The Architecture of Re-Membering

Architecture is made of memory. The slope of a roof, the shape of a window, and the color of a door contain the record of the minds that conceived them and the hands that crafted them. This is never so clear as in the memorials that honor a person, group or event. At first glance they honor an achievement that took place in a particular moment in time. Looking deeper, we can see the courage those individuals expressed when they were thrown into the whirlpool of powerful and far reaching forces. Even deeper, we can see ordinary people, like ourselves, who responded to great challenges in extraordinary ways. Seeing how they brought forth their hidden strengths calls us to bring forth our hidden strengths.


These encounters with memorials are moments of re-membering. They counter the events that dis-membered our minds, bodies and cultures with healing powers of attention and care. Offering a handful of flowers before a head stone not only honors the person memorialized there. It also offers the ache in our souls a gesture for reweaving the torn fabric of our lives into a new and more human whole.


Since every building and designed object is made of memory, every place can become a memorial for re-membering our lives and the world around us. The words on this screen, for example, are made of eons of human struggle to develop a language that re-members our connections across the great divides between us. The table and chair at a cafe offers a setting to stop in the midst of a hectic day and re-member who we are and sense our interdependence with the web of living. In this way, every place can become a place of re-membering, a place to recollect the fragments of our lives into a revitalized whole.   

Creating a Kitchen for Your Soul

Your kitchen is calling. It's inviting you to engage the magic of transformation by taking the gifts of the earth and cooking them into meals that nourish the depths of your being. To make a kitchen for your soul, you don't need an expensive remodel. You don't need new cabinets or industrial strength appliances. All you need is to open your senses to the act of preparing food and the willingness to appreciate the simple miracle being created in the act.
  
It only takes a moment to shift your kitchen from a storage room for snacks into a place of soulful alchemy. Instead of unconsciously stumbling into your kitchen and grabbing something from the frig, plopping it on a plate and stuffing it in your mouth, try this. Stop, look at where you are and sense the possibilities. The stove is offering fire. The sink is providing water, the refrigerator and cupboards are filled with earthy bounty from the world's garden. All that's needed is for you to feel the desire in your belly and allow it to guide you in creating a meal. As you open the doors of the frig or cabinet to select the vegetables, grains and other items, savor the colors, shapes and design of the food. Imagine the fields and orchards they came from and the natural processes of weather and soil that produced them. As you slice and combine the ingredients, notice how your participation transforms the raw materials of nature and sense your consciousness as an ingredient being blended into the mix. When you place the mixture on the stove or in the oven, feel the power of fire to release the flavors from within the food. 


When the meal is cooked, serve it and eat it with the same attention you put into the preparation. Appreciate the colors and aroma of the food. Enjoy the shapes and materials of the plates and eating utensils. Actually taste what you are tasting. Feel the nourishment of what your are swallowing. Breathe and notice how easy it was to create a kitchen for your soul.  

The Design Question That Matters

Whether you are designing a closet, a kitchen or a garden, there's one question that's more important than style, budget or square footage. Glossy design magazines ignore this question and focus on shiny object and dazzling gadgets. Most architects and designers overlook it as their minds glow with visions of innovative forms and dynamic spaces. This may produce beautiful and functional homes, but it often misses an essential ingredient: YOU!  


The creative question that matters and must be addressed if your house is to feel like home is this: "What do you want to experience?" If you don't ask this question, listen for the answers and shape your home to support what you want to experience there will always be a disconnect between you and your surroundings. 


When you choose a new set of flatware, admire its design and materials. More importantly, imagine using it to eat a meal. How does the fork feel in your hand? How will the spoon scoop soup and the fork butter bread? Do this with every design choice you make, from the chairs at your table the floor plan of your dream house on the hill. If you do, the flooring your choose will be supporting the personal character of your life, the walls will embrace your particular style of dwelling in the world and the roof will shelter you dreams, not somebody else's.    

Embracing the Endless Pilgrimage

We are all pilgrims on an elusive and endless road. This struck me as I watched the movie The Way. In the film, Martin Sheen plays a conservative, controlling father who is unexpectedly compelled to carry his dead son's ashes across Spain on the Camino de Santiago. For more than 1,000 years, travelers of all stripes have walked from every corner of Europe on this pilgrimage route to the cathedral in the west of the country where the remains of St. James are said to be enshrined.

The moment the movie began, tears welled up in my eyes and spilled over the rims. In the images of the pilgrimage road on the screen, my soul recognized its ancient and ongoing passage through the world. Though I've been to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella, I haven't walked the Camino de Santiago. I have, however, heeded the lifelong call of my soul to travel to pilgrimage sites all over the world and plumb the depths of my heart and mind. Over time, each day has become another stretch on an endless pilgrimage road. The terrain of this sacred journey has become fluid and ever-shifting. Every step of the way is an arrival, but not a place to linger. The languages spoken communicate what is beyond words.

