A Wordless Landscape: Crossing Over...in Words

A wordless landscape has opened before me. I stand at a threshold, wondering whether I can walk across it...to sit? Breathe? Draw? What does a (professional) academic do within a wordless landscape? Or even a poet? A little narrative background may help say more what I mean.

Life is becoming peppered with people whose primary mode of expression is not language, and their ‘way’ begs a new questioning for me, where and when I am. Now I don’t mean they don’t speak, nor do I mean they’re not intellectual, capable, wise. I’m discovering they live life or 'speak'/express a nonverbal wisdom that I cannot perceive easily, captivated by words as I am. One was a musician extraordinaire who opened a space into music and what then became a sizeable and important (for me) research-writing work. Music was his first language. Regular communications with folks? Passable. But give him a choir to direct, an organ to play? Gardens would blossom in the air. You could smell them, see them, walk through them in your flesh and bones experience of his art. Another is a mother and athlete, a wise young woman still searching. For what…? Not sure. Body is her first language—its form, flow, function in release of self and others. She has an incredible capacity to serve, especially women, and has devoted her life to the training of others’ bodies, forms, synergies of mind-body-spirit. She resists written and e-mail correspondence, for good reasons beyond those I know, but I’m learning this does not mean lack of presence or connection. This prose is simply not her primary language. Another is an artist—painter, sculptor mostly—who has lived in Korea, Japan, and France (Paris) over the course of his lifetime. His work, well-established in a famous NYC museum as well as one in his own name in Korea, would be called ‘contemporary’ (in some contrast to ‘modern’, I’ve learned). Art would be his first language. He plays with form and expectation, pulling awareness into action by means of objects and situations, shapes and setting. He’s even used a recent exhibit to communicate about impermanence: his painting was unframed, on the actual wall made for the exhibit, to be destroyed upon conclusion of the exhibition. He has done some writing, but in almost aphoristic form, or at most, short “writing sessions” hard-pressed to be called “essays.” I think I’ve responded most intensely to him because he opened awareness of this wordless landscape in ways through which I could at least see the door. He has offered me worded “breadcrumbs” to trust its validity, that there is a there there. Each of these persons has goaded me into a wordless space in which I know not how to be or what to do.

A time with my own practice community—over birthday drinks, in this case—poked my mind into reminder-awareness about it. “Modern art seems to speak to me these days, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom,” I told them. Almost in unison, the response was “Because it does not use words, you think? There are very few areas in your life without those!” Or some such worded response I’ve now forgotten. We all laughed. Ironically, I was speechless. You mean there might be ways of being with others, a different kind of landscape for living into new life without words?

Richard Rohr’s new book pushes us over the edge, across the threshold into the landscape mentioned above. Rohr is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and author of Falling Upward: a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass, 2011). He describes a fully human life in two dimensions or stages. The first is aimed at creating “a proper container for one’s life and answer to the first essential questions: ‘What makes me significant?’ ‘How can I support myself?’ and ‘Who will go with me?’” The task of the second half of life is,” he writes, “quite simply, to find the actual contents that this container was meant to hold and deliver.” The whole first half is really not the end, in itself, but only preamble. It “exists for the sake of your deeper and fullest life, which you largely do not know about yourself!” he quips. Living these last several years in organizations captivated by “identity politics” of various kinds, I have to agree with his observation. Many of us spend years making and repairing the “first-half” container without ever “throwing [our] nets into the deep” (John 21:6),[1] as he says. All our questions seem to be about identities--our own, theirs, his, hers...


Forgoing the movie I had planned one evening, in order to devour the book in one sitting, I found myself asking, “Is this wordless landscape where I am to throw my nets? My “into the deep” life that beckons?” Instead of bumping up against others’ identities and questioning my own in the process, is it time to live some risks in ways I cannot begin to rationalize, fathom, or articulate…ways that my body suggests show a path…? If so, how in this world do I proceed?

Smiling, I note how thoroughly I am who I am. First step for me here was writing about it. My container is built of words and poetic jotting, after all, my way of offering back to readers and others what I’m learning about life and love. ... Actually, I now realize, that’s not fully true. I took concrete actions symbolic and demonstrative of my (newly) primary commitment to bodywork because my work of the mind will continue, intensifying with others who live primarily in their minds, in words. I set up a schedule of training appointments with intention of months. And even before that, I sought a bit of ‘spirit-confirmation’ of this availability of bodywork in time and connection. The resulting energies of this primary-commitment amidst my week were telling. Right fit, resonance, energies for activity, even as accompanied by awareness of a weariness too, conclusion of a long week of too much work and too little relational-down-time. I asked myself whether the energies had attachment within them, but I think not. The path is not the person but the practice, the intention to listen to wordless learning. Concurrent to—arguably before all this—has also been creation of a new meditation space with remarkably little imagery or the usual icons, but telling symbolism: a circle and a flame within circle(s). Both create an openness and movement signifying (to me) a transparency of mind and action, body and breath. Sitting practice so easily becomes monkey-minded thoughts, for me. The meditation space is large enough to allow body-movement. Perhaps that can counteract captivity in thought.

