The New Obstacles

All you need to make a romance is a guy, a girl, and some obstacles.

Obviously, there’s a bit more to it than that, particularly if it is to be done well, but I’m playing off of Jean-Luc Godard’s famous comment that “all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun,”

I began thinking about true love’s obstacles after watching “Bright Star” and “Romeo and Juliet” on the same day.

“Bright Star” is Jane Campion’s 2009 film based on the last three years of the life of poet John Keats and his romantic relationship with Fanny Brawne.

The version of “Romeo and Juliet” I watched, my favorite Shakespeare adaptation and one of my favorite all-time films, is Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 masterpiece staring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey.

The many obstacles to love faced by the most famous teenage lovers in history are well known—their star-crossed connection doomed from the jump because their only love sprang from their only hate, their secret marriage, Romeo’s killing of Juliet’s cousin, Juliet’s forced marriage to another man, and so on and so on until they are both dead. As obstacles go, these aren’t at all bad. Not at all.

Of course those of John Keats and Fanny Brawne are pretty impressive too. The two are of different classes in a time when that kind of thing really mattered. He couldn’t afford to marry, couldn’t support himself, let alone a wife. And finally, he catches his death of cold and is sick for a lengthy period and then, well, what the movie.

I found “Bright Star” moving and passionate, smart and romantic. Jane Campion is a fantastic director and, as usual, she has made a stunningly beautiful film.

This was the first time I’ve seen “Romeo and Juliet” in HD and it was exquisite. The forty-three year old film holds up extremely well. As far as I’m concerned there will never be a better Juliet than teenaged Olivia Hussey. I first saw the film when I was maybe eight or ten and was so moved by it that I was sick for days afterwards.

Both “Romeo and Juliet” and “Bright Star” are intensely romantic and tragic, and as in the case of our own epic adventures, death has the final word. And though I believe as the “Song of Songs” says that “love is as strong as death,” as far as we know and as far as we can see it is the insurmountable obstacle of this life and, therefore, its loves.

Classic love stories have classic obstacles—cultural taboos, such as class, caste, money, power, race, religion, gender roles, sexual orientation, etc.—powerful enough to keep all but the strongest soul mates from their fates.

But what do we have today? What possible credible obstacles do modern members of educated, liberal democracies have? For many of us, the dragons of class, race, religious, sexual, and financial impediments have been slain. What’s left?

What are the new obstacles?

As enjoyable and inspiring and moving as I found the two films, I found myself thinking more about the new modern obstacles and concluded that in the absence of outward, societal obstacles and taboos, we have created our own, largely internal ones for the narratives inside our heads and the postmodern stories we tell and live.

The new Capulets and Montagues and cultural taboos are neuroses and narcissism, ambivalence and the tyranny of too many choices. External demons have become inner ones. We don’t have impediments as much as issues. Abandonment issues. Daddy issues. Mommy issues. Commitment issues. And on and on issue ad infinitum.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence we have these now that we don’t have the others.

Newfound freedom causes a vacuum that the insecure rush to fill.

Most modern romances, with the exception of Richard Curtis’s brilliant “Notting Hill” which was about the new and very modern obstacle of celebrity, are more about ambivalence than much of anything else, about self-involved characters who are afraid, who really don’t want relationships. Sure, they want sex, they want interaction, but not intimacy, not strings, not entanglement, not love, not commitment. And I think this is a case of art imitating life, of our modern stories reflecting our modern condition, of avoidance and ambiguity, of fear and ambivalence, of a new level of self-centeredness, of external obstacles being replaced by internal issues, whether real, imagined, or invented that net the same result—the tragic thwarting of love. But it seems far more significant and substantial when the obstacle is that of an entire repressed culture than a character merely being unable to make up her mind.

My Not-So-Guilty Pleasure

The film editor of Crime Spree Magazine, Jeremy Lynch, asked me to contribute an essay to a series he’s running about guilty pleasures.

After I agreed to do it and began to think about it, I realized I don’t really have any. Guilt, like shame and fear and envy and hate, is a negative, mostly useless emotion. I experience remorse when I realize I’ve been wrong (which is often) and do my best to take responsibility for it, repent, and attempt to rectify the situation. But I associate guilt with feelings produced by cultural and parental programming, voices of shame inside us that don’t lead to change, but only to continual condemnation.

I’m in no way saying I never feel guilt. I do—even the negative, waste-of-time kind. But I do my best to identify it and eighty-six it as quickly as possible.

I live a very deliberate life—one, as much as possible, from my soul, by my design, based on my callings and convictions, not those of the culture around me. In this, I feel a deep kinship to Emerson, attempting to be and not conform, to, as he said, “Be, and not seem.”

Given this, and my conviction that, as Emerson said, “genuine action will explain itself,” I try neither to do anything because of how it looks or apologize for anything I do—and this includes movies. But, when thinking of guilty pleasures two genres come to mind—romance and horror.

I don’t feel guilty about the films I enjoy in either genre because I’m very selective, but both genres seem to have an inordinate amount of inanity and insipidity, movies deserving of the guilty pleasure moniker.

For my not-so-guilty “guilty pleasure,” I choose a new horror movie.

Last Thursday I drove over and took my soon to be twenty-one year old daughter to the midnight showing of “Scream 4.”

And you’re thinking, surely I should feel guilty about that, right? Well, I don’t. Not even a little. And here’s why: Not only is “Scream 4” a smart, funny, self-conscious, suspenseful meta-art masterpiece, but well-made suspense-based horror movies are something I’ve used to connect with my daughter since her early adolescence when I had to tell her what parts to close her eyes during.

In the fourth “Scream” installment, Sidney Prescott, now the author of a self-help book, returns home to Woodsboro on the last stop of her book tour. Unfortunately, Sidney’s appearance also brings about the return of Ghostface, putting Sidney, her old friends, Gale and Dewey, along with her teenage niece Jill and her friends, in danger.

I don’t care for horrific or shocking images, don’t like to be subjected to what has come to be known as the torture porn. But I do love suspense—the art of “Psycho,” the German Expressionism and relentless tension of the original “Halloween”—the Hitchcockian brand of anxiety that causes an audience to forget to breathe. And I appreciate smart, well-written scripts. “Scream 4” has a bit of both of these—along with humor and hipness to spare.

Like the original, and to a lesser extent the other two sequels, “Scream 4” works on a lot of levels, but is perhaps at its best when exploring genre. It not only looks at horror genre conventions in general, but at the micro sub-genre of “Scream” itself. At one point I thought, I’m sitting in a theater watching a movie in which kids inside a movie are watching a movie based on a movie based on a book based on a movie—and in the process the characters are not only talking about the other movies, but the one they’re in.

