Facing Yourself in the Morning

NOTE: I was asked to speak at Northlake Unitarian Universalist Church in Kirkland WA on what I've learned and how I've grown on my journey. This is my message.

On August 4, 2013 I spoke here at Northlake and inadvertently misquoted Emerson when I said that ‘It’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey.’ I didn’t even know that Emerson was credited with the words ‘Life is a journey, not a destination.’ On August 10^th, I left Bellevue in my truck and towed my new home away with me.

 

The first question that I am often asked is ‘why are you on this journey?’ In all fairness, I have to say that it depends on who is asking. It was a long-time dream to be able to just travel and see all that I had missed while I was driving the freeways from destination to destination in my life. I decided that from now on, anyplace I would have driven past or flown over, I was going to stop and see. And it is a remarkable journey that continues as soon as I walk out of church this morning and get back in my truck.

But there was more to it than that. A desire to go see would never have gotten me off my butt and on the road. In 2012, I entered a period of darkness and secretly battled depression for most of the year. Perhaps you have even experienced this. No light was coming into my life so I decided to go out in search of it.

Each morning for the past fifteen months, I have woken up to face myself. Today I tell you what I’ve seen.

This is not a travelogue. Rev. Marian asked me to talk about what I’ve learned and how I’ve grown. So whether you want to hear it or not, that’s what you get this morning. Some of it surprises even me.

Part I

First, I listen to XM Radio as I drive. I have buttons set for classic rock, garage bands, classical, jazz, country, and comedy. And several others. My first and most startling discovery about myself was that my entire life could be quickly summarized in a playlist of Beatles songs. I’m not going into that any further.

I learned a lot about driving in a very short period of time. I’m still learning. And I mean much more than how to back my trailer into a small space. I learned the forearm technique of backing a trailer. If you hold your forearm parallel to the ground in front of you and move your hand in the direction you want the trailer to go, your elbow points the direction to turn the wheel. I still get confused at times and have been in some pretty tight pinches.

Somehow, I’ve managed to escape from them even when the GPS pointed me down a grass track across a mountain on a reservation. GPS is a wonderful thing, but here’s a rule for life that is part of my discovery: You just can’t always trust your guidance system.

I became aware that I was talking to other drivers on the road—often angry words about the quality of their driving. Of course, I was aware through a few horn blasts that my own driving wasn’t always as considerate as it could be and I was making my stomach hurt with the vitriol. So I quit talking to other drivers, either out loud or in my head. Try it. I gradually became a far calmer driver.

Part of that was also realizing I was not ruled by a clock. There is nowhere in the past fifteen months until I returned to Seattle that I needed to be on time. There was no need for me to drive 70 or 75 mph just because that was the speed limit. I made it a practice not to go above 60 when I was pulling the trailer and if I discovered cars behind me to pull over and let them pass. After all, they are probably late for something important. I reduce my speed to the speed limit when I enter towns and make it my practice to never, ever exceed the speed limit. To keep from accidentally speeding up, I set the cruise control at 35, 30, 25. I am always down to the speed limit by the time I pass the sign that gives it and never speed up to the new speed limit until I pass the sign that announces it.

Oh, cruise control is such a blessing! I love traveling and knowing that I’m not speeding up and slowing down constantly. I don’t want to be an irritant to other drivers. But a lesson that I’ve been slower to learn is not to be a slave to cruise control. Many people have not discovered the feature in their cars, so they do slow down and speed up randomly. Cruise control can bring you right up on their bumper quickly and when you pull out to pass them it may not be fast enough to get by when they speed up. I don’t need to be anyplace at a particular time. I can release cruise control and slow down. Cruise control is not life control.

Hmm. That is an interesting concept. How often have I put my life on cruise control and not paid attention to my speed. How often in life have I become angry when people ahead of me are not going my speed? My entire adventure has led me to take my life off cruise control.

Part II

Does that sound like I’m giving up? It’s been a hard lesson to learn. It’s probably a hard lesson for all of us to learn.

One of the things that kept me coming to Northlake over the years was the commitment to social justice. In 2007, the church started the share the plate program as part of its commitment to the ten-year plan to end homelessness in King County. A thousand dollars a month of undesignated offerings is given to organizations working with the homeless in King County. We’ve given over $94,000 so far. I put my crumpled $5 bill in the offering plate each Sunday I’m here. So we must be doing something right. Right?

According to the One-Night Count done near the end of January each year, there were 7,839 people homeless in King County on the night of January 25-26, 2007. On the night of January 24-25, 2014, there were 9,194 people homeless in King County. An increase of 17% in eight years. There is one more Tent City than there was at that time. The number of people in transitional housing—the housing that should be moving people off the street into permanent homes—fell by 50 people. The number in overnight shelters rose by 22%. And the number of homeless in our county who spent the night on the street without shelter rose 45%.

