Bow Down Low

Making the old new again

This past weekend we took the kids on a little trip up north to while away the last few days before school started (so late in Seattle!) We took a ferry to Friday Harbor. We spent a morning at Deception Pass State Park, which was every bit as gorgeous as other people’s Instagram photos led me to believe (sometimes social media doesn’t lie). We found an incredible community-built pirate-themed park.

It was a lively weekend, and one afternoon when I had a chance, I took a stroll through downtown Anacortes to recharge, to feed my soul with new sights and sounds.

I love exploring new places, and every time I get to do it, I feel so…alive.

But most of my life is spent in the same few places, and I suspect yours is as well. I sit in the same chair, I walk the same two blocks to school pickup, and, because I’m a parent, I spend an awful lot of time hanging around at the same five or so parks.

How do I make the old new? How do I see it as if for the first time? How do I metabolize it into fresh spiritual and emotional energy, like plants photosynthesizing sunlight?

On our second trip to the pirate park, while the kids gleefully scootered through a splash pad, an answer alit on my shoulder.

“Bow down low.”

And so I did. I delighted in the gorgeous range of shades and textures in the mulch, so many delicately striped shards of umber.

While I was waiting for the kids to finish building their driftwood fort on the beach, I heard it again.

“Bow down low.”

Rocks are rocks, I assumed, until I crouched down and saw the wild extravagance of shapes and stippled colors.

Looking closely at things is an easy enough assignment on vacation, but soon we were back home. Same chair. Same walk. Same parks.

I was a little surprised to find myself bowing down low in my own front yard, marveling at the wispy weave of parched grass, the best harbinger of fall in Seattle. But here it was. Mystery and miracle, right inside my own gate.

There is a lot of bowing down low in The Brothers Karamazov (once a Russian lit PhD, always a Russian lit PhD), and it usually has to do with repentance and forgiveness. But there is one bow about halfway through this hefty tome that’s different. It’s an act of ecstasy and mystery performed by the tender-hearted young monk, Alyosha, who is, unfortunately, burdened by one of literature’s most dysfunctional and drama-enmeshed families. Alyosha finds himself on the ground, embracing the earth and weeping, having the most profound spiritual experience of his life.

What is happening here might best be described as a resacralization. Alyosha, even enmeshed as he is in family and personal tumult, cannot help but see how holy, how sacred, how beautiful the earth is.

May it be so for all of us, too, in new places, in old places, everywhere.

(And, just for fun, here is a much younger version of me with Dostoevsky circa 2004, back when I was an intern at the Dostoevsky Museum in St. Petersburg.)

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A Few Hopeful Things

-I’ve been utterly floored by the heartbreaking beauty of the Dear Alana podcast. It is a tragedy of the highest order—the story of a young woman who was swallowed whole by the beast that is fundamentalism, told tenderly and courageously by a young man who made it out alive. It is required listening for Catholics, and indeed required listening for all humans. I don’t know if I should dare to hope that the harmful LGBT theology held by the Catholic Church will be addressed and rectified at the synod. But I’m hoping anyway.

-It was a joy and a delight to contribute an essay and a prayer to Gracie Morbitzer’s new book on the saints! (I’ll give you three guesses which saint I chose!) The beautiful book of Gracie’s modern icons and essays by SO MANY talented people is now available for pre-order.

-I’ll be leading a virtual contemplative parenting retreat in November! More details as they become available.

Until then, bowing down low with you,
Cameron