“Be all whom God intended you to be and you will set the world on fire.”
--St. Catherine of Sienna, quoted by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, April 29, 2011.
Today, as in every day, my challenge is to put that intentionality in my own heart, and to go about my day seeking to live my intentions. The real challenge comes in opening myself up to be aware of those intentions, and to see the possibilities that lie within each moment of the day.
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Saturday, April 30, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Today's Choice
Each day offers me the gift to make a difference, not only in my life, but also in the lives I touch. It is up to me, then, to decide what that impact will be. I can choose to do nothing, to be destructive, or to build something that is worthy of my time, and worthy of this unique day.
So what will it be today? I hope I choose wisely.
So what will it be today? I hope I choose wisely.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Mirror and the Drawer
An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits,
when they are held up to each other,
that is when real making begins.
That’s what art and crafting are.
A tailor needs a torn shirt
to practice his expertise.
The trunks of trees must be cut and cut again,
so they can be used for fine carpentry.
Your doctor must have a broken leg to doctor,.
Your defects are the ways
that glory gets manifested.
Whoever sees clearly what is diseased in himself
begins to gallop on the way.
There is nothing worse than thinking
you are well enough. More than anything,
self complacency blocks the workmanship...
Don’t turn your head.
Keep looking at the bandaged place.
That is where the light enters you.
And don’t believe for a moment
that you are healing yourself.
--Rumi
I look into myself, into the mirror, and sometimes, I don’t like what I see. And, sometimes, there is something I haven’t seen before, haven’t bothered to notice. Or, maybe it has just come to the surface, and I have made the time to discover it.
Each day is a new adventure, each glimpse into the mirror a new event, a fresh look, a fresh start. I am a bit different today, than yesterday. In that journey, I hopefully have grown a bit, and maybe improved with age. And, maybe something new has come to the surface, or I have found the courage to crack open some heretofore hidden drawer or cubbyhole.
Perhaps this is the day I pull open that drawer, and rummage around, taking inventory, discovering some new treasure, or array of junk, something that needs to be sorted through. Maybe its all destined for the garbage, but first, I must see what it is.
The other day, I came upon one of those well hidden drawers in the back of my childhood closet, the drawer pull rusty with time and neglect, the wood warped enough that I had to give it a sharp pull, the long neglected grooves shrieking with the new demands of movement and opening. A swirl of dust danced around my face, a few cobwebs gritty on my fingers, the silky threads dusty and brittle with age.
Inside were memories, long hidden, stuffed away. Yes, painful, sharp, making me gasp, and choke. Grime and rust coated the bent nails and rusted on nuts and bolts, and a bit of my heart blood from childhood splattered over the rusty metal, its once bright red color faded to a dingy black.
A tear ran down my face at the memory of it all, that afternoon so long ago. And, I remembered crying that day, too, crying at the pain and knowing that no one would hear me, or wipe away my tears. That day, I put that pain, that memory, in the drawer, so long ago, and slammed it shut, not able to figure it out. Later, I thought, when I’m older. Maybe, then, I’ll know.
Until today, so many years later, I was finally ready to yank open the squeaky, warped drawer. In the strong light of this morning, I see the rust, and the blood, and the contents of the drawer, soaked with my soul’s blood and my tears so very long ago, on that summer day.
Today’s tear falls on the rust, and the dried blood, and lets me see that junk in the drawer, for what it is, and what it means. The sharp metal now glints again, in the light of this discovery, and I see it for what it is. It has a name, now. Its spell on me lies broken, finally.
I can move on, now. Now that the drawer is open. Now, that the rusty junk is thrown in the garbage, now that the grit and cobwebs are gone, and it is, finally, what it is.
Looking in the mirror again, I can smile at myself. Good work, today, I say out loud. You cleaned out that drawer. You moved on. And, its about time.
Neal Lemery, April 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Pruning
Clipping off, cutting away
last year’s long vine, now brown
falls to the ground,
becoming mulch for this year’s
green, wandering vine,
this year’s blossoms,
this year’s fruit, at the end of summer.
Snip, snip,
down to the trunk, down to the core
of what it is to be a grape,
an apple tree,
cutting away the dead,
back to the basics,
ready for spring.
Pruners in hand
I look in the mirror
wondering
where do I need to start.
Neal Lemery, 3/2010
last year’s long vine, now brown
falls to the ground,
becoming mulch for this year’s
green, wandering vine,
this year’s blossoms,
this year’s fruit, at the end of summer.
Snip, snip,
down to the trunk, down to the core
of what it is to be a grape,
an apple tree,
cutting away the dead,
back to the basics,
ready for spring.