Believe me, I am not condemning our efforts in any way. The work of the shelters, churches, and organizations working on this problem are doing a good thing and are well-supported by our donations. But it was a wake-up to me to realize that I can’t change the world.

I published a book two years ago by an educator in New York titled Counterfeit Kids: Why they can’t think and how to save them. It is a book worth reading.

I’m going to adapt an illustration that Rod used in his classroom to get his English Literature kids to actually think.

When I was a child, my address was RR2, Mishawaka, Indiana. That’s an address, but it isn’t a location. From the time I was old enough to understand language, I was told that I lived 8/10ths of a mile north of U.S. 20 on Elder Road. That was a location.

Every day growing up until I was fifteen and moved away, I crossed U.S. Highway 20 to go to church, to school, to get groceries, to deliver newspapers. Every day I looked up and down that highway and wondered where it went. This summer I found out. I traveled the highway from end-to-end, Boston to Newport, Oregon and then I came on up here to Kirkland, to Northlake Unitarian Universalist Church. 3,900 miles.

 

I haven’t been everywhere, but I’ve been a lot of where. Now I’m going to ask you to think in very big terms. The beginning of the Universe. What scientists call the Big Bang. How old is the Universe? Let’s say that the Big Bang was in Boston, 12 Billion years ago. The earth is about 4 billion years old. That means that on my journey across the U.S., with the Big Bang in Boston, I would already have reached Yellowstone National Park before the earth solidified in its orbit.

Life on planet earth in complex single-cellular form began about 2 billion years ago. On our map, just east of Bend, Oregon. There’s really not much out there.

Multi-cellular life didn’t begin until I’d finished my trip across the country and stood with my feet at the Pacific Ocean in Newport Oregon.

 

Animals first appeared about five miles south of Portland.

And Dinosaurs walked the earth a little northwest of Mount St. Helens.

At long last, Mammals appeared on the earth, just 200,000,000 years ago. Approximately at Federal Way.

Here is where it gets interesting in my book. Homo sapiens appeared just 200,000 years ago. That’s roughly at the corner outside the church here.

Earliest Civilization is thought to have appeared between 7,500 and 12,000 years ago. That’s about the second or third row here in the sanctuary.

Jesus was born just 2,000 years ago. On the bottom step, right in front of me.

Two weeks ago I celebrated my 65^th birthday. According to my super-duper-scientific calculator, that means I was born right here where I’m standing.

But not all of where I’m standing. I’m only about an inch on that timeline.

And when we consider the fact that I share my inch with 7.2 billion other people, my handy smartphone calculator tells me that I don’t even exist.

I’m prone to look across the country and see the Big Bang in Boston and say, “We’ve got to do something about that!” I look past things I might be able to do that are only a millimeter from where I’m are standing.

In the play Inherit the Wind, a fictional account of the Scopes Monkey Trial on the teaching of evolution in public schools in Tennessee in 1925, defense lawyer Henry Drummond ended the play by saying of prosecutor Matthew Harrison Brady, "He looked for God too high up and too far away." And that's where we look for problems to solve.

That’s what I learned. I can’t change the world. I can’t end homelessness in King County. In fact, I wrote a novel in 2010, published this year that is a journey inside the head of a chronically homeless man. It exceeded all my sales projections. I anticipated sales of ten copies and eleven actually bought that book. And I think half the people who bought it are in this room and the other half are in my family tree. It’s a hard book to read. Not because it is difficult words or badly written. I wrote it. Of course, it is perfect. But because the man in this book will never not be homeless.

That doesn’t put him outside the range of being helped. Of getting a hot meal or a cup of coffee. Or even of shelter on a cold night.

I love this church’s vision statement and I read or recite it with you each Sunday morning I am here:

 

I can’t be that community. I can be a vibrant and welcoming person. Well, welcoming, at least. I would have to think long and hard about what it would mean for me to be vibrant. I do know that I can feed the human spirit.

Many of you know that in addition to writing mysteries and thrillers and the odd literary fiction, I also have a pseudonym, Devon Layne, under which I write erotic romance and adventure. Think Fifty Shades of Grey, only actually well-written, with a plot, and likable characters. I have eight books out under that name. When Odalisque was released last year, I started getting email.

In fact, the largest volume of email in response to any story that I’ve ever received, including the half million downloads of the story I am currently posting. Dozens, perhaps hundreds thanking me for the story. Several of the most meaningful emails I’ve ever received were in response to it. One man wrote to me and said, “I had to share your last chapter with several of my friends. After we’d read it, we bought a load of groceries and took it to the local food shelf. Thank you.”