At the very least, these musings mark an intention for a path of renewed listening for the deep that beckons me in the days, weeks, and months to come. I cannot pretend I understand, nor do I feel easy about communicating this new wordless pathway to my beloved, who lives almost entirely in his/our mind. I do know this is not about who I am or what I do. It’s not even about my work as content for this container of who I am and what I do. What beckons is a wordless expressiveness—bodywork? artistic bumbling? presence-listening alongside others?—which I have recognized (up to this point) in heightened energies, intuited risks, opening-doors of real and metaphorical significance. My prayer will be for surrender of mind’s captivity(ies), patience on part of persons on the path, endurance for long spells of unknowing, and humor for the varieties of humility to come.  Yee-haw.

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[1] Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass, 2011), 1.

One Word at a Time

What is help?

Sometimes I find myself fascinated by a word, spending time with it like I might with a good friend. Open, attentive, present, curious. It’s remarkable how difficult such a simple act of presence is today. We hang our lives on words all day, after all. News reports, mundane communications for lunch or direction and more. Rarely do we devote our attention to just one word at a time. Rarely do we companion it with invitation, inquiry, a blessing of breath, full presence and attention offered without expectation of return. How often are you curious for what might be learned today, in contrast to what you expected yesterday, from one word?

Sitting with the word help, I’m struck by how common yet opaque it is. Helping is something we do every day. I help Dad around the house. She helped him put groceries into the Subaru. We helped a young man pay his rent. They helped students learn calculus for the AP exam. Here help seems to be something someone offers another who needs it. Notice already how a non-noun like ‘something’ is required? Nouns become synonyms for help, things like housework, effort, money, or services of some kind.

Yet help is just as opaque as it is common. Think about those things offered as help that are not received, or able to be received, for some reason. I helped the older woman across the street before she hit me with her cane, saying, “Leave me be! I am fine.” Effort refused, perchance because it was misdirected. He provided answers to help them pass the test. Services of teaching offered here…or cheating that serves no one, in the end? She gave a $20 bill to the woman dressed in rags with her two children. Help or being had? Do we ever truly know? At the very least, help seems to accompany need, whether it is rightly perceived or even received.

Perception and reception are what draw me to the word today. How do we determine need today, identify healthy response(s) to that need, and then either extend or receive such response? What is the responsibility of the one who needs and the one who helps? And of course, the ever-present power-differential: who is helping whom in this connection or interaction? Much like service, you see, help is consistently misunderstood in both perception and reception. The strong help the weak. The full help the empty. The wise help the ignorant. Here, the ‘more’ powerful (or provided, or smart, or…) offer assistance to the ‘less’ powerful (or…). Reception is the task of the one who needs, in this perception.

This way of looking at things falters in the face of need as gift. Just because we don’t like to need, to be needy, does not preclude the fact that our needs are strong signs of invitation to self-awareness, connection, learning. Without need, we stay just as we are. With need, we yearn for, we reach outside ourselves for… What better evolutionary schematic could there be for change, for learning, for new interactions and more life? If we consider a need to be a strong sign of invitation, then the task(s) of perception and reception change.

By naming a need, I join generations of the human race. I become both more than I was—by identifying my particular need-invitation and helping-path—and I connect myself to all those who have come before, all those living. Knowing this need in its specificity allows me to welcome all that may help and invites me to disregard the rest. Strangely, allowing the need, identifying it, puts me in a place to help myself, the only one who truly knows all dimensions of need and the best-path or prospect of help. Knowing my need makes me strong, when I act gently, slowly meeting it, face to face, with a smile.

The unavoidable counterpart here, of course, is that true help comes only with accurate perception and reception, a healthy willingness to discern and receive what the world offers. Both of these things are exceedingly difficult to do well for human beings who only know about 15% of their own brain functioning. [Neurologists estimate that human beings, by and large, live most of their lives dependent upon only 15% of their grey matter.] To respond to the opening inquiry, true help in this sense means that which meets a need toward life, toward wholeness, toward greater connection with self, other, world. Help is that which connects the ‘strong’ to the ‘weak’, the ‘empty’ to the ‘full’, teaching them both of distinct needs and meeting them both in healthy fulfillment of those needs.

Or at least so I surmise from help received this weekend. Unbeknownst to me, a need grew in me I can now see was a heavy feeling of isolation, an overwhelm by a burden I had willingly accepted. I had chosen to make a sacrifice, of sorts, though one unperceived by everyone around me. I had not needed anyone to know, as I didn’t choose the path for recognition (at least in my best self). As it grew heavier than I could sustain, I reached out in need. Help came, unexpected but shared in a smiling strength from afar. My loneliness was met, driven by need known and unknown. The burden became lighter, then moved to completion and release. It didn't take much--a text-touch, a bit of wisdom-sharing--but I had to discern the need within me, seek the right responder and response, and receive whatever might come (or not come) in trust that I had done all I could on my own behalf. Help was both my action of reaching out and the response willingly received.

In the end, help is many things to many people. True help comes when entering into one’s own need and acting gently, slowly, to open to it, to its attraction of the right or healthy response. Only in such a way do we become fully who we already are, newly strengthened for life. The irony is what suggests its truth: one’s need is the hidden gift of strength. When tended in this fashion, need and help become one, interdependent, a new way of being together in and for the world. Not a burden taken or received. Not an 'ought' met in obligation. A deep breath shared outward, for good.