If you like smart, hip, fun, suspenseful horror with all of the pleasure and none of the guilt, treat yourself to “Scream 4.”

The Pursuit of Happiness

“All happiness is in the mind.”

I found this bit of wisdom in my fortune cookie as I was contemplating the elusiveness and evanescence of happiness—partially because of certain circumstances and situations in my own life and partly because of the thought-provoking second act of “Into the Woods,” which I had the privilege of seeing at Gulf Coast State College this weekend.

The production was masterfully directed by the Rosie O’Bourke , skillfully conducted by Rusty Garner, and performed by some incredibly well-trained students in the school’s extraordinary program.

The second act of Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant musical opens with every character, all of whom are taken from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, having gotten what they wanted, what they wished for—all of them in the midst of living happily ever after.

Of course, there’s a dissatisfaction beneath their seeming happiness as dissonant as the music accompanying them.

The entire production they’ve been in pursuit of happiness, of what they each thought would make them happy, and now they have it and they’re learning a lesson so true it’s a cliché among clichés—true happiness isn’t getting what you want, but wanting what you have.

The prince was far happier pursuing perfection than possessing it. Cinderella realizes there’s a world of difference in wanting a ball and wanting a prince.

Where does happiness come from? What is it?

Some seem to think it’s found in the comfort, freedom, and security money affords.

Some say it’s to be found in more spiritual pursuits.

Others, that it’s found in finding a mate—a soul mate to share everything with—including the oneness and nirvanaic oblivion of sex.

Some say it comes from non-attachment, from letting go of everything, of only being fully present in the present moment. But as two characters that break their vows and give themselves to each other discover, even living in the moment can be defensive and over-determined. As the peasant woman points out following her tryst with and abandonment by the prince, “But if life were only moments, then you'd never know you had one.”

There’s not much we can do about the pain involved in life, but much of how much we suffer over it is up to us. Suffering takes place when our minds demand for things to be different than they are. Acceptance is the key that unlocks peace. Peace is the doorway that leads to happiness. And, as my fortune so wisely pointed out, this all takes place inside of us. The serenity prayer says it all. We find true harmony and contentment when we truly let go of those things we have no control over.

At the moment I broke open my cookie and withdrew its timely message, the unhappiness of a few close friends was lodged in my solar plexuses like the broken tip of a blade. One definition of love is that the happiness of others is essential to your own. So even when we’re happy—or would be—the unhappiness of those we’ve invited into our hearts can bring great unhappiness crashing down on top of us.

When’s the last time you were truly happy? Probably wasn’t the result of having everything you wanted. Wasn’t because the world suddenly became a kind and loving place.

I’m reminded of the line from “The Two Jakes,” the underrated sequel to “Chinatown.” When Kahn asks Jake if he’s happy, Jake responds, “Who can answer that off the top of their head?” “Someone who’s happy,” Kahn replies.
Embrace the pursuit. Be grateful for the struggles and soul-deepening difficulties of life.

True happiness comes from meaning—having meaningful lives, from being connected and contributing, from having meaningful relationships and meaningful work. It’s hard to get much happier than having a purpose, feeling a sense of calling about what we do, and sharing it in profound ways with others. This is love. This is happiness—or at least its pursuit, and as the characters of “Into the Woods” all too soon and too late discovered, the pursuit of happiness is happiness itself.

This past weekend, I spoke at a writers’ conference in Fort Walton Beach with one of my publishers. Toward the end of our session, while taking questions from the audience, one of the attendees told us he had been writing for ten years and had only received rejections. He then asked us what was wrong with the publishing industry, why was it so broken it couldn’t see there was money to be made from his books, adding that he knew the only way to get published was to know somebody, to have an “in,” an unfair advantage.

At the conclusion of the session, I spent some time talking to the keynote speaker of the conference who had slipped in about half way through our presentation. He is truly a fantastic writer, a bestseller, and a great guy. He is also someone who not only teaches the craft of writing, but continually works to improve his own.

As we talked, he mentioned how, when he first started writing, he wrote four novels over ten years and couldn’t get any of them published. He shared with me how he didn’t give up, how he worked hard and learned his craft, and how it paid off with his fifth novel—the one that launched his brilliant career.

He didn’t give up, he worked hard, didn’t make excuses, and he broke through, got published, and has done very well. Unlike the angry young man that has yet to attract the attention of an agent, the successful writer didn’t blame his failure on a corrupt, nepotistic system.

I have a lot of writer friends (lots of friends working in all the arts) and not one, not a single one—was helped because they knew someone. They’ve worked hard, paid a price, and earned everything they’ve ever received.

Later in the weekend, I had the privilege of observing the work of and talking to a visual artist. She is a working artist, making a living and her way in the world by living the artists’ life. We spoke about the romantic notion some people have surrounding art and its creation. She, like the best and most productive artists I know, is living an unassuming life dedicated to creating, to improving, and to supporting her work the best way she knows how. She doesn’t have a huge studio or expensive equipment. She has a table—a dining room table. And on it, she makes amazing art. And she does this day after day, week after week, year after year.

Both artists—the bestselling writer and the successful visual artist—are living the artist’s life, one of continual creation, humility, evolution, overcoming self-doubt and drama and criticism with the dignity of discipline and dedication. They continue to produce good work because they work hard. They don’t merely strike the pose of an artist or talk about art. They work hard to create it.

Living an artistic life is like living any kind of life. There are no shortcuts. Hard work and humility are more important than appearances and connections. Imagination, creativity, and dedication are more important than talent and intelligence. And attitude and approach are more important than anything else.

Crying Out of the Depths

Nothing captures cries of the soul quite like poetry.

Cries of longing, cries of ecstasy, cries of agony, cries of love, cries of despair, cries from the depths.

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.

Poetry is the language of love and lovers—and the God who is love, whose very essence and being is love, the one from whom all love issues. Because of this, in the best of poetry it is difficult to discern whether the lover being lavishly loved in verse is human or divine—and in the very best, it’s impossible.

This is nowhere more evident than in the work of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, a 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic, who 800 years after his death is the bestselling poet in America and Afghanistan.

Rumi’s ecstatic utterances are spiritual and sensual, earthen and eternal—effervescent with eroticism. He exhorts us to . . .

Be foolishly in love,
because love is all there is.
There is no way into presence
except through a love exchange.
If someone asks, But what is love?
answer, Dissolving the will.

He insists we . . .

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.

We should do this because . . .

Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.

And reminds us that . . .

*Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.
The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.
Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,
The heart that is not in love will fail the test.


Are the above lines about a human or divine lover? Is there a difference? If we perceive them properly, don’t all loves and lovers ultimately become sacraments, vessels through which the divine loves us, through which we love the divine?

