"Quiet, please. Monks the word."

"Quiet, please. Monks the word."

I just returned from a weekend of silence among the Trappist monks at the monastery of Abbey at Gesthemani in Trappist, Kentucky. It was an item on my ‘bucket list.’ The unfamiliar path that opened before me, as Robert Frost so aptly stated, has made all the difference. It began even before I arrived, having found the card Lynn had hidden with the following:


“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” Isaiah 42:16

It felt intrusive injecting myself into the personal silence and stories of those who walked these holy grounds before me. Still, I leaned into the anticipation of whispers I might discern through reading, reflection and prayer; the melodies of the solitary. I offer two quotes, some images of my walk in solitude and my heartfelt wish for you to take the time…to find the time…to visit the silence…to surrender into its arms.

"Have you ever tried to spend a whole hour doing nothing but listening to the voice that dwells deep in your heart? When there is no radio to listen to, no TV to watch, no book to read, no person to talk to, no project to finish, no phone call to make, how does that make you feel? Often it does no more than make us so aware of how much there still is to do that we haven't yet done that we decide to leave the fearful silence and go back to work! It is not easy to enter into the silence and reach beyond the many boisterous and demanding voices of our world and to discover the small intimate voice saying: 'You are my Beloved Child, on you my favor rests.' Still, if we dare to embrace our solitude and befriend our silence, we will come to know that voice. I do not want to suggest to you that one day you will hear that voice with your bodily ears. I am not speaking about a hallucinatory voice, but about a voice that can be heard by the ear of faith, the ear of the inner heart." Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen

How can I hear with different ears and see with different eyes?

"A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live. Thus, if one is called to be a solitary, he will stop wondering how he is to live and start living peacefully only when he is in solitude. But if one is not called to a solitary life, the more he is alone the more will he worry about living and forget to live. When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of conscience. When we find our vocation - thought and life are one." Thoughts in Silence, Thomas Merton

The more I discover my own face, I discover the face of God. That's God's original plan. There's no way to DO IT because you already ARE IT. Humans do not know what they are doing; every other creature is just doing what they are.

There’s a lot to be said about nothing.

In the embrace of the brackets - (b)

“Put your life where your mouth is;
add a shmear of better.”

• DO THINGS BETTER
• DO BETTER THINGS
• BETTER DO THINGS

Three words. Three sentences. Three meanings.

• Three Men: I moved back to Nashville last October and in the last twenty-four hours reconnected with two men I have known, and who know each other, for almost twenty years and with whom I had lost connection for almost ten years. Facebook made it possible. -- DO THINGS BETTER.

• Three Strands: In just a few moments of texting and exchanged "wassup" inquiries it became clear that each of them had recently become separated from their respective spouses and were going the process of redefining their lives. Knowing that I had also gone through the deserts of separation and divorce, I felt that this “coincidence” was an invitation to weave our (strung out) lives together and share our stories. Besides, “…a chord of three strands is not quickly broken.”Ecclesiastes 4:12 -- DO BETTER THINGS.

• Three Chances: There’s something pretty cool about “threes.” There’s the Three Bears, Three Amigos, Three Wise Men, 3 Dog Night (yes, I am dating myself), Three Tenors, Three Musketeers and those timeless sages, the Three Stooges. Feeling mostly related to the latter of the list, I know that if I hold off and wait till I have some spare time to gather the three of us together, the Stooges will have become the wise men, the Dogs will have been spayed and the Musketeers’ blades will be dull. I will have to create the margin for a part time commitment, if it really matters enough. – BETTER DO THINGS

TAKEAWAY:

1. There are more ways than ever to reach out and touch someone.
2. We are not alone in our blunders, pain and resolve to be better versions of ourselves.
3. Reassembling the broken pieces of our lives is a team sport.
4. Time is never given; it must be taken.
5. There is strength in threes. Remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? What about the Trinity?
6. From between the brackets.

From between the brackets -
(b)

"One man's trash, is everyone's treasure."

I can hardly believe how long it's been since I've added to my column. Even though I somehow missed the uproar of cries for more writings from my loyal readers, I have not been idle during the pause. I have followed my call (it was actually a "collect" call) to write a book about Leadership and Business. It's titled Get out of your own way: How High Impact Leaders take the wheel and drive the HI Way to wherever they want to get to. It's been quite a revealing ride, and now that I am writing the last chapter and conclusion I thought I'd scratch my itch for reconnecting with you. I've missed you, sniff sniff, really I have.

But my catalyst to write today has nothing to do with a new business book. It has everything to do with my flood of emotions over the last few weeks.

If you are not aware of the recent flood in Nashville you 1) are living under a large rock, 2) have joined the Tea Party, 3) ran out of your meds or 4) are so distracted by what will happen to Jack Bauer in Sunday's final episode of 24 that you have disconnected from reality.

The flood's devastation is staggering, beyond anything I can write and capture on camera. I came face-to-face with the real impact of a catastrophe (like I had only experienced on newscasts about Katrina) last week when Lynn, Spencer and his friend Anthony, Bentley and I joined the hundreds of people who unselfishly appeared in a Bordeaux neighborhood. This classic Nashville residential community was one of the city's most water-ravaged; some homes were submerged to their roof.

The assignment we were given was clear: "We are going to walk up to homes and tell people that we are here to do whatever we can do to help them save their possessions, remove sheet-rock, tear out floors, remove debris and anything else to help them to move toward reclaiming their lives.

By the end of the day the streets were lined with furniture, carpets, floorboards, appliances, light fixtures; the stuff of their lives that was now just garbage for a landfill. But all surrounding the molding debris were the torrent of people streaming in from every direction and washing over strangers' lives with the kind of sacrificial love that busts through the dams of disdain and indifference, spilling hope-filled colors palette of compassion.

The stuff of their lives and homes, now reduced to mold-covered refuse and stud-bared skeletons, were being replaced with the furnishings from strangers who were there to help fill the emptiness...just because. Our faces were masked and our eyes goggled, but our hearts fully exposed.

There was little dialogue. Everything needing to be said was exchanged in narratives; the ink of sweat, soil, nods of acknowledgment and passing hugs.

And then our day came to an end. We loaded the tools into the back of the car. We drove slowly out of the neighborhood and headed home. Filthy. Sore. Tired.

There was no conversation.


Just before reaching the highway, off to our left were huge piles of garbage, the debris from the surrounding community. Lynn reached for her camera as we raced past, craning our heads back to catch one more glimpse before the reality of our experience was reduced to the ongoing newscasts.

Our junk is still amidst the heaps of trash we left behind, for the treasures we brought home.

(b)