Alone again, naturally (and some pics of flowers on my balcony)

A Gilbert O'Sullivan song from the 70's croons in the refrain, "Alone again, naturally." The song played over and over on the radio in my coming of age, teen years. It was the same epoch that spotlighted Otis Redding and the suggestion to feel sorry for self in this world of suffering. The "Alone again, naturally" song seemed to acknowledge truth; geez, even though the song itself questions what kinda God we got, the Bible tells us the truth shall set us free. Aloneness appeared as my ticket out of the house of suffering. At college in Kentucky. At sea on the ship. Flying high in the sky. Often gone to far flung places. In Afghanistan. Looking back now at life,  I see how much I have emphasized my life alone, how much my mind refrained to that song. My beautiful friend, Norrie, pointed out when we were married how much I behaved so, in aloneness. She must have been right. Am trying to understand now. Perhaps it came to me as a survival method in my growing up. Perhaps I judged it the most efficient way to get through the day. Perhaps it made sense because I only really had a stab at knowing myself and could not guess, did not want to worry about, what was going on for others. And they need know nothing of me, the innerscape. Perhaps our culture teaches "stand alone...you're all you'll ever have...you are your own." Heck, my senior year high school picture, the opportunity for a graduating teen to have a voice in the noise, I chose the quote from Kahlil Gibran: "Alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun." Having flown across the sun alone, those words echo true, so very true. As if the words we choose have real power. Today, am alone. Or am I?

About a month ago, a female moved in with me. One late Saturday afternoon, the warm day cooling off, I was on my balcony reading my homework with my flowers and a cigar in that red chair you see to the right. I looked up and there she was, working away; her mission was what mattered, not minding me at all. The first voice to shout insistently at me was fear. The silhouette in the waning light appeared as a big butt black widow and the reactionary me wanted to kill that threat before it became a clear and present danger. What if I were reading, not paying attention, and she snuck up on me from above or below and bit me?!? Alone, I'd certainly be safer. But, tending towards the uncertain these days, the wondering voice in me asked. I took a deep breath to ponder, then looked more closely. Her industry, fast, elegant, intentional movement, attracted and gave pause to my male eye. She was building a web that reached from the transverse beam above the balcony down to the flower containers, a stretch of about 6 feet. And the pattern she created with her web as she danced and spun, descended and climbed: concentric, geometric, strong structural simplicity, a gossamer God's Eye, masterpiece of weaving that caused me to gaze in awe as if I were in the Prado, or Museum of Modern Art, or perhaps the Louvre (if ever I make it there). At the same time functional: deadly to the bugs she needed for life, her mission, and which, by the way, I didn't want flitting about me as I enjoyed my balcony. She was not a black widow but a beautiful light lime green with patterned amber spots. We formed a partnership, no words, just presence. 

In the morning before I raced away to school, when I watered my flowers, I was careful not to disturb her vertical threads which she would sometimes re-use. Once or twice I did not see the thread and accidentally ran into it. She must have forgiven me for she came back and recreated a new and amazing masterpiece, evening after evening. Web done, she would station herself patiently at center, master and participant in the weave. But life was not done. She would strike with lightning speed within milliseconds of bug contact, wrap her quarry caringly as if her life, and those she would bear, depended on her every move. Robinson Jeffers writes, "...I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,/ The destruction that brings a [spider] from heaven is better than mercy." (Author's note, "spider" inserted for "eagle" from the original, Fire on the Hills.)

But wait! There's more! The evening moving breeze inspired spider drama as the web gave surface to a three dimensional undulating invisible fluid, air, her holding to center, like a lone sailor in an invisible boat on a wide ocean with big waves. Relative to her size, she moved back and forth wildly in the wind. It looked like fun but then I projected she might feel fear, which made me admire her courage. Do spiders feel fear? Can they have courage? No matter, she inspired me to recite a prayer I learned after divorce that made sense after having been to sea, "God, please help me. My boat is so small and the ocean is so vast." I never knew her name. She no longer appears, as life would have it. Alone again, naturally. Or...?

Beth, Love of my life, went to Paris for September. She far away, I felt alone and ran smack dab into myself. Although in high school I had told myself not to feel jealousy with a woman because if she were to find another guy better for her, c'est la vie, and what I wanted was for her to be happy. (As an aside, I think now that was but one mechanism for me to cling to aloneness.) Back to Beth in Paris, long story short, I experienced pure genuine jealousy. Of course, Beth did not  necessarily give me cause to feel jealous (though we talked about how it  can be interpreted to see an American woman alone in Paris for a month). Voices inside my head yelled the jealousy thing. The collision came about in acknowledging myself as jealous, recognizing it as a human emotion, among the many we can feel and engage as we deal with life. I calmly discussed with those voices why I was feeling jealous. I actually admitted to Beth what I felt. My God, how vulnerable! How weak! How not alone! Does feeling and sharing emotions tie us together with others?