Love opens us, causes us to bloom into our best selves, not only dissolving our wills but all illusions of separation, leading us into oneness. When lovers become one, they are not just one with one another, but will all things.

*With the Beloved's water of life, no illness remains
In the Beloved's rose garden of union, no thorn remains.
They say there is a window from one heart to another
How can there be a window where no wall remains?

Of all the people translating Rumi into English, I most highly recommend the poet Coleman Barks. A wonderful poet in his own right, Mr. Barks translations of Rumi’s work burn with a fire that scorches the soul. Recently, I have been reading and rereading “Rumi: Bridge to the Soul,” but I also recommend, “The Essential Rumi,” “The Soul of Rumi,” and “Rumi: The Book of Love”—all beautifully rendered by Coleman Barks.

So the next time you find your soul crying out of the depths in ecstatic agony, I suggest you invite Rumi and Coleman to join you.



all verse translated by Coleman Barks except
* translated by Shahram Shiva

Lincoln Lawyer Rolls into Theaters

Ten years ago, Michael Connelly sat beside an attorney at a baseball game who told him he operated out of his car—that with forty-plus courthouses in LA, mobility was more important than anything else.

That was all it took for Michael’s mind.

I used to think Michael Connelly had the mind of a reporter and the soul of a novelist, but the more I think about it, I’d say he has the mind and the carefully honed craft of a professional reporter and the soul of a lonely jazz sax player in a small out-of-the-way bar in the middle of the night. The former shows in his excellent plotting and satisfying stories, the latter, in flourishes—riffs if you will—scattered throughout his books, observations and insights about the city of angels and demons and the angles and demons who inhabit it. This is most true of his Harry Bosch series, but also shines through in his first Mickey Haller book, “The Lincoln Lawyer”—now a film starring Matthew McConaughey.

Mickey Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence — it's about negotiation and manipulation.

A Beverly Hills playboy arrested for attacking a woman he picked up in a bar chooses Haller to defend him, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years. It is a defense attorney's dream, what they call a franchise case. And as the evidence stacks up, Haller comes to believe this may be the easiest case of his career.

Then someone close to him is murdered and Haller discovers that his search for innocence has brought him face-to-face with evil as pure as a flame. To escape without being burned, he must deploy every tactic, feint, and instinct in his arsenal — this time to save his own life.

The movie is good—always entertaining, often engrossing—and I highly recommend it. It’s best where it’s most faithful to Connelly’s excellent novel, weakest where it strays—particularly in the ending, where a riveting climax in the book is inexplicably made more pedestrian in the movie. Still, all and all the movie is one of the best things at your local movie house at the moment, faithfully capturing the gritty city—the sprawling slum where pretty people do ugly things.

The film also provides McConaughey with his best role in a long time—to which he responds with his best performance since maybe he played another defense attorney in John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill.”

See the film, but more importantly, read the book it was based on—and for other entertaining legal thrillers with more twists and turns than Mulholland Drive, check out all of Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller books: “The Lincoln Lawyer,” “The Brass Verdict,” “The Reversal,” and “The Fifth Witness.”

Each of these, like every Michael Connelly book, is like a trip led by a brilliant, trusty old tour guide whose night job is jazz musician.

Arise My Love

“The Adjustment Bureau,” which has moments reminiscent of “The Matrix” and “Dark City,” is at heart a romance far more than sci-fi flick. In fact, its use science fiction and fantasy elements only serve as obstacles for its lovers and as catalysts for philosophical explorations of fate and free will, ambition and amorousness.

As I sat in the theater watching the lovers fight for their fate, battle forces beyond them, passages from The Song kept echoing through my mind—as did “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” another film that brought to mind The Song.

The Song (or Song of Songs) is a book of Egyptian love poetry found in the heart of the Hebrew Bible. It’s provocative and profound, sensual and sexual, powerfully capturing both the desires of lovers and the hostility of others to them and their love.

The world is hostile to love and lovers. It has been ever thus.
In The Song, the lover calls to her beloved saying:

Arise, my love,
my fair one, and come away;
for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

She has been searching the city for her lover and experienced firsthand just how cruel the heartless townsmen can be:

I run out after him, calling,
but he is gone.
The men who roam the streets,
Guarding the walls,
Beat me and tear away my robe.

The lovers only hope is to flee to the countryside, to find a garden so they can be alone—away from the callous, commerce-driven city, away from those who find love, superfluous, frivolous, worthless.

Lovers retreat into one another—not only because each is the other’s first best sanctuary but because there is often no other safe place.

As Rumi puts it:

Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.

This is some of what I was thinking as David Norris chased Elise Sellas and agents of the adjustment bureau chased them both through the city.

On the brink of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, ambitious politician David Norris (Matt Damon) meets beautiful contemporary ballet dancer Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt)—a woman like none he's ever known. But just as he realizes he's falling for her, mysterious men conspire to keep the two apart.

David learns he is up against the agents of fate itself—the men of the adjustment bureau—who will do everything in their considerable power to prevent David and Elise from being together. In the face of overwhelming odds, he must either let her go and accept a predetermined path…or risk everything to defy fate and be with her.

Lovers facing obstacles to be together may be the oldest plot in the history of story—or at least second behind adventure tales of the hunt around cave fires. But the obstacles—whether agents from the adjustment bureau or mundane things far less dramatic—aren’t just conflict-producing plot points but examples of art imitating life. Most lovers know only too well just how difficult it is to make love stay.

And what of choosing a lover, choosing to love or not? Or any number of other decisions we make, or think we do, every day? Do we have free will? Are we truly free? In the world of the movie, we’re not. Unseen forces influence and adjust. It’s an interesting notion. Even a nonconformist iconoclast like me often questions how free I really am. And you don’t have to believe in fate or full blown determinism to see how way leads to way, how every choice limits subsequent choices, how our paradigms and worldviews and cultures and educations and families and religions, like the agents of the adjustment bureau, exert enormous, often unseen influence on us.

One of the more intriguing questions raised by the film concerns coupling and accomplishment, happiness and ambition. Does being in a fulfilling relationship cause us to be less driven, to do less with our lives? Does love makes us lose our edge? Fill a crevice without which we fill with other often obsessive pursuits and passions? David is told that if he and Elise become each other’s neither will live up to their considerable potential, that to become her lover means forfeiting the white house and the opportunity to change the world.

This is something I’ve wondered about nearly as long as I can recall—am I limited as an artist by my happy childhood and love-filled life?

Perhaps a better question is so what? So what if David and Elise do less in the world? So what if the mundane aspects of life together make them more mundane as people? I’m not convinced it does—or has to—but so what if it does? What of love? What of what it produces in our souls, the mark is leaves on us that is anything but mundane? Isn’t that worth the white house and any number of accomplishments? And what if love is all there is? What if love and lover are all—everything and anything else a distraction, an illusion, a poor substitute?

