited for days to get on somebodyās non-emergency schedule.
āI reflect again on my pickup truck.
Iāve chosen repair. Iāve chosen to upgrade instead of replace.
Because when you repair something, you arenāt just fixing a machine.
You are building a relationship with the physical world.
You are telling the entropy of the universe: āNot today.ā
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My grandfather was a craftsman. He was an accomplished woodworker. The president of our state woodworking guild, he had multiple lathes in his shop, and numerous heavy tools that he built himself, sturdy, out of wood. His bandsaw, wood. His router table, wood. Drum and spindle sanders, wood.
He had a lathe on which he could turn huge columns for the Elks Lodge. He had a tiny lathe on which he could turn intricate, delicate ornaments for the Christmas trees at our state house and even the United States Capitol Building!
He built Governor Atiyehās desk. He was known for unique, one of a kind spinning wheels. He built a carousel quality rocking horse for us, his grandchildren and he filled his home with ornate woodworking details. Hidden compartments in the mantel. Secret stereo cabinets. That sort of thing.
His shop was warm and eclectic. In addition to his original creations he restored antique furniture, which is a skill beyond. Itās one thing to make something beautiful. Itās quite another to fix something beautiful that someone else built with their ways and their tools and make it literally as good as new.
There was a whole wall full of custom jigs that he had built for various pieces of antique furniture. The workshop smelled like a hundred kinds of wood plus his cigarettesāwhich he didnāt think anyone could smell.
A cork board in his little office was covered in business cards, the currency of a businessman of the 1970ās, the 1980ās. It also had a hundred little pins in the shape of a drop of blood. One for every time he had given blood to the Red Cross over the years.
A laborer by nature and a dairyman by trade and training, my grandfather was, for his last decades, a craftsman. I didnāt know him nearly well enough. There was tension in our family relationships and we never found each otherās deepnesses before he died.
My first graphic designer is a craftsman. Heās out there, crafting still. He and I became fast friends shortly after I began as a businessman, and as a result of our friendship I have always had an outsized graphical presence as a company. Even now, heās moved far away, took a good job, I know what graphic craftsmanship looks like because of him. I know who to hire. And who not to. He taught me what to look for. I have had exceptional graphic design, right down through the years.
Which is a handy skill, because I am not a Craftsman. In some ways I wish I was. I have certainly tried to be over the years, but you guys, Iām just not.
I do crafty things. I am not an unskilled person, not by a long shot. No self deprecation here. I can be honest and not betray my value for humility.
I have built things out of wood that are functional as well as lovely. I have an eye for odd materials and how they might look with other materials.
I can, after twenty yearsā practice, make a mean cup of coffee. I can steam milk and pour beautiful latte art. I can do stuff.
But here, now, I can admit that I am a generalist. I am a jack of all trades.
Personally, my own sense of craftsmanship lies in spotting and managing craftsmanship. Iām a good collector of things, and I often know what things complement a company, a product, a recipe, a design project. And I think admitting that Iām not really a craftsman is the first step to developing it as a part of my personhood.
And I do want to develop a greater sense of craftsmanship in my life. A greater value for it.
A builder I know builds tract homes. Endless, boring, cheap. He would say that heās providing a product for which there is demand, but if Iām honest Iām very sorry that thereās a demand for such a thing. Iām sorry for the place we find ourselves in as a society where cheaply built equals good.
Malvina Reynolds sings a song, Little Boxes.
Little boxes, on the hillside. Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same. Thereās a green one and a pink one, a blue one and a yellow one and theyāre all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
My granddad, the accomplished woodworker, used to sing that song.
Itās about the devastating sameness of modernity and the boxes we find ourselves in. The boxes we put ourselves in, sometimes, but often times the boxes weāre expected to climb into by others.
And the people in the houses all went to the universities, where they were put in boxes, and they came out all the same.
Itās a critique of societyās willingness to default to the path of least resistance. Itās a song about settling.
Another builder I know is a craftsman. He builds structures that are lovely and customized to their use case, and more importantly, structures that will stand up to the test of time. They are more expensive, though not unreasonably so. The biggest difference between these builders is the thought that both they and their customers put into the spaces they create and dwell in.
So. Here we are at the end of my first free-wheeling essay with no card. No anchor. And which is it, Iām still sort of wondering? I have spent the essay telling you Iām not a craftsman and have now convinced myself that I may be.
I am naturally a generalist, a tradesman, a doer. A collector of craftsmanship. Like my grandfatherās corkboard I have amassed a huge team of people upon whom I can call.
My espresso machine was purchased new in 2012 and has essentially been on for 24 hours a day since then. Day in, day out, it is warm and ready to produce. It was built by hand in Florence, Italy. I am astounded at how little maintenance and repair itās required over the years. Craftsmanship. Quality. Itās ended up being much less expensive than a cheaper machine would have been.
The countertops in my coffee shop are concrete. With help from a couple of friends, my wife and I built them by hand. We designed them, we formed them, supported them, we poured and polished them, all us, all on our own. They have survived daily commercial use for thirteen years!
Our signage, hand painted, classic, colorful and simple and strong. No backlighting, no plastic. Just aluminum and paint and good natured craftsmanship from a local sign painter.
We have a four panel mural that is wholly our own. Again, produced by someone wonderful and local.
The list goes on. I am a collector of craftsmanship. My collection is rich.
It takes someone putting it together. It takes the farmer drawing lambs into the barn, the gun shearer gathering wool, it takes the person laboriously sitting at my grandfatherās spinning wheel, spinning carded wool into yarn. And it takes the weaver, mixing colors and textures to create patterns. A tapestry is not usually made by just one person.
Devaluing our contribution is a trap. Devaluing othersā is a trap. One I seem almost eager to fall into at times.
As has become a theme in my writing I must again acknowledge the benefit of community participation. The joy of teamsmanship, even over craftsmanship.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Another central theme. Of this project. Of my life. A sense of belonging can encompass so many of the ideas weāve talked about. Or at least it weaves, mycorrhizae-like throughout.
What are we without a sense of belonging? Family security, humility, social recognition. They all intertwine with a sense of belonging. Forgiveness, equality, a world at peace. Itās all tied in. True friendship. Loyalty. Enjoyment of life.
And card number 57āsense of belonging, feeling that others care about meā connects us, in my head, anyway, back to the beginning, card number 1. social power: control over others, dominance.
Because in the times of my life where Iāve needed to reach for dominance, or control over others itās always because I donāt feel a sense of belonging. I donāt feel a sense of security within my community.
If we fall out of one, we may slip into the other.
This gives me a tremendous sense of compassion for those mean people in the world, and thatās an impulse I could stand to follow a little more often. Default to compassion. Default to understanding.
I cannot change the world alone. But I can change myself. I knowāthatās a little āABC Afternoon Specialā. Forgive me. But itās true.
A sense of belonging is a lot of the why behind my values choices. Behind the hard work I am, (and sometimes Iām not) willing to do for my people. Itās the reason I subdue my sometimes overwhelming violence and bring it to heel. I have a high value for others feeling a sense of belonging.
I lament the way many men feel the need to assert control and dominance. I care. About you. Others care about you. You are enough, you are large enough and strong enough. You have enough. We can have enough together.
I reflect on all of the ways I feel a deep sense of belonging and I lament the rarity it is in some folksā lives. I measure it in a hundred ways. I measure it in the hidden keys I know the location of. I measure it in the beautiful child Iāve been made godfather to. I measure it in manatees made of yarn and wire. I measure it in coffee customers and I measure it in the questions my friends know they can ask me about sex or poop or money. Or anything.
I am blessed. I am the bearer, again, of an absolute embarrassment of riches. I am wealthy beyond comparison. I wish it was appropriate to list my riches, name by name.
I have a sense of belonging in my space. I belong to a community, a large family. I am loved and cared for. I am a local business owner. I am a water board member.
Belonging often isnāt a feeling you get, but the bench youāre sitting on. Iāve talked about āmaking space on the benchā a number of times. A sense of belonging is made real with the act of scooting over. Itās for family, itās for friends, itās for the weak and the marginalized, itās for everyone, together.
I left my church. Letās talk about it a little bit. Perhaps thatās my keystone story as it pertains to a sense of belonging, and Iāve mentioned it, but Iāll talk about it a little bit more here.
Thirty years. I began engaging this community when I was about nine years old and I only left in my fortieth year here. I believed everything. I contributed. I engaged. And there were times when I felt a sense of belonging in that context.
But really, there were people, many people with whom I felt a sense of belonging, and it wasnāt about the church at all, it was always about the people.
The structure failed. The structure claimed to be that mycorrhizal network. The church claimed to be the trellis that we could grow on and when we grew to a certain size, it broke under our weight. There was no room left on the bench, and no more was made. Men failed.
Itās not okay. Some days Iām not okay.
There have, nevertheless, been many people over the years who have scooted down, made room for me on their benches. Many of them have been in church, and I am heartened by the benches still available to me. I think of the number of people whose houses I would let myself into, I would eat their food and drink their coffee, I would take off my shoes and pick up their children and take apples from their trees. And I am glad. For everything. I am here. I belong where I belong.
I also know how to make others feel that sense now. I reflect on the little person living in my home. I reflect on my own children and my nieces and my closest friends. And I believe all of my experiences in all of the years have stacked up and culminated in our ability to make room on the bench. I believe in our ability, my familyās and mine, to be a trellis upon which other people can hang and grow.
Belonging is the mycorrhizae. Itās the network of love and affection that transfers information and nutrients between different organisms. Belonging is the key to someone elseās home, hidden in a place where the right people can find it. Belonging is the trellis. Belonging is not just the bench, itās the act of shoving over. Belonging forks half its food onto your empty plate.
I will end here with a bible verse, as has become my way. Itās one you doubtlessly know, or maybe youāve just heard of it. Or maybe, like Tolkien in your forties this will be your first brush with First Corinthians 13. Here it is, paraphrased by yours truly. May it live a little bit within us.
Love is patient and kind. Itās not jealous or envious. Love doesnāt boast or burst with self-pride. Loveās not rude and it doesnāt look out only for itself. Love doesnāt get drawn into fruitless fits of anger, and it forgets wrongs done quickly. Love doesnāt quietly root for evil to be visited upon others, but it does rejoice in the true things in life. Love is protective and trustworthy. Itās constantly hoping for the best and it stays the course. Love doesnāt fail.
This is it! Card 57. The end of the deck. It feels like the end of something, but I feel like Iām just getting started. Stay tuned if you feel like it.
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āAnother one thatās hard to pin down.
āāClean living.ā Thatās what my dad says.
The old man who smokes all the days of his life and dies peacefully in his sleep at 93?
āClean living,ā my dad might say with an eye roll.
āHealth is an honest value to choose. Health for me and for you. Healthy foods, healthy habits. Healthy minds and bodies.
At least we have our health. I can lose a lot and still have a lot if I have my health.
āBut boy, that can go sideways.
āI think of my friend the artist. She lived her life clean. She avoided sugar, ate healthy, and walked fifty miles for her fiftieth birthday.
And then she got cancer and died. Quickly.
āI think of my cousin, the Forester.
He finished his course of study and found a job in the woods somewhere. He got married and had a pair of real nice kids.
Then he got the flu and died of complications.
The flu! You hear that it kills people every year, but you donāt think it kills the strong.
