Touchstone phrases can be practical and yet mystical. Poetic. Perhaps a little old-fashioned but still current and contemporary.
Singer, songwriter, and poet Carrie Newcomer had a wonderful end of summer reflection entitled You Speak To My Condition. She began by noting that the title was a phrase she encountered when she first started spending time with Quakers.
“The phrase is used when you want to let someone know that their words have touched you and you appreciate the spirit contained in those words. It is more than you understand me. ‘You speak to my condition’ acknowledges something true at the heart of the words spoken, it names something that I may be living but do not know yet how to put it into language. The phrase is an expression of gratitude and a recognition of something shared and human—you spoke and we recognized one another in some essential way.”
Newcomer writes about the joy of finding phrases that become touchstones. I have discovered a few myself in this third stage of life, usually when I’ve taken the time to sit and linger. To tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder.
I’m an impatient person by nature, and lingering, waiting, pondering don’t always come naturally. Someone close to me says that I still speak too frequently before I’ve stopped to think. Perhaps they recognize that I have not yet fully broken the habit of thinking while male. That individual is correct, and they tell me this out of love.
But I do recognize my condition and am working to take time to see and listen in new ways. My friend and mentor Frank Wade writes that “the Chinese have a saying, ‘Most of what we see is behind our eyes.’” In other words, Frank notes, we see what we expect to see, not necessarily what is really there. We force the world into our preconceptions and because of that we miss a lot.
That’s not the kind of sight I’m working to develop.
Newcomer calls us, instead, to listen with more than our ears and see with more than our eyes. Several touchstones for her came from those more expansive ways of listening and seeing.
“We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it.”
Mary Oliver
“Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.”
Terry Tempest Williams
“What we do in love and kindness is all we’ll ever leave behind.”
“I will always love you.”
TOUCHSTONES THAT SPEAK TO ME
I’ve gathered several touchstones in recent years, phrases that speak to me. Most are reminders to be open to—and participate fully in—joy.
Frank Wade (there he is again) preached a sermon on the well-known Parable of the Sower this past July where he spoke about the good news we may have missed.
“The seeds are opportunities for us to participate in that joy, to join in the same things that give joy to the full heart of God. They are invitations to wonder, graciousness, generosity, forgiveness, affirmation, reconciliation, praise, peace, calm, quiet, beauty, gentleness, and charity to name only a few. Those opportunities are around us in abundance, are they not? That good news is the first point of the parable.”
These opportunities are around us in abundance. But the complexity of life often blinds me to their existence. Writer Satya Robyn wrote of the same condition. When she steps out gently from the busyness of life to engage the world through curiosity and wonder, however, Robyn stops struggling. She floats as in a river, embracing the liminality.
The unpredictability is how I learn. The uncontrollability is how my heart is stretched open. Not dodging things means I end up bashing into joy.
Now that I am retired, I have a new life description: I am bashing into joy.
Bash into joy has become one of my touchstone phrases, and I remind readers of it regularly in the words used to conclude my monthly summaries. Here are a few others:
“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”
Mary Oliver
“Take time to dawdle and dream.”
A paraphrase of E.B. White
Marie Howe
“We are here to keep watch, not to keep.”
Kathryn Schulz
“Try to be nice. Always be kind.”
Newcomer ends her meditation with the hope that we will speak in a way that shapes air into language and spirit into meaning. “May we speak from our hearts and to one another’s condition.” And then she shares this lovely song, Say It Anyway, from Mary Chapin Carpenter.
“When it’s time to take the measure of our days
The ones that shine will hold hands with the ones that fade
I think we’re getting closer to it every day
It goes without saying, but say it anyway”
One or more of your touchstones may go without saying . . . but say it anyway.
More to come . . .
DJB
Photo of woman and seashell by Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash. Other photos from Unspash and Pixabay.
MORE TO COME... 