There is a grapefruit tree in my front yard that isn’t the picture of a grapefruit tree, at least not anymore. It has been old and sick-looking for all of the 27 years we have been here, and perhaps for many decades before. Its shrunken trunk is pitted and scarred. The bark, mostly gone. The limbs are mostly gone too, topped off years before we got here, someone’s last resort to keep it alive. It is quite a shambles and yet right now there are dozens and dozens of ripening grapefruits dangling from its thin and brittle branches.

I can see the tree from several vantage points inside the house, places where I’m usually lost in dystopic visions of future life on this earth, crazed in rage and terror at this country’s current self-destruction. But when I catch a glimpse of the grapefruit tree I invariably stop moping and think, “Good grief, how in the world is that thing still alive?”

It’s a good question, especially nowadays. What keeps life alive? What good remains when evil rampages? Where are love, faith, hope, and charity when all seems lost to mankind’s insatiable greed, hatred, and ignorance?

I don’t eat the grapefruits, so I’m not part of the equation here. But my husband loves them. Indeed, he prizes, nurtures, and even babies them. I think what he likes most is that he can step outside in the morning, still in his bathrobe and slippers, and pick breakfast right off the tree. Actually, he doesn’t even have to pick it, because grapefruits want so desperately to be useful that they plop right into your hands with hardly a tug. They just want to help. Even unappreciated, they are born to serve.

The whole world is like that, meaning the whole natural world. Interconnected and interdependent. All forms of life sustaining the others. My husband and the grapefruit tree have a relationship, you see. They communicate. They take care of one another, like when he puts the hose at her feet on a slow drip and then forgets about it for a day or two, the thirsty tree luxuriating in the long deep soak that only she knew she needed. Or when he bags the fruit that falls in heavy wind and stores it so it doesn’t go to waste. Picking the fruit actually serves the tree, preserving its energy so it can live longer and produce another harvest. The natural world proves over and over that beings exist to sustain one another, feed one another, appreciate one another and love one another. All part of keeping life alive.

Trees know this. Plants know this. Animals know this. Bugs and bees and birds know this. Few human beings do. They believe the opposite. They conquer, they steal, they kill, they ruin. The truth is lost on them. And when the truth is lost, everything is lost.

The facts remain: we are in this life together with all beings throughout space and time. We are sustained and supported. We are served and saved.

Sometimes it looks like an old, sick, sad grapefruit tree. But it’s not. It’s your universe, straining against all odds to give you life so that you can do the same. Care for the world you’ve been given. Care when it’s sick and rotten; care when it seems beyond all care. Care more than you’ve ever cared before. All of life depends on you and what you do when you wake up.

Silently a flower blooms
In silence, it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment,
at this place
the whole of the flower, the whole
of the world is blooming.
— Zenkei Shibayama

Photo by Edgar Louis on Unsplash

I had just turned 17 when my older sister and I went to see a movie that had taken the public by storm.  It was called “The Exorcist,” and it was based on a bestselling book by the same name. Since at least half of the world’s current population wasn’t born by 1974, you might not know it well, so I’ve quoted some lines from the  movie to help you follow along.

In the story, the devil takes over the mind and body of a young girl and two priests attempt to exorcise it. Once possessed, the innocent girl’s face contorts into a bloated mask, emitting an inhuman voice that growls with rage and loathing. Defying the priests’ invocations, the demon spews streams of bile and stench and spins its fattened head in a bone-cracking twist. It conjures a swirling wind that carries the shriek of snarling animals and the drone of locusts. The force shatters ceilings, windows and walls. Through it all, the grotesque beast sits in the girl’s bed, perched like a prince amid the pain and destruction he has wrought.

It was the scariest movie ever made.

My sister and I were so terrified after seeing it that we slept together that night. She remembers taking a Bible to bed. For a long time after, I could not sleep with my closet doors open, because the demon was inside. It wasn’t my imagination. I could see him.

These days I’m seeing him again.

“The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological and powerful. So don’t listen to him. Remember that—do not listen.”

Unfortunately, one priest died of a cardiac arrest and the other one listened and lost faith, so although the girl was released from her possession, the demon returned in no fewer than six sequels. I didn’t go to see any of those. I thought I’d seen and heard enough horror to last a lifetime.

When I started practicing Zen, I was pretty convinced that I’d left all that devil business behind me. But we can’t leave our demons. They are inside us, like the shadows inside our closet. The story of Buddha’s enlightenment is nothing other than an encounter with the voices in his head spewing ego’s insatiable desires: greed, vanity, and gluttony, anger and hate, lust for riches and power, the fear and colossal stupidity of our delusional self. We have to conquer our own demons, over and over, or they possess us. We cannot, absolutely cannot, believe what they say.

