Moved

to here:

http://burningdeadwood.blogspot.com/

Why?

One of my goals is to hike the Oregon section of the Pacific Crest Trail.  It’s 430 miles from Cascade locks to the Oregon California border, and I plan to walk all of it, carrying about 40 pounds of gear most of the way.

I realized yesterday, that none of my good friends have ever asked me why.

This may mean that my good friends are as crazy as I am, or at least that they understand me well enough that they don’t even need to ask.  I take for granted that walking 430 miles (not all at once, reality makes me break it into sections), is a perfectly sensible thing to do.

Not to some.  I was on the East Coast recently (work), talking to some folks from all over the country.  I mentioned my PCT plans, and one man gave me a genuinely perplexed look, the kind reserved for children who have just done something inexplicable like put Play Do in the garbage disposal.  He stood there, with his head cocked to one side for a second, before asking, “why?”

The question took me a back for a second, and I realized the mental world in which I live isn’t the only one.  That’s a good thing to remember occasionally.  I do a fair job of not living in a bubble, but I realized just then that most everybody close to me challenges themselves, either physically, mentally, or spiritually.  Even my friends who have never backpacked a single night get why I want to do the Oregon PCT.  They understand it intuitively, without me having to explain.

When the guy asked why, I fumbled for an answer.  Not because I don’t understand my own reasons.  I can articulate them quite well.  To be honest,  part of my fumbling was due to a desire to be pithy.  I was tempted to whip out some Hillary.  “Because it’s there,” has a certain bravado to it that shouldn’t be attractive to me, but is anyway.

But the main reason I fumbled was that I became, in an instant, acutely aware of the space between us.  I knew a little about this guy, from listening to him talk.  He valued comfort, doing as little as possible.  He would be happiest if life was one endless sporting event, not one in which he played, but one he watched, preferably while drinking endless amounts of beer and sitting on an infinitely soft recliner.  He looked for the easy way out of everything at work, substituting being charming and light hearted for the brain sweat required to deeply grasp the complicated material we were supposed to be learning.

I was contemplating walking 330 more miles with a backpack, sleeping on the ground (albeit with a pretty high speed sleeping pad), getting footsore, and facing an outside chance of dying.  How the hell was I supposed to explain to this guy why this seemed like a good idea?

I settled for short.  “Because there’s a difference between being comfortable and being happy.”  This guy always had a cheerful, affable expression on his face that always struck me as fake.  I didn’t suspect anything sinister behind it, didn’t think behind that exterior lurked angry or connivance.  Rather I suspected that under that expression lurked nothing much at all.

For a second that expression slipped into blankness, as if all his processing power was being used up to try to digest what I’d just said.  It was almost like watching someone trying to parse something in a foreign language they barely understand.

Then the grin was back. “I’m not sure I understand, I’d love to hear more.”

For some reason, I wanted to try to communicate.  I’m still not sure why.  At one point in my life, I would have blown this guy off as somebody I didn’t care to connect with.  But slowly, I’ve become less judgmental, come to value connection more.  So I tried.

I talked about how I liked a healthy challenge, how I liked an element of risk in my life, but didn’t want to be a blind adrenaline junkie.  I talked about building a true connection with the place I lived, a sense of place that was much more significant than the one gained by today’s shopping mall and housing development existence.  I talked about the benefits of reflective solitude.  I talked about the humbled, spiritual  existence that being a human in the wilderness brings.

I wasn’t getting anywhere.  This guy was nodding his head at the appropriate spots, providing the right conversational cues, but I could tell he wasn’t getting it by the blank look.

So I switched tactics.  I talked about scenery, about mountains and lakes and quiet forests.

“It’s really pretty in Oregon,” I finished lamely.

He brightened at this.  “So you must have a really good camera then,” and launched into a bunches of questions about megapixels and SLR’s and gigabytes.  He seemed deeply disappointed when I told him I had a cheap point and shoot camera and the battery door was held on with duct tape.