Also during September, during my alone time with Beth in Paris (though skype and FaceTime are a great antidote), I was driving back from school. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the scene before me. Reality shifted. As I drove across the bridge over the mighty Missouri River, two spacious fields on either side opened for a kilometer or so on either side, leading to forests with a variety of trees that showed flaming fall colors: gold waving grass with crimson, green, yellow, light brown, and light green patches below, pixelated leaves above, many still a rich green, some a lighter green in the trees of rust, red, maroon, oranging, even pinks, bright yellow, dull yellow, brown tree trunks reaching from the ground upward and off in the distance the hills lifted all these patterns into rolling multicolored texture under a bright shining crystalline blue sky in golden sunlight. And I felt as if I were in the middle of a masterpiece painting, absolutely stunningly rapturous, alive motion, waving smoothly together in the wind. Some voice inside my heart told me that I was an integral part, that my traveling through belonged in this very alive canvas at this very moment. I think the voice whispered so I could hear that I was vital to that scene, the beauty around me. Some kind of waking up, I yielded to the truth I was experiencing and my heart filled with something that felt like...no, wait, it was: gratitude. Who's there then? Who knows but next time I am want to feel sad sorry for self, will slip thru it quickly to get outside, take a walk in the woods or in the park or in the mountains or around the block, become a grateful part of the scene in which I happen to be. A prayer from Thomas Merton comes to mind, the end of which asserts, "...Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

Beth sent me a song when I was in Kandahar, at the nadir of being alone in recent life.  The refrain of the song: "You're not alone." Over and over again, the Buddhist woman's voice sings in the kirtan, devotional chant, "You're not alone, you're not alone, you're not..." The message did not penetrate my tupid head, first reaction, "How strange. Perhaps that woman is a weirdo." (The singer, not Beth.)

Have spent a lot of my life emphasizing aloneness, exercising the illusion of being separate. From others. From surroundings. From true beauty. To say good bye for now to you this time, my heart turns to the greeting Beth taught me, which these Buddhists from time to time say at the usually no-talking monastery she visits in California. Looking to you in my mind's eye, my hands come together at my heart and I bow, "Gassho," which means, "Your heart and my heart are one." I take it to mean our hearts "are one in the One." Or as Red Green says in his Canadian matter of fact, humorous way, "We're all in this together." Peace and Love in the One, 

Tim

Afghanistan v. British Virgin Islands

Flying eastward a few thousand feet above the open ocean on a small two propellered plane from Puerto Rico to Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands, I sat in the copilot seat and spoke with the pilot, as I am want to do. Much to my surprise and counter to the prejudice I too easily form against pilots, he showed a depth of intelligence and life experience that opened my mind to being back in the United States compared to the penultimate five months in Kabul. First, the pilot, Jeff, explained to my inquiring mind why small puffs of clouds at about 1000 feet above the ocean often appear as lines, arrayed on invisible strings stretched straight to the northwest, a maritime abacus of variety sized white beads on deep blue. He also told me how he ended up in Puerto Rico as Chief Pilot for Fly BVI. Suffice it to say he went with the flow of his life, a delight to talk with him about his family, flying, sailing, and atmospherics of this particular place on Earth.

Another recent delight, my son Brennan provided the opportunity and suggestion to reread Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. Watching Siddhartha's spiral flow severing from father and mother, through youthful asceticism to discovering one's own path away from, at the same time toward, the Buddha, to a hedonistic wine-filled, profit-obsessed, business based existence to the requirement for a type of death to have new life in which Siddhartha discovers he has a son, new dimensions to love, new reasons to live simply, and new ways to cherish friends caused me to reflect on the message of Christ and God's deep, abiding, mysterious love that so often I have missed or renounced. Siddhartha also helped me understand better the title of a book and poem by Robert Bly, an American poet, What Have I Ever Lost by Dying? I think what I am trying to share with you is that letting go with dignity has become an important part of my life lately.