Pruners in hand
I look in the mirror
wondering
where do I need to start.
Neal Lemery, 3/2010
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Courage--A Letter to a Young Man
In you, I see courage. You take your experiences in life, and where you are at, and you move forward. You move into the unknown, knowing that you take your past, and where you are today, and you feel you must move on.
On down the river, on over the wall, on up the mountain. Ever onward.
There are steps to take, challenges to face, explorations of who you are inside. And, you go.
You look backward, a bit, figuring out who you have been, what you have experienced, and what that all means. You try to make sense of it. You try to understand it, and what all that means, for the man you want to be. You do not live in the past, as you cannot change the past. You can only understand the past. That understanding gives you power.
Growing into manhood is hard work. It is not just taking each day as it comes, and being content to do the least amount of work to get by, to park yourself in front of the TV and not be engaged, to just let life go by. To snooze. If you snooze, you lose. Instead, you are awake, alive.
Instead of taking the lazy path, the path of least resistance, you step outside of your comfort zone, and you dig into your troubled past, and you dig into your gut, and you crack open the door of the dark stuff that lies buried, deep and dark, the scary stuff, deep inside.
You are curious of what lies there, in the dark and stink of your life, and you are readying your broom and your mop, and maybe your shotgun, getting ready to wrestle with the monsters that lurk down there. You are tired of the stink and the slime, and you want to clean house.
You soak up knowledge, hungry for news, hungry for challenge, hungry as your mind desires new ways, new approaches to life. You want a new world to explore, a new world in which to live, and fresh air to breathe.
You said this week that you’ve “been around the block”, and have sampled much of the dark side of what life has to offer, and there remains in your mouth the bitter taste of dissatisfaction, of emptiness, of shallow thinking. It is not enough for you, that bitterness, and you crave more, something sweet, substantial, meaningful.
And, so the light of understanding and the hunger for digging deep into your emotions and your gut now comes into your life. You realize there is more, so much more, in life. You are ready for this new adventure, this new calling, this need to be the explorer, the adventurer, and yes, the surgeon.
You are taking control of your life, and your mind. You are deciding not to live life according to someone else’s plan, someone else’s expectations for you. You are writing your own movie script, your own stage play, and you are now walking out onto the stage of your life, and taking the leading role. You are becoming the star in your own movie.
The journey into your heart and into your gut, into the emotional universe that lies
within you, scares you. That place has been off limits for so long. Taboo. Forbidden. Too scary for words. It has been much safer to simply ignore that place, and not go there, and to fill that place with garbage and horror, and lock the door.
Yet, men do go there. Men crack open that door, and discover their heart, and their gut, and the emotions and feelings that are there, inside. For that is who we really are. We men are emotions, we are feelings. We are the currents and forces of conflicting and churning stuffs.
In you, there is anger. A lot of anger. I would call that righteous anger. Not anger for anger’s sake, or simply rising out of the hormones and stress of growing up in this often crazy world. Your anger is deeper, more complex, more intense.
As it should be. You have a right to claim your anger. You have a right to express your anger. You anger is earned from all the horrible and nasty experiences you have had, experiences that have tried to dehumanize you, to steal your manhood, your manliness.
My hope for you is that you claim your anger, to seize it, drag it out of its dark, filthy hiding place, and bring it into the light. Rip off its covers, and dump it out of its stinky box, and see it for what it is. Give it air. Give it light. Give it voice.
And rage, and yell, and scream, as you give it a name, and give your anger its voice. Express yourself and let it be known that you are angry, that you claim your anger, and that it is earned. Declare that it is a poison in your life and you are becoming free of it, that it will no longer have a claim on your manhood.
It is a righteous thing to do. It is seeking Justice.
And, when you do this, you will not be alone, and you will not be defeated. You will gather around you those people in your life who give you strength and support and love. We will be at your back, and we will cheer you on. You will draw from us the strength and determination you will need to give voice to your anger, and let yourself be heard.
There will be fear and hesitation and doubt. Yet, those are the sinister tools of your anger, the tools that anger uses to keep its power over you, its power to keep claiming your manhood.
And, knowing that will give you strength and courage.
We men are called to the river, and we are called to put our boats into the raging current and paddle out into the rapids. We are called to gauge the currents, and find the rocks and boulders, and hidden logs, and we are required to navigate the river, and to come to know its song.
And, as we run the rapids and as we come to know the river, and make it familiar, even beloved territory, we are finding our own song, our own rhythm, our own drawing of what our life is. The river song becomes our song, our melody. We men sing our song loudly, and with pride. It is our song.
