Scrap wood
While at work yesterday, I realized I wanted sausage and eggs for breakfast. It was after Lent, after all, and better yet, now that I was completely on my own, detached from the monastery, I could have that whenever I wanted whenever I wanted. I didn’t even have to eat breakfast if I was busy “in the zone” or something.
This exile might not be so bad, I thought…
Actually, I know it’s better than “not so bad.” It’s right in the groove, baby.
I made a list:
Sausage
Eggs
Coffee
Just the basics for my first morning post-monastery and post-trapeza (meal time).
One problem: my extended-stay hotel had a kitchen, but didn’t have anything for me to, you know, cook with.
Better get a frying pan.
Oh, wait—I’ll need something to flip the eggs and sausages. Sigh. Add a spatula to the list.
Dang it. I’ll need two pans. And probably a pot for Ramen noodles.
In a spectacular instant of growth and maturity, I realized I’d probably need some dish soap and a scrub brush of some kind. Probably some scrubbing pads, too. If I learned anything from my “Mr. Mom” year of 2021, it’s that scrub brushes are great, but there’s nothing like a coarse green pad for the sticky stuff.
As I scrolled through the aisles of Target after work that night, I realized I needed something from every aisle.
That’s when it hit me: I think I’ve reached the bottom.
It wasn’t just the revelation of my utter poverty, it was my location. I checked into an Extended Stay hotel in Tulsa that morning. Residents milled around outside and chain-smoked. I had the impression that few of them had someplace else to be.
Many earnestly tapped away on their phones or made phone calls. This wasn’t the usual bored doom-scrolling. Whatever their calls were about, it appeared they were up against the clock. One guy held his phone in both hands before him, almost supplicatorily, cigarette burning down between his fingers, and then he’d raise the phone to his head, and then back down, rapid fire thumbs activated, delivering numbers, perhaps. Verifications.
A woman great with child just watched her phone screen. She waited for her Gabriel.
We have a tweaker here, too. You can see the whites of his eyes all around the pupils. He rocked back and forth in a lobby chair.
The man with four children, teen and pre-teen, got to me. He emerged from the lobby entrance. The kids, three girls and a boy, giggled and jostled. They were on some great adventure with their daddy. He looked around the parking lot, probably seeking his car, but I recognized those eyes—they appeared to search much farther beyond the parking lot.
Three days ago, I looked out my window as I’d done every morning for the previous 21 months to see a vast field and a shimmering pond in the middle of it. An extremely shy white heron always landed on the float in the middle of the pond at almost the same time every day. A pair of owls routinely flew their final sorties of the night on the south end of the property.
Bells would ring. Incense wafted through the air. Men (and the occasional women) who I considered brothers (and sisters) would rush down the silent halls to services.
This morning I didn’t open my curtains because they opened onto an asphalt parking lot, and beyond that, an establishment called, “The Love Store.” They evidently sell devices, lotions, and media designed to elicit sensations of “love.”
Talk about a change of pace.
I knew I would end up back in the world. Despite the attractions of the monastic life, I knew I wasn’t called to it. At least not that version of the life. I admire it. I revere it. But I’m not called to it.
However, neither am I comfortable living in a world where purveyors of pornography intentionally drop their shops into the center of hotel clusters.
The bottom ain’t so bad.
If you’ve ever written a manuscript and decided to scrap it and start over, you know what I mean.
If you’ve ever coded an app, deleted it, and then stared at a blinking cursor in an empty IDE, you know.
If you’ve ever returned a woodworking project to its origins of scrap wood because it just wasn’t quite right, made another pot of coffee, and returned to the plans, you’ve got it.
Starting fresh liberates.
I’m not a naturally optimistic person. I had to learn the skill. And it is a skill for most, I believe. There are very few things we are. We tell ourselves we are this or that. “I am an introvert.” “I am too old.” “I am too dumb…”
A German efficiency expert once told me to drop “I am” language. He was helping me to get on top of the massive pile of administrative work my business was generating. He said, “Don’t tell yourself that can’t do something—say that you struggle with something, and then get better at it.”
So, I learned not terribly long ago that I AM NOT a high-functioning hippy retard slacker from Portland: I merely struggle with optimism.
Problem sufficiently named, I took steps to correct things. Sure, my life was on a downward trajectory, but I pulled out of the nosedive. Might have lost the landing gears and some paint, though.
This is the cool thing about the bottom. There’s only one path out and it’s pretty easy to find.
I found a lot of what I needed in books, but the real transformation came with two meals per day and an obedience to mop the kitchen floors and mow the acreage. Optimism came from loving and missing four young souls who look to me as a lighthouse in their stormy lives. I learned optimism from reading holy books, but then thinking about what they had to say during walks under the stars.
I learned to seek Him who is love and truth. He removed everything so that I could see.
I have a lot of work to do, if only I can tune out the sound of the failing air conditioning unit in this hotel room filled with about a quarter of the remnants of my past life. (I’m writing this in between boxes of clothes and a mitre saw.) Tomorrow I’ll join the battle again.
Oh yeah, and I might just have three meals tomorrow. Because I can.
Enjoyed listening to this voiceover immensely Chris!