In my very humble opinion, it is time for the US to let go of Afghanistan with dignity. Or it is time for the characteristics of the presence we have in Afghanistan to change dramatically. As you well know, I have an astounding grasp on the obvious so please let me predict we will reduce our military relationship significantly and continue our economic development relationship to the degree that makes relative sense to us. Of course, opinion makers and mongers all have their view of what's wrong and right and in our political hype over the next few months we are sure to hear about a manichean world; God bless their views and voices and the tension of arguments that holds us together as Americans. I will not say we failed in Afghanistan. I will not say we succeeded, either. I will say that Afghanistan has changed and will continue to change. Enough Afghans understand enough about the US and the West that it is unlikely we will be attacked from there for the next 15-20 years. Of course, I could be wrong. We may not be able to see enough desired results of US power exercised in Afghanistan; outcome is uncertain. Get used to it.

Let me say something more about US power: super though it may be, limitless it is not. Each dollar we have spent and each life valiantly provided to the Afghan people sent a message to them that we as a people group care about them, about how we will fight and spend for their right to not be bullied. At the same time, though, the cost takes away from what that value or that life might have done elsewhere. What will be America's return on investment? Let me suggest respectfully that we won't have a reasonable understanding of that for another 10 or maybe 15 years. Security will move into Afghan hands, where it belongs, for only they have the capacity to secure what they value. Their equation for value differs significantly from ours which is why we use such frustrating words as "corruption," "freedom," and the concept of women's rights. We do not have the power to make them see the world as we do. Nor do we want that power. That power belongs to a world I want no part of: tyrannical, despotic, a kind of command and control environment that takes oxygen from the human spirit and puts a boot on the throat of innovation all in the name of that very scary word, "Security." Viz Syria. 

So what can we do? We, as Americans, can buy things so we own them and run them the way we do. That's what Jeff, the pilot, did. He bought the airline Fly BVI after owning a flight training business in Vermont and was able to institute American systems of maintenance, business sense, and customer service into the private airline industry in the Caribbean. Will it be profitable? Will it remain a going concern? Who knows. But he changed things from the way they were, apparently run shoddily with regard to safety, to the way things are now. Flying over the open ocean is a dangerous business. Am not saying that Americans need to go buying the world to secure it. Am saying that security comes from valuing and having the authority to run things accordingly. In Jeff's plane, I experienced security in a very small but important way. As I get older, am learning to live with how small I am, a drop in the ocean of this world. I can't change Afghanistan. All I can do is share a drink with you, hopefully soon. Thank you for your love, your prayers, your thoughts. Without you, my drop is dry. 

By the way, with the blessing, my drop will spend the next year, July thru June, in school at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, trying to figure out more of what that word "Security" means. Anytime you are passing thru Kansas City, please drop me a line and let's get together to acknowledge "Water water everywhere and lots of drops to drink." Happy Father's Day. Peace, love, water, and light, T

Greatness, good, size, changing seasons

A few days ago, spent some time acknowledging the greatness that pervades this place, rugged and vast white mountains against a stark blue sky, sun setting in the west, smoking a cigar and just thinking. Was trying to understand current events here in Afghanistan. Protesters, agitated by what appears to us an unintentional burning of holy Qurans, shout, among other things, "Allahua akhbar!!!," and continue to express themselves with regard to what they believe is a direct assault on God. "Allahu akhbar!!! means, "God is great!!!" Some Afghans (and Pakistanis and Iranians, who for some reason are in Afghanistan)  are using violence and destruction as voice. Over forty people, six Americans, have been killed, many injured. Fast apologies from U. S. officials did not mollify. Two U. S. military officers who are doing what I am doing, working in a ministry, were shot point blank in the back of the head allegedly in required retaliation for the Quran burning. I don't understand it, being from the West, where freedom to do what you will--believe it, live it, burn it-- with what some believe to be the Book of God makes us what we are. Destruction, accidental or even intentional, of symbols on paper in books would not evoke such a response, would not require killing anyone. Unable to apprehend the inscrutable, my mind diverted to the language of "Allahu akhbar," searching for equivalent use of those words in the West; perhaps comparing would offer insight. Southern Germans greet one another with, "Gruss Got," which mostly acknowledges, "Great God." It's what one says in Bavaria when you greet someone or walk into a place or a shop. We have the children's dinner prayer, "God is great, God is good..." Surrounded by these mountains, I see how these people see God is great. In the expansive deserts of Kuwait back in 1994 looking at the quiet night starlit sky I perceived the same thing: sheer greatness. No doubt, Allahu akhbar. But is God good? How would the families of those two officers answer that question at this point? How would families of the Afghan casualties answer? Would they even ask the question?