But it took the conversation out of the realm of spirit and into the world of stuff.  We talked about my backpack, my tent, my sleeping bag.  Food was discussed in exacting detail. 

Despite my initial enthusiasm, I found myself wanting this conversation to end.  The other guy was determined to connect.  I’m not sure if this was just out of ingrained habit, because he is the one who quoted more than once, “people don’t remember what you did, they remember how you made them feel,” or if he regarded me as some weird, foreign creature that he wanted to understand.  I suspect it was a little bit of both.

I was just frustrated.  I was discussing things that are deeply personal to me, with stranger, and it wasn’t going well.  Over the last couple of years, I’ve had two competing impulses.  On one hand, I’ve reaped tremendous benefits from true, deep connections that have enriched my life.  On the other hand, I’ve become quieter, with even less interest in small talk and water cooler style BS-ing.

I regretted even trying to explain. I felt like I was taking something sacred to me and trying to share it with someone who couldn’t appreciate it.  I started trying to think of some way to end the conversation without looking like a jerk.

Finally I was saved by the end of break.  When we parted, I think we were both confused about what had just happened.

I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit dwelling on this encounter, trying to draw some wisdom from it.  Every time I start to feel superior to this guy, for some reason I just stop, because it doesn’t feel right. 

It would be easy for me to judge this guy.  He’s fat.  He’s lazy.  He’s shallow.  But I’m trying hard to not judge people anymore.  Mostly, I succeed.  I’m not troubled by who he is, but I’ve spent a bunch of time being troubled by the gap in understanding between us.

I don’t understand his life.  My life is probably around half over, and the thought of narrowing my world to the endless pursuit of comfort and entertainment, of  coasting through the second half in a recliner, living unexamined and reflexively, scares the hell out of me. 

In the past, I would have blown him off, deemed him unimportant.  But that isn’t true.  We really are all connected (cue the kumbaya track), even though we’d like to pretend that we can all live in our separate bunkers and not influence each other.  For one thing, this guy votes, or at least he can.  If I’m going to enjoy things like the Pacific Crest Trail, I need as much political horse power on my side as I can.

Beyond those practical concerns, I’m troubled sometimes by how disconnected I’m starting to feel from the culture around me.  The trail feels real.  The people I hike the trail tend to be authentic, and deep.  But this guy’s life: football, beers, and bullshit;, seems like more of an imitation life, and it seems like those folks are the ones who are really calling the shots, and that doesn’t bode well.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if everyone else was just like me, the world would be a better place.  And I have to admit, sometimes I think that’s true.  But I also can admire people who think deeply, live wholeheartedly, and come to conclusions I don’t agree with, because at least they are paying attention. 

But I’m having trouble though, connecting with folks who seem to just want to be comfortable, entertained and responsible for nothing.  Maybe instead of feeling frustrated by a lack of connection, or being frustrated by a lack of understanding, I need to just be grateful that I understand that there is a difference between being comfortable, and being happy.

Next

For those of you that have asked: yes, everything is fine.  Thank you for asking.  My blog writing tends to go in cycles.  Lately I’ve been fully engaged in living life, and have spent less time writing about it.

You’ll notice the blog has changed.  Burning Dead Wood, is the title of The Next Book.  This one is going to take a while, mostly because I’m not done living it yet. 

There isn’t going to be anymore fiction, at least not for a while (sorry Briggs.) I haven’t even read much fiction in the last two years, much less written any.  I feel very much estranged from the idea of making up stories in my head, and very much engaged with the idea of living this moment fully.  We’ll see if the two come together again in the future.

No more martial arts, at least for now.  Life goes in a cycle, and it’s entirely possible I may find myself in a gi thinking martial thoughts again, but not right now.  I very nearly removed some old posts, but they are part of the story too, so they stayed.

This coming year is gonna be a doozy. Stay tuned.