Again, Rumi:

Be foolishly in love
for love is all there is.

There is no way into presence
except through a love exchange.

Love and lover live in eternity.
other desires are substitutes
for that way of being.

In and Out

As I write this, I’m watching the 83rd Annual Academy Awards, searching for inspiration, hoping something said in an acceptance speech or a scene played from last year’s most honored films will spark an idea for this week’s column.

And it worked.

But not like I imagined (imagine that).

Several ideas came. And went. Like falling flakes in too-warm weather, nothing stuck.

At one point, a friend IM’d me on Facebook and asked what I was doing. When I told her, she began to offer suggestions for what I might write about—most of them far better than my own thoughts. But, again, not one of the many wonderful seeds she was sowing took root.

And so, with a deadline looming, which of course they always do, I had many, many ideas, but not one that felt right for this column.

Until . . .

I began to muse about the differences between ideas and inspiration.

I have ideas all the time—lots and lots of them; many before I ever started watching the Oscars—ideas for columns, novels, movies, short stories and a host of other random and unrelated things. But in the way only one of the thousands of acorns that rain down from an enormous oak becomes itself an oak, few ideas are ever more than that—ideas.

Ideas are easy. Execution is the thing.

From the moment my first novel came out in the fall of 1997, I’ve had countless people want to give me their ideas for books—and my response is always the same. I can’t get to all of my own ideas. And if it’s your idea, it’s probably your book to write.

An idea is defined as “a thought or conception, that potentially or actually exists in the mind as a product of mental activity; an opinion, conviction, or principle; a plan, scheme, or method; a notion; a fancy.”

This isn’t entirely unrelated to inspiration, but, in my experience, it’s different enough to make all the difference in the world.

Inspiration is defined as “stimulation of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity; an agency that moves the intellect or emotions or prompts action or invention; a sudden creative act or idea, that is inspired; divine guidance or influence exerted directly on the mind and soul of humankind; the act of drawing in, especially the inhalation of air into the lungs.”

These definitions get at part of what I think is the biggest difference between an idea and inspiration.

An idea remains a thought or concept in the mind, while inspiration stimulates us beyond thought and feeling into activity.

Ideas are involved, of course.

Everything begins with an image, a thought, an idea—but, if inspiration, this is truly just the beginning. An idea can be a seed for inspiration, but inspiration moves us beyond the idea—the seed sprouts.

There’s an alchemical process involving passion, maybe even obsession , that transforms an idea into an action or causes some ideas to be inspired, while others aren’t (or aren’t yet), and I no more understand it than any of the great, thrilling, humbling, inspiring mysteries of existence. But it is inspiring—inspiration itself inspires.

We can ponder ideas, but inspiration propels.

And though inspiration is a mystery—utterly beyond us and out of our control, we can court it.

I pursue and woo my muse with an earnest relentlessness akin to madness of a sort only certain types of obsessed lovers can fathom—spending my mornings and midnights trying to seduce her.

I fill my life with people and things I find inspirational—art and artists; books and writers; music, fun, friends, soulful sinners and saints, lovers, thinkers, characters, and kind, compassionate people.

My writing room, the space I spend more time in than any other, is filled with thousands and thousands of books, with photographs and paintings, with images and icons, with gifts and mementos. Often, particularly when I’m writing, the room flickers in candlelight, as incense and instrumental music floats around.

But none of this guarantees inspiration. It’s just preparation and invitation—invocation of a type not unlike religious devotion.

I never know what will inspire a column. Sometimes something in a mediocre movie will provoke a thought that blossoms, while a fine film or book, though inspiring in itself, offers me no way in, no tunnels, no hooks, nothing that sticks to grey cells, nothing that penetrates the soil of soul.

The same applies to all my creative endeavors—from novels to nature photography—and to nearly all of life.

If I don’t know when or from where inspiration will come, I can but be ready at all times. I’m not, of course, but I attempt to be prepared, to be open, to look and listen, to seek and woo.

In this way, the writing life, like the creative life, like the soulful life, is like the best and wisest life any of us can lead. Hone our sensitivity and receptivity, be diligent in our preparation and searching, learn to listen, learn to live the Buddha’s awakened life, for we never know when the still small voice inside us will speak, when our muse will tickle our ear with soft whispers, when the wind or a wren might have a message for us.

As Frederick Buechner so extraordinarily and eloquently puts it, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

Ultimately, inspiration is a mystery, but it’s as basic to our nature as breathing (the very act the word comes from)—drawing in and letting out. In and out. In and out. Just breathe. Breathe in the universe in each inspiring inhalation. This is meditation. This is inspiration. This is love. This is life. In and out. In and out. Removing any obstruction, all impediments, we open our hearts and minds, our souls and spirits, to the Mystery. In and out. In and out.

String Theory

I’m always interested in the emergence of similar themes in movies—not trends that have an innovator and imitators, but films released so closely together it seems their creators were having the same dream.

Two recent films exploring the same issue (namely, is it possible for a man and a woman to have a purely sexual relationship?) are “Love and Other Drugs” and “No Strings Attached.” And though both approach the subject in different ways, with different characters and setups, they have enough in common to inspire a look at their underlying cultural significance. My guess is that for these two films that actually got the green light, hundreds of scripts representing variations on this same theme were tossed over many an agents transom.

So, why all this interest in sex only scenarios? Why is “friends with benefits” so popular? The primary reasons given for the purely sexual relationships in the movies are to avoid pain and complications. Is this a result of a generation reacting to their parents’ bad breakups? A defensive stance against the cost of caring and the inevitability of heartache? Is it the result of feminism? Porn? The masculinization of relationships? The moving onto the mainstream radar of alternate ways being and relating? I’d say it’s some of all the above.

Regardless of the relationship configuration—friends, lovers, partners, sex buddies, or any combination or variation—the two things that are unavoidable are the very things the couples in each movie are attempting to avoid. When we invite someone into our lives—in any capacity at all—we are inviting pain and complications. This is particularly true of friends and lovers.

The Buddha said life is suffering.

It’s part of life. It is life.

Jesus said compassion—the act of feeling what others feel, including their pain—is the most life God we can be.

To me, the relevant question is not “Is it possible to have a relationship that avoids suffering and complications?” but “Why would you want one?” Life is messy. We are the children of the big green slimy mama. We are complex beings fashioned in the likeness of God, the contradiction, according to the biblical book of Genesis, of lofty spirit and lowly dirt, animal and spiritual. Can we really join ourselves with other such creatures without übercomplications, heartache, friction, frustration, pain, joy, ecstasy, creativity, love, anger, challenge, difficulty, meaning, and madness? And if we could, why would we want to?

