I was born on this day in 1982. Here are 41 things that I have learned since then.
* There is so much world.
* When kindling a fire: Start small and build slow.
* Do the same when kindling any new practice, aim, or intention.
* In politics and personality assessments it’s seldom beneficial to paint with a wide brush.
* Blank pages are invitations, not enemies.
* Imperfect action is necessary, and most of the time enough.
* Carry a notebook and a pencil pretty much everywhere all the time.
* Blackwing pencils are the best pencils.
* Any religious idea can be a dangerous religious idea. Most of them can be redemptive. Whether the ideas manifest in the world as one or the other is totally up to us.
* Trees make good friends and good teachers.
* Oak, pine, cedar, and birch each have a personality and intelligence all their own.
* The call of the wild; the calm of the hearth. The thrill of the dark; the bliss of illumination. The quest; the retreat. We need it all.
* Solvitur ambulando.
* The quality of a meal is directly proportional to how far into the backcountry you’ve gone to eat it.
* A good bit of stand up comedy has more prophetic thrust than a well reasoned argument.
* Blessed are those who are in on the joke.
* If you are paddling upstream in a yellow canoe and you get to a bit of swift water, it is best to get out and walk around.
* Hope is useful when it’s also honest.
* The wisest among us are seldom in a hurry.
* Along with Audre Lorde, I think it’s true, “In order to win the aggressors must conquer, but resisters need only survive.”
* With Jay Griffiths, I think it’s true, “We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators, but for thunder and mud.”
* With Aristotle (or whoever misattributed it to Aristotle), I think it’s true: “The most intelligent minds are those that can entertain an idea without necessarily believing it.”
* With Ita speaking to Finn in Frederick Buechner’s Brendan, I think it’s true, “Smirchy and holy is all one.”
* Per the letter I wrote to Grampy the year he turned 100 years, I think it’s true that a man needs little more in life than companionship, nourishment, some sturdy shelter, and a good bottle of mustard.
* Speaking of the palantir in The Two Towers, Gandalf says, “Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.” That’s true also of hammers, of smartphones, and of biblical hermeneutics.
* With a little improvisation and an eye for opportune moments, the three card tricks that you learned when you were 12 years old will “wow” pretty well any crowd.
* There’s always someone who’s got better tricks than you.
* Earth weighs what earth weighs.
* And spirituality is a muscle.
* The best way to speak truth to power is to confront ignorance with inquiry.
* And it’s seldom useful to speak in absolutes.
* What stuck people need perhaps more than anything, is permission. Permission to slow down. Permission to step back. Permission to lean in. Permission to experiment and to fail. Permission to play. Permission to take up the them-sized space in the world.
* The best thing about being a grownup: You get to write your own permission slips.
* If you’re willing, there’s as much truth in Lancelot’s sword fighting lesson, from the opening scene of First Knight, as there is in any other great excerpt of sacred text.
* It matters what metaphors you filter your life through.
* Selfishness is rooted in a lack of imagination.
* It’s not a competition, but love wins.
* It’s possible to simultaneously be open to feedback and careful with your heart.
* At 14, at the summit of Ben Nevis in a bluster of snow, dad told me: “Interest comes and goes, but commitment gets to the top.” I still think that’s true.
* Also true: The top isn’t always the best place to be.
* It can be both.
