Barbara Falconer Newhall

Why Meditate — When I Could Be Sweeping the Garage?

Barbara — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:06:33 +0000

Rhododendron almost ready for deadheading. c 2009 BF Newhall

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

I’ve tried meditating a few times – a very few times. I’m well read on the subject, however. Indeed, I’ve spent way more time reading about meditation than I’ve spent doing it.

Why would I want to just sit there observing my mind, I reason, when I could be outdoors pulling dead blossoms off the shamelessly prolific rhododendron in our front yard? Those blossoms snap off their stems with such a satisfying pop.

(I do nothing to make that plant bloom. Yet year after year it sucks up dirt and rainwater and blasts dozens of grandiose purple-blue blossoms into our tiny front yard. Hardly anybody notices this plant or its outrageous flowers. It produces them anyway.)

So – why would I want to just sit there, meditating? I could be calling my son in Minneapolis, my fingers still sticky with rhododendron sap, to ask how his appendectomy scars are healing. I could be phoning my daughter – were there any cute guys at the wedding in Kansas City last weekend? I could be at the kitchen sink in my 91-year-old mother’s apartment, washing her dishes. I could be having fun.

People like Sylvia Boorstein make a great case for the practice of meditation. Her book, Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There, is one of my favorite ways to think about meditating without actually doing it.

Sylvia is very convincing, but the sitting vs. doing trade-off has never worked for me. Sit quietly for a half hour? I’d rather be sorting laundry or brooming cobwebs off the windows in the garage. I like the physical world, right down to clean socks and window sills speckled with dead fruit flies.

A life is to be lived. And for the time being I’ve got one. Why would I want to spend any of it sitting there watching my thoughts go by – when I could be out in the world, generating new ones?

Yet – right now I’m thinking maybe a little meditating could do me some good.

Last week, a friend gave me a copy of an essay that Thomas Merton wrote way back in 1968. It’s called “Creative Silence.” In it, Merton makes a distinction between negative silence and creative silence. In negative silence, we fret and stew and let our anxieties run off with our thoughts. In creative silence, we experience what Paul Tillich called “the courage to be.”

Creative silence requires a certain kind of faith, Merton says. (If you’re like me, you’re not keen on the word faith. It has a squishy, sentimental, boasty feel to it. So, bear with me here. Merton uses the word in a specific way.)

Faith, says Merton, requires us to cut through the smokescreen of our daily activities, our busyness, the charming or efficient or competent personas we present to the world and to ourselves. Our talky prayers can be a smokescreen. So can the ideas about God that our traditional religions have constructed for us over the centuries.

All those reassuring slogans and routines of religiosity, says Merton, “can become a substitute for the truth of the invisible God of faith, and though this comforting image may seem real to us, he is really a kind of idol.”

We fear genuine silence, Merton says. We are afraid of being alone in the nakedness of our true selves without our usual masks of competence or sociability. Why are we afraid? Because we’ve lost hope of ever reconciling with – of accepting – our true selves.

By faith I think Merton means the willingness to trust that, if we set aside the busyness of our days and the busyness of our thoughts and we go fully into silence, someone – our true selves – will be there to meet us. As will God.

I like Merton’s take on silence. But does that mean I’m about to take up meditating? Time spent in meditation might be like time spent with a Stairmaster or a hair dryer. I might like the results.

No, sitting meditation is not for me right now, but Merton’s silence is. And so, as I snap the spent rhododendron blossoms from their stems, and fold my husband’s T-shirts, and wait for the phone to pick up in Minneapolis, I’ll remember the silence. I’ll listen for that wordless self of mine.

© 2009 Barbara Falconer Newhall

Sylvia Boorstein. c Christine Alicino

Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There: A Mindfulness Retreat with Sylvia Boorstein, by Sylvia Boorstein, Harper Collins, 1996.

“Creative Silence,” by Thomas Merton, first published in April, 1968, in Bloomin’ Newman, by University of Louisville students. Reprinted in Thomas Merton: Essential Writings, Christine M. Bochen, ed., Modern Spiritual Masters Series, Orbis Books, 2000.

GodsBigBlog: What Ever Happened to God?

Barbara — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:24:31 +0000

NASA photo - Spiral Nebula

Wondering what happened to God — and GodsBigBlog?

It’s moved to another location, to its very own blog at http://GodsBigBlog.com.