Nietzsche said, “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness” and Francoise Sagan said, “I have loved to the point of madness / That which is called madness / That which to me / Is the only sensible way to love.” To me, both quotes resonate within this anonymous one: “A fool in love makes no sense to me. I only think you are a fool if you do not love.”

The gentle madness of love that makes fools of us all is not to be avoided, but sought. The fact that, as Shakespeare so insightfully noted, “the course of true love never did run smooth” is the whole point.

Of course, it’s human nature, or seems to be, to avoid suffering, to search for the situation that gives the most pleasure for the least personal cost. And that’s exactly what the characters of these two films attempt.

In “No Strings Attached,” Emma (Natalie Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher) are life-long friends who almost ruin everything by having sex one morning. In order to protect their friendship, they make a pact to keep their relationship strictly "no strings attached." "No strings" means no jealousy, no expectations, no fighting, no flowers, no baby voices. It means they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, in whatever public place they want, as long as they don't fall in love. The questions become - Can you have sex without love getting in the way? And can their friendship survive?

In “Love and Other Drugs,” Maggie (Anne Hathaway) is an alluring free spirit who won't let anyone - or anything - tie her down. But she meets her match in Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose relentless and nearly infallible charm serve him well with the ladies and in the cutthroat world of pharmaceutical sales. Maggie and Jamie's evolving relationship takes them both by surprise, as they find themselves under the influence of the ultimate drug: love.

Neither picture is great, and though “Love and Other Drugs” is the better film, both are entertaining, have moments of humor and insight, and really strong performances from their respective stars and supporting cast. As usual, Natalie Portman stands out—something she’s been doing since “Leon: The Professional” and all the way through “Beautiful Girls,” “Garden State,” “V is for Vendetta,” “Closer,” and again just recently in “Black Swan.”

But far more interesting than any performance or even the films themselves is the lengths we go to in order to avoid pain and heartache and complication and vulnerability and, yes, madness. We’re defending against the things we need most—loss of control, ego death, connection, compassion, need, want, desire, love.

Our souls need the complexity and difficulty and challenge and pain of relationships. We cannot become who we’re meant to be without them. The notion that we can have lovers with no strings or sex with no complications is a denial of the soul and assumes choosing who we love and get involved with is somehow a rational decision up to us, but as Rumi said, “Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” Our souls find each other, are drawn together by forces we can scarcely imagine, and our connections accomplish things within us we can’t begin to comprehend—and it doesn’t get much more complicated or stringy than that.

The Best One Wish to Change the World

My religion, to the extent I have one, is compassion.

I’m not saying I live it out very often in any meaningful way. Only that I try to. That, to me, compassion is the highest of humanity, the ideal all truth aspires to.

Into a world, a culture, a religion centered in “be holy as God is holy,” Jesus taught and lived, “be compassionate as God is compassionate”—insisting that we can be no more like God than when we love enough to feel what another feels. And not just those who are like us or look like us or think like us, but even, especially, our enemies.

As a student of art, philosophy, and religion, I’ve found no better advice, no wiser counsel than “treat others as you would have them treat you.” And this is best and most consistently achieved through compassion, that process by which we open ourselves up to others—walk in their shoes, see the world from their view, feel with them what they feel, their joy and pain, frustration and futility, triumphs and tragedies becoming our own.

Given this, I was thrilled to discover that one of my favorite religion scholars and writers’ new book and project is about this very thing.

When Karen Armstrong, author and religion historian was awarded the TED Prize and asked to make “One Wish to Change the World,” she wished for compassion.

As far as I’m concerned there can be no better wish. If we lived in love, in compassion, actually put ourselves in the place of others, we could no longer close our hearts to them, no longer refuse to share the abundance we have with them. It would end hunger and arrogance and ignorance and violence and incivility and inhumanity and be the quickest route, the only route, to “on earth as it is in heaven.”

I’m so thankful TED chose Karen and Karen chose compassion.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The TED Conference, held annually in the spring, deals not only with technology, entertainment, and design, but also science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world.

The TED Prize is designed to leverage the TED community’s exceptional array of talent and resources. It is awarded annually to an exceptional individual who receives $100,000 and, much more important, “One Wish to Change the World.” After several months of preparation, s/he unveils his/her wish at an award ceremony held during the TED Conference. These wishes have led to collaborative initiatives with far-reaching impact.

Karen Armstrong created a Charter for Compassion, aided by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The charter was signed in November 2009 by a thousand religious and secular leaders.

Out of all this, her new book, “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life” was born. In it, she writes that while compassion is intrinsic in all human beings, each of us needs to work diligently to cultivate and expand our capacity for compassion. Here, in her straightforward, thoughtful, and thought-provoking book, she sets out a program that can lead us toward a more compassionate life.

When told she was being honored with the award, Armstrong wrote, “I knew immediately what I wanted. One of the chief tasks of our time must surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live together in mutual respect; yet religion, which should be making a major contribution, is seen as part of the problem. All faiths insist that compassion is the test of true spirituality and that it brings us into relation with the transcendence we call God, Brahman, Nirvana, or Dao. Yet sadly we hear little about compassion these days. And it is hard to think of a time when the compassionate voice of religion has been so sorely needed. Our world is dangerously polarized. There is a worrying imbalance of power and wealth and, as a result, a growing rage, malaise, alienation, and humiliation that has erupted in terrorist atrocities that endanger us all.

Please consider reading “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life” and joining me in signing (and doing our best to live) the Charter for Compassion.

Charter For Compassion

“The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.

Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honor the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women

• to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion;
• to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate;
• to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures;
• to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity;
• to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.”

Walking In Another’s Shoes Whether They Fit or Not

I wish we lived in a world of love—of justice and compassion—where there was no judgment, only acceptance and appreciation. If this is too much to ask for, I wish we lived in a world where people were not judged by the color of their skin or their sex or their religion or their sexual orientation, but by the content of their character. If this is too much to ask for, then I wish we lived in a world where ignorance and hatefulness and incivility were marginalized instead of celebrated, where people who practice such things were not promoted to the top of companies, voted into office, given radio and TV shows and book deals. If this, too, is too much to ask for then I at least wish those of us who disdain such things would not remain quiet, not give into the blusterous bullies and their benighted rhetoric, not sit in silence as the insecure haters make homophobic, sexist, or racists remarks, not stand idly by accepting injustice because that’s just the way the world works. As Dr. King said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

To all this, you may say that I’m a naïve dreamer. Perhaps. But I’m not the only one.

