Letters Home: To Ethan from Chicago

Ethan,

How are you? Chicago (have you been here?) is a beautiful city, but it has been hard on us. Our morale is flagging – I have been sleeping in the cab of the truck and my back is beginning to ache. This weekend it rained for three days. On saturday alone 6.5 inches of rain fell ands set a local record. We had to cancel our events.

I did not know that a hurricane could make it this far north – the meteorologists on the news must all be in denial about global warming, or they are just not telling us the whole truth… How can a storm be the size of the gulf of mexico, ream houston, and then dump enough water on us in Chicago to flood homes without a great alarm going off in the weather room? This year New Orleans was evacuated again, then Houston, and earlier floods in Iowa and fires in California… what about next year?

Today I went to the art museum with a new friend and saw an old statue of Jizō from the 13th century.

(in the orient this monk is called “the earth treasury.” In Japan he is the guardian of children, particularly those who are ill, or die before their parents).

The statue was like the ones you were making when I visited you at the Zen monastery this summer. Remember how we walked in the woods past all the statues of Jizō that over time had been laid along the path with prayers wrapped around them to honor the dead children? And then we saw the owl sitting on a branch above us. He was huge great horned owl that looked us in the eyes. You said “We are so fortunate. I have been hoping to see that owl all year!”

This is the kind of luck that I see in our lives right now — It is sadness, sparked by moments of such spontaneous beauty. The species are dying but they are not all gone yet. What does it mean to be able to look out the window and imagine the symbols of life that we know disappearing forever? How could one person possible carry this weight alone? We have to stick together these days Ethan, like we did in the ninth ward.

It is easy to become separated.  I have spent the last few days walking around neighborhoods in Chicago and watching people interact — how they ask for directions or simple acknowledgment; how friends and couples and families walk together between showers of rain. It is something to see how in immigrant neighborhoods people stick together. In white neighborhoods it is less so, as if as my friend James tells me “our shadow has become so long that we can no longer see past it.” Maybe it obscures our vision of each other – we use each other for money, attention, sex – a cycle of fake closeness that makes it hard to be equals.

I think you were right in moving to the monastery after our stint in New Orleans.  The more people I visit from our time in the ninth ward, the more I hear about the difficulty of returning to business as usual — trying to balance the weight. The consensus is: meaning is hard to find in day to day life.

Some scientists are saying that if the honey bees die off we will follow them them within a few years. My nephew is nearly five years old and his voice on the phone is expectant, trusting. “Where are you Uncle? Why?” My family has a ritual habit, if you can’t tell already, of taking things very seriously. He is no exception, and so over the phone none of my responsibility is absolved. But his world (and this is his world) moves from moment to moment, and when I spend precious time with him he demands most of all that I pay attention to each one. Everything is temporary he seems to say, but it all still matters.

What a time to be alive! I write that without sarcasm; we still have a lot more living to do. I get up in the morning, find a way to wash my face, and focus on the beauty around me. In Chicago it is the traffic and the people that wake me up in the morning. “The people, the people, the people…”

Are you still at the monastery? Did you hear about the conventions? I know you wanted to come with there, but needed to finish your garden. I hope you are well.

From Chicago,

Logan