Now, Smile!

I lost a tooth yesterday. Not just any tooth. One of the front two. The right one, to be exact.

I broke it Friday night biting into a piece of pizza of all things. The pie was a little crispy from being reheated in the oven, but still. I was shocked.

At first the tooth was just loose, but Sunday it broke off while I was chewing something soft and doing my best to avoid the danger zone in my mouth.

Standing in front of a mirror, squinting at the jagged little stump that used to be my tooth, I was in for another shock: I looked like a derelict. It was quite horrifying actually.

This morning my dentist told me that teeth get brittle as we get older. Plus, I have what he called a deep bite, so he wasn't surprised at all. He simply fitted me with a temporary tooth — nothing that would withstand a bite of french bread, but at least I look like my old self — and scheduled a root-canal operation for later in the week.

I'm told that there's a lesson to be learned from every experience, and in this case the lesson is simple: I need to appreciate what I have before it's gone.

Knowing that — really knowing it — is worth more than any tooth.

Work in Progress

I struggle sometimes, because I don't trust my own perceptions.

Should I?

To me the world looks flat, but pictures from space show that it's quite round.

On the other hand, don't try to tell me what to think. I trust my own mind more than anyone else's.

Except when I don't.

The strange thing is it's easier to disbelieve than it is to believe. Disbelief is safer somehow. To believe is to put yourself on the line.

I like to think of myself as a spiritual person. My intuitions, when I trust them, are almost always good. I should trust them more. I think.

I think of the time I was first in line at a red light and thought, Don't be in a hurry. It was an odd thought because I had no reason to be in a hurry. Then, sure enough, a car came speeding through the intersection from my left, two seconds after my light turned green and his turned red.

But I also think of the time I told my best friend he should look for a new job in Roseburg, Oregon. I don't know why I thought of Roseburg -- I'd only been there once -- but he did indeed find a job there. Only it didn't work out and he quit soon after he started.

Good thing he doesn't really remember me suggesting Roseburg.

I've been trying to increase my awareness through yoga, and I look forward to Mondays in particular. On Monday nights, the center where I train holds a special class in which we do 103 Chun Bu Kyung bows. Think of it as an exercise in sincerity and humility. An active meditation. Whether you believe in the Chun Bu Kyung — an ancient spiritual code that begins and ends with one — doesn't really matter. Everyone ends the night feeling calm and peaceful.

Or energized.

You have to trust your own experience.

Sometimes our instructor will ask us to consider a question while we bow. "Ask yourself, 'Who am I?'" she told us recently.

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

I was getting nothing. And then ...

You are God's creation.

I don't know where that came from, but it made me smile.

Later I would wonder if it was a message from the cosmos or just a random thought, but in that moment, I was happy to be God's creation. I felt his pleasure in what he had created.

And in the next moment I realized I was also my own creation.

Think of it (me) as a collaboration.

As a storyteller, I know a little about creating characters and having them take on a life of their own. I love that.

I think God loves it, too.

What I've Learned

> If you're going to criticize me, say something nice first, even if you don't mean it. It will help, even if I know you don't mean it. (Note: Others may require actual sincerity.)

> When I'm feeling down, I play Van Morrison's "And the Healing Has Begun" over and over and over. With each repetition, I start to feel stronger.

> If you like to dance, dance — and don't let anything stop you. Not shyness. Not anything.

> The punishment for lying is always wondering if others are lying to you.

> Buy Reese's peanut butter eggs at Easter time. They're way better than the peanut butter cups. They're fresh.

> Hatred is a waste of time. You only make yourself miserable.

> If you're taking a cruise on, say, the Danube, choose the downstream tour. Less engine noise.

> Think about it: If you were God — omniscient and all-powerful — could you ever be jealous of anyone or anything?

> Would you demand that people worship you?

> If you did, what would that say about your emotional maturity?

> Note to President Bush: If positive thinking were enough, our troops would all be home by now. Try something new.

> The movie What the Bleep!? Down the Rabbit Hole will boggle your brain.

> Even when I was attending church and studying the Bible like crazy, I could never understand prayer. You can't say anything to God he doesn't already know.

> Now I think the trick is to make your whole life a prayer, even if you feel compelled to use profanity now and then.

> I really like this quote from Depak Chopra: "At any given moment the universe is working toward the best possible outcome."

Hat humbly doffed to Esquire for its inspiring January issue.

Fear of Success

I've reached the point in my life where I'm more afraid of failure than I am of success.

It feels strange to say that — the last part, especially — but the truth is I've always been one to hold back. Why? The more you do, and the better you do it, the more people expect from you.

And I'm not comfortable with expectations.

I suppose if I had enough confidence not to care what people think ... well, I'm getting there.

But the fear of success is more than that. I won a state-wide award once when I was in high school, and my best friend wondered if I would still hang out with him. Really. That's what he told me. Not at the time, but later.

So the thing to fear, I think, is that success changes people in unpredictable ways.