There’s King and Lennon, of course. And there’s also Philip Green—a highly respected writer who is recruited by a national magazine to write a series of articles on anti-Semitism in 1940s America in Elia Kazan’s “Gentleman’s Agreement.” Green (played by Gregory Peck) is not too hip on the idea at first, but then it occurs to him that since he’s new in town, he can pretend to be Jewish, and thus experience firsthand the realities of racism and prejudice, and write from that perspective. It takes very little time for him to experience bigotry. He soon learns the liberal-minded firm he works for doesn’t hire Jews and that his own secretary changed her name and kept the fact that she is Jewish a secret from everyone. Green soon finds that he won’t be invited to certain parties, that he cannot stay in certain ‘restricted’ hotels and that his own son is called names in the street. His anger at the way he is treated also affects his relationship with his fiancée, Kathy Lacy, his publisher’s niece and the person who suggested the series in the first place.

Of all the horrible injustices and inequities Green experiences, the most insidious is the silence Dr. King talked about, the gentleman’s agreement of those who say they are not anti-Semitic not to stand up against those who are. Of course, by their very refusal to take a stand they (and we) are part of the systemic oppression of the minority, the different, the other, that history gives dreadful witness to.

“Gentleman’s Agreement” deals with anti-Semitism, but the lessons of hate and tribalism in the film apply to all oppressed peoples and groups, particularly the powerless, the different, the disenfranchised minority.

“Gentleman’s Agreement” is a brave and poignant film—especially for 1947—and though I’m sure some will condemn it as polemical or didactic, I think it achieves a good balance between story and moral, never becoming preachy or patronizing. And it’s not bulky or heavy-handed in the way of 2004’s “Crash.”

Of all the brilliant achievements of “Gentleman’s Agreement,” perhaps the two most telling and terrifying are the way good, well-intentioned people contribute to the oppression of others by not raging against the machine, and the way certain people within oppressed groups attempt to assimilate and disappear, and resent those who don’t—both groups taking a dangerous “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach that requires denial and dishonesty.

Bigotry, prejudice, hate—any form of xenophobia, whether racism, sexism, classism, or homophobia—all come from the same little lizard brain place of fear that leads to tribalism, insecurity, and a warped sense of superiority.

I returned to “Gentleman’s Agreement” recently for what must be the fifth viewing because of an experience I had that was not unlike that of Philip Green.

When word got out that I refused to be married until my gay brothers and sisters enjoyed the same opportunities and equality, gossip began to spread and certain people assumed I was gay and began treating me differently. Speculation and gossip and condemnation have continued and let to some incivility and unkindness—and the entire experience made me feel like I was living my own little version of “Gentleman’s Agreement.”

I’m grateful for the experience, and its heightening of my experience of the film, which is rich and rewarding, reminding us that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.

“Gentleman’s Agreement” is filled with good people—actors, writers, filmmakers—doing something.

Several of the main players and the director of “Gentleman’s Agreement” were brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The two who refused to testify, John Garfield (who played Green’s best friend, Dave Goldman) and Anne Revere (who played Green’s mother) were added to the Hollywood Blacklist. Revere didn’t appear in another movie for twenty years and Garfield died of a heart attack at the age of thirty-nine after being called before the committee again—this time to testify against his wife.

Gregory Peck, my all-time favorite actor, for his choice of roles even more than his acting style and screen presence, was a good, principled man whose name was on Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.” Peck is Philip Green, Father Chisholm, Dr. Anthony Edwards, Joe Bradley, King David, and Atticus Finch—the very embodiment of the best of the characters he played.

Our failures of compassion say far more about us than those we’re prejudiced against. And compassion is the key—not pity that comes from a superior place, but a “feeling with,” putting ourselves in the place of others, experiencing what they experience, feeling what they feel. As another of Gregory Peck’s characters, Atticus Finch, says, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” A Muslim proverb says, “To understand a person, you must walk a mile in her shoes whether they fit or not.” It’s exactly what Atticus Finch and Philip Green do, and what you and I can do every day if we will only be as willing and caring and open and brave as they are.

Dark Night of the Soul

After a truly amazing year, for which I am deeply grateful, 2010 ended with a period of prolonged difficult and dark days for me.

I don’t mean to suggest that the rest of 2010 was without pain and disappointment and darkness. Just that there’s a difference between life’s ordinary slings and arrows and a true dark night of the soul—and over the past few weeks, I’ve been in the throes of the latter.

The experience is complex and multilayered—part circumstantial with identifiable causality, part inexplicable, utterly unmooring in its mysteriousness.

I can’t remember ever feeling as lonely or broken or empty for as long. It’s as if during the year’s final days, I’ve been experiencing a death of my own.

During this time of downness and darkness, of loss and loneliness, of pain and puzzlement, of melancholy and meaninglessness, I have attempted (and often failed) to be mindful and present, open and engaged, resisting the urge to bypass, short circuit, fix, or otherwise prematurely end the experience. I’ve tried to follow the wise advice of the Sufi mystic and poet, Hafiz, who wrote:


Don't
Surrender
Your loneliness so quickly.
Let it cut more
Deep.


It’s not easy, of course. Who relishes being lonely or cut deeply? But there is something about brokenness, about the crushing of the grapes of our being, something about spending a solitary, sleepless night at the place of pressing, the Gethsemane of our souls, that produces the most potent and profound wine. As Hafiz says:


Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.


Hafiz words heal and inspire, but no one’s words have done more for me, have resonated more in me, that those of Thomas Moore.

Though he’s best known for, “Care of the Soul,” and I’ve benefited greatly from all his books, the two titles of his I find myself returning to most often are, “The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life” and “Dark Nights of the Soul”—the latter especially helpful in recent dark days.

A mentor and counselor to me in more ways than I can begin to express, Moore was a Catholic monk for twelve years and later became a psychotherapist, earning degrees in theology, musicology, and religion. His many books are at once accessible and abstruse.

His approach to life is one of soul. Through psychology and art and religion and myth and literature, he performs and teaches care of the soul—reminding us of its vital importance, exploring its dark depths, helping us view life in the light of its needs.

Gentle and wise, caring and compassionate, Moore’s revelatory work is revolutionary without being egocentric, heroic, or sentimental.

Truly shamanistic, Moore’s medicine offers a soothing salve while encouraging the embracing of soul-building darknesses and difficulties.
As he writes, “At one time or another, most people go through a period of sadness, trial, loss, frustration, or failure that is so disturbing and long-lasting that it can be called a dark night of the soul.

“If your main interest in life is health, you may quickly try to overcome the darkness. But if you are looking for meaning, character, and personal substance, you may discover that a dark night has many important gifts for you. Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the vital and the deadening. How you think about this rhythm of moods makes all the difference.”
In “Dark Nights of the Soul,” Moore examines life’s difficulties—such as the loss of a loved one or the end of a relationship, aging and illness, career disappointments—not as obstacles to be overcome, but as periods of incubation and positive opportunities to delve the soul’s deepest needs for healing and a new understanding of life’s meaning.