Have always been a small sized person. At least that is how I grew up. In elementary school, when my sister wanted to provoke me, she would call me, "Small." And I would roll in with violence to "defend myself," as if she needed to learn that she were wrong and should be punished; that I could make her think what I wanted her to think with beatings! (Please forgive me, dear Judy.) Friends in high school, as our culture unwittingly promotes, tried to thicken my skin, prepare me for the onslaughts of the coming adult world, and would tease me about being small. I realize how much I wanted to be big, to be great, like the guys who were taller than me in the neighborhood, at school, on the football field. Size mattered as a kid. I took comfort in the story of King David, the small, ruddy lad who took down the giant Goliath and became king after Saul. To wit: Saul was chosen mostly because he was a head taller than anyone else and the people needed a king; tall people are popular from the gitgo. But what happened to Saul? Saul ends up a blithering idiot. Heck, what happened to David? Geez, one could look at those stories and legitimately wonder, Is God good? David gets chased across the countryside by Saul, the very king he served so loyally. Kingly though David was, with an eye for attractive women, he commits and is convicted of adultery, one of his sons dies as a child, and another son, Absalom, as a young man leads an insurrection against him! Talk about heartbreak: David, favored and chosen by the One True God in the holy book of the West, had his share.

Back to size from heartbreak. What is going on here in Afghanistan is so much bigger than what one person can change. Oh, I should have liked to imagine that I could be so big or great as to walk out the embassy gates, join the crowd with clenched fist, riled jaw, protest the burnings with fiery compassion, and shout, "Allahu akhbar!!!" from the bottom of my soul until a leader of the crowd noticed my white man zeal and then invited me to address the crowd. And I would find the words through a translator and a bullhorn that would promote peace and reconciliation not only between the West and Afghanistan but among the people themselves. And they would all go home to their families and the next day wake up and go to their jobs to build a country from the mud up into the beautiful place that Afghanistan could be. I did not imagine it, was not smoking hallucinogens. Perhaps it was the cigar and the setting sun and the sharpening cold but the mountains sent the very clear message to me about my size; I accepted my relative size in this situation and am even obeying the embassy rule of not going outside the compound for the past two weeks. Small truth is: no one person in this world has the power to affect this situation. Even our ambassador, Ryan Crocker, who did great things in Iraq, and by the way is a small man (I'm taller than he is!), could not do what I just outlined above. Larger truth: no one nation can change this place. Even larger truth: even our coalition of nations may not change Afghanistan to the degree that we in the West will be able to appreciate. Could be very heartbreaking for all the lives we have lost and treasure we have spent. 

In a separate but related event, am reading Gone with the Wind, an especially appropriate book for this place for the art in the book expresses an idyllic world changed through war and time. Reading the book makes me think that culture, along with all of its required ingredients--common language, foods, ethics, etc.-- also includes common and accepted distortions of reality that people mutually support to keep what they got, whether its things or belief systems. That is, truth becomes secondary to stories they tell themselves. A specific example from the old South: chattel slavery is a fine way to live for the slaves. A specific example from here and now from the Ulema council in Afghanistan, endorsed by President Karzai: "women are secondary." Time marches on, seasons change, and I see Afghanistan in a civil war with those of us in our world. Inexorable conflict as people meet people, old ways give way, and ambient temperatures change. What will happen here? Again, an open question. But to ask offers hope.

For the first day since the killings, I go back to the Ministry of Finance tomorrow. To what true and lasting effect, I do not know. All I know is I work alongside Afghan counterparts; they have affected me with their humanness, their work for change, their sense of humor, their hope for the future, their goodness. Is God good? I know where I come down on that question, whatever happens. But the question bears authentic asking. I request your prayers again, now more than ever, for the final stretch. Love, Tim

Here is a picture of Tammy, my coworker, just before we got into a car and headed toward the Ministry of Finance. 

