" Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist..."
Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones
Many years ago, I read an article that described an early encounter between John Lennon and Yoko Ono. While I no longer recall every detail, I remember that Lennon had come to an art installation of Ono's. I believe the two had met on at least one prior occasion. In the room, among the rest of the art, was a ladder. In the article, Lennon talked about climbing the ladder where he discovered at the top a small word in very small print. The word was, yes, and it was all the affirmation Lennon needed to begin his life with Yoko Ono as his companion.
For reasons I cannot explain, I recall this story often, and not so much the story but the yes in it. Yes is a powerful word. Right now, I am doing battle with it. It is a familiar battle, one that I engage in often when I take my seat to write. The disciplinarian in me is saying yes. The part of me that can easily think of 100 other things I would rather be doing, the part of me that wonders why the hell I think I am a writer, should be a writer, should write today at this moment in this little blog post window has, let's just say, opposite sentiments. I fight a similar battle some mornings before practice. The allure of not today, later, or any combination of words that is a substitute for no can be exceedingly compelling as well.
Of course, we cannot say yes to everything. In taking up the fight for certain ideas, we take a stand against others. In choosing to make a life with one person, we agree not to choose another. Here I could go on to make a long list of choices that would preclude others: raising children, having pets, declaring a political party, selecting a candidate, being a vegetarian, and on and on it would go. But there are other yeses that make up our daily lives that we may not have counted on embracing, that we did not ask for, could not have expected, were entirely unprepared to undertake. These are what writer and Buddhist Natalie Goldberg calls our holy yeses. The stuff of our lives we are responsible for tending even when, or especially when, we did not ask for it to come for a visit.
Our youngest is in high school. As the newspapers and other media sources continue to report, this election season has attracted big numbers of young people. In my mind, this is one positive outcome in what has otherwise been one of the wildest run-ups to a presidential election that I have ever witnessed. Our teenager and her friends talk repeatedly about moving to Canada if Donald Trump is elected in November. While I understand this sentiment--four years of The Donald, my mind cannot even go there--I tell our daughter that if Trump is elected, it is even more important for those who oppose him to remain steadfast in giving voice to those causes and ideas and principles that Trump has forsworn to trample. It would be a difficult yes to swallow, no doubt about it. But retreat is not a reasonable option.
When Martin Luther King, Jr., was incarcerated in the Birmingham Jail in Alabama in April 1963 for marching in defiance of a court injunction that had been issued to forbid King from marching, demonstrating, or parading in Birmingham, King did not sit silent in his jail cell. He used that time to compose a letter to his fellow clergymen who had suggested that King not lead the march that led to his eventual arrest, insisting that now was not the right time. King's letter, like Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience, has become a treatise on the strategy of nonviolent resistance. King's message to his fellow clergymen was this, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." King's letter is a capital "h," capital "y," holy yes. He could have obeyed the injunction and skirted arrest. Or, once incarcerated, he could have sat silent as he awaited his day in court. Instead, King said yes to events as they transpired, and in that bold assent he penned a document that provides enduring testimony for why we must stand against injustice.
During the months that led up to the Persian Gulf war when George H.W. Bush was president, Natalie Goldberg grew increasingly upset that the U.S. was poised to send in troops. As the U.S. fought alongside Saudi Arabia and Egypt against Saddam Hussein, Goldberg felt more and more powerless about voicing her opposition to the military operation. Ultimately, Goldberg found a way to say yes to this conflict, to say yes to a military campaign she could not otherwise influence. Every day for the length of the war, Goldberg would spend her 30-minute lunch hour seated in meditation in a park in the downtown area of her city. She had a sign with her that read "Peace." Eventually, she drew a crowd. People would come to join her. Some would stop to ask questions. Others would want to engage her in debate. Goldberg mitigated any conflicts by insisting that the purpose of her sitting was a silent mediation for peace. Those who wished to participate were to remain silent for the 30 minutes. It proved a powerful means of engaging in a positive way, of accepting something that was very difficult, and of holding on to the holy yes.
Last week, I took my 92-year-old mother to the DMV so she could renew her driver's license. I sat, as we do at places like the DMV, in a chair in a sea of humanity. I was one of a number of ripples in that sea, and while I waited for my mother outside the examination room, I contented myself by watching the waves of people going about the business of their lives. There was the little boy, maybe four years old, watching Elmo from Sesame Street in his pocket-size screen. He walked transfixed in circles never taking his eyes from that screen and, miraculously, never running into a single person or fixture in the wide open room. There was the man in the Angel's poncho--a full-length get-up--a DMV employee, fielding questions from many who were trying to find their bearings in that large space. The person I found myself watching the most was my mother. As she walked away from me to take her test, I was struck by a sudden vulnerability, hers and mine. Those holy yeses, I saw the years of them in her stooped and slanted gait. I wondered how mine would appear one day to my daughter as I aged. I marveled at how often my mother said yes when she could have said no, should have said no in some cases. And there she was, walking away from me as I had walked away from her countless times throughout the years in the process of taking up my path to live my life. She was going where I could not go. In this case, into the examination room. But in a few years, we will share a larger good-bye. At some point in our lives, we all have to face that heart-breaking and joyful holy yes.
How do we bear it? I sometimes wonder. That window in our hearts where Paul Simon noted we're blown apart and everybody hears the wind blow. I suppose we keep learning how to say yes. We learn, as the poet Theodore Roethke said, by going where we have to go.
Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones
Many years ago, I read an article that described an early encounter between John Lennon and Yoko Ono. While I no longer recall every detail, I remember that Lennon had come to an art installation of Ono's. I believe the two had met on at least one prior occasion. In the room, among the rest of the art, was a ladder. In the article, Lennon talked about climbing the ladder where he discovered at the top a small word in very small print. The word was, yes, and it was all the affirmation Lennon needed to begin his life with Yoko Ono as his companion.
For reasons I cannot explain, I recall this story often, and not so much the story but the yes in it. Yes is a powerful word. Right now, I am doing battle with it. It is a familiar battle, one that I engage in often when I take my seat to write. The disciplinarian in me is saying yes. The part of me that can easily think of 100 other things I would rather be doing, the part of me that wonders why the hell I think I am a writer, should be a writer, should write today at this moment in this little blog post window has, let's just say, opposite sentiments. I fight a similar battle some mornings before practice. The allure of not today, later, or any combination of words that is a substitute for no can be exceedingly compelling as well.
Of course, we cannot say yes to everything. In taking up the fight for certain ideas, we take a stand against others. In choosing to make a life with one person, we agree not to choose another. Here I could go on to make a long list of choices that would preclude others: raising children, having pets, declaring a political party, selecting a candidate, being a vegetarian, and on and on it would go. But there are other yeses that make up our daily lives that we may not have counted on embracing, that we did not ask for, could not have expected, were entirely unprepared to undertake. These are what writer and Buddhist Natalie Goldberg calls our holy yeses. The stuff of our lives we are responsible for tending even when, or especially when, we did not ask for it to come for a visit.
Our youngest is in high school. As the newspapers and other media sources continue to report, this election season has attracted big numbers of young people. In my mind, this is one positive outcome in what has otherwise been one of the wildest run-ups to a presidential election that I have ever witnessed. Our teenager and her friends talk repeatedly about moving to Canada if Donald Trump is elected in November. While I understand this sentiment--four years of The Donald, my mind cannot even go there--I tell our daughter that if Trump is elected, it is even more important for those who oppose him to remain steadfast in giving voice to those causes and ideas and principles that Trump has forsworn to trample. It would be a difficult yes to swallow, no doubt about it. But retreat is not a reasonable option.
When Martin Luther King, Jr., was incarcerated in the Birmingham Jail in Alabama in April 1963 for marching in defiance of a court injunction that had been issued to forbid King from marching, demonstrating, or parading in Birmingham, King did not sit silent in his jail cell. He used that time to compose a letter to his fellow clergymen who had suggested that King not lead the march that led to his eventual arrest, insisting that now was not the right time. King's letter, like Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience, has become a treatise on the strategy of nonviolent resistance. King's message to his fellow clergymen was this, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." King's letter is a capital "h," capital "y," holy yes. He could have obeyed the injunction and skirted arrest. Or, once incarcerated, he could have sat silent as he awaited his day in court. Instead, King said yes to events as they transpired, and in that bold assent he penned a document that provides enduring testimony for why we must stand against injustice.
During the months that led up to the Persian Gulf war when George H.W. Bush was president, Natalie Goldberg grew increasingly upset that the U.S. was poised to send in troops. As the U.S. fought alongside Saudi Arabia and Egypt against Saddam Hussein, Goldberg felt more and more powerless about voicing her opposition to the military operation. Ultimately, Goldberg found a way to say yes to this conflict, to say yes to a military campaign she could not otherwise influence. Every day for the length of the war, Goldberg would spend her 30-minute lunch hour seated in meditation in a park in the downtown area of her city. She had a sign with her that read "Peace." Eventually, she drew a crowd. People would come to join her. Some would stop to ask questions. Others would want to engage her in debate. Goldberg mitigated any conflicts by insisting that the purpose of her sitting was a silent mediation for peace. Those who wished to participate were to remain silent for the 30 minutes. It proved a powerful means of engaging in a positive way, of accepting something that was very difficult, and of holding on to the holy yes.
Last week, I took my 92-year-old mother to the DMV so she could renew her driver's license. I sat, as we do at places like the DMV, in a chair in a sea of humanity. I was one of a number of ripples in that sea, and while I waited for my mother outside the examination room, I contented myself by watching the waves of people going about the business of their lives. There was the little boy, maybe four years old, watching Elmo from Sesame Street in his pocket-size screen. He walked transfixed in circles never taking his eyes from that screen and, miraculously, never running into a single person or fixture in the wide open room. There was the man in the Angel's poncho--a full-length get-up--a DMV employee, fielding questions from many who were trying to find their bearings in that large space. The person I found myself watching the most was my mother. As she walked away from me to take her test, I was struck by a sudden vulnerability, hers and mine. Those holy yeses, I saw the years of them in her stooped and slanted gait. I wondered how mine would appear one day to my daughter as I aged. I marveled at how often my mother said yes when she could have said no, should have said no in some cases. And there she was, walking away from me as I had walked away from her countless times throughout the years in the process of taking up my path to live my life. She was going where I could not go. In this case, into the examination room. But in a few years, we will share a larger good-bye. At some point in our lives, we all have to face that heart-breaking and joyful holy yes.
How do we bear it? I sometimes wonder. That window in our hearts where Paul Simon noted we're blown apart and everybody hears the wind blow. I suppose we keep learning how to say yes. We learn, as the poet Theodore Roethke said, by going where we have to go.
…of light we can never
have enough
but how would we
find it
unless the darkness
urged us on and into it
and I am dark
except when now and
then it all comes clear
and I can see myself
as others luckily
sometimes see me
in a good light
Frank O’Hara “Poem”
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