First trip 2010 (From Burning Dead Wood)

My first trip of 2010 was up the Herman Creek drainage, in the Columbia River Gorge. I couldn't remember looking forward to something this much since Christmas when I was a little kid. It felt foreign, but welcome at the same time. In the past I'd anticipated trips as problems to be solved, which gave some satisfaction, but this was different. This simple, blissfull excitement had been missing for so long, I no longer noticed its absence from my life. Feeling it again was like having a long lost relative, one forgotten from child hood, step through my front door unexpectedly.

I spent the night at Ainsworth State Park. I could stay there for free, because I was a “Disabled” veteran. Ainsworth was sort of a boundary land. It has a campground, but I wasn't camping there so much as “sleeping outside.” I was maybe a quarter of a mile from the Interstate, and I spent the night listening to the lonesome drone of 18 wheelers out on the interstate, and the rumble of freight trains hauling wheat from west from Idaho and Montana, and TV sets and plastic lawn furniture East from the freighters that docked in Portland.

I had plenty of neighbors at the campground, most of whom had trailers and motor homes. RV's that cost upwards of $50K seem a little offensive to me, but then I'd known men who only got to go camping with their families because they owned such a thing. What do you say to a guy like that? Get a new family?

I feel asleep to the hum of generators, and bursts of laughter from around campfires. At one time that would have annoyed me. The woods were a place for quiet, dammit. But people annoy me less in general these days, and besides, I wasn’ t really in the woods yet.

The next morning, I had the entire Herman Creek drainage to myself. Herman Creek doesn’t have the eye popping scenery and waterfalls of nearby Eagle Creek, but I didn't care. I don't usually backpack “for the view,” although it can be a bonus. I was actually uncomfortable with that idea, because it reduced wilderness into an amusement park, as if the purpose of the woods is to provide me with eye candy. I never expect anything from the woods, rather I try to be grateful for what I’m given.

I'd worked over the winter on my gear. I now had a pack weight of less than 30 lbs. I had also worked on my body. My core strength was good, my back didn't hurt and my feet were in excellent shape. I fell in love with the rhythm of the trail. The pack settled easily on my back, and before I knew it, I was half way there.

I did a fair job of staying present. For most of the day, I managed to be present, in the moment, an integral piece of the woods I was walking through. For fifteen, maybe twenty minutes at a time, I just walked, and breathed, walked and breathed. I saw everything, often without focusing on any one thing.

But my mind still had to have a story occasionally. Mostly I anticipated the next thing. Thinking about the next creek crossing, what I would do when I got to camp, how much mileage was left. The hard part is to not label that as failure, to just accept it, say “that again,” and move on.

The trail took me up the Herman Creek gorge. It was narrow in most spots, with a usually sheer drop to my right, and a cliff side to my left. I lost count of the number of creeks I crossed. The uphill climb was gradual, but steady.

I didn’t take many pictures. I have an odd relationship with photography. You can stand me in front of a beautiful view, with four other people. Two of the other people will take great photos, maybe something you can publish. The other two will have nice photos, maybe something you can frame. I will walk away with a snapshot is blurry, washed out, or at very least poorly framed.

So I tend not to take pictures, not just because of this, but because I no longer am quite so focused on “saving” moments. Even the best photos of my experiences, whether taken by me, or by somebody else, never do the moment justice, the best they can do is serve as a kind of mental book mark, a trigger for future recall.

In the Herman Creek drainage, there is a cedar swamp that had very recently taken some major lightening strikes. There were several fallen cedars that looked way too big to have ever succumbed to anything, and many more standing giants that bore huge, jagged black scars. I maneuvered around, trying to find a spot to take a picture, then finally just put the camera away.

I made camp just on the other side of the east fork of Herman Creek. I made the mistake crawling into my tent and laying on the sleeping pad, for “just a few minutes,” and fell almost instantly asleep. I was tired from eight miles, a little dehydrated, and probably a little hypoglycemic.

I woke just before dark and ate. As far as I knew, I was the only person for miles, and I realized how rare of an experience that was these days. Most people probably would go their whole lives without being farther than a couple hundred feet from another human being, and I was eight miles up the drainage.