Moore goes on to say, “Many people think that the point in life is to solve their problems and be happy. But happiness is usually a fleeting sensation, and you never get rid of problems. Your purpose in life may be to become more who you are and more engaged with the people and the life around you, to really live your life. That may sound obvious, yet many people spend their time avoiding life. They are afraid to let it flow through them, and so their vitality gets channeled into ambitions, addictions, and preoccupations that don’t give them anything worth having. A dark night may appear, paradoxically, as a way to return to living. It pares life down to its essentials and helps you get a new start.

“Here I want to explore positive contributions of your dark nights, painful though they may be. I don’t want to romanticize them or deny their dangers. I don’t even want to suggest that you can always get through them. But I do see them as opportunities to be transformed from within, in ways you could never imagine. A dark night is like Dante getting sleepy, wandering from his path, mindlessly slipping into a cave. It is like Alice looking at the mirror and then going through it. It is like Odysseus being tossed by stormy waves and Tristan adrift without an oar. You don’t choose a dark night for yourself. It is given to you. Your job is to get close to it and sift it for its gold.”

C S Lewis said we read to know we’re not alone. This is no more true than of a book like “Dark Nights of the Soul” that speaks directly down into the deep, dark well of our most utter and complete aloneness.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a dark night of the soul, get Thomas Moore’s brilliant book so whether you go gentle into that good night or rage, rage against the dying of the light, you won’t do it alone. If you’re not experiencing a dark night of the soul, get the book anyway, so that when you do, you’ll be better equipped to receive the dark gifts offered by the experience.

The Tao of George

There’s a reason why “It’s A Wonderful Life” is such an enduring film—and it’s probably not what you think.

It’s not just that certain copyright and licensing issues led to it airing every night on every station every holiday season for many years, making it as much a part of Christmas as trimming the tree and exchanging gifts.

It’s not just that it’s sweet or sentimental or so called Capracorn.

It’s not just that it’s an exceptionally written, perfectly acted and directed, inspiring and entertaining movie.

It’s the Taoist-like balance it achieves, the yin-yang of its light and darkness, the truth of human existence it captures and conveys.

Birthed out of failure, “It’s a Wonderful Life” began as a short story titled, “The Greatest Gift,” written by Philip Van Doren Stern, who, after failing to find a publisher for it, made it into a Christmas card, which he mailed to two-hundred family members and friends. Originally purchased by RKO Pictures as a vehicle for Cary Grant, three different scripts were written and rejected before the project was shelved and Grant went on to make the “Bishop’s Wife”—all of which led to Frank Capra getting involved and the success the film ultimately became. Of course, success is relative. This seminal, among-the-best-of-all-times movie was a box office failure when first released in 1946.

George Bailey is a small-town man whose life seems so desperate he contemplates suicide. He had always wanted to leave Bedford Falls to see the world, but circumstances and his own good heart have led him to stay. He sacrificed his education for his brother's, kept the family-run savings and loan afloat, protected the town from the avarice of the greedy banker Mr. Potter, and married his childhood sweetheart. As he prepares to jump from a bridge, Clarence, his guardian angel, intercedes; showing him what life would have become for the residents of Bedford Falls if he had never lived—a hellish existence in the greed-driven, dark, depraved Pottersville.

Clarence tells George, “See, you’ve really had a wonderful life.”

But has he?

As “wonderful” as George’s life is—particularly in its positive impact on others, it’s not all wonderful—or even good. There’s a price to pay for living in a small town—or any size place where you don’t fit in. There’s a price to pay for honesty and integrity, for a life lived in service to others and high ideals, a high price for not having a price. The biggest price George pays is an internal one, intellectual and spiritual, the anguish and frustration that comes from being awake, surrounded by those who slumber.

Appropriately black and white, “It’s a Wonderful Life” is profoundly Taoist in its push-pull of yin and yang. These two forces, and the interplay between them, arise out of emptiness—symbolized by the empty circle they are drawn into. George embodies, and is surrounded by, and is acutely aware of, light and dark, soft and hard, masculine and feminine, receptive and aggressive, but mostly the empty that is around and in and between all things. And it’s this balance of the lighter and darker sides of existence that elevate this film to greatness. Without the one, you’d have silly, sweet, sentimental swill. Without the other, you’d have only meaninglessness and darkness. But the two together achieve a complexity and profundity that so mirrors reality it gives rise to the notion that life can actually imitate art.

Many viewers seem to miss how truly dark the film actually is, but it’s this ingredient, this rich yinish quality that enables “It’s a Wonderful Life” to earn its inspiration and ending.

The film’s shadow side doesn’t just appear when Bedford Falls transforms into Pottersville. It’s been there all along—showing through the skein between realities, in the injustice and inequity, in the claustrophobia and frustration, in the way the rich and powerful oppress the poor and disenfranchised.

Perhaps more than an alternate reality, Pottersville is the same reality as Bedford Falls—only seen differently. George Bailey, a truly good, kind, and decent person projects a goodness and decency on the world he inhabits. To him, the town is Bedford Falls. Old Man Potter has always seen it as Pottersville. The rich and powerful always view the world as theirs—their right, their entitlement, their prize, their reward. Instead of Pottersville being the version of reality that resulted from George never being born, maybe it’s what happens when a good man like George finally allows the selfishness and brutishness and meaner aspects of lesser men to cloud his vision, when he gives up and gives in, quits fighting the good fight and turns the whole thing over to them.

The Tao is the way or path (a term used in a lot of the world’s great wisdom traditions). It is ancient. Ineffable. Unnamable (“the Tao that can be named is not the Tao”). And you don’t have to be Taoist to appreciate its universals truths or the wisdom of its most sacred text, the Tao Te Ching.

This way or channel is the flow of the universe. True fulfillment and serenity comes from living in harmony with it, walking the path. Like us, George spends much of his life fighting the path, stubbornly resisting the way, insisting he has a better way. Invariably, when he surrenders and begins to travel the way he glimpses his best self and begins to practice wei wu wei—doing without doing, actionless action, that in-the-zone, alignment with the Tao, where we, like water, flow in a stream of effortless action/in-action, yielding, becoming inseparable, indistinguishable from the creator and all of creation. Truly one.

But George went to some very dark places before aligning himself with the Tao, before giving in and becoming truly free.