As I was preparing this on Tuesday, I received an email from a person who had just finished reading my book “Redtail”, published in January. His email said: “I’ve never lived north of Texas but have driven past Laramie, & I can hear that hawk in my mind. As my days are numbered, I find comfort in the hope that friends are waiting. Thanks for the work & creativity.” Even in stories that are, shall we say, frivolous, I can feed the human spirit and maybe feed a few humans, too.

 

I don’t know yet exactly how to light a beacon for love and justice in my life, but I’ll willingly aspire to that.

My great revelation, my growth, my discovery, is that I cannot change the world. But if you are busy changing the world, perhaps I could cook you dinner.

Part III

This is hard. It goes with realizing I can’t change the world. No protest I make will return 200 girls from raiders who abducted them from school in Africa. There is no one I can call who can free Tibet. No letter to my congressman will prevent children from being shot in school. Oh, I care about all those things. But I also recognize that they are not within my control.

But that is what sells. It sells newspapers. It sells television shows. It sells shares and likes on Facebook. And it simply makes me upset, terrorized, and polarized. So, I quit watching television. I have a beautiful 24” 12-volt LED television with digital antenna in my trailer.

It has only been unstrapped from its secure position on the wall four times in the past year. Those were to watch movies. It isn’t even plugged in. I use the outlet to charge my modem.

I quit reading newspapers. I quit listening to news broadcasts. I follow the weather when my sister reminds me to. On my timeline on Facebook, I quit “liking” things. I don’t “share” things. In fact, I “hide” anything that is shared from a popular source, TV station, somebody else’s website, that is posted “via” another source, or that has the least hint of a commercial, political, or religious application--Yes, even the stuff from George Takei. What I am interested in are the notes from my friends that tell me who is sick, celebrating, excited, or sad. And I don’t "like" their posts. If it is important enough to me that I should “like” it, I comment on it. I don’t clean it every day, but my timeline, should anyone look at it, has little on it that isn’t real news from my friends.

I have told my friends and followers and those people I meet along the way that nothing in my religion or my politics requires me to convince them that I am right. Nor does anything require me to listen to them try to convince me I am wrong. My stress has gone down significantly. I have not woken up in the morning with a sore back or been unable to stand up straight when I got out of bed in over a year. Yes, I am aware of Isis. She is a goddess of ancient Egypt, the ideal wife and mother and patroness of nature and magic.

Part IV

My journey not only took me through thirty-five states and across 30,000 miles this past year, it also took me on several trips through time. So I will take you with me, back to 1966. I was a summer student at Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Carbondale, Colorado. I spent the summer studying drama, anthropology, and philosophy. And climbing mountains. Glorious! At the end of the summer, we had our concluding anthropological field trip. A week-long adventure in the Southwest. We were divided by sport. The Kayakers stayed on the Colorado River studying the effects of the Glenn Canyon Damn. The horse-back riders rode through mountains and the Navaho Reservation. And the hikers and climbers were split into two groups of 35 each and started at opposite ends of a tour that would include a raft trip on Lake Powell, a visit to Rainbow Natural Bridge, a hike across the reservation to Navaho Mountain, a visit to the Anasazi ruins, and a long truck ride back to Colorado. My part of the group didn’t complete the trip.

We took a wrong turn in the night and ended up miles out in the desert. The overnight hike took us three days before we were “rescued” and led out of the canyons by a trader. We didn’t get to see the Anasazi ruins or Monument Valley. So I went back. Just being in that region flooded my mind with memories of kids I had known for a summer and never met again. Most were just names or locations or a defining characteristic.

I went back to Navaho Mountain. I drove up Indian Road 16 in Arizona into Utah past the mountain and onto Trailhead Road. That’s a sand track. I found a high promontory that I could hike to. I brought my spiritual tools with me and cast a circle where I could see down into what the AP referred to in ’66 as the “airless canyons.” I told the wind, the fire, the rain, and the earth that I was here and it was beautiful.

As I meditated in my circle, I met my younger self emerging from the canyons, whooping up a storm. I found, oddly, that I had no advice for him. I have my own mistakes to make. I’ve already made his.

But I did finish the trip. I camped at Navaho National Monument and hiked out to see Betetakin cliff dwellings of the Anasazi Indians.

As clever as they were, apparently they weren’t as smart as they thought, either.

Part V

I joke with friends that I get up in the morning sometime after I wake up. I go to bed at night when I’m tired. I eat when I’m hungry. I drink when I’m thirsty. And if I get sleepy, I take a nap. I’m a baby.

But that utter independence also brings me face to face with my harshest critic. Me. When I wake up in the morning, no one passes judgment on me. No one tells me I’m a good person. No one castigates me for speeding. No one criticizes my writing. Well, that last isn’t exactly true. It seems there are a lot of people willing to criticize my writing. But in general, I don’t face them each morning. The only one I face each day is me.