I'd grown remarkably comfortable with myself over the last couple of years. I'd always been introverted and self reliant, but I had come to be at peace with myself. Earlier in the week, I woke up with a realization: there was nothing wrong with my life. That morning when I meditated, when I was supposed to be just observing thoughts and letting them go, that idea kept echoing through my head: there was nothing wrong with my life.

I was still turning that idea over in my head. I had grown accustomed to there being something wrong, some crisis to be solved. Not having a crisis seemed like a crisis itself. As I sat in my campsite and wrote in my journal, I realized I hadn’t had any significant symptoms of PTSD in weeks. Memories were just memories now, things consigned to the past, rather than competing with the present.

I didn’t dread the future. I realized as I sat there with the sun setting, as it grew almost too dark to write, that if the rest of my life stayed just like this, it would be a fine life. I could die and say I was living with honest intent. Instead of dreading the future, I was looking forward to stepping into the unknown. I no longer felt like I was living on borrowed time. Every day was still a good day to die, but I generally had other plans.

I eschewed a fire. I didn't need one to keep warm, and it somehow seemed wrong to burn a tree that had grown for dozens of years, just for my own entertainment. I realized though, that if someone had been with me, I would have wanted a fire. Sharing a fire with someone is a primitive, atavistic connection that seems hardwired into us.

As content as I was by myself, I could still feel a loneliness that was never far away. I sat there in the quiet, and thought how nice it would be to share this, to share an after dinner shot of bourbon with some one. It be wonderful to have this moment be part of a story shared with someone else, instead of just myself.

Darkness came quickly in the gorge. I went from having a little trouble seeing my journal to needing my head lamp to navigate my campsite in just a few minutes. I had packed a book with me, but had little energy for reading. Despite my nap, I was still tired, and sleep seemed like a good idea. Also, my head lamp seemed like an intrusion up here. It seemed wrong somehow to make the effort to walk all the way up here, like some humble supplicant, and then light everything up with a lithium battery driven LED.

The money I’d spent on a new sleeping bag and pad where well spent. As I laid there, I held two ideas in my head at the same time: I was both really happy to be here by myself, and yet it would be nice to have a a hip pressed against mine, to fall asleep wrapped up with a woman in a tangle of arms and legs.

It seemed like almost everything else I needed was coming my way, and just maybe, if I didn’t become too wrapped up in my own desires and push things too hard, this would come too. Faith isn’t a word that comes easy to me, but it seemed like little by little, every day I was getting a little more. It was faith grounded in the experience of things slowly getting better, and based on my ability to slowly live more skillfully. Maybe that’s the best kind faith to have.

I woke in the middle of the night, I’m not sure what time, as I’d intentionally not taken a watch, preferring instead to just live according to the sun for a day or two. I was cold and had a full bladder. I stumbled out of the tent, found a likely spot, and made a concession to the reality of not peeing on my feet by switching on my head lamp.

Two green eyes floated out in the woods ahead of me. It was far enough out that I couldn’t see to who they belonged, but close enough to catch a strong reflection. I stood there far longer than I needed to, watching those eyes. I had no reference to tell how far off the ground they were, but I had the impression I was looking at something big. They didn’t move and neither did I.

I wasn’t afraid, exactly. On a rational level, I knew that I was more likely to be mugged and murdered at the trail head than die in a cougar or bear attack. On a a deeper level, I just didn’t feel any menace. Instead, I felt humbled. Those eyes seemed to carry a message. “You are welcome here, but don’t confuse that with being in charge.”

I switched off the light and just stood there. For how long I’m not sure, but my eyes slowly grew used to the dark. First I could see the patches of snow on the ground, then, slowly I could make out my tent. I stood there and listened, hearing nothing but Herman creek.

I went back to sleep, and dreamed of cougars. I didn’t dream of being eaten by one, or chased, but dreamed of their mere presence in the world. It was comforting, somehow, to know they were there.