“The victim’s belief in possession helped cause it. And just in the same way, this belief in the power of exorcism can make it disappear.”

A demon possesses, manipulates, and controls those who believe in him. Perhaps they believe he is a savior, a strong man, and a victor. Perhaps they believe that he is god’s messenger or the one true king. Perhaps they believe that they will be among the great and glorified, enriched and sanctified, even as he corrupts their minds, consumes their bodies, and befouls their beds. But a demon has no power to create anything other than damnation. What then is the point?

I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as . . . animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility that God could love us.

And that we could love one another.

I don’t know the ending to this story. I only know it’s up to us. Time is short and the road is long, but please don’t lose faith.

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If your faith is wavering, here is a gift link to Ezra Klein’s recent essay in the New York Times: “Don’t Believe Him”

Photo by Zanyar Ibrahim on Unsplash

A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. — Luke 6:44-46

The other day I was working the New York Times crossword when one of the clues was, “First book after the four gospels.” Straightaway I knew the answer. Maybe everybody knows it, but it reminded me how valuable my religious training might have been.

And perhaps, how valuable it still is.

When I was growing up I was a good Lutheran girl who went to Sunday School and church every week, Vacation Bible School every summer, confirmation class for a year, and youth group once a week. You get the picture. It was my mother’s church, and my sisters and I attended with her. It was a wonderful thing to be in the company of our mother when she lifted her voice in communal song and prayer. These were her happiest days.

Our church was on an empty lot on the undeveloped edge of a Dallas suburb, a fledgling missionary church that met in a prefabricated building about the size of a double-wide trailer. We were already outcasts, old-fashioned Christian kin amid a spirited sea of Southern Baptists, the likes of which would eventually transform into a raging evangelical tide.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. —1 John 4:7

I learned the Lutheran liturgy by rote: the confession, the absolution, the creeds. But not a bit of it penetrated my heart until I heard the parting words from the pastor at the end of the service. He would stand on the altar, facing us, and raise his arms wide enough to include all of us, everyone, everywhere, saying the most comforting words I had ever heard in my life then or now—the truth that we are never apart, that we are loved beyond measure, and that we are held safe and blessed by grace.

May the Lord bless you and keep you,
May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you,
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

I’ve never forgotten these words and why would I want to? When my hope dims, the benediction resounds. And now, illuminated by my Buddhist practice, I see it not as the invocation of a distant god, but as an expression of a mysterious and universal truth—that your miraculous life is a blessing and a haven, an ever-bright jewel darkened only by the evil pouring out from lesser-human hearts. Yes, those lesser men who would claim to be so great.

The god of my youth is hardly invoked these days, hardly seen or known. I am sorry for that. I am sorry for the depravity, betrayal, and deceit that has beset us in his name. So let me share the promise of goodness and mercy that have followed me all the days of my life.

May the Lord bless you and keep you,
May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you,
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Photo by Uta Scholl on Unsplash

A few years ago we were taking a road trip home from Colorado when I noticed we were driving through Navaho Nation. They have road markers, you see, just like any other city or state or country. After awhile I noticed that we were still driving through Navaho Nation. A hundred miles farther, still Navaho Nation. When the scope of it hit me, I said “Wow, it really was a nation.”

It really was a nation of distant horizons and majestic mountains and eternal skies that we stole from them. You see something like that and it hits you: the greed, the treachery, the killing, the guilt. How could anyone do that with eyes open? Oh, I know how we do that with eyes open. We do that every day. Ignore the past and destroy the future so we can have what we want today.

One night last week a friend called just before dinnertime and said we should pack our bags and get out. I was skeptical. How can you not be skeptical when it sounds so impractical and unlikely. Even silly, and you don’t want to be silly. Yeah, I know, warnings and sirens and wake-up calls and all that. I sat there paralyzed by the broad daylight and the cloudless sky, and then I got out a backpack, tucked in some underwear, toothbrush, overnight stuff, and oh yeah, don’t forget the important papers box. I didn’t think to pack an extra pair of socks.

Within 15 minutes the evacuation warning came for us, and then after another 15 minutes the mandatory order, and by then we were racing down dark roads with no streetlights, dodging whole trees tossed across streets, looking for any place with a light on, a door open, safe shelter. We drove a long way without looking in the rear-view mirror.

I don’t have to tell you what had already happened in those first 30 minutes. I can’t tell you how many friends, how many homes, how many families, how many yesterdays and tomorrows would disappear before the next dawn, and the one after, and the one after. It’s inconceivable, incomprehensible, unknowable. Even if you drive street after street and mile after mile you still can’t grasp it: entire worlds and generations to come, displaced.

