walking into mystery

To hear Brandi Read this week’s essay, click here: https://youtu.be/pYwpN7IukLE

Walking deep in the woods earlier this week, a rushing sound overwhelmed my senses. Looking up at the tree cover, I paused and searched for the source. The leaves above me were still, confusing my senses as the rush of sound increased. Was wind moving leaves in another part of the woods? Was it raining high above my protected head? Was a plane nearby? I looked up. I looked around. I did not find the answer, but the mystery made me present. I lost myself in that moment.

Mystery is marvelous.

Frederick Law Olmsted was a landscape architect and designer of public spaces. The impact of his thinking on how a park can transform an urban environment is all around us, whether we know to thank him or not. A lasting monument to his genius sits in the middle of the largest metro area in the United States: New York’ Central Park. Designed with Calvert Vaux, the park was first opened in 1858.

Olmsted believed immersion in the natural world restores us. He understood, even in the urban stress of the nineteenth century, that crowded efficiency cannot sustain the human spirit. He was convinced that the state had a duty to create communal, natural spaces that literally interrupted the rushed patterns of the city’s residents. How much more do we need his wise intervention in our twenty-first century?

We are not sustained through accomplishment and business alone. Concrete achieves, but nature grounds us, awakening our senses in baffling but restoring ways. We need the pause that a natural landscape provides. For those who seek solace in the Bible, you’ll find this truth uttered pretty regularly by God and God’s prophets as well. There is mystery in making meaning of life. Purpose, intention and accomplishment matter. Working, creating and improving matter. However, so do wondering and stillness. In the design thinking of God and Olmsted, restful meandering restores dignity as well. Dessert solitude prepares us for excellent communal living. Quiet time in a garden provides strength for a difficult task ahead. Parks remind us to trust this mystery: Slow, present rest equips us for good work.

Olmsted designed mystery into his parks. Like most landscape architects, he was an artist. He knew that while many of us crave order, what we need is to be overwhelmed, even lost. To be reoriented through disorientation. Olmsted would have rolled his eyes at the beauty of Disney-esque, ultra-ordered and symmetrical landscapes. Instead, he wanted the average New Yorker to feel disoriented but curious in every inch of the park. He wanted meandering pathways, rolling hills where the way forward was obscured, sightlines so crowded with trees and boulders that a person couldn’t see the building from which they exited. Olmsted centered mystery in the heart of his design. We can work to find comfort in the not knowing that surrounds us. Allow this truth to seep into the way you interact with others. Conversations are much more fun if you don’t try to predict where they will go. Instead of saying all the things you know, try listening to what you don’t know.

Remind yourself that mystery can disorient us in deeply restorative ways, and then let that fuel you as you walk into the woods or discuss society with another person.

 Olmsted believed that public parks create community. Now, as then, we follow patterns that segregate us by race, class, and mobility. Public parks can be one of the few points of intersection in our shared Venn Diagram. Olmsted used the language of aristocrat and commoner, and the terms still convey the meaning he intended. In a park, poor kids and rich kids take turns on the monkey bars. Wealthy folks and struggling folks throw out a blanket and enjoy a picnic. Country Club moms and working-two-jobs moms walk or run, venting to a friend. Public parks bring people together. Moreover, interacting in a park helps us appreciate others without having to figure them out. We stumble in to trusting others, satisfied with what we see without having to explain the mystery of what we don’t.

Embracing mystery in a public park reminds us we belong to a big community that helps provide for us whether we intentionally vet and include each person or not.

So many of us have worked to eliminate mystery from our lives. We get notifications the moment someone asks a question of us. Our lives are controlled by Siri giving us directions, or Alexa telling us when to start the meeting. We are tracked by our computers, and thank Google for completing our sentences. We block people who source news differently than we do, choosing to buzz comfortably in our own hives.

The mysterious rushing noise I heard in the woods this week reminded me of the wisdom of a man who died before our current way of being in the world could even be imagined. His wisdom holds (as it reflects the wisdom of God). Allow yourself to be interrupted by mystery. Leave the sidewalk and wander into grass. Take your earbuds out and hear what you hear. Look up from your phone and see what you see. Look around at the mysterious creatures surrounding you and appreciate them before you categorize them as worthwhile or worthless. Notice the moments in your life when the path forward is unclear, and enjoy the mystery of not knowing what will come next. Appreciate the fact that you are surrounded by unfamiliar spaces and faces. Walk into your own journey without the burden of needing to predict every step. Embrace the wisdom of Olmsted. Allow the mystery of the rushing wind to stop you in your tracks.

