We all carry parts of each other’s story

Or, why should you say what you have to say?

A light comes on in the darkness of a space that you didn’t know was there.

That is how I felt after a family reunion connected the circuits that began carrying current to a new room in the chambers of my heart and I wrote a simple letter to my parents to try to articulate what I was feeling.

It began: “We all carry parts of each other’s story.”

You don't know what you carry

My family on my father's side has been broken and estranged ever since my grandmother Mary died in 2001. In her old age, her main interest became tinkering with family politics, and playing her children's power, money, and loyalty against one another. At her funeral in 2001, one of my uncles sat next to me and said, "Look around. This is the legacy she left." I saw her six children, standing apart from each other, silently attending to the space in-between them. It would not be until a surprising family reunion 22 years later that I would see some of them again.

My father’s brother Mark sent the invitation. Would the McCloskey family gather at his beach house for a weekend? There was speculation among my parents and siblings about who might show up, and what the consequences of attending might be. There were so many years of managed, packaged, and forgotten pain. It could get unwieldy. Most in my inner family wanted to say no.

Ultimately my parents and I decided to attend, as did all of my father’s remaining siblings. I think everyone was surprised. Driving home afterward, I kept thinking about a sentence which I have pondered before, but had failed to properly keep in mind: We have no idea what it is we say yes to.

Heaven is the final manifestation

We are full of desire, full of story, full of love and forgiveness, and also brokenness, bitterness, and pain. We speak our desires and tell our stories, always imperfectly. Sometimes we decide to stay quiet, in wisdom, and sometimes in fear or shame.

T.S. Eliot laments the difficulty of speaking what we have to say in East Coker V:

"Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it"

We are growing, changing, and maturing more quickly than we learn how to describe it. Even once we find the courage to say what we think, the words fail us. When I read that passage I feel revealed, but also weak, and it’s hard not to feel a bit despondent.

But what if we finally “learnt to get the better of words”? What if we could truly tell our own stories, express our hopes and desires, and tell the ones we love how we feel about them, both the love and the pain? We can only get glimpses of what that looks like through stories, plays, novels, poetry, and all of them are only an approximation.

If you imagine the world as it could be in some final state, it would be composed of who finally decides to speak, the ideas and the people finally revealed, and understood. The final word truly spoken, as it was when the first word brought the world into being.

Leo's Memoir

At some point before he died in 1996, my grandfather Leo set out to write a memoir. It's titled "Dear Grandkids”. He didn't get very far, only producing a few pages. When Leo’s children surprisingly decided to gather again for the first time since Mary’s death, my father printed those pages in large font and taped it up on a wall. Throughout the weekend we would gather and read it together. It hung there like an icon, a blessing, a reminder of who we are and from where we come.

Looking at my grandfather's words on the wall, I felt a deep sense of loss hanging around at the last page, as if we were all waiting for the next page to appear. It was a story that had no end, and it's author was no longer alive to finish it. What else would Leo have said, had he continued? And what don't I understand about myself and my story, because I cannot read those pages that do not exist.

And yet, they do exist. As I looked around at his family, it seemed to me that the rest of Leo’s story was here, in the hearts and minds and memory of all these people gathered around the pages on the wall. We are the descendants of that unfinished story, and we carry it forward, still unfinished, telling the next chapter with our own lives, even if we don't realize it.

I started talking to my aunts and uncles about Leo, sharing stories of them and my cousins, and they began telling me their memories. I heard new parts of this story, reaching back generations, and reaching forward, through me, into my children. I felt hungry for it. And I felt somehow angry, for those many years of silence. How much different would my life be, if I had a better understanding of my own story?

Talking with Mark late one night about some of my own memories, I asked him, "Have you ever considered writing your own story, like Leo started to do?" He looked perplexed, as if a categorically new thought had pierced his skull. I could see his neck recoil from it's insertion. He said he hadn't, and then after a turn of the thought in his brain, his eyes twitched back to lock into mine. He said "would you read it?" it was one of the most honest questions I have ever been asked. Honest, not in its content, but in its asking - he cared to know the answer, and waited patiently, and hopefully for a true reply. I told him I would love to - so that I could know him, know my grandfather, know the parts of my family, and my story that I don't yet know.