As we men go into our hearts, and into our guts, and as we find the words and the songs to express what is inside of us, then we find our own songs. We find our strength and we find our gold.
In that journey, we open the windows in our soul, and we air out the stench of the ugliness, the bad times, the things that were so bad, so awful that we put them in black boxes and sealed them up with tape, and hid them in the darkest part of our basement. And, instead of letting those blackest, most evil things lurking and hiding in our basement, stink up our lives, we toss those boxes out onto the front lawn of our lives, and rip the boxes open. We let the wind carry off the stench, and we let the bright sunlight of our courage and our knowledge and our self confidence burn into the rotten garbage of the past.
We take our hose and flush away the filth, and the blackest slime and ooze, and make it all clean and fresh.
We call that stench, that filth, for what it is and we give it a name. We shout its name out loud, so that all our friends can hear. We do this so that the stink will know what it is, and so it will have no more power over us.
We feel clean, refreshed, pure. We feel that we are sacred and holy, for we are men. We are children of God, and we are good.
And, all of this is taking power, taking control. Becoming a man in your own house, your own soul.
None of us takes this journey alone. We bring our ancestors, we bring the strong, healthy members of our family, we bring our good friends. We bring our cheerleaders, our allies. We bring our armor and we bring our spears. We bring our courage.
You are the Captain now. You are the Man. You are the Boss. Not me. Not anyone else. And, definitely not the slime and the filth that has clogged and polluted your soul.
Be free.
And, be a man. Be the man you want to be.
--Neal Lemery 3/19/2011
On down the river, on over the wall, on up the mountain. Ever onward.
There are steps to take, challenges to face, explorations of who you are inside. And, you go.
You look backward, a bit, figuring out who you have been, what you have experienced, and what that all means. You try to make sense of it. You try to understand it, and what all that means, for the man you want to be. You do not live in the past, as you cannot change the past. You can only understand the past. That understanding gives you power.
Growing into manhood is hard work. It is not just taking each day as it comes, and being content to do the least amount of work to get by, to park yourself in front of the TV and not be engaged, to just let life go by. To snooze. If you snooze, you lose. Instead, you are awake, alive.
Instead of taking the lazy path, the path of least resistance, you step outside of your comfort zone, and you dig into your troubled past, and you dig into your gut, and you crack open the door of the dark stuff that lies buried, deep and dark, the scary stuff, deep inside.
You are curious of what lies there, in the dark and stink of your life, and you are readying your broom and your mop, and maybe your shotgun, getting ready to wrestle with the monsters that lurk down there. You are tired of the stink and the slime, and you want to clean house.
You soak up knowledge, hungry for news, hungry for challenge, hungry as your mind desires new ways, new approaches to life. You want a new world to explore, a new world in which to live, and fresh air to breathe.
You said this week that you’ve “been around the block”, and have sampled much of the dark side of what life has to offer, and there remains in your mouth the bitter taste of dissatisfaction, of emptiness, of shallow thinking. It is not enough for you, that bitterness, and you crave more, something sweet, substantial, meaningful.
And, so the light of understanding and the hunger for digging deep into your emotions and your gut now comes into your life. You realize there is more, so much more, in life. You are ready for this new adventure, this new calling, this need to be the explorer, the adventurer, and yes, the surgeon.
You are taking control of your life, and your mind. You are deciding not to live life according to someone else’s plan, someone else’s expectations for you. You are writing your own movie script, your own stage play, and you are now walking out onto the stage of your life, and taking the leading role. You are becoming the star in your own movie.
The journey into your heart and into your gut, into the emotional universe that lies
within you, scares you. That place has been off limits for so long. Taboo. Forbidden. Too scary for words. It has been much safer to simply ignore that place, and not go there, and to fill that place with garbage and horror, and lock the door.
Yet, men do go there. Men crack open that door, and discover their heart, and their gut, and the emotions and feelings that are there, inside. For that is who we really are. We men are emotions, we are feelings. We are the currents and forces of conflicting and churning stuffs.
In you, there is anger. A lot of anger. I would call that righteous anger. Not anger for anger’s sake, or simply rising out of the hormones and stress of growing up in this often crazy world. Your anger is deeper, more complex, more intense.
As it should be. You have a right to claim your anger. You have a right to express your anger. You anger is earned from all the horrible and nasty experiences you have had, experiences that have tried to dehumanize you, to steal your manhood, your manliness.