I was getting complaints from some of my dear secular humanist friends that God was taking over my Writing Room and getting way too much ink.

They were having to slog through my posts on the Bible. Some of the posts are hopeful (the one about how my atheist friend loves the Universe). Some of them are cranky (e.g. my pique at reading about God promising to clear out all those annoying Hittites and Jebusites and Girgashites from the Promised Land so the Israelites could have it to themselves). All of the posts tend toward the irreverent.

Seriously, blogs are supposed to have a focus. Some people want to read about my adventures with God and all the interesting people I’ve met as a religion writer. Others don’t. So GodsBigBlog.com is getting a niche of its own.

For those friends and readers who want to hear about my life, sans the musings on the otherworldly, this blog will continue to be about reading, writing and being alive in the here and now.

Now’s a good time to think about whether you’d like to subscribe to this blog — and/or to www.GodsBigBlog.com. Just click on that orange blob to your right on this page or on the GodsBigBlog home page. (Note: AOL users have trouble subscribing. Sorry.) See you there.

The Writing Room: Can This Guy Make Me a Star?

Barbara — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:24:43 +0000

Jeff Greenwald

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

I’m getting out of my writing room long enough to take Jeff Greenwald’s Page to Stage class at the San Francisco Writers Grotto.

It starts Jan. 17. Sounds like fun. I think there are still spaces available. Join me???? Here’s the link.

Jeff is a journalist, author and stage performer. And he’s got a book out called Shopping for Buddhas. Sounds like an interesting guy. Let’s see if he can turn me into Tina Fey in four short weeks.

Seriously, I have an agenda here. I’m pretty happy with the state of my book, Finding Holy. It’s 95% written. OK, 90%. It only needs tweaking and the filling in of a few modest holes.

But I’ve got at least one agent and multitudes of editors and publicists at book publishers, big and small, telling me that Platform, with a capital P, is everything. One editor even told me that it’s easier for a publisher to fix up a book that is mediocrely written than it is to get attention for a book and author who’s got no platform.

OK, what’s Platform? It’s your credentials to write a book (which I have), but it’s also the ready-made, identifiable audience that a writer brings with her when she or her agent approaches a publisher. Giving talks, leading workshops and getting onto NPR are mighty helpful. (So does keeping this blog, btw. Help my Platform; send the link to your friends!)

Soooo. In the interest of strengtheining my Platform, I’m off to Jeff’s class next week. Let’s hope he can make me a star of stage and screen. Or, better yet, a published author.

To be continued . . .

A Case of the Human Condition: Our Christmas Candy Is — Gone!

Barbara — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 02:04:17 +0000

Christmas candy half gone . . .

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

My son Peter’s girlfriend’s mom has a lot of good qualities. She gardens, she composts, she giggles at my jokes, she adores my son. This is all good.

But what’s really good about Liz is — what comes out of her kitchen.

Take the little bags of homemade fudge, nuts, toffee and caramel she dropped into our laps on Christmas Day.

No, you can’t take them. We’ve already eaten them up. Jon and I unpacked our bags of candy on December 29 after we got home from Minnesota. And by yesterday, January 3, the candy was gone.

. . . Christmas candy all gone

Gone, gone, gone. Like a lot of good things in life — mothers, fathers, old friends, colleagues.

Those people are gone from my future, but hopefully Liz’s homemade candy is not. With any luck at all, Peter’s girlfriend’s mother will continue to adore my son, and little packages of candy will drop into my lap for years to come.

A Case of the Human Condition: Fewer Marriages — but More Facebook Relationships?

admin — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:07:10 +0000

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

Apparently, fewer Americans are getting married these days. (Check out the PBS Newshour story.)

But lots and lots of people are doing the next best thing: making a public declaration of being in a relationship — on Facebook.

Neither of my twenty/thirty-something kids is married. But both are telling the world they’re in a relationship … and they’re naming names.

The computers over at Facebook keep you honest, I notice. You can’t say you’re in a relationship with somebody unless they agree to it.

On the other hand, some folks are so keen on marriage, they'll marry a bunch of people all at once: The Darger family of Utah has three wives.

A Case of the Human Condition: Holy Sex Toys

Barbara — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:24:10 +0000

Traditional Christians, Jews, Muslims — and maybe even a Buddhist or two – they’re discovering the joy of sex, with a little help on line from sex toy manufacturers.