To the extent we don’t talk and don’t tell people what we think, we don’t know our own story. I wonder what our lives would be like if we all had the courage to sit down and write our story, like Leo started to do.

What is Heaven?

The concept of Heaven serves as a functional placeholder to an unanswerable question. It is the answer to questions like "How good could good be? What would my home feel like if all of the things that are broken were fixed, including my relationship with my family? What would our societies and communities look like if they truly functioned, and tragedy and catastrophe were minimized?" The answer is that we do not know. Jordan Peterson has said, "you can only be so happy, but you can be 100% dead." In other words, it's easy to imagine the maximum negative state (death), but not so easy to imagine the maximum positive state (100% happy). It’s easier to describe suffering, than it is to describe goodness. How good can things be? We don't know, but we have a very real sense that things could be better, and our sense of that doesn't diminish, even as things do get better. On the contrary, the better things get, the deeper your hope goes.

There are things that we sense but cannot fully imagine or describe. These things are represented by symbols - songs, paintings, icons. They communicate something to us from behind a veil, they continue to exist and hold meaning and power, despite our best attempts to describe what that meaning is. There are not enough words, or combination of words to extract what is inside them. Heaven is a symbol. An answer to an unanswerable question.

Hell is what remains silent

We often feel the pull of an idea, and it tugs at us at some inopportune time. You're driving the kids to school, or grocery shopping, navigating the isles in an efficient way while keeping track of what you have left on your list. And there it is, some light between the cracks of stress, between the arguments, between the items on the checklist. Some new understanding, or new way to say something you couldn't get right in a conversation three days ago. Or perhaps a few lines of a poem, or a new melody for a song. It only comes as some collection of light in your mind, some shape, undefined and unarticulated. You may turn away from it - you don't have the time. You may turn your back on it - inspiration and revelation can be terrifying because it has the potential to change things. You might be encountering a new and beautiful piece of art that wants to be shepherded into reality, and that may make you likable, or even loved, or even famous. Or you might be encountering a new understanding of the truth, and it might be something you don’t want to know - your husband, or your mother, don't actually love you. And so you turn away, unwilling to allow that understanding to come to light.

Hell is what ultimately decides not to speak, not to engage, not to see and understand. If the world was brought into existence with a word, then hell is the nothingness from which nothing is said. It is the place where creativity and truth still ping, but they are not allowed to live. The big bang constantly beginning, as a spark like the idea that appears in your head when you're distracted with something mundane, and yet constantly dying out, as you turn away from it, and refuse to say "Let there be light."

We delay heaven

In 2011, I had written collection of songs. The creative process is sometimes like giving birth - it's going to happen whether you like it or not, and you will be left to attend to the survival of what emerges. In rare cases, a mother will develop no emotional attachment to her infant and disregard it’s wellbeing. These songs were like that to me. After a painful birth, I could not love them.

My plan was to forget them, but first I recorded them into my iPhone. Somewhere deep inside a coward, lives a recognition of the value of what he turns away from. Making a recording of these songs was my act of recognition. And then, in an act of self flagellation for what I was about to do - disown my own offspring - I played them for my friend Josh.

He heard something I could not, and saw something I refused to look at. As I think about the way our stories are intertwined, I am thankful for his active refusal to go along with my plan to forget. In fact, he insisted that those songs be made real, and given their own life, despite my objections.

Several months later, he assembled a group of musicians, in a studio space in Austin, and we recorded those songs, live to two-inch tape. And he had convinced everyone to work on the project - for free. Even the studio time would be given to us without charge. I was tired and ashamed, broke and depressed, but luckily not stupid enough to refuse this gift from Josh and so many others.

He saved me from my sin, and what emerged is a record called The Hard Rains.

A line from one of those songs called Into The Light goes:

"My family tree is full but broken
Their stories burn, down deep into my soul
And then come out in lines, all on my forehead
And when I see them there,
I know that I can't make it on my own."

What took place in that studio was one of the most intimate, vulnerable, and creative experiences I've ever been a part of. You can hear the spirit of what happened in that room when you listen to it today. It's beautiful, and I'm so glad that I said yes when my friend offered me that gift. Those songs are now a gift to me, as was the participation, love, and care that each musician contributed to them.

