Gifts ... Synchronicities ... and Tea ....

I recently read a wonderful book, The Gift of Rain, the first novel by author Tan Twan Eng (oddly, and rarely at least in my experience, a lawyer with a lyrical soul and a metaphysical bent). For me, the book was a true "find" ... a "gift" itself.... I ordered the book "cold" ... without a recommendation from anyone, and certainly not because I knew the author or his work, but simply because I stumbled upon a brief mention of it somewhere, and the title somehow caught and "called" to me. When the book arrived, I opened it in great anticipation and read Tan's first paragraphs:

I was born with the gift of rain, an ancient soothsayer in an even more ancient temple once told me.

This was back in a time when I did not believe in fortunetellers, when the world was not filled with wonder and mystery. I cannot recall her appearance now, the woman who read my face and touched the lines on my palms. She said what she was put into this world to say, to those for whom her prophecies were meant, and then, like every one of us, she left.

I know her words had truth in them, for it always seemed to be raining in my youth. ... the one impression that remains now is of rain, falling from a bank of low floating clouds, smearing the landscape into a Chinese brush painting. Sometimes it rained so often I wondered why the colors around me never faded, were never washed away, leaving the world in moldy hues.

I was a goner from the first line. And so once again I abandoned myself to the remarkable poetry which may be found in the juxtaposition of elegant, often startling prose and trenchant thought. I found myself awed by the "wonder and mystery" conjured by the book, caught up in one of those "magical" experiences that sometimes come to us at random times of our lives ... unexpected occurrences which may open doors or shed illumination into the recesses of the mind, which continue to resonate in the fastness of the soul. In some places Tan's prose left me just absolutely breathless ... words, you know ... but it also proved to be a book of seemingly inexplicable synchronicities that upon later reflection turn out to be totally explicable, ultimately serendipitous and life-affirming.

Toward the end of the book, Tan's protagonist Philip Hutton explained "the gift of rain" in these words:

The fortune-teller, long since dead, said I was born with the gift of rain. I know now what she meant. Her words had not been a curse, nor had they been words of blessing. Like the rain, I had brought tragedy into many people's lives but, more often than not, rain also brings relief, clarity and renewal. It washes away our pain and prepares us for another day, and even another life. Now that I am old, I find that the rains follow me and give me comfort, like the spirits of all the people I have ever known and loved. ...

We [all are] beings capable of love and memory. These capabilities are the greatest gifts given to us.... And that is the point of life itself, I whisper into the night....

When I finished the book, I turned back to the first and read it again ... which I am also prone to do with books that move me, or impart something of great interest. In doing so, I put off moving on to a few other books I'd been eagerly looking forward to reading ... but sometimes one must linger for a while in lovely, soul-stirring places.

Buddhist temple in the mountains, 11th Century, ink on silk

Even after my second reading, I found it difficult to stop thinking of the themes and the imagery of Tan's book. I loved his description of rain "smearing the landscape into a Chinese brush painting." Growing up in a small, dusty corner of the Texas Panhandle, my metaphor would likely have run to sand storms thick with grit carried on wild, howling winds that sometimes literally blackened the sun, causing the street lamps to feebly flicker at noon, while cars crept slowly past preceded by spectral headlights. Still, I could not help but recall how often the farmers and other citizens of Childress County were thankful for the literal gift of rain, when it came on time and in the proper amounts to make the red dirt surrounding that town fertile and sustaining for another year. If the rains were late, or too early, or filled with hail, the longed for and much-needed gift could and did take the form of a nightmare, destroying fields and seeds and hopes for the future.

Like Philip Hutton and his creator, I know we are given many gifts in our lives, although sometimes they don't come at the right time, or in the right way, or we don't recognize them or their worth when they are tendered to us. Of course not all gifts are good; more likely, as Hutton articulated, many of our gifts are neither blessings nor curses ... frequently they are "good" or "bad" only when defined by the ways in which we use them.

Some gifts are loud, exuberant and splashy ... others are quiet and reflective, appearing slender and insubstantial, but forged with the strength of a tempered blade ... still others, like the gift of the apple to Snow White, are insidiously poisonous ... some are consumed quickly and greedily, burned to ash or dissipated by profligate use ... and some are carefully guarded and nurtured to provide illumination and sustain us for all our lives ... "until time and times are done" as my old "friend" W.B. Yeats magically wrote.

