Reverberation

You get an idea for a poem or a story, but you're in your car or out walking, somewhere impossible to write. And the idea spins into lines in your head, begging to be recorded. You worry that you'll forget this windfall of words before you can write them down. My advice to you: Don't strain to record them later if they were but temporary traveling partners. You wouldn't try to force a friendship with someone you met on the road unless some surprising, special bond had occurred. The same applies to your words.

I have learned to trust the power of reverberation in my writing life.

Reverberation is a quality directly proportional to the quality of the words. Great words tend to stick around and echo in your head till they're recorded. They are memorable because, by definition, they are "able to be remembered"--by the author as well as the reader. If you've forgotten your own words, chances are that someone else will forget them, too.

Trust the power of reverberation, and recognize that memorable words flow--they can never be manufactured.

On Passion: Thanksgiving-Related, Spiritual Thoughts

If we are vehicles traveling various roads to spiritual fulfillment, then passion is our driving fuel. Yet the price for that fuel is the full investment of oneself in living in the present—our Gift from God. Those who constantly live in the past, muttering over the “good old days,” or fretting over the “could’ve-would’ve-should’ves,” cannot feel true passion for any aspect of their existence; the best they can feel is heartfelt reflection, or a sentimental ache. And those who live longingly for the future, murmuring “Someday…” and gazing off to imaginary “better days,” sacrifice the chance for experiencing passion by miring themselves instead in mere anticipation. Those who never experience any intense inspiration, any awe for a process, any fervor for a cause or another living thing, or any overwhelming gratitude for an experience, merely exist, rather than live. Thus, the discovery and nurturing of passion brings with it a heightened awareness of the Now, and an acceleration toward what I call “Shalom Shalem,” meaning “complete peace” in Hebrew.

To pursue one’s passion with love for God and our fellow humans—that is the key to balancing the universe and healing the universe, for in receiving the joy of self-fulfillment, we give our fulfilled selves to our world. We “heal” the breaks between the pieces of God that we all are, those breaks representing the egos that separate us. We abandon our egos and glue ourselves together, thereby solving the puzzle that is GOD. In sum, the pursuit of passion along a road paved with awe, gratitude, and love, is a sublime journey toward Oneness with all.

We must find the sparks within us to be lights unto others.

Dishonoring the Power of the Word "Honor"

“To honor” is a verb applied to one deserving admiration for strength of character and/or good deeds. Why do people today throw it around as a term to apply to anyone who died, regardless of his/her character or the circumstances of the death?

I’m looking at a news article using “honored,” “honoring,” and “honor” multiple times to recount the death and funeral of a seventeen-year-old boy killed in a car accident as the passenger of a drunk teenage driver. The accident occurred at 1:45 a.m., in a wealthy suburb, long past the legal curfew for underage teens. The driver was reportedly drunk enough that his three passengers could easily have recognized that getting into the car with him posed a danger to them and any other car they encountered. The kids all attended one of our area’s most highly ranked schools, so they were presumably educated about drunk driving, probably with some special presentation at school involving a smashed vehicle and a tear-jerking reenactment of a fatal crash. In other words, not one kid in that car, even the now dead one being “honored,” had an excuse for breaking the law and the hearts of family and friends by 1) being out driving after curfew (the laws were created to protect kids, after all!); 2) drinking alcohol; and 3) getting into a car driven by a drunk.

And we “honor” the dead boy WHY?

“Mourn,” yes.

“Grieve,” certainly.

“Memorialize,” of course.

But “honor”? Was he an admirable asset to his community, a promising scholar, a selfless do-gooder, a pillar of strength for his family? The article says only that he was a surfer, that kids deemed him “funny and a good friend.” Either the journalist left out some very important details to show why he was worthy of “honoring,” or the journalist and all those quoted in the article who used the verb “to honor” in some form have misused, and indeed desecrated, a term that ought to be reserved for the worthy, not just the dead.

Death doesn’t make you honorable. Life, and good choices, do.

I sympathize with the mourners who feel the needless loss of a young man’s life. I really do. Especially with his parents, since I have precious teenagers of my own.

I am not negating the painful love and loss endured by the people at the funeral. On the contrary, I am calling attention to it, to the fact that his death is about pain and loss. Not about honor.

This seventeen-year-old boy’s funeral was deemed by one interviewee in the article as “a celebration of his life.” I see no cause to celebrate the probable misguidance of an irresponsible kid who died due to his own bad choices, pitiable and tragic though that may be. I do see a cause to mourn. And to memorialize, to prevent similar mourning in the future.

By “honoring” a kid for dying in a drunk-driving accident in which he was an accessory to his own manslaughter, we become accessories ourselves—to the denial of responsibility that will lead to the next drunken killing. Let us honor, instead, the power of words, used appropriately: their power to teach by implication.