It killed my strong, healthy cousin. He was an ox. He was a gem. He was beautiful and strong, and he died because of the flu.
āMy parents are all sick and beginning the process of moving on to the next stage.
For one, itās dementia. For another, itās chronic leukemia. For the others, itās heart disease and diabetes.
This life can be cruel.
āOh, that we might all live to old age and die in our loverās arms.
āWe walked in and found them together, peaceful and gone.ā
āMy friend Johnny lived until he was old.
He mowed the lawn one sunny morning. He came up on the porch and half-drained a glass of lemonade, and then he sat back in his chair and went to be with Jesus.
That is the dream. Death by lemonade. He died of too much satisfaction.
But we donāt get to choose.
My middle child was born with complications. They spent a month in the NICU in Portland, and then came home with us.
Their young life was punctuated by appointments and checkups, blood draws and urine samples and renal ultrasounds.
They are healthy and strong todayāessentially no residual effects.
āBut years later, when our third child was nearly ready to be born, the doctor reading the ultrasound (who was also involved in our middle childās birth) stopped and looked at the chart.
She asked if the older one had survived.
Survival is apparently uncommon for kids with our middle kidās condition. And survival with no meaningful consequences is essentially unheard of.
We rolled the dice and won. We had the dice rolled for us. We did little more than blow on them.
āAnd of course, my own wife is a cancer survivor.
We do not take our health for granted. Or if we do, we do so in folly.
āI have experienced acute mental health issues in my lifetime. I think theyāve been with me all along, but it wasnāt really until my wifeās cancer diagnosis that they became untenable. Unmanageable. I am not a stranger to the darkest of thoughts.
Thoughts of how my family might be better off without me.
āBut my family rose to that occasion. My wife, my closest friendsāthey surrounded me and chained me to a deeper reality of our mycorrhizal connections.
I sought help and found it.
I am more attuned now to my mental health and more conscious of its delicacy.
āBe well! Stay healthy!
As weāve established oāer and oāer in this series, we have but one life for sure. And we donāt even know the length of that. āLive your life fully and chew on the bones.
Drink in love where you find it and give as much as you get. Give a little more than you get.
Mind the mycorrhizae.
They are the only things holding us up.
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This is another weird one. People donāt tend to choose it, and they often need help understanding it.
Hereās how I explain it, imperfectly, when Iām sitting with someone doing the sort:
Imagine I bring you a cup of your favorite beverage. Out of nowhere.
What do you feel?
Do you feel loved and cared for?
Or do you feel a sense of urgency to reciprocate? Do you feel a sudden, heavy weight that you now āoweā me a beverage?
Do you have a value for returning the favor? Or do you simply let love do the talking?
Iām not rightly sure what I think about this card. Or what my level of value might be for this concept. Letās explore it together.
I guess in the worst circumstances, this value could produce anxiety.
Every time something nice happens, itās as though a burden is laid at the feet of the giftee. That would be heavy indeed.
If I buy you lunch, and you spend the whole meal doing mental math on how to buy me a dinner of equal value to āsettle the score,ā we arenāt having a meal. Weāre conducting a transaction, and I hate the ledger.
I hate the idea that relationships are a balance sheet to be zeroed out.
That feels antithetical to everything I believe about grace.
But... letās look at the flip side.
Letās say you make good on that promise to bring me a box of Island Punch Spindrifts.
I would not probably feel like I needed to rush right out and buy you something of equal or greater value.
What I would feel is loved and thought of.
It would make me think you were paying attention to my words and my likes and you wanted me to feel seen.
That, in turn, would endear you to me. And naturally, organically, Iād be on the hunt for a way to love you back.
Is that Reciprocation of Favors?
Yes, I suppose so.
But there is a nuance hereāThe ledger vs. the echo.
* The Ledger says: āI owe you.ā (Definition: Avoidance of indebtedness). This is about me. Itās about clearing my name.
* The Echo says: āI heard you.ā This is about us. Itās about keeping the connection alive.
If you shout into a canyon and there is no echo, the sound dies.
If you pour love into a person and there is never any returnānever a nod, never a thank you, never a mirrored kindnessāthe relationship eventually withers. Not because you were ākeeping score,ā but because flow requires a circuit.
I think back to the Mycorrhizae from the last essay.
The fungi give nutrients to the tree. The tree gives sugars to the fungi.
They arenāt sending invoices. They arenāt worried about āindebtedness.ā
They are just living in a state of constant, fluid reciprocation. If one stops giving, the other dies.
The danger, as established, is in putting things on the backs of another person in expectation of reciprocation.
āI did this for you, so now you must do that for me.ā
That is manipulation. That is a trap.
But the beauty is when the reciprocation is involuntary.
When you love someone so much that you canāt help but return the serve.
I donāt value āAvoidance of Indebtedness.ā I am happy to be indebted to the people I love. I am happy to owe you my time, my ear, my heart.
But I do value the Echo. I value the back-and-forth. The volley. The dance.
So, if you bring me the Spindrifts, I wonāt pay you back.
But I will probably write you an absurdly long text message telling you how great you are.
And that, I hope, is a melodic echo.
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We choose our families. I believe that more deeply than ever.
My wife and I have chosen one another time, and time and time again. Through thick and through thin, up times and down times. Itās been conscientious and it has not been either easy or automatic.
My kids and I, also. We didnāt choose to be specifically who we are, they didnāt choose to be born. But staying in tight with one another is a choice and itās one we keep making.
We donāt start out choosing our families of origin. But at some point we must begin choosing them.
I have not really asked my family about these essays, I have not really asked for advice or input from them on the content of these writings. But today at our shared table I did. As I cracked my brain open for family security I asked simply āwhat I should writeā, and my wife said connectedness without performance. Right off the dome like that. She should write her own essays. Iād read them.
Connectedness without performance. A sense of belonging, (that cardās coming up), without expectation of reward or even always reciprocation.
I have talked about my family throughout these essays. I have talked about my brother whose love for the soil and the land make me love mine more. I choose him.
I have talked about my wife and kids. Theyāre everything to me. Theyāre my sun and my moon, and they rise on me daily, newly, brightly.
I have talked about my grandmotherās values and her biscuit bowl. I have talked about my nieces for and with whom I would walk to the end of the Earth. I have talked about my aunt, the chef, who never had children of her own but loved us eternally and even in death is knit tightly into the fabric of this family.
Something funny happened this week. My brother and his wonderful wife, who is a sister, (drop the in-law, if you please), to me, and their five beautiful daughters were in my home. It was not an eventāit was a morsel. It was the stuff futures are built up upon. The pylons supporting our forever-structures.
My middle niece has eyes only for me at this time. She thinks of me. She made me a manatee, (one of my favorite animals), out of wire and yarn for Christmas. She didnāt show up with gifts for my wife, for my kids or for her grandparents. Just me. I am honored and love her so very much. We spent a good part of Christmas day drawing together with her new paper and pencils and I gave her two Blackwing Pearls for her collection.
When I saw her a few days after Christmas at my house she did something nobodyās done for me since I started my Values Deck adventure. She grabbed my deck and asked if she could do my values.
I think I mentioned at some point that though Iāve thumbed through the deck countless times on countless mornings, I have never been presented with the deck and property done the exercise since my day in therapy so long ago. She grabbed hold of my hand and the deck and presented each card to me in turn, reading them aloud.
It was a beautiful expression of love for me. She knows how much this means to me and she wants to be a part of it. We are choosing each other.
I have talked about my parents. I have probably hurt their feelings at some point in this project and for that Iām sorry. Theyāre imperfect people who have done imperfect things, and some of them have affected me negatively. This is normal. I know because I talk to other people and I now have an adult child of my own; I am no different than my parents. I am not better or worse, and besides, they have done so many wonderful things as well. They made me who I am and I am grateful.
We have to choose our parents, too. Once we become adults we have to choose them. Even if we stay connected, thereās a certain level of relationship that just wonāt happen on its own.
One person I have not mentioned is my sister. I have one. Not a lot of people in my life know about her.
She is far away from me. I believe she is physically far from meāliving in another state and another state of mind. She is insecure in our family and has chosen to withdraw for her own sense of self preservation.
I am bereft. There is a piece of me that will always roam a stretch of wilderness longing for her. But I am not angry at her for withdrawing. I understand some of the reasons and I think thereās probably a lot more that I donāt understand.
I think about her nearly every day, and thereās an element of family security that is dashed because of the great weight of knowledge that this estrangement bringsāI say it again, we must choose our families. And sometimes we donāt choose the ones weāre biologically connected to. And sometimes that hurts.
My sister is quite savvyāI have not blocked her on my social media apps, nor have I changed my telephone number in the last twenty-five years. I email her on an old email address periodically, when something big happens in my life. I assume she reads my words but I do not know. I wish to be a person with whom she might feel secure one day, if ever she wanted to. Itās entirely possible that sheās reading these words now.
Nevertheless, I am overwhelmingly blessed in my life with relationships. The people Iāve married, the nieces who adore me, my children to whom Iām so devoted. And my closest circle of friends who care for me.
And I am compelled to learn from their example. To be a better friend, a better husband and dad and uncle. To foster and be ready to expend father, uncle, friend energy for anyone who might need it. Any time they might need it. That requires me to be deeply and firmly rooted in family. In community.
On my little Values Tree our roots are the representation of our Values. Theyāre fed by the rain and the sun and theyāre informed by the mycorrhizae of community.
Mycorrhizae are symbiotic partnerships between fungal networks and plantsā root systems that benefit both organisms. In fact they blur the lines between organisms. They allow plants to share water and nutrients and even information. One tree can talk to another. Mycorrhizae make this community possible. Itās such a very beautiful thing!
Family security is really just connectedness without performance. Itās connectedness for the sake of itself and I am insurmountably endowed with a deep sense of security in my relationships. I am glad. I am satisfied.
And I feel the missing mycorrhizae of my sister acutely.
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Stability of society this card says at the bottom. Man, I feel like no matter where you land politically there is a tremendous instability in our society.
On the heels of national security, the inclination is to see this as a very broad, national conversation. Maybe a global conversation about police and guns and the National Guard moving between communities.
But Iām going to think small. Real small.
I am water insecure. Which is an insane thing for me to say out loud because itās currently raining buckets outside. Just dumping.
I moved onto this land a couple of years ago. We have two sources of water on this property, which makes my statement about insecurity sound even sillier. But Iāll lay it all out for you.
Thereās a well. I was told by a neighbor that āthe wells around here are brackishā. I didnāt know what that meant, so I did what any country boy like me would do, I went out to the barn and had a long drink from the hose. It tasted fine to me. But to be honest I have a high tolerance for weird waterāthatās another story.
I bought one of these water testing kits on the internet. They send you some little bottles and some instructions and you follow them just so, and fill the bottles and send it all in to a lab. And then they email you a report.
I got mine and there were a bunch of green line items on there, and a few yellows and a couple of reds.
āThat doesnāt seem greatā thought I, but my life is pretty wild and free wheeling, and I moved on. I figured Iād have to pay that piper at some point, but we have another source of water for our home, so I didnāt pay it much heed.
Well, I should have paid heed, friends. My plants did poorly. I watered a little patch of grass all summer and it didnāt do very well at all. And my chickensātheir stool was loose and watery. Watery stool!
