Looking East

When in doubt, I look east. That seems to be a theme with me. We've established my deep-rooted connection to Maryland's Eastern Shore, its brackish water and shallow rivers; its small towns and open fields; its marshes and panoramic Bay sunsets. Its history and my family's intertwined. There are times when it feeds my soul.

But that's not the only east.

There have been times when my soul struggled. In college, it was Buddhism and writers/thinkers like Thich Nhat Hahn and Fritjof Capra that dialed me in to interconnectedness and gave me a new way to think about spirituality. When I was between jobs years ago, it was Chogyam Trungpa's "Shambhala," that gave me a code, the code of a sacred/spiritual warrior, to think about and try to model my life around. It has been yoga, second to only running, that has grounded me and elevated my awareness of my body, pointed out how connecting mind and body creates a holistic peace that I can't go without.

Aesthetically and creatively, it is east-meets-west writers, Gary Snyder, Robert Hass, Alan Watts and Tom Robbins that have meant the most to me.

And recently, I have turned east again. This time to Cold Mountain. I had read some of the songs of Cold Mountain through Gary Snyder's translations. I used some birthday Amazon money from my sister and her family to snag Red Pine's take on Cold Mountain's songs. Cold Mountain was a person, not a place. His name in Chinese, "Han-shan," translates to Cold Mountain, a name he took from the cave he chose for his home. He lived mostly as a hermit. And he wrote. And what he wrote connected soul to land to Nature to Universe. Like this:

Today I sat before the cliff,
sat a long time till mists had cleared.
A single thread, the clear stream runs cold;
A thousand yards the green peaks lift their heads.

I may have said this before, but I wish the Eastern Shore had mountains. I'd like to import some if we could. There is a sense of awe and beauty that a smooth landscape just doesn't touch in some ways (though it does in others). But while I don't have mountains, I can follow his example on a more simple scale.

When I am having coffee or Dale's on the back deck, watching a male cardinal circle repeatedly, I can pay attention. Or a robin protecting her nest in our rose bush, which is beginning to bloom. Or when I sit on the front steps, and feel a breeze come up from nowhere, and see the moon rising in the dusk, just as the streetlight comes on and tries to copy the moon's glow. Or being divebombed by spring birds while out on a run, who seem to be having fun with me, showing me Nature's smile.

I don't think I would make a good hermit. Or much of a poet. I don't have mountains or solitude. But I understand, sometimes, what Cold Mountain is doing, what he is showing me. And, as has often been the case in my life, I will keep looking east.

Beer, Conversation, God, Repeat

Bryan Berghoef is clearly on to something. He's coined a term for something I've been doing since I had my first beer with friends (at age 21). But it's not about the beer. I'm thinking of times and conversations at Pope's Tavern in Oxford or Greenshield's in Raleigh, N.C., where the the superfluous sloughs away and you are pondering Life's big questions over a pint.

I can remember walking to philosophy class at N.C. State (a rarity, given), and thinking about some question or another and having it addressed in class while discussing Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" or Bertrand Russell. Philosophy seemed to cut through the details. Which is why I studied it at Washington College and why, had the ball bounced differently for us, I would have been a PhD philosophy graduate student at Duquesne University and likely teaching it now.

It's why when the ground feels shaky under my feet, I pick up Thomas Merton or Thich Nhat Hahn or Alan Watts or Chogyam Trungpa or Frederick Buechner to help calm it down.

Church services are not discussions, generally speaking. They wouldn't work too well that way. You sit, you stand, you sing, you pray, you reflect. If you have young kids, you might be equally focused on making sure they aren't crawling under the pews or coloring in a hymnal. But dialogue is largely absent.

Not to mention, if your spiritual lineage includes Buddhism, Fritjof Capra, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walt Whitman and Sunday morning trail runs, well, I'm still trying to figure out what all the means.

It's also true that you don't want to be the guy, or girl, at the bar watching the game or celebrating a birthday, who wants to scale the walls of existentialism. That guy doesn't get invited to happy hour.

Berghoef figures it out with his idea of "Pub Theology." Beer, conversation, God. All backgrounds and beliefs are welcome. Open, honest discussion, each week (don't most churches meet weekly?). If you are a narrative cat like me, you can read how he describes it for the Huffington Post. If you look at how many places are starting their own version of pub theology groups, Berghoef isn't alone in his thinking. And that makes me happy.

That's why a pub theology group has kicked off in Easton. Every Wednesday, at the Washington Street Pub, at 7:30 p.m. A place, an outlet, for pondering Life's big questions, in a casual environment, possibly over a pint.

Roadside Salvation

I'm a big fan of the roadside stand (a la Walker Evans's "Roadside Stand near Birmingham, Alabama, 1936"). On the way to Ocean City there was a rundown roadside stand that read, "The Thinking Man's Market." It sat on the west-bound side of Route 50, for those returning home from the beach.

I never stopped there, though I would have liked to. I do consider myself a thinking man, after all.

When we would drive past it, either primed for the beach or hungover, sandy footed, sandy pocketed and sunburnt, I always wondered what they sold. Was it full of MacGyver-style props--gum wrappers and paper clips, duct tape and compasses? Or was it an emperor's-new-clothes type scheme with rocks and blocks of wood, daring yo to expose yourself as a non-thinking man if you failed to see their utility?

I may never know as the building has been updated and renamed. You no longer need to think to shop there.

I don't claim to be a thinking man all the time, as history, present and future (will) certainly show. But as an occasionally thinking man, I have long been a fan of allegory and parable. I love to try to figure shit out. Not Rubick's Cubes or car engine figure shit out, mind you, but books, stories, movies, morality, the natural world, metaphysics, how many licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop figure shit out.

I remember being smitten with Plato's Allegory of the Cave on first reading it. No doubt the parable-happy open-endedness of Buddhism has always kept my mind sitting next to, or in, the stream. And I've been spending more and more time with the contemplative prayer of Thomas Merton, who was tight with Thich Nhat Hahn, who is quite a chap to sit with.

I tend to lay the lens of personal allegory over all kinds of stuff, looking for what message or deeper meaning I can take away from an experience or a story. As such, you might expect to find mustard seeds and fig trees, lost sheep and coins in The Thinking Man's Market. Or if you are a fan of Tom Robbins you never know what you'll run into on the roadside.

Probably best just to grab some sweet corn, tomatoes and a plastic pink lawn flamingo, cruise home and sit on the porch to enjoy. No deeper meaning needed.