I hiked out the next day. It’s always easier on the second day of a trip to settle in and stay in the moment. I wasn’t trying to hurry, but I made record time. My body felt good. I wasn’t stiff or sore. Half of that I attributed to conditioning, the other half to the fact that I had invested in a high quality air mattress.

About four miles from the trail head, I encountered two women in their 50’s who were hiking up the drainage. They were both wearing tank tops and shorts. One of them was carrying a water bottle, but I saw no other concession to the fact that they were inside a wilderness area.

We had a strange, disjointed conversation. One woman kept asking how to get down to the creek. I kept explaining that the trail crossed the East Fork of Herman Creek, but it was still about 4 miles away. She kept insisting that she “just wanted to get down to the water.”

She’s passed two maps showing the trail stayed well above the creek, without crossing it until it was well up the drainage. I was standing there tired, but happy wearing 30 pounds of gear designed to keep me alive, while she was standing there wearing just enough clothes to die quickly of hypothermia, frustrated and indignant that I wasn’t giving her the answer she wanted to hear. It was obvious she was going to refuse to believe that she couldn't get to Herman Creek for another four miles, because, after all, this was the Herman Creek trail.

I realized we were standing in the same place, but having two different experiences. I’d studied wilderness survival, good backpacking practices, bought gear, and spent an hour or so poring over my route on topo maps and google earth. By all appearances, she had hopped in her car, decided to hike up Herman Creek because it sounded good, ignored two maps thoughtfully provided by the Forest Service that plainly showed she couldn't do what she wanted to do, and was ignoring plain evidence that the idea in her head didn’t match the reality in front of her.

I suddenly had a greater understanding of how search and rescue cases happen.

She finally said, “look, I just want to know how to get down to the creek. Would you just tell me?”
My good mood evaporated. I pointed straight down the cliff, “you can go that way, but I wouldn’t recommend it, or you can go that way for four more miles.” I pointed up the trail.

There are folks who, because of their education, family background, and position in life, aren’t used to hearing something they don’t want to hear, and don’t frequently have to deal with reality being different from their wishes. When confronted with an uncomfortable reality, there is a particular pained expression they get. I’m intimately familiar with that expression, because, for whatever reason, I’m often the one with the big bucket of reality.

She pursed her lips, took a deep breathe, and once again explained that she just wanted to get down to the creek, and since this was the “Herman Creek Trail,” there just had to be a way to do it without walking four more miles. Because, apparently, the problem wasn’t in her understanding of geography. The problem was the big scruffy looking guy with the backpack was just too stupid to understand the question.

I put my sunglasses back on, and just walked past her. As I trod down the path, I turned on my GPS, marked the spot and time, and memorized the two women’s physical descriptors. I did this because if I saw on the news that Hood River County Search and Rescue was looking for two lost women, this would be valuable information. It seemed like about all I could do for them.

There’s an expression from the stoner 90’s that came to mind: those two had “harshed my buzz.” I resolved to put it out of my mind, which was tough, because all my irritation aside, I was convinced those two were in over their head, and I’m a sucker for somebody that needs rescued.

I succeeded, mostly, in getting back into my groove on the way out. I started passing more people out on day hikes, and one overly friendly, crotch sniffing dog of indeterminate breeding. Many of the people had questions: how long had a I been out, where had I stayed, how much did my pack weigh, wasn’t I scared doing this by myself?

I try to be a good ambassador for backpacking, even though questions get a little old. One little boy stared at me, mouth agape, like I was some apparition from the woods. I took off my sunglasses and that seemed to help.

Finally, I was back at the car, and enjoyed that few minutes of feeling weightless that happens right after taking off a backpack. I sat there on the bumper of my car, eating the 11th essential, Oreos, for almost half an hour. I was tired, and didn’t feel like hiking anymore, but I wasn’t quite ready to go yet either.

There’s a peculiar re-entry that happens to me after being in the woods. It takes time for my eyes to acclimate to colors other than greens and browns. Industrial sounds seem way too loud, and cars seem to move way too fast.