What moves me deeply about pilgrimage is its accurate and poetic depiction of the human journey. Despite our attempts to build lives on stone foundations, our spirits continuously flow. Endless streams of consciousness ripple through our minds. Currents of energy shimmer through our bodies. Like shooting stars, we rocket through spacious stillness. But this silent, unmoving background is nothing like the granite ideas we use trying to take root in groundless soil. Instead of the solidity we seek, we pass through intangibility and impermanence. The pilgrimage removes the mask of certainty we hold tightly to our face. It says, let's get real and acknowledge we are all travelers on the way. Compelled by longings we define but know are indefinable, we move toward specific goals that when reached have no tangible substance.

When we acknowledge our lives are a pilgrimage, everything changes. Each person becomes a fellow traveler sharing the same road in his or her unique and personal way. Instead of going home at the end of the day, each step becomes an adventure and a homecoming. If we're tired, we learn to rest where we are. When we're hungry and thirsty, we learn the local language for finding food and drink. Lost and alone, we find companionship and direction from those nearby or from the compass in our soul. Instead of inhabiting a prison of dead routine, we dwell in a living landscape; each building and tree breathes; each event and relationship is a dialogue of life speaking with itself through that place and interaction. Life is far from what we expected and the journey is a mystery revealing ever deeper surprises.

Whether we take a dramatic walk along the Camino de Santiago or stroll down the path of a so-called quiet life, we have a choice. Fight the journey by straining to construct a solid home or engage our life as an unfolding wonder. We can either try to stand rigid in predictable formation or walk with nibble steps, responding to the music of the way. On second thought, we really don't have a choice. We may try to refuse the call of the pilgrim's road, but it can't be refused forever. No matter how tightly we struggle to build a solid house on immovable foundation, the earth eventually quakes and force us out the door. Each morning, we might as well lift the packs of experience and grasp our walking sticks of our skills. We might as well give in to the tug of our spirits to explore this confounding and wondrous world. We might as well greet each other as endless pilgrims and bid each other well on our way. Because we're already on the road and we always wandering through this endless world.

THE KEY CHANGE: From Viewpoint to View-Field

The key shift in awareness is

from self-centered viewpoint to ever-widening view-fields

CHANGE. We want it. We work toward it. We try innovative technologies, different organizations, new laws, other politicians, varied diets, fresh relationships, creative ways of working, and more. These tremendous efforts have shifted many things. The world seems perched on the edge of a major transformation. That monumental shift cannot happen, however, if one central factor isn't altered. The key change at the foundation of all others is to move from a self-centered viewpoint to ever-widening View-fields.

Most of the time, we see ourselves standing at the center of the world. As the drawing in the upper left hand corner depicts, each of us experiences life revolving around "Me." This Me is the central character in every life story. In this scenario, all change is directed toward what benefits the Me no matter how much it undermines the surrounding world. Such self-centered viewpoints spawn the greed, isolation and limitation that separate the haves from the have-nots, the powerful from the powerless, the in group from those on the fringes of society. In this structure, all change is merely a shift in appearance. The divisions that wound the world are reinforced and deepened.

On the other hand, events arise that knock the Me off center. Economic collapse, climate change, and social uprisings can push the Me to the edge of the world stage. Despite the personal trauma of this experience, a great opportunity opens before the Me. As the second drawing from the upper left depicts, the Me's self-centered view can widen into an arc of perception. Viewpoint can open to the View-field. The concerns of the individual can include the concerns of the whole. Change from this perspective can be directed toward benefiting as much territory as possible. The View-field approach spawns more compassion, connection and expansion. This key shift in outlook generates true structural change in what the Me thinks, says and creates.

As the third and fourth drawings above depict, each shift in viewpoint can widen into a broader View-field of concern. Our lives change from being all about Me to being about the role I can play in the wider world. This is not a diminishment of self. It is an expansion to a broader definition of self, a Me that lives as We.

How has life urged you to move from a self-centered viewpoint to a broader View-field? Please share your experience. It will help us all change the ways we see and transform the world we are creating.

Read more about the View-field and other patterns of change in my book 24 Patterns of Wisdom. Click here to see a preview of what's inside. Click here to see the book trailer on YouTube.

Courage to Walk on Water

There comes a time when the solid ground we walk upon dissolves. Tried and true methods for navigating life as if we were dwelling on firm terrain no longer work. No matter how hard we try or how much we love, our reliable maps and compasses, insightful knowledge and beliefs, precise formulas and techniques fail. The lines connecting people, places and events vanish. Our actions don't produce predictable results. We can't get a grasp on things. Not only has the rug been ripped from under our feet, the floor is gone too. We find ourselves adrift with no land in sight. The solid earth has liquified. We are living in a watery world.