With some trepidation, I fed my water report into AI, and it basically threw a bunch of red flags that explained all of my symptoms.
I switched our chickens to our other water source andāgood news folks! Firm, solid stools! I know you were worried.
So basically, without giving you more detail than is necessary for this, Iām looking at a very expensive reverse osmosis system if I ever wanted to do much of anything with the water from the well. Not much else to to with it. Rats.
The other source of water is municipal water from a nearby larger city. We have a meter on a small water utility. I had lived here about six months when my neighbor roped me onto the board of our small utility and so now I have access to and am privy to information that is openly and readily available to all, but which I may not have paid attention to if not for being a member of the board.
Our water comes to us in a single 4 inch PVC line running nearly ten miles from its point of distribution. That line, until recently, had no isolation valves making leak identification complex. We had two separate water outages in 2025, one lasting a week, (and we got luckyāit could have been longer).
The system was installed in the early 1980s, the same time I was installed into society. And itās just in disrepair. Weāre doing our best with the resources we have, but honestly, we live in a fairly rural area, thereās not a lot of money sloshing around here, and federal grants for this kind of thing are harder to come by than they once were.
It is entirely plausible that the cost to maintain this system will, in the future, outstrip public ability or willingness to do so. And this, so far, has been all about me. About My family. About my property and my specific scenario. The reality is that our little water utility serves only about 85 households in my area, and there have to be 300 households more who would benefit from this clean drinking water.
Because remember my neighbor, who told me the wells āround these parts were brackishāhe knew what he was talking about. Theyāre pretty much all brackish. The salts come from a time many years ago when my piece of the world was covered in the sea. Salts settled and were sealed in by the thick, sticky grey clay that is so prevalent where I live. And there the sodium sat for thousands of years, untouched, until someone disturbed the aquifer. And now our wells are salty.
So thatās the situation at my home. And it makes me feel insecure. Not for tomorrow or the next day or even next year. But in the broad, uncertain future.
And that makes me feel uneasy. Because I remember a time before the internet; I could go back. I remember a time before the ubiquity of handheld screens; I could go back. I can imagine a time, (though I donāt remember one) without electricity or speedy, efficient travel between towns and cities and counties and states. But I understand that I could go back.
My family and I are adapters. We could do without a lot of things. Yours could too.
But we canāt do without water.
We cannot do without basic foods and clean drinking water. So what do I do if, in ten or twenty yearsā time my source of water dries up? What do we do if we are faced with an impossible situation?
A man once told me, right to my face, that if it came down to it, some terrible, nightmare scenario, if society had collapsed to the point that a loaf of bread could buy a bag of gold, that heād shoot me and my family dead before he shared.
He wasnāt even being threatening. He wasnāt an enemy of mine or in my estimation a particularly hateful person. He was just a guy. With a plan. And an iron jaw, set against the world.
I worry about the order of our societies. I worry about not having enough. I worry about what I might do then. And I think thereās a certain healthy wisdom in thinking about these things.
Not obsessing, not making them the central focus of your life. But sitting, as I do, in my morning chair, coffee in hand, (what a luxury), and staring into the middle distance. Letting ideas and thoughts wash over the various bits of my brain and allowing them to tumble about, picking up context from my life and, yes, from the values Iāve chosen along the way.
Iāll tell you what I want to do. I want to build a big-assed cistern. Really big.
My friend, the beautiful musicianāIāve mentioned him beforeālives far away on a tropical island. He was born there, moved here, and has moved back. We made fast friends in an instant one day and have just stayed that way. I have been to his home to visit, it is utterly lovely in almost every way.
One challenging thing about his island paradise is that there is no fresh water. Zero. Zilch. One well on the whole of the island and itās brackish like mine. My salt is from the Eocene era, 40 million years ago. His saltiness is because the well is like a hundred feet from the ocean.
There is a single, diesel powered desalination plant on the island which serves the main downtown core of the small main town with piped water, and water is also available for sale via tanker truck or barrels in the back of your rig.
Other than that, (and thereās a lot going on other than that), all of the fresh water on the island is collected rainwater. It is ingenious. It is a kind of elegant beauty. And it is an inspiration to me in my beloved western Oregon, where we routinely receive a full four feet of rainfall every year. A tremendous amount of fresh water falling out of the sky.
My plan is, as I mentioned, (when I can put funds together), to build a huge cistern, and collect the rainwater from the roofs of my buildings.
I have built on my piece of land a garage with modest living quarters for my parents-in-law. The structure totals about 2000 square feet. If I were able to collect four feet of rain from 2000 square feet of roof, that would total 8000 cubic feet of water.
Now, a quick burst of mental arithmetic, (or a quick trip to Google) will tell you thatās very nearly 60,000 gallons of fresh, clean drinking water with only minimal need for further processing. Thatās a lot of water, friends. With some specific lifestyle choices, (that who are we kiddingāIām excited to make anyway), like a grey water system installed and mindful showering, that could be more than enough for my family to live on for the year.
Plus, the hope is to add a little more roof in the future. Iāll spare you the details. Plus, I have a barn! A huge piece of roof. More like 5000 square feet. Thatās enough water to feed critters. Itās enough water to drip irrigate crops for food. Itās enough water.
If I can store itā¦
From there my mind wanders to the wanderer. What will I do when there are people around me with no water? How can I make choices now that put me in a better position to share later?
Look, maybe none of this will come to pass. Hopefully! Hopefully our little water utility will find the funds and the community support it needs to upgrade and provide that water for all. Hopefully society never collapses this way and a loaf of bread will remain simply a thing to be shared. And as an aside, hopefully, as a culture, weāll stop being so obsessed with gold anyway.
This whole āend of the worldā scenario I play out is mostly just a mental exercise in kindness. How can I prepare for kindness to my family, to my loved ones, to my neighbors. Because Iāll tell you right now, in the end, when a loaf of bread will buy a bag of gold, you will have a place at my table. We will drink water together until the end. Maybe the end comes quicker that way? But weāll be together.
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I grew up American. All the way American. I know all of the songs. I know the old ones, like our National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.
My country ātis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrimās pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!
Youāre a grand old flag, youāre a high flying flag, and forever in peace may you wave, Youāre the emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave.
I know the new ones too. Like the post 9/11 Toby Keith classic, Courtesy of the Red White and Blue, also colloquially known as The Angry American. Perhaps my favorite lines of the tune:
Oh, and justice will be served and the battle will rage
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage
And youāll be sorry that you messed with
The U.S. of A.
āCause weāll put a boot in your ass
Itās the American way
There is a kind of a perfection of toxicity in those lines that hammered hard when I was young and teases at amusing today. Weāll put a boot in your ass. Is that the American way? Is that your way?
Alan Jackson sang:
Iām just a singer of simple songs
Iām not a real political man
I watch CNN, but Iām not sure I can tell you
The diffārence in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith, hope, and love are some good things He gave us
And the greatest is love
Kinder words for sure, but I do think perhaps all of us could have spent a little more time learning the diffārence in Iraq and Iran. Faith hope and love.
I am an American. I travel with an American passport and I consistently pay my taxes. This has presented more and more conscientious challenges for me as Iāve gotten older, and I think, if weāre honest, it presents them for many of us. We border on sociopathy when we hide our eyes and our minds from the American Way of putting boots in asses.
And listen, I was there, I remember 9/11. I was young but I was awake. I was living with my grandmother at the time, because I was awesome. My friend was quietly staying there with me because he was also awesome.
We both came downstairs that morning and my grandmother was weeping in her armchair. Sitting not comfortably back into her chair as was her way, but perched up on the edge, hoping she wasnāt seeing what she was seeing. We watched the coverage of the first tower, then we watched live as the second was hit. The loss of life was senseless. The cruelty was on display in a way weād never experienced in this country.
Except. I mean. We did know our way around cruelty, right?
Approximately 13 million Africans were shipped like cargo across the Atlantic ocean. An estimated 10.8 million actually survived the journey. Of those, most were landed and were enslaved in the Caribbean and South America, with a comparatively small percentage making it to North America proper.
But statistically all of them were bought, sold and traded by people that look like me. Thatās just whatās real. Our whole society is built on globalized poverty, those systems were institutionalized and propped up with enslaved people. Sugar, (and rum) and tobacco to feed our insatiable appetite for vice brought in from the Caribbean.
Importantly, the slave trade didnāt end there. In 1808 after we outlawed the international slave trade, (partly to clean up our act, thanks, Quakers, partly to present ourselves as more virtuous than we had any right to to the international community, but mostly to protect the economic interests of southern plantation owners), a robust internal slave trade took root, displacing families and individuals at an unprecedented scope and scale. God damn it. Damn it all to hell. Slavery has been a part of human history for millennia. But we, white Europeans and Americans, perfected this most barbaric, treacherous evil. Nobody enslaves like we enslaved.
Also I skipped past the atrocities committed against the people living here before Europeans began arriving in force. Forced displacements and starvations literally designed to eradicate in the name of our Lord.
The card says āProtection of my nation from enemiesā. I have seen the enemy you guys, and it is us. Itās me. Itās my fathers and theirs.
What then is our response. Whatās the big, white, traditionally Christian guyās response to such heinous history? Such ugliness?
I must protect my nation. I want to protect my nation. And the only way I can do that, the most subversive act I can think of is making room on the bench for others. Itās using my girth, as Iāve said before, to hold the door open for others. It wonāt end up being apologizing, (though that probably couldnāt hurt), it will be demanding equality, loudly if necessary. Only then will it be a brighter tomorrow.
We cannot blot out the stain of the past, and our past is filthy and stained. Donāt listen to anyone still peddling American Exceptionalism, still peddling Manifest Destiny. Get your head right.
Itās not about a guilt trip. Thatās what they want to make it. They want to say that the blacks and the browns are pissed off and they want the whites to prostrate themselves before them. Theyāre coming to GET us! But itās not about that. Itās about a brighter, better, coequal, loving, caring, generous future that considers everyone and leaves nobody behind.
Look, Iām happy to be an American. I love my lovely valley and my mountains high. I love many cultural aspects of America. I love the ingenuity that has been shown by the people here from time immemorial. How else could the first Americans, (the ones who knew the place before there were roads or bridges or pubs or muskets or AR-15ās or horseless carriages or Christianity) survive and thrive as much as they have? Ingenuity! Constant personal reinvention! Admirable qualities that we could all aspire to.
Iām not advocating for anyone to go home. Europe wouldnāt know what to do with our Chick-fil-aās and Ford F650ās.
We are all Americans now. The least we can do is all be Americans.
I will end this essay with the entire text of Emma Lazarusā consummate piece of Americana, The New Colossus. May we read it over and over until itās burned into our souls, and for once in our history may it be true for us.
Now, you read it. I mean it. Read it all and read it twice. Donāt you skip this ending.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
āKeep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!ā cries she
With silent lips. āGive me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!ā
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What the heck with this deck. I just finished the last essayā¦ ummm.. The way I finished it. And now itās cleanliness. Neat and tidy. The deck wills it, letās do this.
Cleanliness is another card that doesnāt make it to peopleās top five often. I think itās because in a deck with Mature Love, and Family Security, cleanliness feels a little out of place. Neat and Tidy. Is that a core and central human value?