 I did not discover the source of the rushing noise that day in the woods. I didn’t have to. Instead, I appreciated the moment that took me out of head, while grounding me in my body. We don’t have to understand a thing to appreciate it. Sometimes it is enough to know that a given space offers Holy Ground. That a given moment becomes eternally present with the source of life. When we can’t see beyond the next curve, and we don’t fully understand the person before us, let’s accept the invitation into restoring mystery. Look up, listen attentively, lean in.

on grit, and tripping

This week, a repost (with a few mild changes), from last spring. For all of us in our wildly different contexts, it is helpful to remember that every good path presents some trips and falls.

Good stories struggle. They have moments when it is not clear that the good guys will win, or even survive. They have heroines who compromise or take a stand in the service of a long-term goal. They have heroes who persevere against all odds, getting dirty in the process. Most of us want to be part of our own good story. Why is it then that we often lose perspective when our journey becomes imperiled? We tend to throw up our hands, assume the end has come, and walk away. 

We Americans like to think we are models of courage and hard work, but hiding within this narrative are cynics who give up at the first sign of discouragement.  Even though we know struggle is part of all progress—often the most valuable part—we are shocked and consider quitting when we come upon unexpected struggle. It is not unreasonable to argue that many lack the grit required to stay the course when things seem impossible. This is why so many schools and consultants overuse the word so often. “Grit” is the hipster version of determination. It is the ability to stay at it even when the odds feel stacked against you. 

This idea is problematic though, because encountering difficulty is not the same thing as the odds being stacked against you. Difficulty is part of life. Trials come. Life rarely moves in a linear path of ascension. Only a collective and sustained cognitive dissonance allows us to live amidst the sadness and decay of others while expecting sunshine and roses for ourselves. Part of the reason we struggle when we encounter difficulty is that it often catches us off guard. We observe others, thinking, “I am so inspired by the way she struggled through that trial, learning and growing in the process to become an even better version of herself.” When we face a struggle, however, our response often involves foul language, throwing things, and giving up because it is too hard. If we learn to pay attention to the stories of those around us, we might nurture our ability to anticipate and live through our own roadblocks. In addition to grit, we need to develop a greater capacity to contextualize our hopes and dreams with the stories of others.

Understanding that set backs accompany progress has a collective impact beyond the obvious personal benefit. As a society, we need to develop stamina for staying the course even when it is hard. The city of Nashville seems committed to rolling out the red carpet to every industry, developer or entrepreneur looking for a place to land. This is mostly wonderful; however, it is hard to become the “IT CITY” without displacing many of the residents of the previously “ignored city.” Gentrification is hard. Affordable housing is complicated. This doesn’t mean we stop trying to find a way forward though! Nashville is off the growth chart, and we need the grit as a society to create health in all our new dimensions. We need to contextualize the positive aspects of our growth with housing inequities and displacement, and then find the grit to keep creatively addressing our affordable housing deficit. The presence of frustration means neither that progress is impossible nor that we are powerless to correct course. 

 Immigration is complicated. According to some, we have an employment and crime crisis in America because of it. According to others, we have inefficient court systems, mistrust between police and immigrant communities and poor oversight of employers’ hiring practices. Because immigration in complicated, and we as a society typically lack the capacity to sustain effort in the face of difficulty, I am concerned we will continue to demonize asylum seekers, traumatize their children, reduce Americaness to whiteness, and then walk away away in defeat, fear and isolation. In this moment we need leaders who understand that terrible mistakes are part of any success. We must listen to voices who understand that America often finds itself in unfamiliar territory with no clear solution, and then we find the grit to stay the course and keep working together.

Last summer my family and I went hiking in western North Carolina, and it was magical to watch my kids go from grumbling-whiners-forced-out-of-their-technology-caves into honest-to-God-frolickers. They frolicked. Ran and skipped and played and laughed. They handled the ups and downs with ease, jumping from rock to rock across rivers, crossing every root, stumbles and all. Then we approached the final ascent to the waterfall. It was muddy and slick, dangerous even. Quite steep. When we got to the top, the trail became a four-inch thick sloppy mud fest. Our shoes sank, our steps slid, and we nearly missed the majesty of the waterfall because we were covered in mud. Most of us overlooked the mess to enjoy the beauty, but our tween immediately started demanding I replace his nice shoes.  He said it was all my fault for taking him on this dumb hike. Grit gone.

Where did all the frolickers go? The beautiful truth is that you can’t get to the waterfall without going through the mud! The presence of hard and wonderful things are not mutually exclusive. We need to expect the setback in the midst of forward progress, for it will always come.

