It’s the first day of November 2017 and I’m drinking a Samuel Adams Maple Red Ale from a snifter, a proper beer glass, usually reserved for stouts and brandies and other things worth smelling. The writers on
samueladams.com talk about this beer like it’s a $300 sweater from the J. Peterman catalog:
As vibrant in color as fall's liveliest foliage, this deep red beer's hints of caramel and vanilla are rounded out by a smooth, rich maple character. Warming enough for a chilly fall day, its distinct notes of maple dance against a slightly sweet malt background and make this complex beer the perfect bridge into cooler weather.
Around here, in northern Indiana, maple is a March flavor, when the air freezes during the still-long nights and warms up during the crisp sunny days. That’s when the local maple mill runs. Then and only then. About two weeks, four if they’re lucky. So I’m not so sure about this “perfect bridge into cooler weather” business. For me, it’s the opposite, when the green grass pokes through the thin crust of icy snow and the gray winter clouds give way to cold blue afternoons, dad calls and tells me he’s going to the mill and I lace up my mud boots and join him in the middle of a small woods. If you’re looking for the perfect bridge into cooler weather, you don’t need the Maple Red by Sam Adams, you need Advent.
We're coming up on the 1 year anniversary of Pilgrim Dude and I'm trying to remember what this blog is for. I'm doing something here, I just can't think what. Last year, at the end of November and well into December, this writing space became a sort of liturgy. For 18 consecutive nights (until I took off for Hawaii), I sat at my computer and wrote, drank, smoked, and cried. I wrote about death. I wrote about life. I chewed on roots. Ironic Advent MediCATIONS, I called them, unashamedly ripping off the Ironic Advent Meditations of
Ben Camino (which are now trademarked). I do what he does, only worse, and with less irony, and without a half century of life to look back on (or however old you are, Ben). Those MediCATIONS were about treating the anxious, desperate, exasperated, reaching, uncentered life we too often live with some naps, walks, poetry, patience, music, and friendship. We’re about a month away from Advent 2017, which begins on Dec. 3rd. If I manage to write a full set this year, it’ll be 22 meditations in all. I don’t have much to teach, but I have a lot to think about. Truth be told, I should have started yesterday with an Ironic Halloween Meditation, like Ben. I’ve wanted to write one of those for a while now. But I’ll have to settle for an Ironic Day of the Dead Meditation.
There's a quote I came upon recently (not from Thoreau, from former NFL exec Michael Lombardi): "Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner." I've spent the last month unpacking it. I'd think about it on long afternoon runs, while mowing the lawn, or cooking eggs and potatoes. When I was a student at Huntington University (a history ed. major), the education profs talked a lot about teaching strategies, behavioral strategies, and classroom management strategies. They had semester long, 3 credit hour classes dedicated entirely to strategy, but I'm not sure I ever once heard anything from the educrats about culture. To their credit, culture is a tricky thing. It's hard to quantify, harder to teach, and it doesn't tackle classroom problems in a specialized or "rational" way. That sort of thing isn't bound to be popular and you can't really expect it from education departments. The trouble is, you can't build anything of significance with strategy alone. So, this year, Pilgrim Dude is going to do a lot of thinking about culture. Thoreau might call it soil. We aren't quite as far removed from the rest of the planet as we like to think, we aren't a special category unto ourselves; the seed requires good soil to grow, and so do we.
I had a walking conversation with my partner Heather a few weeks ago. I’m an external processor, so sometimes I’ll just start talking, finding my way through thought and counter-thought via the spoken word until I trip over something I think might be of worth (she’s a trooper and she’s got insight). On this day, I was casting out demons. I was thinking about love and death. Throw out the idea of marriage as “forever” and replace it with “until death do us part” (if we’re lucky). Throw out of the idea of marriage as “finding happiness” and replace it with “change and growth” (if we’re lucky). “Forever” isn’t real. “Happiness,” as some permanent state, isn’t real. Christianity at its best is a religion about reality - bloody, dirty, slimy, decaying, hopelessly terrifying reality. Any conception of marriage that doesn’t account for fear and decay is...unsatisfactory, and for whatever good it might do, logically, it can’t equip you for marriage on this planet, in this bodily existence, where we all die and only some of us grow old.
Of course, I’ve never been married, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about. That’s why I’m deferring to the experts. I visited the Michelsons a couple months ago and they asked me if I was dating anyone. I said yes, and Jean asked if we prayed together. I told her no, but just the question persuaded me that we needed to start. If it’s worked for Paul and Jean, then who am I to disagree? Just to participate in the same ritual has been culture-changing and centering for me and Heather (Jean told me that during life in Romania prayer together always gave her and Paul a sense of unified purpose). We aren’t much for extemporaneous prayer, so Heather and I pray out of the Divine Hours and the Book of Common Prayer and other like-texts. In Mexico, during Dia de los Muertos, offerings are made to the dead. For me, to read old prayers, to participate in old rituals, to join in the same rhythms and traditions as those who’ve lived and died is a kind of offering, and it’s grounding. To get the most out of life and love, I think we need to stay connected to death and old things and folkways that exist because they’ve been proven useful, even if they don’t always seem rational. That’s part of establishing a culture (for a marriage or a household), I think. A culture that respects life by respecting the dead, and by seeing your partner as a human being, mortal, with feelings and needs, not a means to an end, or on the planet to “make you happy.” I-Thou rather than I-It.
When I was in my mid-20s, I read the book Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch and I internalized this quote:
When you're oblivious to the ways marriage can operate as a people-growing process, all you see are problems and pathology -- and the challenges of marriage will probably defeat you. Your pain will have no meaning except failure and disappointment; no richness, no soul. Spirituality is an attitude that reveals life's meaning through everyday experience; however, don't bother looking for sanctuary in your marriage. Seeking protection from its pains and pleasures misses its purpose: marriage prepares us to live and love on life's terms.
There’s an old sports adage I tell my chess students: “You can’t figure out how to win until you learn how not to lose.” I don’t know how to do a relationship right, but I sure know how to mess one up. Here’s some bad advice: 1) believe that intimate life with another person is a smooth and happy hiding place away from the terrors of the world, 2) view conflict/argument/disagreement as an unnatural, horrible thing to be avoided at all cost, 3) always be willing to sacrifice your integrity if the alternative is discomfort or growth, 4) and never, ever change your values, beliefs, or behavior or put your partner’s goals on par with your own.
When I was younger, I excelled at these mistakes. Now, at 31, I’ve learned how not to defeat myself so outright and to really enjoy the growth process, even when it’s difficult or irrational. This isn’t a strategy or technique, it’s a personal culture-shift. It involves staying connected, rooted, centered, to something bigger than yourself, to an ideal, to an old tradition, to music, to poetry, to prayer, to the life inside you and your partner. This is the soil. We need this. We need the gifts of the dead, of our ancestors, of those whose bones are buried in the crypts and cemeteries, their prayers, their songs, their rules. I have given up entirely trying to do life on my own. There is nothing I know or have or have done that is not to the credit of some older, prior sinner like myself. If during this blogging season I learn only how to better love the dead (and my elders), I'll consider it time well spent.
The pilgrimage continues. Thanks for reading.