Now, fifty-one cards deep, seems like as good a time as any to mention Shalom Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz is a social psychologist and along with what Iām sure is a massive team of researchers and assistants and friends heās the man behind the Theory of Basic Human Values, from which my Values Deck is derived. This research is no slouch-effort. Dr. Schwartz has been working on the job continuously since the late 1960ās. Now retired, the man just wonāt quit.
Research has taken place across many countries and cultures over the course of decades, Itās really a pretty impressive body of work.
So what the heck is cleanliness doing in there?
Well, these values are universal. Theyāre cross-cultural in their very nature and they reflect peopleās responses and research over those cultural lines. Cleanliness is in the deck. So be it.
When I think of cleanliness I think of a few things. First, Harold.
You will recall the brown shed between the barn and the house. Out my back door there is a path to follow; you pass the firepit, you cross a little bridge over what I would very much like to think of as a stream or a brook or perhaps even a creek, but is, in fact, a ditch.
Nevertheless it is a quaint bridge. You pass the apple tree I cut down and also the one I didnāt, and you find yourself in front of Harold. There you encounter my deep shame. The mess within.
The problem with Harold is that itās an islandādisconnected from the rest of the farm. My home, (I do not wish to brag), has both electricity and running water. Similarly, my barn is fully electrified and lit! I even have a faucet back there!
Harold, in contrast, boasts neither of these things. Itās cold and damp. In the wintertime water drips through some leaky spots in the roof. Really, Harold needs to be thoroughly addressed from top to bottom. Its posts are solid, its rafters true. But the roof could be replaced, and a simple summertime ditching project would bring the power of light.
That would still not address the bitter chill of the wet Oregon Autumn and Winter, the cold air laden with moisture working its way to your bones. I donāt want to be in Harold. I donāt want to spend time there.
As it is, it is a mess. But by God itās mine.
Where we lived before I had a beautiful and proper shop. It wasnāt the biggest shop youāve ever seen but it was warm and dry and clean and cleanable. It had a concrete floor; Haroldās is gravel.
My old shop had electricity everywhere. I could, and did plug in my woodworking tools anywhere it was convenient and off Iād go. Here, where weāve lived for a little more than two years, I have yet to regain my woodworking stride. Thereās just nowhere to work!
My barn is fairly full of barny things like chickens and their necessary accoutremon. My tractor is stored there. I have a welder in the corner and a space for hay storage for the cows. Thereās a tack room, (this used to be a barn for horses), but we keep feed and dry storage in there, and anyway, itās not very big. Not big enough to store tools, let alone woodwork.
I must make due with Harold, at least as storage. And itās a mess. And it is a steady drip of stress and pressure in my life. All winter long I move things around and try to keep them from getting wet. I would like to hope I might take up any number of projects Iāve been carrying around for these adult years of mine. But not if theyāre moistened. Then theyāre no good for anything but to be cast away and forgotten. So I keep moving things and I keep fighting Harold.
I blame Harold and its lack of services. But itās really my value for cleanliness that is the source of my stress.
After all, Iām exaggerating its interior wetness. Itās not really that bad. A lot of the moisture is condensation rather than open drips. And after a couple of winters I know what goes where for safety.
I love a place for everything and everything in its place! Iām just not very good at making that a reality in my life.
I also think of a broader kind of cleanliness as it pertains to our natural environment. We are so prone to extraction, so prone to taking and using-up that we hardly notice when other peopleās trash and refuse and waste becomes our problem.
I reflect on my desire for a clean, pure expression of land management and stewardship. I have a few acres here. It is a little pocket in the middle of a million acres of ryegrass and hazelnuts and enough vines to romantically refer to our part of the countryside as wine country.
These are monoculture crops and to a large degree monoculture crops require intensive chemical inputs in order to maintain. And I am the owner of, (I mentioned) a stretch of ditch. I wish it was a river, a proper waterway. But it is a ditch. There are no fish. There is the occasional duck, seeking refuge from the nearby hunters hidden in blinds this time of year.
I have plans for my land! To improve it, to beautify it. To improve the soil quality like my brotherās doing on his piece of the Earth. Iām so proud of him. Iām so impressed. So inspired.
Beyond Harold is the barn, and beyond that are three pastures, about 90 feet wide each and about 500 feet long each, totaling about an acre each.
Hereās my plan: Iād like to rip the fences out between the pastures, making it a larger open pasture area of about three acres. Iād like to ring the whole thing with a five-foot-wide hedgerow constructed of species endemic to my area. Iāll plant taller trees and cut them partially down, laying them into the hedgerow and allowing new growth to take off upward from the fallen trunks. Iāll plan Red Osier Dogwoods, (Cornus sericea) and Oregon Grape, (Berberis aquifolium), and Pacific Snowberry, (Symphoricarpos albus), and other species that will grow in tightly together. This hedgerow will be a wind and visual break in the landscape and will stop invasive seeds from blowing into the main pasture.
Then, Iād like to carve some shallow swales that follow the gentle topography of the land, allowing for more water to be retained and used by some gentle copses of native trees planted on the high side. Iāll plant a mixture of forage species on the land, oats, crimson clover, vetch and initially, tillage radishes which are huge rooted brassicas that are meant to grow long, heavy taproots deep into the clay soil and then rot, aerating the soil and providing organic matter as the roots decay.
Iāll rotationally graze as many as three species on the land. Cows for a few days, then a few days of rest followed by sheep for a few days, then a few days of rest before chickens for a few days, then a good, long rest before cows again. By grazing multiple species I will exponentially increase my soilās microbiome and the health and fertility of the soil. It will take more hooves for a longer season. I learned this from my brother.
Neat. Tidy. Somehow this speaks to cleanliness to me.
But as I said, our land is an island in a sea of monoculture. My ditch will continue to run with petrochemical runoff no matter what I do. All I can do is take responsibility for my little bit of earth. I can steward what I have. And not swim in the ditch. I can avoid swimming in the ditch.
Finally I think about my own inner cleanliness. This is where inner harmony and self discipline meet up and marinate together and sometimes create friction with my sense of self worth.
It is my own sense of inner cleanliness that calls me back to Harold. āFix the roofā it calls to me. āPerhaps a door that closes properlyā, it whispers in my ear as I pass by.
Inner cleanliness is another central theme of this whole projectāa central theme of my adult life. I am reminded again of the man who married my wife and me, and his childhood farm, and the spring of clean water that fed the whole farm, its animals and people, its gardens and crops. The spring required maintenance and part of that was a thorough yearly cleaning. We must clean our springs, we must maintain our water sources for ourselves and for those we wish to care for.
In the end I do have a value for a sense of cleanliness. I want to live clean. I want to be clean of heart and intention. I want to wake up to a clean kitchenāmy wife loves it and so do I.
And I want to contribute to a greater cleanliness for my children and yours.
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In some ways this entire project has been about my own self discipline. It has come up time and time againāitās at least a central focus of the project.
I have had to exercise tremendous self discipline in my life. Ever since I was young. Donāt get me wrongāI often fail in my disciplines! Emphasis on the word exercise.
I have regularly been called upon, in many forums, to be less. āHalf as hard, half as fastā my mother would repeat to me in my youth. And who could blame her? I consistently did things twice as hard and twice as fast as the people around me, and not always with favorable results either for me or for my loved ones.
āYour greatest asset is your greatest assacheā is something thatās been a constant refrain in my life. Two sides to the coin. Itās a never ending battle to stem the tide of internal negative self-communication. The things I say to myself sometimes.. Youād be shocked. You might even feel defensive of me. How dare myself?
Feeling twice as hard, twice as rough, twice as much of a liability to myself and others is a great weight to bear, though, and it can be difficult to flip that script; I have great capacities for kindness and love and care. And I donāt give myself credit for them becauseā¦ I must restrain myself!
Iāve already alluded to the idea that Iām sometimes too much, even in a positive way, in my relationships with people. Too much text! Too many cookies! Too much praise offered without enough perceived merit.
I again reflect on what this card means to and for me versus another person. Surely there are as many interpretations of this card as there are respondents sorting through the deck. I cannot be the only one to struggle in life with self restraint. With self discipline.
The card also says resistance to temptation.
I will eat the whole box of shortbreads. I will stay up past my bedtime and write essays knowing Iāll be tired and grumpy in the morning. I will let the thing that need not be said escape my lips.
Words are something Iām tempted by always. It comes from a desire, I think, to be heard and seen. And it comes across, (often) as a desire to dominate or relegate another person into wordlessness. I call names. I level judgments. I put my mouth out for the world to hear and not everyone likes it. I donāt always like it.
And vices! Iāve known a few and weāve discussed some of them here in this series. But itās been far from an exhaustive list! There is barely a vice on this good Earth that I would not, have not dipped a toe into. And the remedy is very nearly always some practice or method of other-centric thinking. Observing how my behaviors, thoughts and actions affect the people around me. Thinking beyond myself. Maybe thatās my motivation for self-discipline.
Is that okay? Is it okay for my motivations to come from a place of community rather than from a pure, deep well of personal integrity; an integrity that cannot be bought or sold? God, I hope so.
I would like my motivations to be pure. I would like them to be from me and for me, and benefiting others only inasmuch as theyāve already benefited me. But I confess, I am sometimes motivated to self-discipline by a quiet observance of my behaviorās effect on the ones closest to me.
Sometimes I struggle with knowing the right thing to do. Life is not always black and white! Life does not always present its challenges with clarity of reason and cause and effect and consequence. Sometimes we must suss these things out for ourselves and that can be a challenge.
And how do I discipline myself toward greater love and communal affection when I donāt know whatās right and good? And what about the times when a lesser of two evils presents itself as the only option? When there is no good outcome for everyone? When someone, by my hand, by my words or decisions, by my vote, will be harmed? How then do we discipline ourselves?
It can only be our best. The core discipline must be our intentions I guess. But that leaves room for play in the steering. āI was doing the right thing for my familyā. āI was just following ordersā. Itās a paradox to wrestle with.
I would like to make this concept land with a big story about self discipline in my life. I think we want a movie montage here. We both want to see me getting up early and running hard up a flight of stairs with a rucksack on. We want to see me drinking raw eggs and pumping iron and getting into fighting shape and waking up tomorrow and doing it again. Right? We both want that?
I have accomplished things! I did quit smoking. Twice, actually. I have cut back on and even eliminated bad habits that donāt bring life. But those are largely events, and self-discipline is about smaller choices that take place over a longer time.
I am here to tell you, as a man who has roasted coffee for a living since 2009: The soundtrack never plays.
There is no soundtrack for 4:30 AM on a Tuesday in November. The bed is warm. The floor is cold. The business I run is a giant beast filled with moving pieces that do not care if I am tired. It does not care if I am inspired. It only cares about heat and airflow and time. It cares about espresso and customer service and repetitive motions. If I donāt get up, the coffee doesnāt get roasted. If the coffee doesnāt get roasted, the customers donāt get their drinks. If the customers donāt get their drinks, my family doesnāt eat.
So I get up. I put my feet on the cold floor. That is the entire story.
And I think thatās all of our stories regarding self discipline. There are moments in our lives, probably, where we are either literally or figuratively getting up at 4:30 and body-slamming lifeās challenges to the ground. But more often, more consistently, itās about consistency, and itās about recognizing our place in the great web of life.