My hope for you is that you claim your anger, to seize it, drag it out of its dark, filthy hiding place, and bring it into the light. Rip off its covers, and dump it out of its stinky box, and see it for what it is. Give it air. Give it light. Give it voice.
And rage, and yell, and scream, as you give it a name, and give your anger its voice. Express yourself and let it be known that you are angry, that you claim your anger, and that it is earned. Declare that it is a poison in your life and you are becoming free of it, that it will no longer have a claim on your manhood.
It is a righteous thing to do. It is seeking Justice.
And, when you do this, you will not be alone, and you will not be defeated. You will gather around you those people in your life who give you strength and support and love. We will be at your back, and we will cheer you on. You will draw from us the strength and determination you will need to give voice to your anger, and let yourself be heard.
There will be fear and hesitation and doubt. Yet, those are the sinister tools of your anger, the tools that anger uses to keep its power over you, its power to keep claiming your manhood.
And, knowing that will give you strength and courage.
We men are called to the river, and we are called to put our boats into the raging current and paddle out into the rapids. We are called to gauge the currents, and find the rocks and boulders, and hidden logs, and we are required to navigate the river, and to come to know its song.
And, as we run the rapids and as we come to know the river, and make it familiar, even beloved territory, we are finding our own song, our own rhythm, our own drawing of what our life is. The river song becomes our song, our melody. We men sing our song loudly, and with pride. It is our song.
As we men go into our hearts, and into our guts, and as we find the words and the songs to express what is inside of us, then we find our own songs. We find our strength and we find our gold.
In that journey, we open the windows in our soul, and we air out the stench of the ugliness, the bad times, the things that were so bad, so awful that we put them in black boxes and sealed them up with tape, and hid them in the darkest part of our basement. And, instead of letting those blackest, most evil things lurking and hiding in our basement, stink up our lives, we toss those boxes out onto the front lawn of our lives, and rip the boxes open. We let the wind carry off the stench, and we let the bright sunlight of our courage and our knowledge and our self confidence burn into the rotten garbage of the past.
We take our hose and flush away the filth, and the blackest slime and ooze, and make it all clean and fresh.
We call that stench, that filth, for what it is and we give it a name. We shout its name out loud, so that all our friends can hear. We do this so that the stink will know what it is, and so it will have no more power over us.
We feel clean, refreshed, pure. We feel that we are sacred and holy, for we are men. We are children of God, and we are good.
And, all of this is taking power, taking control. Becoming a man in your own house, your own soul.
None of us takes this journey alone. We bring our ancestors, we bring the strong, healthy members of our family, we bring our good friends. We bring our cheerleaders, our allies. We bring our armor and we bring our spears. We bring our courage.
You are the Captain now. You are the Man. You are the Boss. Not me. Not anyone else. And, definitely not the slime and the filth that has clogged and polluted your soul.
Be free.
And, be a man. Be the man you want to be.
--Neal Lemery 3/19/2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Adversity
"The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results."
--Carl Jung
--Carl Jung
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Gratitude
Its been a bit over a year. Now, the workouts at the Y are no big deal. I walk up and down stairs without gasping for breath, and I can walk a couple of miles with not even a thought. I feel healthy, strong, even vibrant, with 25 pounds of lard now gone, and still fitting in my much smaller jeans.
The memories of my heart attack last February are still around, and I still take my regimen of pills twice a day. Mealtime is a place to ponder how I will nourish my body, and bring new nutrients into my amazing body, rather than a time to wallow in processed food, sugar and fat.
Today, I had to crank up the exercise bike and increase the weight size I was lifting, just to give myself a challenge, raise the heart rate a bit, and give my body a reason to break a sweat. Its nice to be “too successful” at this exercise stuff and be needing to “raise the bar” every couple of weeks.
I’ve actually worn out gym shoes, and the sweatshirt I wear to the Y as a symbol of my commitment to working out, is getting a bit frayed around the edges.
There’s been some amazing conversations with other people this year, where we talk about our recent heart attacks, the hospital care, and our cardiologists. We survivors become reverent as we talk and compare notes, sharing that special knowledge of how precious life is, and how quickly one can come so very close to dying.
We share that zeal for each day that we wake up and feel good, feet on the floor and full of energy. Being alive is not taken for granted. Having a healthy heart is a gift, and oxygen is our drug of choice.
I celebrate the small things now, like coffee with my wife in the morning, or the first daffodil of spring, or finding something really healthy and tasty to add to the menu.
We’ve done things this year that we’ve been thinking of putting off, but time is precious now. Life can be short, and life is to be enjoyed, each moment savored.