If I were successful — wildest dreams successful — would I turn into a pompous ass? Would I be too good for my friends. Would they think so even if I didn't?

Would new friends be real friends? Would they tell me the truth or just what I wanted to hear?

Would I lose the spark that drove me to be successful in the first place?

All of which sounds just a little ridiculous when my wildest dreams remain out of reach.

Storytellers

I'm always thinking about stories and how they are told.

A great way to learn, I've discovered, is to read the same story twice. Or read the same story as told by different writers.

The four gospels, for example.

It's interesting to see what each writer chooses to leave in and leave out. How the the order of events gets changed around. How the writers differ in their descriptions of, say, crowd reactions. How they differ in their characterizations of the twelve apostles.

(Hint: Read one complete gospel each day. Otherwise they all blur together.)

Movie versions can be revealing, too.

Take The Passion of the Christ.

I wasn't surprised that it was controversial, but I always thought it was controversial for the wrong reasons. (Old news, I know, but now Gibson has directed another movie, Apocalyto, also not in English, and it got me thinking about his choices.)

To me, The Passion stands as a shining example of how a story changes in the retelling. Even in the hands of someone who believes the story is true. Even in the hands of some one who cares enough about historical accuracy use the languages of that time and place.

Like the Gospel writers, Gibson made certain choices about what to include and what to leave out and, perhaps most revealing, what to add.

Matthew chose to begin with Jesus' birth, Mark with his baptism, Mel with his arrest. I guess he assumed we were all familiar with the rest of the story, though he did throw in flashbacks to a few key events — the Sermon on the Mount, the Woman Caught in Adultery, the Triumphal Entry, the Last Supper.

In the case of the woman caught in adultery ("Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"), he chose to place Mary Magdalene in the role, which would explain why she appears so devoted to Jesus in the rest of the film. Historically accurate? No. But, in Hollywood parlance, the flashback "works." It makes emotional sense and makes for a better, more compact story.

To borrow a phrase from novelist Ken Kesey, "It's true even if it never happened."

The same could be said of this addition: As Jesus falls under the weight of the cross he must carry, we see his mother watching and recalling Jesus falling down as a toddler. Clearly, she wishes she could scoop him up again and comfort him as she did then. It's a touching moment and could even be true. After all, what mother hasn't comforted a child who has fallen? Was that really what Mary was thinking? Doesn't matter. It works, right?

Well, not for me, but never mind.

The most surprising addition, though, was a flashback to Jesus as a young carpenter who builds a table that is unusually high for the time period — he has to explain to his mother how people will sit at the table using chairs he hasn't built yet.

Go figure.

Maybe Jesus was a visionary carpenter as well as a visionary teacher. Maybe his accomplishments as a furniture maker were simply overshadowed by his other insights. The high table forgotten; his admonition to love our enemies remembered.

We all remember that, right?

If not, all the storytellers have failed.

Remembrance

My mother survived a world war and the early deaths of two husbands. Cancer took the first, a passing car the second. Through it all, she retained a steadfast faith in God and showed an uncanny ability to find contentment regardless of circumstances.

Or so it seemed to me.

I cannot claim to have known my mother well. She was not given to talking about herself without prodding. But I learned from her example. (I don't know how else to explain my ability to be happy even when things go wrong. Not that I don't have ups and downs.)

Although my mother was not well-educated (she had the equivelent of a grade-school education), she was smart and talented.

She taught herself to play the mandolin by ear.

She was a gifted gardener — a talent she passed on to some of my siblings.

She made the best apple pies anyone has ever tasted.

She and my father added a wing to my childhood home without the benefit of blueprints.

On the other hand, she had a terrible sense of direction and a fear of getting lost — surprising (or maybe not) for someone who came halfway around the world to start a new life and learn a new language.

When I lied to her, she believed me, which made me want to never lie again.

Her lasting legacy will be the large and loving family she left behind — a family I am pleased to be a part of.

It's been nearly seven years since she died.

I did not cry at her funeral.

Genesis

Before the beginning there was eternity and emptiness, a vast darkness stretching to infinity. Hidden in this darkness was a mysterious presence. The universe was his never-ending womb, and he was born at the moment he became aware of his potential. He became aware of the emptiness and realized it didn't have to be that way. The universe could be full. Indeed it already was for he was everywhere. By the same token he became aware of the darkness and realized it didn't have to be that way. (An uncanny inspiration since there was nothing else.) And the presence said, "Let there be light," and there was light. He began to play with this idea, taking it to extremes, and an explosion of creativity followed. He created solid and liquid, hot and cold, rough and smooth. The things he created gave him pleasure but then he also knew pain. He created life: birth and death. Comedy and drama. And God saw that it was good, but he immediately recognized the potential for evil, for everything had its opposite.

- Note to myself dated Sunday, March 1, 1987, 1:09 a.m.

Weird, huh? I never stay up past midnight. Well, almost never.