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Another tricky one for me. Let me say at the outset that I love my parents and elders. I crave their approval. Less so now, in my forties, but the craving is still fresh in my memory.
Letās start with another heavily paraphrased bible story!
Near the beginning of time there came a great flood that killed every man, woman and child, every beast of the land and every bird of the sky and presumably every saltwater creature of the seas, all except a man and his family and two of every animal in creation residing on a dubiously sized boat. After weeks afloat, landfall was made and the hard work of being fruitful and multiplying began.
Noah apparently had brought vines aboard the craft, for after a while he became a farmer and planted a vineyard and promptly became a drunk. Classic.
His son, Ham, in all probability pissed off at being named Ham, found his father passed out drunk and naked lying in his tent. He ran to his brothers, Shem and Japheth, and made light of his fatherās circumstances. Shem and Japheth did the honorable thing, going into the tent backwards so as not to even SEE their fatherās nakedness and covered him with a blankie to sleep it off.
I have a friend who is younger than me by about fifteen years or so. I think he respects me, I was kind to him as a little guy and now heās kind to me today. We were sitting around another fire, (I love a good fire), some years ago. And I made the analogy of walking around a big stadium outer-ring. You know, where the bathrooms and concessions are? You can walk and walk and finally youāre back where you started.
I said it was as though I was walking just barely ahead of him around the ring-road. I could see the futureāitās true. I could see further ahead than he could and I had a little more time under my belt. But really, just barely. In the scheme of our lives the differences in my wisdom in comparison with his were really pretty incomprehensible and even then should only be brought to bear for our edification. And besides, he can see further back than I can! I know a little better about what lies ahead. And he knows a little better what is happening now, today.
I have examples of this going every which direction in my own life. I certainly have examples of elders demanding their due respect. I also have my friend. My mentor. My coffee guy. Yes, itās the guy I took $250 off of. He appears again.
He is really the first one I can recall showing me the respect of an equal. The theft incident was a great example of this. I had to make it right. I had to make amends. And in truth, heās had a bit of fun at my expense on the issue over the years. But I can never remember him lording it over me. I never remember him typecasting me. The opposite, actually.
I was naked like Noah, black-out drunk on dumb choices. And instead of grinding me into a powdered form, he honored me, he chose to cover my nakedness and filled in my weak spots. He treated me with respect and dignity and very soon we were back on that ring road, he was just ahead of me. Still looking out for me.
Respect for parents and elders cannot, in my understanding, come at the expense of respect for the young. And sometimes, oftentimes, it does just that.
It didnāt feel great when I was young, and now that Iām aging up a little bit itās my honor to love and respect those coming up on my heels the best way I know how.
When people respect and honor one another intergenerationally it is almost cosmically lovely. It is a kind of beauty to behold. And I have beheld it.
When respect is demanded from one direction, any direction, it is ugly and unproductive to say the least.
What profit is there in demanding a high place of esteem? What good is the respect of the youth if it is coerced on traditional or religious grounds?
By contrast, what good does it do to discount the lives, the work, the sacrifices of those who are a little stretch ahead of us in this great ring-road of life?
Now is the time of my life to put my money where my mouth is. Now is the time for these concepts to be made real in my life and in my experience. I am the elder. I have elders. I am an elder. I am middle-aged.
I have an eighteen year old child. They areāyou will be shocked to hear itānot making all of the same choices I might make for their lives.
I will turn out, in the sweet by & by, to have been correct about a great number of my ideas and thoughts. They will come around to some of them and we will look back together and sigh. And I will always have been pure in my intentions toward them. Thatās my way as a dad. I will cover their nakedness and fill in their weak spots wherever I can. And I will not demand a power differential that does not need to exist. Thatās my promise.
Because at the same time, the rubber meeting the road as it is, I must acknowledge that father does not always know best, and there will be a second great many things that we look back on and see that they were right in their assumptions, correct in their thinking. That they were the master of their own fate, captain of their own vessel and they were simply sailing a different direction. Much to my immediate chagrin.
I want to harness this. I want to foster this belief in my life. I want to remind myself that the youth are alright. That theyāre worthy of honor and respect and that respect is, now perhaps more than ever, a two way street
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The next four cards all fall under the heading of āConformityā. Here we go. Letās get this deed done.
You will not be shocked to learn that I can be quite an impolite person. I have that capacity. But in truth, as I sit and reflect on what on Earth to write about this idea, I do think I am quite as polite as I can be. Itās a learned behavior, maybe for all of us, but certainly for me. My mother taught me the value of politeness.
When I was young we were but simple country folk. Still, my mother taught us which fork to use in the correct order. She taught us to use our napkins efficiently and sparingly, to keep our elbows off the table.
I was apparently the last human being to address my elders by Mr. & Mrs. and I did so until I was a teenager. Sometimes I still do, and it really seems to weird some people now. Not a very polite practice at my age I suppose, actually.
When we answered the rotary phone on the wall weād say āHello, Walton residence, this is Nick speakingā. What a nerd.
I did grow up with a value for politeness, but I think itās one I easily trump with other values. It didnāt make it very far in my sort because, much like the last card, it can feel, (in todayās society), cloying and inefficient. And that bothers people. It bothers me.
It feels like politeness can also be weaponized and used as a blunt object with which to subjugate others. To put oneself on a morally superior footing. āAt least I wasnāt rude about itā.
If weāre not vigilant and watchful, politeness can cover all manner of sin. Politeness can even cover abuse or in the worst cases crimes. I am thinking of a crime now in my head, covered up for years and hidden under the guise of politeness. I am gratified that this seems less common now than it was when I was younger. Politeness often demands silence. āDonāt make a sceneā. Many people today are more willing to make a scene. Perhaps not enough people.
I think the complex part of politeness to me is that it seems to often fly in the face of kindness, a value that does not have its own card but is nevertheless among my own personal central values. Politeness uses the correct fork and then quietly slips its sharpened handle between your ribs. Kindness shoves over and scrapes half its food onto your plateāthereās enough to go around. Polite is nice. Kind is kind.
In the end I find politeness suspicious at best. It does feel too-often antithetical to kindness and in a binary choice I know where I land. I know I land with kindness and it alarms me to feel like Iām in a world where not everyone shares this hierarchy of values. I will be polite until it is untrue. Until it is unkind or harmful. And then I will let the chips fall.
I will try to be polite. But I will not be silent.
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I placed the photo upside-down on purpose. Just to be difficult. I thought it would be funny to start by disrespecting the 45-essay-long tradition of putting a normal photo atop each post by making you crane your neck around.
I really aināt got much. I do not actively respect very many traditions. As Iāve aged, Iāve become less conservativeāin that there are fewer and fewer things from the past that I see a substantial value in conserving. It always feels like we end up conserving the wrong bits, anyway. We canāt be trusted to be conservative. (This is not necessarily a political statement. Donāt get weird).
When I think of tradition, I think of people trying to shoehorn their loved ones into doing something āthe way itās always been done,ā despite the world changing, the sands shifting āneath our collective feet. I find the traditionalistās perspective to be primarily one of a head buried in that sand.
What customs are important to me? Iām really wracking my brains. I like that we gather, but I never really care about doing it on Christmas. Iād much rather have sporadic, randomized gatherings. I love receiving gifts! But I donāt need them concentrated together. Iād prefer to be thought of when Iām thought of, and never for you to feel a sense of urgency or obligation. (Seriously though, about those Island Punch Spindrifts... thatās a tradition I can get behind).
As I sit and reflect on Respect for Tradition, I see that Iām actually somewhat antagonistic toward the concept. I get barby and short-tempered when Iām forced to participate. To me, traditions often feel like Peer Pressure from the Dead. Or from those who refuse to live into the future. At best, they can be stifling and boring. At worst, they feel toxically rote and obligatory. And as we discussed in the Responsibility essay, obligation is the enemy of care.
But then. Then I look at the 5-year-old child in my house.
We have a little child living with us now. They came from a place where things were not predictable. For me, a man who has had safety and stability for 40 years, āTraditionā feels like a cage. But for them? Tradition feels like a floor.
āWe always wash our hands before we eat.ā āWe always watch a movie on Friday.ā āWe always say goodnight.ā āBath, Books, Bed.ā
I am realizing that while I hate the obligations of tradition, I deeply value the rhythms of tradition. Because Rhythm can create Safety.
When my friend and I shared a Schnecken (that espresso split for two), we were building a micro-tradition. It wasnāt a law handed down by an elder; it was a recurring kindness we built for ourselves. When I take a photo of every single person who does the Values Sort with me, that is a tradition. It is a ritual of honoring the moment. And I do love that tradition.
Perhaps I have been looking at this card wrong. I thought āRespect for Traditionā meant worshiping the past. But maybe it just means respecting the infrastructure that holds us together.
If a tradition is a wall that keeps people out, I hate it. I will kick it down. But if a tradition is a trellis that allows a new vine to climb up out of the dirt and find the sun... then I can respect it. I can get behind it. .
I am building new trellises now. I am building a trellis for my family. I am building some trellises for my friends. I am respecting the necessity of doing the same good thing, over and over again, until it becomes a part of who we are.
So, I will leave the photo upside down. Because that is my tradition now: To question the way things are done, and to only turn them right-side up if they actually serve the people I love.
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Weāve left my five chosen values behind and these are getting trickier to write. I feel like weāre back at the beginning again writing about āWealthā or āSocial Recognitionā. I feel awkward and ham-fisted. Because indeed I am, and anyway, we are very near the beginning again because as Iāve said before these values are arranged in a great wheel; spoiler alert, the last card in the series is #57, A sense of belonging, (feeling that others care about me), which is, if you think about it, strikingly connected to card #1, Social Power, (control over others, dominance). Let the circle be unbroken.
Letās DO THIS.
This card is moderation, the photo for which I took on the backdrop of a box of my favorite commercially produced shortbreads, Walkers. I will, left to my own devices, eat this entire box in one sitting. Cup of coffee, nervously read the news, Iāll blow right through them.
Some of these cards feel made just for me because I guess I was really made for them. Some of these cards are so difficult for me to get my head around as to be laughable. I laugh at this card. I snort, snicker. I LOL.
I am not naturally moderate. I am naturally obsessive. I am positively addictive in ways. I must be mindful of the vices I allow a foothold in my life lest they take me over completely. And sometimes they do. Sometimes they do.
I have discussed some of these things here in these essays; To my great disgust I smoked cigarettes. I will drink Spindrift, (Island Punch if youāre feeling gifty), until my blood is carbonated. I am currently obsessed with these essays and I am more than a little nervous about what might come next, once I do reach card #57. Where is #58? What will I do? Itās actually not a small anxiety in my life. I feel them coming to an end and Iām already sad.
I am also full throated in my love and my care for people. I am not moderate in my fondnesses. I have, on more than one occasion, utterly overwhelmed someone with the depth of my affections for them. Itās too much! They havenāt felt theyāve earned it! But itās honest and itās true. If I decide I like you thereās little you can do to keep me from liking you.
On my road to 200+ values exercises I have written, letās say, 175 absurdly long text messages. I overwhelm people with my words, I overwhelm them with intended-kindnesses that can even, I imagine, seem disingenuous. I love people as Iād like to be loved. Immoderately.