I have spent as much as a week cutting myself to pieces over every major and minor decision I have made in my life from my first attempt to kiss my high school girlfriend to sleeping with the enemy. I woke up every morning that week with a headache, but I blame that on my nephew’s moonshine. But for the most part I listen to Rod, in Counterfeit Kids as he asks his students if they have completed their homework in the spirit it was intended, to help them learn something about life. On those mornings when I sadly shake my head, he says, “Do better tomorrow.”

I am not seeking enlightenment.

I am not trying to change the world.

I have no great advice to give you.

I am only trying to do better tomorrow.

Laramie

With each passing mile as I head toward Laramie, the dim mountains grow clearer. I cannot help but think God built a wall around the West to keep mere mortals at bay.

 

The closer you get the less you see the mountains and the more you see the valleys.

At long last I arrived in Laramie after a climb from 3800 feet to 7200 feet in elevation.

Why am I excited about coming to Laramie, WYO? A year and a half ago I made an off-hand comment that the next thing we'd see in genre mashing would be an ‘erotic paranormal romance western mystery.’ I’d know more than said it when I knew the story. I got more excited about it as the year progressed and in November, in seventeen days, I wrote it. Then rewrote it before the end of the month.  By January it was published under the author name of my evil alter-ego, Devon Layne. It has become Devon’s most popular book in both eBook and print.

Great. The only thing is that I set the story in and around Laramie—a place I’d never visited. Now I’m wandering around looking to see if anything I said about the area is true. In general, so far the terrain is what I anticipated. Lots and lots of range land with the major crops being hay and cattle.

They have coffee! I bought five pounds of Coal Creek Coffee Company coffee before I got out of town! And a couple of "Turbos"--their name for a shot in the dark.

A lot of the story takes place around the University of Wyoming where Cole and Ashley are students. My first major story error was that there is no view of the cemetery from any window in the library at the University of Wyoming.

 

The Coe Library, however, is fantastic. And it is only steps away from the Student Union. That I got right, at least. The University campus is beautiful. Even the newer buildings have kept to the same sandstone construction as Old Main, the original building. UW was founded in 1886, four years before Wyoming became a State. And don't forget that the first legislature of the new Territory of Wyoming in 1869 passed a bill granting equal political rights to the women of the territory. Twenty-one years before it became a State!

The Greenhill Cemetery was much more visible from the fraternity houses. I somehow imagined Avenue of Flags to be a broad paved way lined with flags. All the paths thru the cemetery are dirt tracks. The Potters Field, however, is much like I imagined Caitlin's 1887 grave to be.

There was a big farmers market in downtown Laramie on Friday afternoon. I’m told it is there every Friday. The streets are closed and the booths line 2nd and Grand. I had a big Mexican lunch next door to the Buckhorn Bar and Parlor. All the brothels were finally closed in the 1960s. That was Caitlin and Kyle’s meeting point. The places on First all face the railroad that got the town started in 1868.

I was uncommonly lucky to delay my visit to Centennial until Saturday.

It was Centennial Community Day and there was a whole feast of activity at the history museum depot. There were community garage sales and ladies selling strawberry rhubarb pie. Yummy.

The countryside near Centennial is much as I imagined it though I probably chose the worst possible location for Cole's ranch in Albany County. It’s impractical to move cattle onto these steep slopes for summer grazing. Just to the east there are miles and miles of rangeland. I was told there are few ranches left though. The cattle are trucked in, graze, and are trucked out. Still, if I were Cole I wouldn't give up this land without a fight.

There’s an interesting thing about cattle that I didn’t realize when I started writing about ranching. Think of every picture you’ve seen of cattle or buffalo in movies or old western TV shows. They’re all bunched together. Well, that may be true when they are being driven or are frightened, but when grazing, a hundred head of cattle spread out over acres and acres of land. The same is true of buffalo. You can’t call them solitary by any means, but they sure aren’t fighting over the same tuft of grass.

 

With a population of only 582,650, Wyoming is the least populated state in the Union. It ranks 49th in population density at just 5.85 people per square mile. It is unfathomably beautiful. I would consider moving here, at least in the summers. Some of the big ranches are being subdivided and you can buy a 40-acre ‘spread’ just west of Laramie for only $85,000. Of course, then you have to put something on it to live in. The economy here seems to be good if house prices are any indication. Most of the real estate ads I've seen around Laramie are in the $500k range. In 2011, Money Magazine identified Laramie as one of the best cities in which to retire. It’s on my list!

Having actually visited here, I’m seriously considering writing a sequel to “Redtail” this fall. There are as many stories as people in this great state. In fact, I’ve already started research and character development for the story that I’ve tentatively called “Raven.” I might even get back to Laramie before I head south for the winter!