Many of us long for an encounter with beauty. We desire meaningful success. We strive to find peace. But we often think we can get there without getting muddy, without losing our footing along the way. The presence of the hard does not eliminate the possibility of the good. Keep living in the present, taking each step, breathing in and out, and remember that every hard moment is just that, a moment.  It is not your entire story. If you want to live a “good story” kind of life, develop a capacity for living through hard things. It is wildly unlikely that you will find the depth of life’s beauty without encountering pain in the process. Stop turning back, and learn to navigate the mud before the waterfall.

on paths of least resistance (and destruction)

On a recent hike through Montgomery Bell State Park, I was struck by the way the trail was carefully created to offer challenge followed by beauty. I have done this particular hike several times, once getting so lost that I thought I might become an unofficial and very smelly backcountry groundskeeper. Remembering that disorientation, I was keenly aware of my surroundings, and paid attention in a way that I normally don’t.

 Nashville had record-breaking rainfall this winter and spring. Although the Appalachian Mountains on Tennessee’s eastern border are famously home to generations of Scotsmen, middle Tennessee recently mirrored Scotland with months of gray rainy days. Walking though the woods, the evidence of the rain was everywhere. Soggy ground sprang under each step, and rivers’ voices were louder than normal as the water rushed past. Tracks of mud were evident as rivulets large and small formed during the most ardent downpours.

 Montgomery Bell’s trails are well cared for and defined, but now, because of the rain, there were huge gashes of mud and mulch that crossed the curated paths, at times making it difficult to find the way forward. Heavy rains gorged the earth, scarring thoughtfully laid paths with newly formed trenches that led nowhere. Walking along, it was easy to follow the path of least resistance, to go along with the rain until I realized that once again I had lost my way and wondered off the path and into a ditch.

 In my fifth decade, I am often struck by how difficult survival can be. Carefully choosing my steps, searching for the trail’s progress, I considered the many ways we move through life. The act of forward movement can feel impossible sometimes, especially when the best path is unclear. Particularly challenging is the choice to resist the instinct to function out of our most entrenched places. Sometimes it is hard to even recognize when a choice will take us into a ditch or elevate us to higher ground. Like pouring rain that falls, carving deep ravines across a more thoughtfully laid trail, our worst instincts tempt us to leave the best route and instead follow a path leading to our own destruction.

Consider the way we engage with difference. We know by now that we cannot talk with people who come from different walks of life without first recognizing our own bias, remembering that our experiences shape us in meaningful ways, that these experiences are incredibly different, and that in order to walk toward others we should expect to hear new ideas and different perspectives. When we enter into these conversations, it is rather easy to wonder off the curated path, stepping unknowingly onto the rugged path cut through the earth from the many downpours that came before. We say we want to learn something new, but then we hear a different experience, we react badly, and we end up in a ditch, often without even realizing we stepped away from the path created for our own good.

 We feel skeptical when another’s experience seems to challenge our understanding of how the world works, and we step into the ditch.

We feel attacked by the hard reality someone else lives, and we step into the ditch.

We feel exhausted by the effort it takes to keep moving forward in awkward conversations, and we step into the ditch.

We feel defensive when we hear the unfamiliar perspective of another, and we step into the ditch.

We feel confused and alienated when we perceive that “normal” for others is wildly unfamiliar for us, and we step into the ditch.

Like accumulating water, gathering into franticly formed streams, we look for the path of least resistance. As spontaneously formed rivers cut a new path that leads nowhere, the meaningful path becomes harder to discern, until one day it is hard to see at all. Our interactions are like that. The more we follow our instincts, defensive and touchy, easily offended and looking for a way to escape the discomfort that comes with reaching across lines of difference, the more we find ourselves on the unstable ground of recently moved earth. We look up to see we are in a ravine—with like minded others—trapped in a dead end and far from a path made for many feet.

When we follow our worst instincts, we lose our bearings, and eventually, our hope, finding ourselves in a muddy ditch rather than on a path toward a clearing where we can share ideas and form a society with room for all. However, when we keep our footing and avoid the destructive streams rushing by, we quickly recognize that engaging with others who experience the world differently inspires our own curiosity, increasing our capacity for mystery, humility and wonder. It becomes obvious that the carefully laid path is the one that leads to wonder, to curiosity, to walking with another person who stands in their own shoes and interacts with the world differently than you do.

Walking on the shared path is difficult, and requires a deep focus on context, on orienting ourselves to our surroundings. It requires us to step over small currents that can sweep us away, to maintain our bearings, to choose our steps—and words—wisely. It requires skill that can be honed and strengthened. We can get better at this! It begins with a commitment to notice the rivulets, to observe how they end, and to choose instead to keep walking on the path toward a clearing.

How easily we stumble onto the path of least resistance, haphazardly created by a downpour.  The rains will keep coming, and the way forward will continue to be obscured by destructive habits. A better way is to slowly walk the trail meant to take us through challenging terrain with others, but ultimately, toward beauty.