After the sessions were over, we listened back with excitement and awe. We had made something truly good. At least that's what I thought then. Over the next year I would doubt more with each passing week, and it would take me a year of procrastination, and a descent into the darkness of myself, before I would actually share those songs with the world. I feel ashamed about that now - I had delayed what I knew to be good.

But something in those songs, and whatever strange context into which they emerged had a multiplying effect. Another friend, a storyteller and filmmaker, made a documentary about their creation, eventual release, and my own personal struggle with that.

Several years later I was walking down 6th street in Austin when I heard my name called out from behind me. I turned and saw a man I didn't recognize. He said that he knew who I was and wanted to thank me for one of the songs on that album. It had been a comfort to him and his wife after the passing of their young child. How is it possible to respond to such a thing? I would never understand him, or know him, nor could I take responsibility for or truly accept the thanks he gave to me.

I was depressed and ashamed when I first made demos of those songs. I wanted to throw them away, and when my friend wanted me to record them, I said no. Finally when he persisted, I agreed. I walked away from that man on 6th street thinking, we have no idea what it is that we say yes to. Stepping foot in that studio, I never would have imagined that a stranger would be comforted in a time of loss.

What if every good idea, every call to beauty, every inspired act of Love, were said yes to? How good would things be? To the extent that we do not answer that which calls us - whether inspiration, or the words of a friend - or we do not say what we truly think, or we do not tell our story, we delay Heaven by tiny increments.

To manifest heaven as quickly as possible is a moral obligation

The world we live in is not Heaven, but the reason is not because evil exists. It is largely, if not fully, the result of us declining to live in Heaven. It is us saying no to Heaven, rather than yes. We simply do not walk through the door. We don't answer to that deep part of us that wants things to be as good as they can be. If Heaven could or will exist, we can only get there by responding to it, by saying yes. And because our response is required, it becomes a moral obligation. If Heaven could exist, or the world could look even 20% or 2% more like whatever Heaven is, then in some tiny fraction, our ability to say no to, or decline to engage in the process of it's unfurling, leaves everyone else in something that looks just a little bit more like Hell.

Steve's speech

My Uncle Steve, whom I hadn't seen since my grandmother's funeral, was at the reunion. I was surprised that he showed up after all these years of silence. After gathering a plate for dinner one night I sat down with him and his wife, and asked how they had been, and how their girls (my cousins) were. We made small catch up talk and shared pictures on our phones.

In conversation, you can sense the arena of possible ideas. They float around at the end of sentences, and in-between the pace and pauses between words and syllables. You might call it reading the room. At a moment when my aunt got up to speak with someone else, my uncle turned squarely toward me, and began. He began something that I did not see coming, nor understood. It was clear that he had focused on a new idea, something well outside of the previous set of possible topics. This one was floating very far away from me. I couldn't tell what it was about, or where it was located, but I could feel my uncle's firm and solemn grasp on it, and I could feel the line between his attention, and this idea, moving straight through me. I was compelled to sit still and simply listen. I didn't try to guess where his idea was or interfere with it's progression. I didn’t interject my own guess or assist in it's revelation. For the better part of 45 minutes he spoke. He spoke at me, for I hardly replied, but he was speaking with me - with some part of me which he knew from my childhood when we would spend time together fishing or laughing at his jokes. He was speaking with some part of me which used to be my future, some of which has already come to pass. And he was speaking with some part of me that he could see moving forward, but that I am only dimly aware of.

There are things that can only be expressed symbolically, for they remain as symbols, and retain power despite our ability to articulate them. My uncle’s speech that night holds this kind of power. I still don't understand the idea floating in the air that he was after. Perhaps I am not old or wise enough to even grasp it’s category. I was caught up in it though and something in me was extracted by his line moving through me.

In short it is this: He knew me, and still knows me, and he blessed me with what he saw, and encouraged me to never give up sharing my talent.

After he finished, he left and did not return. I accepted his blessing, and I felt thankful that he chose to pursue it, and speak what he had to say. But I also was left with some amount of bitterness. Why had he waited all these years to tell me these things? Why had he obeyed the brokenness of our family, rather than the trueness of what he felt to share?