Is there time in this life for moderation? I guess I donāt really know if I believe there is; not in relationship to people, to loving them and liking them and vying for them. Thereās not enough time to love people as much as Iād like to. Why measure out my love as if there is some hard limit on the amount I have? I have not reached it yet, and I donāt imagine I will.
I am also sometimes immoderate in my rage. This, weāve discussed as well. Try calling my children names! Disrespect my wife, be needlessly unkind to my friends. Iāll have a difficult time moderating my response to you, and it will not be laden with kindness.
Is there time in this life for moderation? I guess I still donāt really know, not when it comes to the defense of the weak or the loved or the defenseless. I defend people as I wish Iād been defended at various times in my past; viciously and thoroughly. Immoderately.
So. Moderation. Is it worth even pursuing?
Well, yes, probably so. Because in my immoderate justice-rage there is very often collateral damage, and anyway, itās not always righteous in its origins.
Sometimes I am caught in a shameful situation and I react badly. I react in a way that feels taken over and Iāll fight with someone for no reason, over nothing, for too long. There is value in the pursuit of moderation. I have admitted to the capacity for dishonesty. It is a terrible feeling to be caught in a lieāa feeling I know. Itās a kind of a self-wounding to wound someone else that way. A double edged sword by which weāre all sliced way open, our insides showing. And to respond immoderately in that place of pain is damaging for those around me.
I smoked cigarettes. At one point I drank too much beer. I eat shortbreads like pacman. Nom nom nom.
Forget about keeping a bag of gummy worms in the middle console of the car. Those things are gone. Yesterday.
These displays of my great lack of moderation catch up with me. Sometimes quickly like the distance and sadness I feel between me and a friend when Iāve been unreasonable. And sometimes theyāre longer term. Will I pay the big price for my smoking? Will I develop diabetes as is a hereditary potential for me?
Will my relationships with those Iāve perceived as wrong doers ever recover? Can they really be that bad? And what of my family? If Iām not careful I make unilateral decisions about who we do and do not relate to based on my immoderate judgments.
How then shall we live? Moderation in all things, friends! Even in moderation. The answer I think, for me, is discipline in my proclivities. Mindfulness of my tendencies. I can grow! I can change! I can become a better version of myself by observing my values and rejecting the things I find to be harmful.
I can be justifiably angry and not wound others unnecessarily in my anger. I can be mindful of the collateral damage I cause. I can choose peace instead of violence. I can decide not to always choose the path of extremes. I can choose a moderate, measured response and I can enjoy the benefits and rewards.
Like the last essay on humility, perhaps, for me, itās not really about moderating myself in relation to anyone else, but simply about moderating myself. Full stop. Being willing to hold things in my hand and prioritize my responses to them.
I can rage for injustice! I can make room on the bench even if it means using my weight to shove some boorish inconsiderate oaf off the other end. But I must always be aware. Mindful of the boor as well as the weaker one. I can be aware of how my actions and words and responses will affect the whole group in a situation.
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I needed to look up the word effacing. I could use context cluesāI got what it meant the first thousand times I thumbed through the deck. It means what I imagined it would: To erase. To make oneself smaller or less conspicuous.
I am not humble. I am loud and somewhat boorish, and I can be rude and perfectly monstrous the better you get to know me. I can be outlandish. Just far, far too much sometimes.
I would like to be more humble. I would like to be more modest. But I think āself-effacingā gets into complex territory. I am willing to shine less so that others may shine more. Itās part of the job of humanity to lift one another, to float all boats. But if Iām taking up all the space in the harbor... well.
I reflect on this very thing weāre doing togetherāhere, now, as you read this. I have told more than one person something to the effect of: āThis is for me. I do not need anyone to read my content or validate me in this.ā
But. I mean. I want people to, right? The truth isāIāll share it now, 44 essays ināI hope there are people reading these. I do hope people are gathering value from my words. I hope people ālike, share, and subscribe.ā
Iāll go further, friends. I am hoping this turns into something. Which precipitates something else. Which generates interest and energy for something more. I hope I look back at the second half of my life, when I am very old, and see that the day I discovered the Values Deck was the day my life changed. The day something new began. I want to build a website. I want to write a book. I want to use this big mouth and my propensity for communication to benefit the people around me.
Thatās what I want. Is that humble? Am I humble?
Thereās the rub. In truth, I donāt just want to help you. I donāt only operate from a place of purity and altruism. I am beset by the needs of the one. And for me, for now, that means validation and comfort. It is to be known and beloved and appreciated.
What does this say about me? It is a flowing gradient. There are moments when I can honestly say it is all about the other.
When Iām sitting with someone doing their values sort for instance, itās very nearly always this way. I do feel my best when Iām looking out for others.
But there are other days when the gradient shifts, and I am lowly and in need of validationāmore than validation sometimes, praise. I lost a good friend once because of this.
He had been, for a time, my very closest pal. We worked together and we played together. We invented the Schnecken together. Itās a German word meaning āsnails,ā but commonly refers to cute little sticky buns.
Iāve used the word as a stand-in for any kind of tasty treat since I saw the incomparable Nathan Lane use it in The Birdcage. āWhen the schnecken beckons,ā Lane says, sampling a second treat at the corner bodega.
In our context, a Schnecken was a double shot of espresso, split into two 5-ounce rocks glasses and topped with a little water. (And a little cream if ya nasty). The point was a single pull of espresso shared between two people. It was our way of encouraging people to come and spend time together, and my friend and I did just that.
But at a certain low point in my life, I cried out to him. I was flailing and thrashing about in need of validation, love, and preferential affection. It was too much for my friend to bear. It was too much for him to shoulder, holding me up in this time of great sorrow. And we drifted. Just like that.
I was not modest. I was not self-effacing. I sucked all the air out of the room. My lack of humilityāmy inability to see things from another personās point of viewāwas the death knell for our friendship. The Schnecken is meant to be shared. I drank it all.
I reflect on my marriage. It requires near-constant re-calibration to humility for both of us. We would call it āpreferring one another in love,ā which comes from the Bible (Romans 12, if youāre taking notes).
I think the thing I dislike about āself-effacingā is the implication of disappearing. The goal, from my standpoint, is not ultimately to become less, but to make space for others to become more.
I reflect on my place of privilege in this current society. Iām large. Iām white. Iām ruddy-cheeked and ruggedly built. I generally get along in this life just fine wherever I go. Nobody hassles me. Nobody stops me and asks for my papers. People usually trust my words. I do not walk around under the weight of strangersā suspicions. I have so far enjoyed the privileged position of not having to care.
And I reflect on my wife the woman. My friend the Black man. My friend the trans man. What of them? Do they also enjoy my place of position? Or are they standing lower on the ground they were given?
How can my modestyāperhaps even my self-effacementāmake more room for them at the table? I am physically incapable of becoming small. But I am capable of moving over. And I am capable of blocking the door open.
I have chosen to care. To try, anyway. It takes a choiceāan endless series of choicesāto give a s**t about others. To root out any stem or seed of tokenism. To stop trying to earn my high place, and start using it to pull others up.
Maybe that is humility for a loud man. Not silence. But amplification of someone else.
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I visited with a college professor yesterday. He taught that biology class series that changed my life. Yesterday I had the opportunity to tell him so.
The class was environmental science, and it was a required class for my course of study, (forestry). I have already told you that I did not finish this course of studyāI am not a silvaculturalist today.
This biology class was part of the reason I quit. The comparison between the things I was learning in the class with the things I was learning in and about the forestry classes and industry were so stark. And I found myself drawn into a fuller and more beautiful observation of the natural world and away from the extractive practices of my youth and of my course of study.
Of the classes I took that year I do not retain very much mensuration, (the branch of mathematics focused on calculating lengths, areas, and volumes of geometric shapes, like tree shapes), I could not easily, if called upon, estimate the board feet in a stand of timber today.
But I still happily keep and occasionally refer to my copy of Pojar and Mackinnonās Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast as well as my Oregon State dichotomous key. Iāve added to the list the Sibley guide to Trees and more recently, (and perhaps more delightfully), Pete Wohllebenās The Hidden Life of Trees. I entered the program thinking of logging. I left the program thinking of the preservation of our natural world. Not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive! This is not a political statement. Donāt get weird. My house is made of wood.
I went into that class very dubious about its value in my life. I spent a year measuring logs both standing and lying, and counting insects, and learning about the impacts we have on our natural world and learning lessons about hairbrushes broken too easily.
I could not have articulated the change it made in me at the time. But in hindsight I see that it was a point of inflection and it changed my perspective. Which did in turn affect my values, which catalyzed beliefs in my life, which had forever impacted my vision and mission.
Many of my actual behaviors and thoughts and actions in life have ultimately been affected by this class and Iām grateful.
When I visited my professor, (the first time weād seen one another in more than 20 years), it was as though no time had passed and I remembered why I liked him and his class so.
One thing he showed me as we sat and ate gingerbread in his living room near his warm fire, was thirty years of data heād collected on bird species present on his 28 acre property. It was delightfully nerdy and reminded me of a dataset Iām collecting.
I have done this values exercise with over 200 people. And at the end of each one, (with permission), I take a photo. A beautiful photo of the respondent and their choices. I do not publish these photos or share them with the world, but I do look at them myself. I will flick through the album on my phone, land on a person, observe their values, check the date and think about their lives in the days or weeks or months since we sat together. Itās really been a fascinating experience in addition to being a beautiful one.
Interestingly, in the times that Iāve done this, only two people have had a matching set of five values. This says nothing, really, as they are unrelated in any meaningful way and both people will have landed on those choices for different reasons. In fact, out of 57 cards, itās remarkable that I would even have had a full match at all in only 200 samplesāa big number for me, but not a particularly huge dataset.
Itās also notable that there are several cards that are chosen only very seldomly. Preservation of my public Image. Social recognition.
One of my favorite tasty little mysteries, one card has been selected exactly one time.
Acceptance of my portion in life. Submitting to lifeās circumstances.
One time. One person. Sitting crosslegged on her living room floor with me. One time. Now what do you make of that?
What does that say about my friend who made this selection, I asked her after the exercise? And what does it say about over 200 other people?
I reflect again on my professor. He does not try to count all the birds in Oregon. He accepts his portion. He accepts his 28 acres and has a beautiful, ring-bound volume of collected data as his reward.
Do you not yield? Do you not submit? Do you not accept the circumstances of your life?
Obviously Iām making a mountain out of a molehill here, because as I have noted these are five cards, five choices in comparison with the compendium of human experience. There are fifty seven cards. There must be 57 million things that we could value as humans. Things with words like Kindness or Generosity, or things that are beyond words like a babyās warmth or a long love in the same direction.
Still, itās a value that, far from discarding flippantly, I wrestle with. Submission to lifeās circumstances.
I have bent my knee to lifeās circumstances. Is that always the right choice? Can we value it and still fight, still rage against it? The submission? Or is the fight itself a lack of submitting to the slings and arrows of this life? And is approaching submission as a defeat a sort of defeat in itself?
For what of positive circumstances? Do we submit to those as well, or do we expect them and take them for granted? Do we deserve all that we have? All that we get? All that happens, how it happens and when?
I often think of my college professor and the things I learned in that year. Not just mensuration and dendrology and planned obsolescence. But the things I learned about my own self. It was, as college often is, one of my first experiences outside of my parentsā sphere. I had lived on my own for some years by then. I was accustomed to that Lucky-Charms-and-cheap-beer lifestyle.