At the grocery store, I took a shortcut the other day and ended up in an unfamiliar aisle. Everything on the shelves was fat and sugar. I realized I hadn’t shopped in that aisle for over a year, and hadn’t missed it in the least. I shop around the edges of the store now, excited about finding great produce, or some nonfat yogurt, or some tasty new cereal.
I check out the vegetarian items on the menu at restaurants, and I’m not afraid to ask for substitutes for the fried, salty and sugary stuff that is the usual fare for meals.
And, I see other folks doing the same, and I’m finding more healthy stuff in the stores and in the restaurants. And, when the Y is crowded after work, part of me is happy that there’s actually a wait for the treadmills, or the leg press machine.
I spend a lot of time with friends now, taking in the chance meetings at the grocery store or on the sidewalk. I make it a point to connect with them, and share their joy in their creativity, their work, their passions.
Idle chitchat has become insufferable, and I rarely turn on the TV, finding instead that the evening is much better spent with my guitar, my writing, or enjoying a good book with a cat on my lap, and a mug of tea.
I’ve started mentoring a young man in prison, my Sunday afternoons well spent in his company, as he struggles to find his place in the world, and to learn how to socialize with a father figure who hasn’t beaten him, verbally abused him, or left him lost and frustrated with life’s possibilities. He’s teaching me a lot about courage and determination, and the excitement of learning that anything is possible in this life, if only we have the guts to take a step forward.
Gratitude. My gratitude is everywhere in my life. Every experience, every sunrise, every glass of wine shared with my wife in the kitchen as we talk about our days, every amazing experience that comes into my life is a precious gift. I take nothing for granted, and I am so very thankful.
The memories of my heart attack last February are still around, and I still take my regimen of pills twice a day. Mealtime is a place to ponder how I will nourish my body, and bring new nutrients into my amazing body, rather than a time to wallow in processed food, sugar and fat.
Today, I had to crank up the exercise bike and increase the weight size I was lifting, just to give myself a challenge, raise the heart rate a bit, and give my body a reason to break a sweat. Its nice to be “too successful” at this exercise stuff and be needing to “raise the bar” every couple of weeks.
I’ve actually worn out gym shoes, and the sweatshirt I wear to the Y as a symbol of my commitment to working out, is getting a bit frayed around the edges.
There’s been some amazing conversations with other people this year, where we talk about our recent heart attacks, the hospital care, and our cardiologists. We survivors become reverent as we talk and compare notes, sharing that special knowledge of how precious life is, and how quickly one can come so very close to dying.
We share that zeal for each day that we wake up and feel good, feet on the floor and full of energy. Being alive is not taken for granted. Having a healthy heart is a gift, and oxygen is our drug of choice.
I celebrate the small things now, like coffee with my wife in the morning, or the first daffodil of spring, or finding something really healthy and tasty to add to the menu.
We’ve done things this year that we’ve been thinking of putting off, but time is precious now. Life can be short, and life is to be enjoyed, each moment savored.
At the grocery store, I took a shortcut the other day and ended up in an unfamiliar aisle. Everything on the shelves was fat and sugar. I realized I hadn’t shopped in that aisle for over a year, and hadn’t missed it in the least. I shop around the edges of the store now, excited about finding great produce, or some nonfat yogurt, or some tasty new cereal.
I check out the vegetarian items on the menu at restaurants, and I’m not afraid to ask for substitutes for the fried, salty and sugary stuff that is the usual fare for meals.
And, I see other folks doing the same, and I’m finding more healthy stuff in the stores and in the restaurants. And, when the Y is crowded after work, part of me is happy that there’s actually a wait for the treadmills, or the leg press machine.
I spend a lot of time with friends now, taking in the chance meetings at the grocery store or on the sidewalk. I make it a point to connect with them, and share their joy in their creativity, their work, their passions.
Idle chitchat has become insufferable, and I rarely turn on the TV, finding instead that the evening is much better spent with my guitar, my writing, or enjoying a good book with a cat on my lap, and a mug of tea.
I’ve started mentoring a young man in prison, my Sunday afternoons well spent in his company, as he struggles to find his place in the world, and to learn how to socialize with a father figure who hasn’t beaten him, verbally abused him, or left him lost and frustrated with life’s possibilities. He’s teaching me a lot about courage and determination, and the excitement of learning that anything is possible in this life, if only we have the guts to take a step forward.
Gratitude. My gratitude is everywhere in my life. Every experience, every sunrise, every glass of wine shared with my wife in the kitchen as we talk about our days, every amazing experience that comes into my life is a precious gift. I take nothing for granted, and I am so very thankful.
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