Puddleglum

I don’t remember my life before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Well, I do. Glimpses of this house or that puppy. Snapshots of my family. But not life as an American. Or life as anything other than a Boardman.

I’ve been sitting, these last few days, in the shadow of a tree and pondering the impact of this man on my life.

Actually, I’ve been sitting under a picture of a tree which is mostly still a sketch and, oddly, a revelation.

My nails are splattered in brown paint and the dogs are beginning to grasp the notion that they need to stay out from under my feet while I paint.

I am still learning.

My Intentional Creativity friends and I are painting trees of life.

Well, we’re painting lots of things but this seems to be where I am just now.

One day, back in December, the notion came to me that my tree would want to be a Banyan tree.

An enormous tree like the ones where I grew up in Florida, systems of branches and roots and trunks, communities of breathing life.

I visited a few of those trees in Key West and they kept whispering to me.

Kelly and I took some pictures. Mine were mostly roots.

Roots that reminded me of the ancient wisdom of elephants.

Then, we came home.

The time to paint came closer and closer, and the Banyan tree kept tugging at me.

Then, I found out why.

In the online newsletter, Aeon, Jonardon Ganeri, a contemporary philosopher whose work draws on a variety of traditions to construct new positions in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology, writes that:

…knowledge should be pictured as a banyan tree, in which a multiplicity of aerial roots sustains a centerless organic system. The tree of knowledge has a plurality of roots, and structures of knowledge are multiply grounded in the earth: the body of knowledge is a single organic whole, no part of which is more or less dispensable than any other.

Dr. King is one of those roots in my Banyan tree. Justice. Equality. Community.

His tree had many roots, as well.

The prophet Isaiah. Abraham Lincoln. A dream of what hadn’t been yet but could be.

And his tree is growing still.

Bernie Sanders, perhaps.

We need all the dreamers we can get!

For today, though, I’m sitting with my tree and recalling a wise old friend named Puddleglum who had a pretty big dream of his own. Taking his leave from the Queen of the underworld to search for Narnia, along with his young friends, the Marsh-wiggle said this:

…All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things–trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think, but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say (C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair in The Chronicles of Narnia).

Many dreamers dreaming dreams. Justice. Equality. Community. Hope. Love. All of them feeding the branches and leaves still to come.

I suspect Dr. King would approve. Our four-footed Luther does, too!

Lately, I’ve been gobbling up Natalie Goldberg’s books on writing like they were peanut M&M’s. As it turns out, the books may well be a whole lot better for the world than the candy!

Here’s a favorite quote from the classic, Writing Down the Bones:

Afraid of being lost, she became lost.

If you’re like me, you may hear lots of tinkly little bells ringing inside just now. There are many ways to think about this.

One is that the human mind/consciousness does not “understand” negatives. Instead of hearing, to borrow from the quote, “Don’t get lost!” we hear only “get” and “lost”.

Or, to risk a bit of potty humor for an even clearer example, let me tell you about my new favorite TV commercial. A young dad is carrying his pre-school aged son rapidly toward the bathroom saying, “Don’t poop! Don’t poop! Don’t…Oh, no!”

They think they’re selling washing machines. We know the kid’s just hearing, “Poop! Poop!”

My Qigong friends would explain it a bit differently.

Where the attention goes, the energy flows.

Chopped is a good place to study this phenomenon. Contestant after contestant claiming, over and over again, with great passion, “I don’t want to lose!” when a more helpful perspective would be, “I want to win!”

If my old friend Steve Glenn were here, he’d encourage us to say to our anxious toddler, half way across your grandmother’s prized antique rug with a glass of milk, “Walk carefully. Keep your eyes where you want to be,” rather than the customary, “Don’t spill the milk!” unless, of course, we were longing to have that antique rug cleaned.

We’ve all done it. Where, we might wonder, are we doing it now? Where might we be lost?

I’ll bet you have some ideas!

Let’s use the resident herd of Newfoundlands for an example. They’re enthusiastic greeters, which is great, but I vastly prefer for them to keep all four feet on the floor while welcoming guests.

Every now and then, in a fit of delight, one of them might forget.

My job is to avoid the very tempting, “Don’t jump!” and rely instead on, “Sit!” which is a word they do know and it tells them, in a positive sense, what to do in the moment.

Far from just language games, “Sit!” has a much higher likelihood of ensuring the safety and comfort of the greet-ee.

(There is probably a truth-in-advertising law somewhere which obligates me to admit that some of us are still working on this, and few things are absolute!)

I have some thoughts about what to do with all this insight.

Instead of caving in to a fear of failure, consider adopting the notion that life is for learning.

Give up on perfect. As soon as possible. Just experiment, five or ten minutes at a time, with a different goal.

Celebrate progress. Possibly with your favorite music and a dance party!

Claim what you need. Or want. You’ll already be a step closer!

I know. This isn’t the way you learned most of this stuff. It’s not the way I learned it either. Until I started learning some new things.

The greatest part of all this is that you don’t have to have it all down pat before you can start helping others learn, too. Grandkids. Dogs. Partners. Possibly even politicians.

And the best way to teach is to do.

Eyes on the prize!

I can’t guarantee immediate gratification. (My magic wand isn’t rated for that!) And progress is often messy and indirect. But “…it beats,” as my old friend Puddleglum would say, in perhaps the best example of all, the old way, “all hollow.”

That’s a lot!

Thanks to Puddleglum for making a special appearance from deep in the magical land of Pinterest, just for us. (I really need to find out how this works!)

Tag: Puddleglum

Eyes on the Prize!