My List of Important Things

My fiance and I went down to the ocean a couple nights ago. The point was to get away from the noise and to spend a little quiet time together before my trip.

[Planning a wedding is like inviting a bear to dinner. You can never be sure what he's going to eat (the food on his plate? the plate itself? the furniture? me?) and you must maintain the highest vigilance to keep him from taking over the house. If you're not careful, he can chase you right out the door.]

We stood on the beach and looked at the stars. Which was good. We sat on the lifeguard tower and slid around it, staying in the shadow, when the beach patrol 4WD came by.

And gradually I noticed what had been there all the time, although it took a second walk down to the water to really begin to see it. It was this: a sense of space around me, a no-man's-land like the space between the two Koreas or around the Federal Correctional Institution in Victorville that we drove past two weeks ago. Like I was wrapped in heavy flannel. Like everything I have been saying and doing, everything I have been experiencing, has had to pound its way through the layers in order to get my attention. This, of course, requires everything to be loud and violent, extreme, harsh. This is a sad state of affairs.

It is the way I get sometimes when it seems that are too many weeds and not enough hands to pull them.

It is also the way I get when I am not keeping things in the right order.

At times like these, I will sometimes look at my List of Important Things and find that the things of monumental importance, the mountains, have somehow been relegated to positions of relative dishonor, like, say, number 34 on the list, and the miniscule bits, the specks of dust, have accomplished a revolution and are sitting pretty at the top, number 1, 2, and 3.

What is going on here? Who has been tinkering with my List? I would like to blame it on the devil, or the culture around me, or indigestion, but I think I know the answer. The answer is me. Whether through apathetic inattention or intentional distraction, I am to blame.

Now I am getting ready to leave on a trip which will require my careful attention and my persistent alertness. I am not entirely sure if I can pull it off -- fortunately, I will have about 24 hours of travel/meditation time to prepare myself -- but at least I am watching for it.

As for my fiance, she was the one who suggested I go back down to the water's edge and wait a little longer. She was also the one who held my hand while I babbled on about everything else but the real problem for minutes on end. I am surely blessed.

As for me, I am grateful for bells that ring from church towers in the morning.