Our first response it is to flail about, desperately attempting to grab something that's not moving. We look for fixed reference points to tell us where we are. We search for clear signposts to guide our way. The watery world, however, has shimmering milestones and undulating pathways. Everything is swirling, rising, falling, rolling. Nothing is graspable or clearly defined. The separate billiard ball world we're used to has melted into an ocean that continuously heaves and breathes. It's bottomless. It stretches beyond all horizons.

It's time to sink or swim. So we start paddling. Maybe we embrace the challenge and have some fun splashing about in the waves. We carry with us the solid ground belief that we are separate from the watery currents, however, and our arms tire from the effort. Our bodies remember we are not dolphins; we were made to walk upright. But, we've be told that walking on water is reserved for saints. It only happens in the mystical realms of miracles.

We realize there's no alternative. The only way to find food, shelter and clothing is to step onto the shifting currents and find a trail across the roiling foam. Treading on water is counter intuitive, to say the least. It takes a powerful suspension of disbelief to stride through the rippling seascape. That's what life calls for these days. The analog world we have inhabited for thousands of years has been swept away by the digital tide. Everything is out at sea. The only way forward is to summon the courage to walk on water.

24 Patterns of Wisdom—Book Trailer

Imbalance: The Secret to Dynamic Balance

We seek balance in stillness. Another kind of balance makes the world go round. It's the dynamic balance that nature uses to renew itself. This animated balance enlivens your body through yoga and exercise. It sparks relationships, regenerates economies, and recreates the world in countless ways. This illustration of Growth, Decay and Renewal from my new book 24 Patterns of Wisdom depicts this dynamic balance. It diagrams how balance in action comes through what appears to be imbalance. Instead of seeking balance through freeze-framing it in unmoving suspension. We can sense the dynamic balance that is already and always moving us toward lively renewal.

Interview: Discover Your Patterns of Wisdom

Listen to the interview

with me and Marti Spiegelman

Click Here

Applying Patterns of Wisdom to Daily Life

These days our attention turns to the lessons learned over the past year and how to apply them during our next orbit around the sun. Whatever wisdom we have gained, our minds organize it into patterns. We develop systems for action that we believe will produce certain results, "Early to bed, early to rise makes one healthy, wealthy and wise." We focus on tasks that will enhance our food, shelter, clothing and communities while they enrich our bodies, minds and souls. We begin the new year determined to work smarter, try harder and love more. As the months unfurl, our visions of a better life can get lost in the day to day challenges we encounter. So, what is a practical and sustainable way to apply patterns of wisdom to daily life?

For me the answer is depicted in a story I came across more than 40 years ago. I found it in a sidebar of the Whole Earth Catalog and carried it with me for years. I used this tale to open my first book, The Temple in the House. It goes like this: The Japanese tea master Sen no Rikyu built a teahouse on the side of a hill overlooking the sea. He invited three guests to the inaugural tea ceremony. The guests had heard about the beautiful site and expected to find a structure that took advantage of the wonderful view. After arriving at the garden gate, they were perplexed to discover a grove of trees had been planted that obstructed the panorama. Before entering the teahouse, the guests followed the custom of purifying their hands and mouths at the stone basin near the entry. Stooping to draw water with a bamboo ladle, they noticed a small opening had been clipped through the trees. This opening framed a view of the sparkling sea. In that humble position, they awakened to the relationship between the cool liquid in the ladle and the ocean in the distance, between their individuality and the ocean of life.

What I draw from this story is that patterns of wisdom are a means to connect with what is beyond patterns. They are forms that set up the experience of what is beyond form. Patterns of wisdom are physical vessels of life that allow us to drink in the energy and intelligence that animates and guides daily living. We may enact our wisdom by creating a vision board describing our ideal house, car, physique, wardrobe, partner, family, community and world. But, more than these objects, we want the experience of being alive that we believe this object will bring. Because, these forms are hollow if we are not ignited by the sparks of energy rushing through them.

Sitting on the meditation cushion or stretching out on the yoga mat are, therefore, vessels for feeling the life force flowing through our minds and bodies. Eating a healthy meal is a vessel for tasting the life force moving through the world that produced the food. Going shopping is a vessel for embracing the life force animating and connecting your community. Every physical form from a blade of grass to a galaxy is a vessel for accessing the miracle of life energy shimmering through it.

The application of wisdom is not how to get the things we want. It's how to feel the life energy surging through everything we already have. It's not how we can reshape the world into our preconceived patterns; it's how we can open to the vitality and intelligence animating the amazing patterns that are already and always forming and reforming our lives and the world.

As I focus on the year ahead, I think of expectations of the guests as they arrived at the tea ceremony all those years ago. I recall the small opening the tea master clipped through the trees and how that opening pointed to the ocean of life beyond the trees. I feel how the guests sensed the waters of life pouring through the ocean and through them. I'm inspired by the way this pattern of wisdom awakened them to the life force beyond the pattern. I sense how to apply the patterns of wisdom life has shown me, to honor each physical form I encounter as a vessel for the revitalizing life force surging pouring through it.