Some gifts inure to our benefit, others prove detrimental to us and to those around us. One of my greatest gifts (although sometimes a decidedly mixed blessing) which Yahn and I (and others) have mentioned on the blog, is my "infernal" memory. While I am sure that my memory can on occasion cause discomfort to some, or incredulity in others, it has been a saving gift of grace to me more than once in this life. I am also blessed in the gift of time I have been given ... approximately at this point 22,500 days, and counting (I hope)....

These conjoined gifts of memory and time have helped me retrieve one gift I casually devalued and attempted to discard when I was younger and less appreciative ... I speak here of the gift of once living in a particular town, in a particular place and time. Growing up in Childress ... like life itself ... was not without pain and consequences; we are often called upon to "pay" for our gifts in one way or another. Nevertheless, the ability to remember the past, and the time and maturity to put my memories in context and analyze them as they relate to my life today ... to learn the lessons I need to learn in this life for the times to come ... are indeed priceless.

Which leads me to reflect on another priceless gift ... Nicki's "gift" of this blog to all of us ... and the treasured gift to me when she asked me to be her partner in this effort. Over the past several months, we have been warmed, amazed, gratified and nurtured by all of you who read the blog, who have shared your thoughts and your memories of a time we all experienced together. We've loved hearing the stories of your families and the people you have become in the years since graduation. Like Rashomon, however, referred to in my recent post L'Affaire des Mots ... Wishin' and Hopin' ... and It's Only Words... (published April 20, 2008) ... memories are frequently subjective and dependent on the mindset and agenda of the narrator. It is only by weaving our memories together, taking cognizance of the differences and the similarities, that we may begin to apprehend a semblance of the way things really were once upon a long time ago.

Nicki and I have also reveled in the knowledge that as time has passed, there are more and more of you reading the blog, and we are always looking for ways to bring more of your "voices" to this forum. In recent conversations, we have speculated that some wonderful memories and life experiences were shared in the earlier days of the blog ... thoughts which might stimulate comments and stories from those who have only joined us in the past few days or months. We have also acknowledged that because of the way the blog has grown, some of you may find the thought of reading it in its entirety daunting ... or if you have taken the time to read, you may have failed to leave comments because you thought no one would notice them on some early topic post. Perhaps you read the posts when they were published, but were not yet comfortable in sharing your voices "in public". Or maybe you left a comment then and thought of something else later, but didn't go back.

Calligraphy and painting by Zhao Mengfu

And so we have decided to periodically rerun certain topic posts from 2007, along with the comments that accrued to them, even as the blog continues with new posts on its (and our) journey into the future. As ever, we hope you will enjoy all these posts, whether you are a first-time visitor or an old friend, and that you find comfort, humor, reverie, insight and understanding in them. Look for them under the "Oldies But Goodies" heading, starting early next week.

Coincidentally (?) with these ruminations on The Gift of Rain, a story of the relationship between a student and his teacher, the first post published on the blog deals with memories of some of our teachers at CHS, and we urge you all to share new comments on this "old" post.

In his book Messages from the Masters, Brian L. Weiss, M.D., refers to the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn, who likened life to a cup of tea, saying that one "must be in the present moment, mindful and aware, to enjoy the tea.... If you are [always] ruminating about past events or worrying about future ones, the tea will be gone. You drank it but you do not remember, because you were not aware." But I believe it is inarguable that our memory of drinking that tea, of the moments that we held and savored it, experienced the warmth and the aroma and the taste, increases our awareness and contributes immeasurably to the sum of our personal and unique lives. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Sometimes in the rush of daily life, we may forget to reflect and examine. The blog can be our key ... to yesterday, today and tomorrow ... if we accept and utilize the gift.

The Sakyamuni Buddha, by Zhang Shenwen, Song Dynasty (1173-1176 C.E.)


Yahn is fond of posing the question: "Who is the 'I' who knows that I have changed?" Or as Tan Twan Eng wrote:

There were times when I wondered whether it really all happened or whether everything was a dream, like the [philosopher Matsuo Basho's] dream of the butterflies.... Does the philosopher dream of the butterfly, or is he merely the butterfly's dream?

Without introspection and examination, life consists of wandering from one event to another, without awareness, knowledge and growth. It is the difference between "existing" and truly living. I think the blog reminds us that there are other layers and levels of this life, and may help us recognize forgotten goals and dreams to which we may yet aspire.

Each of us who "owns" the blog, every one of us whether a contributor or a reader, is interested ... we are listening ... and we want to hear ....

)O(