We are lucky. Such a strange word. It’s not as though we got something, or even kept something. We are lucky that we have something remaining to care for, and that we still have so many people to care for and who care for us. The wonder of this madness is how many people reached into themselves to care about godless California and reached out to me to say they cared. If that isn’t miracle enough, there are no miracles.

We are home now.

Our little town was full of brave soldiers, regular folks whose job was to work all day and night for a week inventing ways to keep people from harm. They were helped by firefighters from all over the country and world. I got regular updates from my city telling us to stay away for a bit longer, yes sorry, a few days longer. The winds might whip up. The fire might reignite. There were “hotspots” on the mountain, smoldering embers or deep buried heat, that had to be eliminated.

Not to worry, one message said, the hotspots in the canyon right behind our house were being dug up and put out by firefighters from Navaho Nation. Yes, that one-and-the-same Navaho Nation. It really does go on forever.

Just telling you that makes me cry.

You can forget a lifetime of socks and it won’t matter.

It’s the people. People who lift us up and get us through. Thank you for reaching out beyond yourselves, even if it’s just to care. We can’t let ourselves be turned into the kind of people who don’t care. There are no homes there; there is no nation.

Photo by Steven.T on Unsplash

Having entered this world, now exit it completely. This house is not a place for staying long. — Rinzai

It is a time of transitions. It is that time for all of us, all of the time. Time to let go of what we have held onto. Sometimes the things we hold onto are ideas — hopes, dreams, and expectations for ourselves and others. Sometimes they are the things and people we love. And sometimes what we cling to are beliefs about ourselves: who and what we are. These are hard things to let go of. We don’t want to see the reality of change and the truth of impermanence.

But sooner or later we’re going to come up against this thing that most of us are avoiding or denying: the great matter of death. The intimate experience of impermanence. The Dalai Lama calls awareness of death the very bedrock of the path.

This is a timely issue for me and many of you. My teacher has just died. For some of you, your parents are sick or dying. Your cherished pets have died. Or perhaps we ourselves are increasingly aware of how much shorter our own horizon is. I know I am. In a way, it seems to happen in an instant. A 60-year instant or a 70-year instant, and overnight, we are old. Of that my daughter is so afraid, so she insists, “Mom, you’re not old! Promise me you will live to be 120!”

But I am not afraid, because I know: this house is not a place for staying long.

My mother died many years ago. She was sick with a disease that had mutilated her body. Her death was not a shock or surprise. It was a clear and merciful blessing. What shocked me was not the finality of her death on that day, it was the presence of my life. Life flowing, life ongoing. It seems like a sacrilege to go to the supermarket on the day your mother dies, but there was no other alternative. There was nothing other than that for me to do.

When someone you know has died, you are instantly returned to your ordinary, everyday life, which may seem quite mundane. But that is in fact your awakening: to take care of what is right in front of you, when it is in front of you. Drinking tea, making dinner. That’s it. To see the life, your life, moving and flowing from one moment to the next, and carrying nothing with it.

I have just given a talk on this topic, “The Dharma of Life and Death.” You can listen to it at this link.

Last week I met with a friend on Zoom. The caller said that she didn’t have anything in particular to talk about, but that she just wanted to keep the connection between us. I applauded her. Connection, you might say, is everything.

But you know as well as I do: these days we’ve got connection all wrong. With phones, email, texting, DMs; meeting apps instead of meetings; patient portals instead of doctor’s offices; social media instead of social, well, anything. With instant online shopping and banking; remote working and remote schooling, and so on, and so on. We can’t even list all the ways we have co-opted and confused real-life human connection. Even a connection on Zoom isn’t a connection, although it’s often the only connection we have.

When my friend and I were talking I remembered a line that someone famous had once said, a screaming, crying, urgent exhortation to remedy modern life: “Only connect!” Was it Buddha? Jesus? Oprah? I looked it up.

It wasn’t so modern. It wasn’t so holy. It was the author E. M. Forster in his 1910 novel Howard’s End.

“Only connect! Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.”

He was writing about relationships, and the social strictures that keep people distanced. That breed fear and loneliness, that stifle communication and kindness. For all our snazzy inventions, for all our lofty intentions, and against our basic need to meet, gather, herd, commingle, and yes, connect, we have only succeeded in driving each other further apart.

But rarely, I get a glimpse. I get a glimpse when I see a delivery person walking up to my door. Up to my door! And the knock. Will I open it, or will I pretend I’m not home? Will I say hello? Will I say thank you?

I get a glimpse when I’m in a room with other people. It may be a big room, or a small one, no bigger than my front porch. It may be a quiet room, or it may be a noisy room. It may be with people I know, but more often with people I don’t. It’s not likely to be people who think like me; more often it’s probably not. There may be talking, there may be singing, there may be silence, there may be stillness, there may be dance. I feel it in a theatre, I feel it in a stadium, I feel it in a grocery line. It’s in a meditation hall or church, in a hospital waiting room, at the post office, and with total strangers in the airport shuttle. It’s on my street. It’s on your street.