Finally, I was ready. The traffic was still too fast, and too loud, but I managed. I found myself really looking forward to the next time.

Thinking out loud about writing

I have been estranged from a serious writing practice for far too long. Before being Overcome By Events (Part I), I wrote two novels. #1 is a mess, a sort of good idea grafted onto a not terribly good idea. It’s unpublishable in its present form, and I can probably flog away at it for ten more years, and it will still be unpublishable. But I still love it, or more properly, love the characters. They may live again.

#2 was better, and an honest assessment says it might even be publishable, because it is, after all, genre fiction, and the bar is lower. But, I’m not sure I want to feed that genre, so there it sits.

Writing fiction is something I can't do write now. In the past, I had to check out on life to become fully involved in fiction. Right now I’m more fully involved in life than I have been in a long time, so that doesn't appeal. I may, someday, write fiction again as a form of truth telling, as Tim O’Brien does (although likely not as well), but now is not that time.

Writing is a perishable skill. The facile use of language is only built through practice, and just like any practice, if you stop for a while you get rusty. Picking up again has been painful, perhaps because I’m more attuned to clunky sentences than I used to be, but the skill has gone away. The only antidote seems to be writing.

Then there is material. I’ve blogged sporadically these last three years, mostly about things that happened long ago, or things that were cerebral and could be held at arms length. That was comfortable. Lately though, my writing has caught up with my life, and that is less comfortable. The last few thousand words have become a project, one I jokingly refer to as “The Dude’s Eat, Pray, Love.” I think it could fly, even though I’m not even done living it yet, much let writing it. I even have a real title: Burning Dead Wood.

It doesn’t lend itself, somehow, to the immediacy of a blog. It’s too close. Sometimes blogging isn’t considered “serious” writing, but I disagree. Rory made me vomit with his blog once*, and another friend changed my views of faith with hers. For some reason, putting all this in book makes sense but, right now living an experience and putting it on the net a few weeks later is too much.

It seems dangerous. All writers have an urge for an outlet, and the net is just too damn easy sometimes, because there are somethings that don’t need to be let out in the wild. Writing about relationships is off limits, even if done in the most elliptical sense. There are also some things that are just pure purging, what I’ve heard referred to as an “oh the pain” piece. When Natalie assigned three minutes of keeping the hand moving on the color red, I went for 15 on what it’s like to walk into a house three minutes after a suicide by .30-06. It’s good, descriptive, concrete writing. And nobody else ever needs to read it.

But the practice feels good. I’ve started moving life forward, and writing will be a part of that.


* Sometimes a piece of writing captures something perfectly. Rory did that with these words: “a mixture of very fresh, high-quality meat and Ivory soap.” I read that, and there I was again...

Peacemaking Part II

I'm in a fallow period right now, a time when I'm thinking more than doing, which is not my natural state. But there's a Next Step I need to take, and I'm not sure what that is right now. So I'm studying the tracks laid by people who have gone forward ahead of me.

Anshin's book was transformative. His story resonates with me, even though his solutions probably aren't mine. He became a mendicant monk, and it saved him. The monastic lifestyle doesn't appeal to me (although I remain open to the idea that match.com might drive me to it), but just knowing he is out there has been good for me. He isn't "just" a monastic, but is engaged in the world through his Zaltho Foundation.

Tich Nhat Han is a beautiful soul, and his peace work is informed by witnessing things I can't imagine. I will probably return to his works periodically. There are some thinkers who I have to digest slowly over time.

Bernie Glassman made me much more at peace with the idea of Bearing Witness. His is no cloistered, ethereal Zen. The engaged Buddhism of his Zen Peacemaker Order is something I respect deeply.

Aidan Delgado's Sutras Of Abu Gharib hit me much harder than I expected. Delgado's background, and experiences are different than mine, but but somehow I saw my own confused twenty something self in his narrative. I was lucky that someone suggested the Coast Guard to me, so I didn't wind up in the Army (at least not at first), and there was no war during my time.