Snow, boundaries, and that curious beast, the American

Snow today again in Kabul. Absolutely beautiful, big, floating flakes quiet the air and cover the ground. My mind remembers Brennan's first remark about snow as we looked out our small apartment second floor window in 1992 Medford, Mass: "White covers the whole world, Daddy." So it did, that 4 year old's world. And so it does here now, this 50 year old man's world. The white accumulates on everything able to collect flakes and turns this warzone into a menagerie, magical city, hushed. The menacing concertina wire that spirals atop gray slabs of tall concrete catches flakes and becomes a softened horizontal helix; the sharp barbs disappear in whiteness and reach into the distance in fascinating shapes, stitching together with white thread walls between embassies, ministries, houses. Indeed, one beautiful facet of snow: eliminates the lines we draw between ourselves, between grass, concrete, dirt, rocks, between property. Looking down, all white, grace covers all. People here respond to the snow falling. The playfulness of Afghans emerges and spontaneous snowball fights erupt; great snow for snowballs, light, dry but packable. Snow brings about authentic community compassion. Bundled and roving security guards carrying AK-47 or SAW automatic weapons smile in the mysterious warmth that surrounds soft falling snow; even these guards seem to realize, whether you are Afghan, American, Tibetan, Indian, Canadian, Brit, French, Italian, Macedonian, Spanish, we are all in this together. 

Which we are. Except news reports assert this as the coldest winter in Kabul in 15 years. Those same news reports present tragedy and isolation. Apparently, twenty two children in internally displaced refugee camps throughout Kabul have died as a result of the cold. And the media is fast to point out how absurd it is for us to be spending billions of dollars over the past years but here in the Kabul, right under our noses, vulnerable children are freezing to death! Of course, as soon as some Western readers became aware, they responded, which is our way. Blankets and food and firewood were quickly delivered by Western aid; response to what we are aware of. (There is so much, though, here that we are not aware of.) John Donne writes, "Do not ask for whom the bell tolls..." One of Donne's points was that when one person dies, the whole corporate body of the community loses. Another point of that fantastic Meditation XVII was that the bell tolling, the death of one person, evokes mindfulness of one's own mortality. And a sober person begins to experience the vastness of uncertainty that surrounds, how much could go wrong, the ocean of threats that swim about our ordered island lives; and in John Donne's world, a sober person would turn to God, our only security. Parents, even in our Western lives, quickly learn how fragile health is when their child gets sick for the first time and runs a fever of 102, climbing; my God, I felt so powerless when that happened to Brennan! Some parents learn the practicality of praying, with all the things that threaten kids these days; prayer is often all we can do. I imagine the parents of those children were praying. The snow and compassion grieves me for those parents.

Something an American said in the newspapers about the death of those children struck me as indicative. A mother and obstetrician from Cambridge, MA wrote the NY Times: "when you described the children dying of cold, it drove me crazy...I have fantasies when I'm on the treadmill of flying large passenger aircraft to those places and loading up all the moms and dads and children and flying them back to live in Florida or California." Now, am a student of language and these words here shine a light of insight about the American approach to Afghanistan. First, the heartbreak. The urge to take action. The imagination snatching for solutions. All of those good intentions are there. So is the naivete, the misunderstanding of this place, that this world differs from hers so very much as she ambles on a treadmill indoors. And let me suggest there is selfishness in that as well. If I listen to the words one way, the woman seems to want the suffering of these people to stop more for herself than she wants to understand their situation to genuinely help them. Taking Afghans, (especially Pashtun, which these people are, from Helmand) moms and dads and children and flying them to Florida or California would be the worst act for it would rip them out of their social fabric here, their community, their group and plunk them down in the middle of... fish outta water doesn't begin to describe the mouth agape, or the myorcardial infarction, these people would have if they landed on Venice Beach or South Beach. So, God bless that doctor for her big heart and her clear articulation that points to how little our Western world understands this Eastern world. Kipling wrote, "East is east. And West is west. And never the twain shall meet." We have met. We're still trying to figure it out. Let me get back to you in a few years.

Like Colorado, the sun will come out tomorrow morning. Morning, shining sun will light the clear cobalt sky and blinding whiteness all around, no boundaries for a while, just white. And the snow will crunch under my feet as I walk to the motor pool, breath puffing condensed moisture punctuating my step, smile at the Gurka guard, "Nah mah STAY," (I salute the light that emanates from within you.) And he will smile back and say, "Nah mah STAY, sir." And I will push open the door to the Motor Pool Dispatch Office and say, "Salaam alaykum, Sobik khay air." (Peace be upon you, good morning.) And the dispatcher will kindly greet me and recognize me as the guy who goes to the Ministry of Finance and then yell loudly for my driver, "Kakoo!!!" or "Suleiman!!!" or "Naseeb!!!" And we will get in the up armored Toyota SUV and drive through the streets of coming-to-life-through-the-white Kabul. A giant shark fin mountain swims to the southeast of this city, its menace softened in smooth white against a beautiful blue sky. And I will climb the cold marble stairs up three floors to take my place in the workaday world here. Much like any other gubment job in any other place. Except it's Kabul.

Love to you, T