It’s the people, the people, the people! And the invisible, unknowable essence that flows between us, that unites us and defines us, not as separate, but as whole. That’s our beauty! That’s our power! That’s the height of our existence, revealed when we only connect.

I’m hopeful. I’m much more hopeful.

Photo by Keith Luke on Unsplash

I visited Washington DC a few weeks ago. It was 100 degrees; the grand boulevards were all but empty. I walked a merciless mile through patches of shade to the National Portrait Gallery. I’d never been. I’m not sure I will go back or that it will still be there if I do. What will become of this place and its people when all is said and done?

These days we hear a lot of racket about our founding fathers and their original intentions. We hear mostly from people who interpret our history and constitution, indeed all our laws, by the notion that they, and they alone, uphold the narrow meaning of the 4,500 words on the four pages of a 240-year-old document, written in secret and signed by 39 white men.

When I entered the gallery, I didn’t know what was inside. For sure, I wanted to see the presidential portraits, especially those prized for their artistry and originality. I wanted to see them with my own eyes, I suppose, to restore my sagging spirits.

You begin by parading past portraits of colonial, revolutionary and early Americans. Sadly, these do not restore your spirits, because these are portraits of the vain and, mostly, vile. Men who might have escaped crimes or debts to amass or inherit a princely purse. Moneyed men who possessed vast reaches of stolen land, once taken by massacre or manipulation, from which profits were extracted by hundreds if not thousands of slaves. There are room after room of them, generations and venerations of them. I’m no constitutional scholar, but the meaning was clear.

When they wrote “we the people,” they could not have meant people like us. They meant only themselves, because only they enjoyed the inalienable rights of personhood.

When they wrote of freedom, they could not have meant us, only that they themselves were free, and that their freedom was not challenged, but endowed at birth.

When they wrote of equality, they meant only that among themselves they were equal in power, place, and participation in this closed society.

They had thrown off the yoke of a king to make themselves kings. The expansion of rights, freedoms, and equality were granted to the rest of us much later on, only to be taken away at whim. It’s no wonder that we’ve been steered here again.

There is a political and philosophical through-line from the first-floor galleries to the far corner of the second floor where the hall of presidents comes to a stop. It ends with another picture of outsized greed and vanity, a slenderizing photograph of Trump veiled in darkness, posing in Churchillian pretense, draped in a blood-red tie.  It is located on the backside of the gloriously colorful portrait of President Obama by Kehinde Wiley. When I stepped around the edge of the display to glimpse Trump’s image, I was afraid to see who might be standing there admiring it.

But the woman I encountered, off to the side, was like me. She was afraid, but not of me. She was proud, but not of him. We said these things to one another in secret, without betraying the other, because we know we are not free, we are not considered equal, and more than any other time in our innocent allegiance, we are not safe in this country.

But we have each other. And we parted knowing that we are not alone.

My husband and I have been trying to muster the wherewithal to update our will and advance healthcare directives. Twenty-odd years ago, we sat down with an attorney friend and in one evening had the whole thing knocked out. That’s probably because we felt like we were still in the middle of life, where time seems suspended. That can happen with a young marriage, a new home, and a small child. The future was far off, and events that would happen there were just a fuzzy abstraction.

Not so now, for obvious reasons. Not so now at all.

Sometime in the last year my Zen teacher, who is a good twenty years older and infinitely wiser than I am, gave me new instructions for my meditation practice. “Keep your gaze focused on the horizon.” For me, this involved lifting my sights higher off the ground than I’d been used to. And at once, my view expanded and the horizon came closer. I likened the change to watching a sunset on the beach: we can’t take our eyes off of it. It’s instantly relaxing, absorbing, and quieting. Don’t we savor a sunset? The delicious array of color as the light scatters. A subtle cooling in the air. The slow encompassing of darkness. The indescribable beauty, the inexplicable magic, the doneness of it all.

That’s how I see my horizon now. As it shortens, it beckons as a raft to ride beyond the rising swell. I am less afraid of what lies over the edge of time. Trust me, I’m not hasty to leave. There is so much to do right now. I can’t hope to change the tragic and horrible course of ignoble human events, today in this country, in this world, borne of the deepest evil, hatred, greed, and insatiable corruption. But I will try. I will show up. I will support. I will give comfort and care. I will hold fast to goodness, kindness, gentleness, charity and love, as we must, bravely. My time is short, or shorter than it was — a comfort of sorts — but there is not a day to waste. There is not a day that doesn’t matter.

Photo by Jorge Fernández Salas on Unsplash