To sin is to miss the mark

We are incentivized constantly to not engage in what calls us into creative action. We fear rejection, so we don't express the fullness of love and desire. We fear judgment, so we don't share the poem or song we wrote. We feel weak and scared, so we don't attempt to overcome addiction, and it quietly steals our time and health. These things also have a hidden cost. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking there is no cost to inaction. The cost is in the negative space, and time not spent wisely.

We are a living story. What is that story? Where does it lead? What characters does it include? We're trying to make sense of it as we go. We discover love and want to tell the person, but our words falter. We get hurt, and want to confess our pain, and ask for apology, but instead hit someone with a zinger. Are we really in love? Are we really an asshole? Who are we in the final analysis?

We're trying to tell a story and we miss the mark. The word “sin” is derived from the Greek word “hamartia” which is an archery term which means just that - “to miss the mark.” When you find inspiration, and lay out a plan, or some vision of hope - that is a target. When you miss, or fail to take aim and shoot, that is sin. And you fail to participate in the redemption of the world.

Doing what you want to do

While it is our moral obligation to move the world toward heaven, rather than hell, it is not through obligation that we accomplish this task. On the contrary, it is specifically a result of saying what we think and doing what we truly want to do. It is to tell your friends and your family what you really think about things. It is to respond to what whispers to you to make something or repair something. It is to look at what truly illuminates you and invigorates you, and to pursue those things. It is chasing your wildest dreams. It's a great adventure. What could be a better deal than that? Go, and do what you truly want and you will have moved the world toward Heaven.

The trouble is in the word “truly.” We fool ourselves by imagining that our desires are obvious and easily identified. It’s not so easy to know what you truly want. Many of our desires are deeply buried and we misinterpret or misrepresent them all the time. St. Teresa of Avila said, “Oh God, I don’t love you, I don’t even want to love you, but I want to want to love you.” How is it possible to want to want?

Imagine if, starting tomorrow when you woke up, you did only exactly what you wanted to do. Would your life improve? Would your children’s lives and the lives of those around you? Or, would your life begin to fall apart immediately? I think most of us would imagine that it would be the latter, but would never test it, because to have your life fall apart as a consequence of what you want would be the most terrible indictment of who you are. But perhaps you should be indicted, so that you can work out which of your desires are misplaced or misinterpreted, and which things you are failing to want, or failing to want to want. Not setting up a target is no solution to the problem of sin. Work out what you truly want and you will find who you truly are, and that creative part of you that desires and speaks from it’s unique nature, will become a force that revitalizes the world. 

This is love

It is Love which ushers what is good and what is true into being. It is love that tries and fails to say what it has to say, and then tries again, slowly revealing it. It is a lifetime of revisions, corrections, variations on a theme. It is the attention that wakes in the morning and says there are things to discover, things to describe, corrections to be made, and things to build - and it is good. It isn't that it is good intrinsically, it is that you have decided it to be, and you say “Let there be light”, and then work to make it true. So think seriously about what you want. And then work courageously to do it to the best of your ability. That is Love.

We all carry only a part of our story

Whatever light pierced into the dark after experiencing my estranged family’s reconnection had an expanding and multiplying effect. I wanted to capture it, to tell it, and to choose to not turn away, but toward. So how do you start? If you say to the spark “Let there be light,” into what does it expand, and where does it end. How far will the journey take you? I don’t know, but I can at least start.

So I started with a simple letter to my parents on their 64th birthday:

We all carry parts of each other’s story. It is a grand story, reaching back generations, and reaching forward through us, into some final state - perhaps heaven, or maybe hell. If we are to know ourselves, those who carry the story with us must speak the parts they know. To the extent that we do not tell our own story, or decline to say what we really think, or remain silent in shame or fear or anger, we deprive the world from fully knowing itself. So tell us your story, that I may discover the parts of me that I do not yet know.

East Coker V, by T.S. Eliot

The Hard Rains - Spotify | Apple Music

Reason To Bleed - Watch on Vimeo
A story about taking risks and living with the consequences.