O'Briens In The Lake Of The Woods, was fiction, but it was still true. This book, and its meditations on character, left me disturbed for days.

Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communcation was problematic. Rosenburg labels as "violence," actions I would describe as "unskillfull," or maybe just "being an asshole." I understand that violence begins in how we think and what we say, but when I hear the word "violence," my visceral expectation is something more than a snide comment. I expect to see blood and hair on the walls. It occurred to me as I read this, that just like the English language needs more than one word for "love," maybe we need more than one for "violence," as well.

There is gold in Rosenberg's book. A process that makes people responsible for their own feelings and reactions, and makes them own the process of clearly articulating their own needs is conflict reducing, relationship enhancing, and marriage saving. But I choke on the word violence as he uses it.

I will, however, give Rosenberg a second read. I was still somewhat Overcome By Events during the first read, and thus distracted, so I'll try again before making final judgement.

Then there is Ueshiba, who sits patiently on my bookshelf. I've held The Art of Peace in my hands more than once these last few months, then put it back on the shelf. I'm saving Ueshiba for the fall, when I have decided I will make my decision about whether I will wear a gi again.

There are more. I have some Marcus Borg I've been holding at arm's length for a while, for a couple of reasons. There are some other Christian writers, a book about compassion, the true title of which escapes me. Plus there is the sitting, and the walking, and new connections.

This post is more of a brain dump, a check in, than a report of resolution. It's also a request for help. How about it friends: thugs, former thugs, and others, what else should I read? Who else has ideas I need to absorb during this fallow period?

Peace Making

I keep getting reminded that peace is not just "the absence of conflict." There are a bunch of quotes that all riff around that theme, but it's taken me a while to figure out what that really means for me.

It has been good for me to not go to work everyday prepared for violence.It's been three years at the new gig. It used to be, if I showed up at work without weapons, I could get in trouble. Now I work in a place where they don't allow pocket knives in the building. Other conflicts have faded too, and that is good. It has all lead to a lessening of defensiveness, a more reasoned perspective on the idea of "threats," and the beginnings of the ability to relax.

But it's not enough. Merely walking away from conflict is not the same thing as creating peace. Rejecting one thing often leaves a hole, until you embrace something else. I've been in that in between state for a couple of years now.

Peace is not just the absence of conflict. So to have peace, Ihave to study peace making.

It's hard to say when, exactly this "crystallization of conscience" happened. I wish I could say there was one singular moment on the cushion, or some profound experience that led to an epiphany, but it's not quite that easy. Re-reading Anshin's book was part of it. Spending time with a beautiful, but troubled, spirit, was another. Simply being still, and not on the alert, has been huge. But there was no moment of the kind we all like to read about.

Gradually, tools of the old ways have been sold, and used to buy freedom. Surgical Speed Shooting and Green Eyes and Black Rifles have been cleaned off the shelf, replaced by Ghandi, Tich Nhat Hahn, Bernie Glassman, and Marshall Rosenburg.

There is trepidation. Many of my old friends would dismiss these ideas out of hand. Too pie in the sky. Sounds wonderful, but the REAL world doesn't work that way.

Maybe. But...

People who practice peace making know things I don't. There are valuable things here, new perspectives from people who think beautifully and deeply about the same issues I've wrestled with, and come to very different conclusions, conclusions that revolve around things getting better, not just keeping them from getting worse. I feel like I'm drinking deeply from a new well.

I stumble over these ideas occasionally. I would make a poor pacifist, and I can't imagine that changing. I balk when the definition of "violence," gets stretched to include behavior I would categorize as unskillful behavior, or just being a jerk. I understand that the seeds starts small, but still...

This is an opportunity to approach things with a beginner's mind, to both retain what I've learned, but also stop doing things that aren't working. Life hands us that opportunity occasionally, but you have to be paying attention to notice it, and have the courage to change.