Reverence and Kindreds

I've been reading 'Bird by Bird' in pieces these days, picking it up whenever I feel inspired to listen to Anne Lamott talk.  Now she's someone I'd like to have dinner with.  She's alive and real and honest, and these are my favorite kinds of people.  This shows up in my life...often, my closest friends have not become cookie cutter reflections of me at all.  But if they face life honestly and see it right in front of them and try to do something with it...I love that person. 


When Anne Lamott wrote 'Bird by Bird', she was sought after as a writer, and had been plied with requests for cure all writing tips.  She stayed to the mark though, and didn't let herself get picked up and taken away to a transcendental sort of mindset about her work.  I like that about her too.  Sorry to say it, since I've never met the guy, but I did not get that impression of Ben Franklin when I read his autobiography in college, and it's been difficult to talk about him in a very animated way with students ever since. 




Ben Franklin shows up numerous times in the first chapters of my textbook.  But I hate the pretension.  Maybe if I lived in his own times I'd have for grace for the man.  (Maybe not.)


In 'Bird by Bird', there is a chapter called 'Looking Around' and I read it this morning and loved it again.  It describes how I like to see the day, and the people in it, and all of the little tasks that make up a life.  I'm adding 4 sections of it here for your enjoyment too.  Prepare to be refreshed and amazed by Anne Lamott.


  
"The writer is the person who is standing apart, like the cheese in the 'Farmer and the Dell' standing there alone but deciding to take a few notes.  You're outside but you can see things up close through your binoculars. Your job is to present clearly your view point, your line of vision.  Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense.   Then you can recognize this in others.  It's simple in concept, but not that easy to do."


"My Uncle Ben wrote me a letter twenty years ago in which he said, 'Sometimes you run into someone, regardless of age or sex, whom you know absolutely to be an independently operating part of the Whole that goes on all of the time inside yourself, and the eye-motes go 'click' and you hear the tribal tones of voice resonate, and there it is - you recognize them." 


"I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing?"


"Let's think of reverence as awe, of presence in and openness to the world.  The alternative is that we stultify, we shut down.  Think of those times when you've read prose or poetry that is presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, by a glimpse into some one's soul. All of a sudden everything seems to fit together or at least have some meaning for a moment.  This is our goal as writers, I think - to help others have this sense of - please forgive me - wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds.   When this happens, everything feels more spacious."     

'There is ecstasy in paying attention.  You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in all of creation."  


So. 

I've had moments when the shutter clicks and I see a new person in front of me and really feel that I know them.  I think we all have.  It's such a nice feeling and it does make life feel spacious and startling.  I remember having this feeling distinctly in the awkwardness of my student teaching experience.  I was teaching high school Civics with a bunch of really tall coaches in the History Department.  I think they had no idea how to relate to me.  And I had pneumonia, so I think I looked more pathetic than I even remembered. 


One day, a substitute teacher came in and when I ate lunch with her we talked about books and music and how you see students, writing things, where we've gone in the world....really, all of my favorite topics.  The shutter went click and I was, as Anne Lamott says, startled by the insight and the beauty. 


I had this experience with Ordell when we became friends.  Unlikely friends, really, but it meant that in my adult life I could go back to having tea parties and get to know this person who was 60  years ahead of me in life perspective. 


I think the shutter went click when I met my first grade teacher too.  It sounds so dramatic, even now, but on the last day of 1st grade, I came home and sobbed on my bed because I had a feeling I would never have a teacher as wonderful as her.  I couldn't, so said my 6 year old self.  

I had high hopes in kindergarten to be a teacher, but in 1st grade this was a cemented, forever kind of an idea.  And, advice from her about teaching came later when I graduated.   It was so simple...it was about patience, and remembering to smile.  But in the most intense moments, this is the advice that comes back first.  Sometimes all people really need is 2 extra seconds to THINK and someone to smile at them and the world is ok again.


So yes, I agree with Anne Lamott about looking around.  There's awe and beauty and space in front of us.  This week, even among details, I will choose to see it. 

I hope you see it too.