But everything I was and wasnāt in those fresh, crispy years of early adulthood was still measured against who I was within the context of my home and family.
And environmental science was a breath of something new. I often wonderāwhat if Iād stayed in? I make the comment, Iāve made it here, that thereās probably a place where a guy with a big mouth and a big love for people could have made a home with a forestry degree. I could be something really neat, like a park ranger. And instead I am not. I am a coffee roaster, an occupation I have already admitted I do not have a particular passion for. I must accept this. I must let go.
And besides, if I had not followed the life path I did, I may never have developed my dataset, my 200 people, (and counting), I may never have married my partner, I may never have done and seen a million wonderful things.
Not everything is perfect in my life. Not everything is always peachy-keen for an entrepreneur. My business struggles in this post COVID era where people make buying decisions very differently on some levels. Not everything is perfect in my family; my own children are growing up and pushing against boundaries I donāt even know that I should have set in the first place.
In my recent essays I have discussed my faith. Out of something and into something new. Metamorphosis. But what does it mean for the caterpillar? Is there any sense of loss? Probably not for the caterpillar. But for us? As I continue a life-long transformation it is necessary to accept the circumstances of that transformation.
My portion is my portion. My portion is indeterminately good and indefinably difficult. This is true for us all I think. For every choice we make there are a million more we do not. And we can spend our lives, if weāre not careful, regretting those paths.
What does it mean to submit now, today to the circumstances of my life?
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You may recall that I grew up in church. Perhaps you did, too.
This card is funny because people have one of three responses, and maybe itās actually this way for all fifty-seven cards. But Iām reflecting on the triad of choices now.
Itās either a shoe-in, no contest, a definite value, OR itās an easy card to toss in the ānoā pile on the first round, OR, it is deeply wrestled with; compared and analyzed alongside other cards like a spiritual life or meaning in life.
It all sort of depends on where you came from and where youāre going.
I am, you may have guessed, moving away from organized religion in my life. Exceptā¦
Iāve started going to church. About six weeks ago as of this writing I was sitting with my friend around a nice backyard fire. We were sharing a whiskey and a moment together and I was becoming animatedly enraged, (as I do), with various church leaders from our shared past, their abuses and untended wounds. He listened quietly, gave me space to feel and be myself as friends do, and then suggested I try a church heās been attending with his wife for a while.
Itās a very different kind of church than Iāve ever attended before, and Iām not going to make this essay a comparative side-by-side, nor am I going to give you a list of reasons why Iām still in church at all. We are all on our own paths.
In this series Iāve admitted to being disillusioned with the church of my youth. Iāve tried to be fairly diplomatic about it, but if youāre paying attention itās there.
In this series Iāve admitted to stealing in my youth, Iāve admitted to my own capacity for violence and malice and dishonesty. Now hereās another admission.
I am still on what I weirdly call a āJesus flavored pathā.
No matter how much I grow weary of the church, all her rules, all her dominions, all her hate-dressed-as-love, I do not seem to grow weary of the words of Jesus. And I do not tire of wanting to be more like him. I think.
I grew up learning a certain set of facts regarding Jesus, regarding his place in the larger story of the Bible, regarding our appropriate responses to those facts.
Do you remember POGs? It was a fad in the 1990s. A game played by stacking cardboard disks, (the name was taken from the name of a Hawaiian beverage, Passionfruit-Orange-Guava, and the acronym POG printed on the cardboard bottle lids).
Youād stack up your POGs face down and then use a heavier disk, a Slammer to, (as the name would suggest), slam the pile. The player would āwinā any POGs that flipped face up.
In my personal experience, I rarely ever played the game, instead I collected POGs. I had a binder with special plastic pages in it that was made specifically for displaying and protecting the little disks. I did have a SLAMMER though; a huge, heavy piece of acrylic plastic affixed to a metal disk that said the following, (this is why Iām telling the POG story):
The Bible says itāI believe itāThat settles it.
I grew up believing in the Bible as a set of literal facts collected for my benefit. I grew up telling myself, (and almost believing it), that the very word Bible, stood for Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.
In reality the word āBibleā obviously comes from the Greek biblia (Ī²Ī¹Ī²Ī»ĪÆĪ±), meaning āThe Booksā, itself stemming from biblos (Ī²ĻĪ²Ī»ĪæĻ) which means papyrus and refers also to the Phoenician port city of Byblos where it was commonly traded. But you already knew that.
But in my little-guy brain, thatās exactly what the Bible wasāspecific instructions for living. If it wasnāt in there, it didnāt exist; it spoke, if you read hard enough, to every potential eventuality this life could throw our way.
This is how I grew up. This is what I believed. I memorized various passages of scripture and performatively recited them to Mrs. Kennedy in order to win the 10Ā¢ goldfish sheād bring in as prizes once each year for the good little boys and girls whoād done their memorization.
I won my fish. I named him Clyde. He lived for many years and only died in the house fire I mentioned in the Privacy essay. He was six inches long living in a 20 gallon aquarium at the time. It was too small a habitat. I believe heād still be alive today if not for that ill fated end, teaching us lessons about growth.
And over time my beliefs have changed; I have already admitted that I no longer believe in a place of ECT, a real acronym used to shorten Eternal Conscious Torment, the specific kind of hell we believed in. The cracks began to form in that doctrine many years ago and they continued until one day I justā¦ didnāt believe that way. I couldnāt. I couldnāt make myself see what some people see in the texts and I couldnāt unsee or unlearn some of the things Iād seen and learned that countered that narrative.
And as I mentioned in the Spiritual Life essay, without hell, without consciousness in torment, evermore, evermore, what were we even left with?
For me, Iām left with invitation. One of Jesusā most often used words was come. He was invitational in nature, that guy. He was always speaking with authority the religious leaders didnāt feel like he did, (or should) have to forgive, to invite to repair.
And those are things we can do, too! I cannot, (as I have already stated many times), speak to the afterlife. I do not know.
But I can invite you into love, into kindness. I can look for the fruits of the spirit of God in my life, the Love, Joy, Peace in my life and I can foster and foment those things in my life. I can share good news with youāthe good news is that we have this life. We have now, today, together. We can be heaven or hell for one anotherāindeed we will be heaven or hell for one another. We may have no other way.
A few years ago I started tuning my ear to Rainn Wilson. Hopefully you at least know of Wilson and his character from The Office, Dwight Schrute. Heās hilarious and a treasure.
He was born and raised into the Bahaāi faith. I am compelled by his messaging and his stories, and Iāve thought, privately to myself and apparently publicly on the internet, that if I had it to do again I might dig a little deeper into the Bahaāi.
A few years ago I received my introduction to Buddhism. It was simple and a little silly, but it was mine. I was wandering Powellās Books and picked up, almost at random, James Norburyās The Journey: Big Panda and Tiny Dragon.
In it two friends embark on a beautiful journey out of and into. They leave a comfortable home theyād made together taking only Tiny Dragonās teapot as luggage.
They face various beautifully illustrated trials and finally lose even the teapot before finding a new place, a new life, a new home, and yes, a new teapot. In the end all is different but all is well. So, I feel it going for me.
Perhaps in another life Iād have pursued Buddhism. Perhaps Iāve had made a terrible monk somewhere.
Am I devout? The question here is am I devout? Do I hold to a religious faith? And the answer, which still, after all this time, after all these words, is hard for me to write, is no. Not to the faith I knowānot to the faith I knew. I have left the way I knew.
I can no longer hold to a religious tradition. That word āholdāāas in grasp tightly, clutch, refuse to let goāthatās carrying a lot of weight here. Because Iāve let go. Not of Jesus, not of love, not of invitation. But of the structure that said there was only one way to understand any of it.
But am I devoted? Yes, I think so. Devoted to continuing to sojourn on, continuing to identify those fruits in my life, continuing to discipline myself in the way(s) of love.
A word used to describe people in my situation has been Deconstruction. As in, weāre de-constructing our faith. But I donāt like that term very much and I donāt actually feel like it applies to me or maybe to very many people at all.
I do know folks who want to just tear it all down and walk out of the rubbleāIāve met them, Iāve known them, and Iāve even felt like one of them.
But I see now that, (as I mentioned in a previous essay) that I am simply evolving and growing. I am going from one thing into another, quite naturally, quite natively. Like a caterpillar I am entering my pupae state; closing into myself for a quiet liquid metamorphosis into something different.
If I had to guess Iād guess Iāll never become a Buddhist or a practitioner of the Bahaāi faith. If I had to guess Iāll keep walking this Jesus flavored path all the days of my life growing less sure and not more sure that I know what Iām reading or what he was saying. Iād guess Iāll die the way I was born; unsure.
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I am in a time of flux. I am in a time of transition. I am in a time of metamorphosis.
When we were all younger my wife and I started a coffee shop called Chrysalis Coffeehouse. Do you know what a chrysalis is? Maybe you do, but if not you should because itās beautiful.
Before about 2012, if you would have asked me how a caterpillar became a butterfly Iād have said something about going into a cocoon and maybe one leg grows up into a longer bone, (insects have bones, right?), and then maybe the wing sort of webs down from that, and presto-chango, itās a butterfly or something!
That is not how it works, friends. Moths form cocoons, silk structures into which they envelop themselves and out from which they emerge.
A chrysalis by contrast is fully the insect itself. The hard outer shell is a part of the critter, and on the inside, far from growing into something it actually changes into something new. Metamorphosis. The whole of the animal liquefies into something magical, reforms, reconstitutes and regrows into a different animal altogether. Itās a beautiful, and Iāll say it again, magical exercise in natureās way.
So it goes, we decided, with coffee. We were a metamorphosis point in the life cycle of a coffee bean, taking a hard, barely edible, waxy green coffee bean and, through the application of heat and pressure, transforming it into something palatable and even more than that, pleasurable.
At that time we also saw ourselves in that imagery. I can look back now and see that weāve pretty much always been at the beginning of some new change, some new way. It is the blessing and the curse of being us. I look around and see that not everyone is so lucky to live this way.
As we did business it became increasingly clear that not everyone knew what a chrysalis was, and certainly not everyone knew the beauty of how they worked, and the name presented more challenges than weād intended. Eventually we changed again, rebranding and becoming something different.
So, I feel, it is going in our lives today. I can feel the winds of change. They have ebbed and flowed in our lives often enough that Iām no longer particularly afraid of them, though I know they almost always bring pain along with new life. I am turning to liquid. Again.
I will not discuss all of these things now; I have revealed some of them already. My children are growing. My business is changing. Things never stay the same for long, and they will continue on that trajectory I think.
The most important thing I do now, the most important thing to me, is this values exercise. It never gets old and I could do it every day. In the beginning I did the exercise with everyoneāI was ravenous. You could not be on my doorstep for long before Iād ask you to ādo a fun values sort with me.ā I have my electricianās values. I have my old babysitterās values. I have my friendās sonās girlfriendās values and I have my former life coachās values. It is what I would like to be doing with the rest of my life.
Itās not the cards, though, you know that by now. Itās my love for people and my belief that we do have this life! We are more than we know, more than we think we are. Itās about coming up under the people around me and giving them something, anything that gives them hope or a little more of a vision for their own futures. For their childrenās futures. As I write this it feels self aggrandizing. Oh, that I could be a benefit to others! Who am I that I think I could?