Read all about it on The Daily Beast.

The Writing Room: Writing Tips — Free for Nothing!

Barbara — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 05:01:17 +0000

I just discovered a site called Nieman Storyboard: Breaking down story in every medium. A project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

Looks like there might be lots of good stuff for writers on this site — including creative nonfiction writers.

A very helpful new post takes a close look at writer Jeanne Marie Laskas’ work — why it reads so well. Check it out for some great tips for making your nonfiction writing more lucid and reader-friendly.

See you there.

Yosemite — More Beautiful than the Himalayas?

Barbara — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:28:25 +0000

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

Is the Yosemite high country even more beautiful than the Himalayas?

That's Al, very tiny between trees and rock. c 2011 BF Newhall

My hiking pal Al Aistrope thinks so. The Himalayas’ claim to fame, of course, is all those high, spectacularly high, mountain peaks.

Yosemite, on the other hand, abounds in beautiful sights, large and small — rocks, trees, wildflowers, river beds, meadows and mountains. (For more pix, check out the posts below.)

Al knows whereof he speaks. He spends a lot of time in Nepal.

Right now he’s in Katmandu, where he looks after orphans through his program Virtue’s Children Nepal. He’ll be having Christmas dinner with them.

Some day I’ll have to ask Al how his charity got that name. It’s probably something about the amazing loyalty and generosity Al has observed over the years among the orphan children he’s met there.

You can see Al in this picture. He’s very tiny between the rocks and the trees. For a closer look at Al, go to the Virtue’s Children Nepal website.

More Pix of Beautiful Yosemite High Country

Barbara — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:44:16 +0000

A diseased tree on the trail at Yosemite high country

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

Here are a couple more pictures from my days at Inyo National Forest the Yosemite National Park high country near Tuolemne Meadows. (It’s pronounced too-OLL-eh-mee, btw.) Enjoy!

Snow melt in September at Inyo National Forest, near Yosemite

It was spring in September at 11,000 feet in Inyo National Forest. Photos c 2011 BF Newhall

A Case of the Human Condition: My (Awesome) Zumba Body

Barbara — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 17:24:52 +0000

That's me on the left

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

Trying on bras at Nordstrom the other day, the truth was all too apparent. Too much flesh here. Too much skin there.

Some of it fit into the bra. A lot of it didn’t. I felt terrible about my body.

Lucky for my body image, however, I finished my day with Zumba. A few warm-ups, a few stretches and I was feeling great.

So was my body. It can jump. It can grapevine. It can move with the beat. And my, those hips can wiggle.

Photo and text c 2011 BF Newhall

At Tuolumne — Celebrating Getting Born

Barbara — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 07:26:19 +0000

We spent one of our days at nearby Inyo National Forest

Birthday at 10,000 feet

By Barbara Falconer Newhall, with a little help from her friends

On my last birthday, in September, I had three wonderful days at Tuolumne Meadows and Inyo National Forest in the Sierra Nevada with two wonderful friends.

It was probably my best birthday ever — though there’s maybe some forgotten birthday back in my school days when I dressed up in a tafetta dress, put on my Sunday-best patent leather shoes, played pin the tail on the donkey and accepted wonderful gifts from my little girlfriends, also dressed up in tafetta and patent leather.

We were pretty, surely. But Tuolumne — Tuolumne is spectacular. Even my friend Al, who spends lotsa time in the Himalayas, swears that Yosemite and its high country is the most beautiful spot in the world.

Lupine -- it was spring in September

I had my camera and took hundreds of pictures. I mean it, hundreds.

At every turn in the trail something new and unforgettable cried out to be noticed and recorded. Big things like rocks and mountains. Small things, like the pinecones and duff under my grateful feet.

All that beauty, just sitting there, outdoing itself, whether anybody happened by that day or not — what to do about it?

If you’re my two friends, you quietly take it in. If you’re me, you snap yet another picture. And another. And another.

I even took pictures of the forest debris littering the trail.

A Three Dishwasher Day — Make that Four

Barbara — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 03:52:49 +0000

Getting ready for the second dishwasher load of the day.

By Barbara, aka Mom

I’ve loaded the dishwasher three times today. Daughter Christina madly baking Thanksgiving pies, peeling squashes, and cooking up some kind of sauce to go over the goat cheese appetizer.

One more load of dishes after dinner — and I’m done for thenight.