But Iām here, I have these cards, I have these ideas, and Iām not losing heart or interest. Iām continually discovering meaning in life.
As part of this pursuit, I have begun developing my Values Tree which I will describe again here, briefly for your reference.
Our Lived Experiences happen to us. Around us. Without our command or request. Theyāre the sun rays and raindrops falling on our faces and we cannot control them. We cannot even predict them much of the time.
Our responses to those experiences inform our Values which in turn inform our Beliefs, which I believe are really just crystalized, (or calcified) values.
Our beliefs and values inform our Vision, the āwhat success looks likeā, and Mission, the āhow weāre going to do itā of our lives. For me, these things are fluid. More fluid than Iām altogether comfortable with. But here we are.
Our mission informs our Goals, the things weāre trying to see made real, our goals inform our Tasks, and our tasks inform our Time Management.
So you see, thereās a line of continuity between our lived experiences and our time management, (the things we do with our hands and think with our minds and say with our mouths.
For me, for the purpose of these essays, I see meaning in life in relation to our Vision and Mission. What are we going to do.
I grew up with a vision for the next life. Everything was viewed and filtered by the coming age. And now I donāt know! I literally, honestly, just donāt know what to think about the future. I donāt know what to think about next week, let alone the split second after my final breath. And as Iāve said numerous times in the course of this project, we know only this life for sure. We know we have our next breath, our next minute, our next day. What will we do with them? What does success look like for us?
For me, it looks like continuing to dig deeper here. Continuing to try to identify whatās making this work in my head. Itās something about people. Itās something about you. Itās something about us, and about making tomorrow brighter. Weāre the only ones who can. Itās something about helping people know themselves better. This writing project is specifically to help me get to know myself better. I hope people read these, Iām gratified that some people seem to be. Iāve gotten some positive feedback which feels nice. I want peopleās kindnesses. I love them.
But ultimately this is an exploration of my own thoughts surrounding these cards and the ideas they stir up. And ultimately success looks like you being more mindful of your own values in life. Which is nearly impossible to measure. Classic Nicholas. Setting unattainable goals informed by an immeasurable mission in life.
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In my last essay, A spiritual life, I identified that many times people struggle with a binary choice. Is it this one or is it more that one? Is it capability thatās driving my choices, driving my thoughts and behaviors, or is it ambition?
So this one goes for me. I sat and looked at mature love and true friendship together for a long while. Which one is it? If Iām not able to walk in mature love, how can I be a deep, true friend? But.. Isnāt true friendship the highest form of love? Ultimately, as I revealed, True Friendship won the day in my sort.
But I often tell people, you know, this thing weāre doing, (the values card sort), isnāt a game. Itās not a game because you can neither win it nor lose it.
I suppose you could lose the exercise sort of if you failed to take it even a little bit seriously. If you were only sorting the cards for my sake or to get me off your case. But assuming you think a little and choose five cards honestly, then itās been a success and youāre a winner. So forget what I said beforeā¦ You can both win or lose this thing. But itās not really a game.
I have also established that the big secret, as Iāve found anyway, to this sorting exercise is that theyāre all important! Theyāre all valuable. I say to people, āas a marginally well adjusted human adult, you probably have a value for all 57 of these concepts, there are no negative values listed; thereās no punching babies card.ā
I tell people that if, in two weeks time, youāre driving down the road or sitting in your chair and a value card you didnāt end up choosing pops into your mind, and if you let it linger there, if you let a concept like social recognition or wealth or preservation of my public image pops into your mind, why, then itās been a double success because it means youāre beginning the process of thinking of your values more holistically! Everyoneās a winner here.
I have spent a lot of time driving down the road thinking about mature love. When I think of deep, emotional, spiritual intimacy I do think of my wife. There is simply nobody else whose relationship I can compare ours to. I revealed in True Friendship that I am utterly surrounded by friends and more than that, surrounded by friendship. I cannot escape it, I could not if I wanted to. If I ran away they would follow me. If I hid around corners or under beds they would find me. Friendship follows me.
But there is no friend I have like her. We have been married for twenty years! Which is not forty! But itās not five! We have weathered many storms. Big ones like her cancer and my somewhat rocky mental health over the years. We have been there for one another, and when weāve found ourselves not there for one another, we have mindfully redirected our attention back toward our chosen togetherness.
This is not the right choice for every couple, not the right choice for every situation. But itās been the right thing for us and while we have many years and many trials and many successes waiting for us up around the bend, I am more committed than ever, I am more resolute and more in love.
I am resolute in my steadfast love for her, yes. But in that love I have discovered a resolution to a kind of steadfast love for myself that wasnāt familiar to me at the beginning. I am realizing and learning that almost always, the thing I can do for her is to mind myself. To care for the life I have to live and to be the best version of myself.
You know, at the beginning I was sold a belief system that was self-sacrificial. Which sounds excellent! It sounds loving on some levels. And certainly, in this life, there are times when weāre able to be self sacrificial and ātake one for the teamā. But very often, much more often, that resulted in a patriarchal sort of martyrdom that was at least intellectually dishonest. If I am always the one sacrificing for you, then I am the hero and you are the burden.
By not caring for my own self, by not putting on my own oxygen mask, by not observing and spending adequate energy addressing the log in my own eye, I was free to condescendingly and paternalistically āmake roomā for the speck in hers, in a show of false magnanimity.
And it all came so naturally to us, you know? Until it just didnāt.
I still want to be self sacrificial. I would still spend mine to conserve hers. But now it comes with a realization that she feels the same. Would do the same. Has done the same. Is still doing the same.
Today weāre both looking out for each other in this life. Weāre both minding ourselves, walking into growth opportunities and developing postures of learning, awareness, curiosity. For ourselves, for each other.
The love we shared in our youth said āI am here for youā. The more matured love, (though not as mature is it shall be!), that we share today says āWe are here togetherā. It is a subtle difference, perhaps. But one I wouldnāt trade for anything.
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**Fair warning, this one gets a little churchy. Buckle up, but keep reading.**
Iāll tell you an interesting thing to observe about this values exercise I do with people.
People often find themselves struggling with a binary. A duo of cards that, for them, represent something so similar so as to be nearly indistinguishable. Or at least inseparable.
How can you have one without the other? How can you choose between these two?
Theyāre not always the same for everyone, but this card, a spiritual life is one such card. I am delighted to watch people struggle through this exercise-within-an-exercise because thatās how real muscle is formed, right? Tearing of muscle fibers, pain, exhaustion, and finally the growthāthe building back of something stronger.
A spiritual life is often, (not nearly always), compared with a card coming down the line, Devoutness: holding to religious faith and belief. Thatāll be a weird one to write. One at a time, Nick, one at a time.
I like the descriptor for this card; emphasis on spiritual, not material matters.
My dad used to express that some folks were āso heavenly minded they were no earthly goodā. I can see what heās talking about. I can see what he was saying. Or, at least, I can see what Iād be saying if I were to repeat the phrase, (which I may do).
I have had a long and winding religious road. But as I reflect, I feel like my spiritual life has been a fairly straight line.
I learned early that Christ was the true vine, and we were the branches. And that the one the Lord loves, he prunes. He clips little bits off of us that arenāt helpful or arenāt producing fruit in order that we may grow as an organism, and recognize our connection to the oneness of himself.
I learned that the fruits of the spirit of the living God are as follows: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness and Self Control. I further learned that against these things there is no law.
Nine things to look for in my life. Nine things by which to measure my need for pruning, my need to be a part of the long, slow, laborious work of loving the other people I have access to.
I do not worship the way I once did. It all looks and seems so different now. There was a time when Devoutness would be a tippy-top value choice of mine. That would have been a choice made out of obligation, or, more probably, fear.
When I was young I can remember asking Jesus to come into my heart regularly. Weekly. Monthly. I can remember moments alone, in my room or in my woods, dissecting my foul humanity, laying every ill deed out on a stone table to be sacrificed and done away with in order to make room for a holiness that seemed completely out of reach in the best of times and something completely undeserved in the worst.
So many of my young patterns were, I see now, based on a fear that God would smite me. Would strike me down. He was looking for an opportunity to give me what I deserved, and I kept providing them. And I just donāt think that now. My spirituality hasādare I say the word?āevolved.
So much of how I practice my beliefs, so much of how I see my values intersecting with others has changed. And yetā¦ And yet it still feels familiar. What did I ever believe? What did I ever know? What did I ever even hope for in my younger days laden with ecclesiastical burden? How much really has changed?
One thing has changed, and itās substantial for me, anyway. This is the big reveal: I do not believe in hell. I do not believe in it conceptually in the heart of Godāwhatever cosmic oneness awaits us, (I hope) after our time here is complete. And whatās more I do not even believe it to be a concept fairly borne out of scripture.
The idea is anathema to what Iāve come to think about God, and as further evidence in my mind, itās directly on brand for what Iāve come to believe about men. And itās always men. You will note that women are rarely mentioned in the Bible and none are, (at least credited with being), responsible for its written contents. I believe it to be a tradition of men, heavily influenced by the second-century church and beyond that, by literatureāfables and fictions written in the most generous of assumptions to delight or, in the worst, (and sadly more likely) case, to deceive and control.
That may sound heretical to some. To others, it may sound obvious. But for me, letting go of hell changed everything. Without the threat of eternal conscious torment, my faith stopped being about avoiding damnation and started being about pursuing love. It became about allowing love to slowly grow and activate and unlock itself in my life.
The fruits of the spirit arenāt a checklist to escape hellātheyāre just... the whole point. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. Against these things there is no law. Not because they save you from fire, but because they are salvation. They are what it means to be fully human, fully alive.
I think I knew the fruit. I think I was born to spot the fruit in others, to draw it out and gather it up and put it by for a time when itās needed. I think I was born into a knowledge of Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness and Self Control. I think Iāve known it since I was young, and I think I know it now and I wonder if Iāve known it as part of a cosmic oneness since before the dawning of time. āHidden in the heart of Godā, weād have said.
In many of these essays I have shared some specific truth or nugget or anecdote from my life. I fought with my brother. I blew my hand up in a binge of freedom. I stole, I repaired, I learned, I grew somehow.
And so it goes with my spiritual life, so why am I having trouble deciding on or even coming up with an anecdote to make this land? Perhaps itās that it feels so very raw, so very alive to me just now. It feels so very going, and in-the-process. I am not done being worked out. I reflect on another song from my deep childhood.
Heās still working on me; to make me what I ought to be. It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the Earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient he must be; heās still working on me.
Now, Iām not claiming that tune quite the way I did the last one. The one about the āriver of lifeā flowing out of me.
Still, I do feel that Iām a work in progress, and nowhere is that progression more evident than in my religious beliefs.
I did say, though, that something feels familiar. I see that the familiarity is myself. My inner life, my inner hunger for truth and more than that, love, which in the Bible is called āThe greatestā. The greatest of these is love. In fact, it says that God is love. What do you make of that statement? Perhaps Iām interpreting it incorrectly, but I do continue to believe very deeply in Love.
I have shed many shackles. I have done away with some childish things. I have come to grips with some realities of a world which does not often value life or love over profit and gain. And I am still shedding. I am still gaining understanding. May it be so for all the days that I live.
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