Like religion and philosophy, we turn to art for meaning—and few films are as meaningful and as much about meaning as “It’s a Wonderful Life.” That an average George can make a difference, can have meaning by giving meaning to others gives us hope, challenges us to make a difference. Viewing the film is a religious experience for me. Profound. Transcendent. Trasformational. Watching it each year is a rite, a ritual, a memorial and remembrance.

For me, “It’s a Wonderful Life” is both inspirational and cathartic. It moves me like no other movie. I laugh and cry (a lot). I am George Bailey. I am small town. I have a small life. My Bedford Falls existence could easily be Pottersville if not for love, for art, for meaning, for family and friends. I’m on a quest, searching for meaning, attempting to walk the way. I want to make a difference in the world and doubt that I am doing much of anything that matters to much of anybody. George inspires me to give, to take the small gifts I’ve been given, like a few measly loaves and fish, and share them with others. It’s what Philip Van Doren Stern did with his story, “The Greatest Gift.” It’s what I’m attempting to do at this very moment by writing and giving away this column, for I believe what is written beneath the picture of George’s dad in his office: “All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.”

The Most Wonderful Films of the Year

What is it about Christmas movies?

I don’t mean Oscar contenders released during the holidays, but films in which Christmas is actually a character.

Why are the good ones SOOOO good?

What makes movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Love Actually” among my favorite films of all time, and why do I return to “The Holiday,” “The Family Stone,” “The Ice Harvest,” “This Christmas,” and “Home for the Holidays” time and time again—and not just in December?

I think it’s a number of factors really—many of which are the very ones that make this season the most wonderful time of the year.

There is much that is tired and trite, hollow, cynical, and sentimental about the holidays. Much cashing in. Sometimes the entire environment sounds as shallow and tinny as poorly recorded, overplayed Christmas music on small, cheap department store speakers. Too much of the season is about buying, spending, acquiring—and ridiculous reciprocation calculations (Should I get him a present? He’s probably gonna get me one. We’ve got to invite them to our party since they invited us to theirs, right?)

The crass commercialism of the holiday supposedly in honor of the impoverished peasant living among and fighting for the marginalized, subsistence, villagers and day laborers of First Century Palestine is, like so many things related to him, a most tragic irony.

What is bought and sold more than anything else during this season is us—our very souls.

And yet. And yet. In spite, of all these violent assaults on Jesus, all these adulterations and perversions of the meaning of his life, something sacred, something magic, something undeniable survives. This, more than anything else, demonstrates the true power of the man, his message, and the holiday that honors and celebrates his birth. That something of the ineffable, something of the transformational, something of the true spark of divinity survives the full on assault of the American capitalist religion is truly a Christmas miracle.

And the best Christmas movies embody this. They tap into the magic and they quiet all the clamor to capture the love.

Jesus dared to live love. His life (and too soon his death) was the result of his conviction that God is love, that God loves everyone equally and unconditionally. (It’s another tragic irony that the religion that rose up around him has all but lost this). Jesus’ radical, yet only-hope-for-humanity notion that God is not an angry, distant deity, but a present loving parent who loves us no matter what we do (or fail to, including living out love) survives in spite of the religion that bears his name’s insistence on being like every other religion. And it somehow survives Christmas, too.

Love survives.

We ignore, abandon, dilute, and contaminate love, and yet love remains. Mixing our needs and projections and illusions and neuroses and insecurities and attempts to control with love can’t kill love any more than mixing our greed and gluttony and selfishness and tribalism and sentimentality with Christmas can kill its spirit. We alter it to be sure—and what remains often bears little resemblance to love or Christmas—yet we can still glimpse love, still feel the meaning and magic beneath, above, around, and, on occasion, through the small tears in the fabric of the blanket of commercialism smothering Christmas.

The best of Christmas movies provide us with this glimpse of love, which is captured so brilliantly by Richard Curtis in the prologue to his Christmas masterpiece, “Love Actually.”

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there—fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge—they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion . . . love actually is all around.”

The characters in “Love Actually” or “The Holiday” risk and receive love, and it’s this not particularly dignified or newsworthy phenomenon that is a metaphor in microcosm for the macrocosmic love Christmas is meant to commemorate and celebrate.

Among the best movies ever made, “”It’s A Wonderful Life” is also about love at Christmas—about a good man who truly lives in love by turning his back on greed and selfishness and extending himself on the behalf of others (the textbook definition of love). It captures love on many levels—the love of a couple (George and Mary, “George Bailey I’ll love you to the day I die”), the love of family (both George’s home of origin and the one he and Mary build), the love of others, and community, and ultimately, the divine source of all love (which comes to George through Clarence and eventually others). This last is particularly important, and the meaning of Christmas—we experience God’s love through those others who are willing to be conduits of it for us; others experience God’s love through us when we are willing to undergo ego death, becoming empty of anything but love.

The best of Christmas movies, like the best of art and religion and philosophy, remind us of what really matters. They inspire us toward the best versions of ourselves and provide us with much needed perspective. They say, like all truth, that love, not status or money or power or presents or bills or public opinion, matters most of all, and, as Clarence wrote to George, “No man is failure who has friends.”

The End of the World As We Know It

If the Philistines are at the gate of American culture, it’s on the inside.

We’re witnessing the end of an era, the twilight of American culture.

As a wise person once said, “America has become a storefront for a corporate mob.”

We are a culture of constant consumption, gluttons who mostly stuff ourselves with regurgitated entertainment devoid of anything meaningful or of lasting value. As social critic James Twitchell put it, “There is barely an empty space in our culture not already carrying commercial messages.”

So many things being sold to us. So much noise.

We live in a “systematic suppression of silence,” George Steiner said.

It’s the end of the world as we know it—and how do most of us feel? Just fine. At least we do as long as they keep us distracted, entertained, medicated, and consuming.

Morris Berman says in his book, “The Twilight of American Culture” that there are four factors present in the collapse of a civilization. Name one of them that doesn’t apply to us:

1) Accelerating social and economic inequality.
2) Declining marginal returns with regard to investment in organizational solutions to socioeconomic problems.
3) Rapidly dropping levels of literacy, critical understanding, and general intellectual awareness.
4) Spiritual death—the emptying out of cultural content and repackaging it into formulas.

In the same book, Berman writes, “We live in a collective adrenaline rush, a world of endless promotion/commercial bullshit that masks a deep systemic emptiness, the spiritual equivalent of asthma.”

Are we talking about the Roman Empire or the American one?

According to Sallust, Rome in 80 B.C.E. was a government controlled by wealth, a ruling-class numb to the repetitions of political scandal, and a public diverted by chariot races and gladiatorial shows.

Sounds like us to me. Our sickeningly greedy culture is of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations. Too many are numb to and ignorant of everything that truly matters. And we are a public diverted by NASCAR, sitcoms, reality TV, transient, trashy novels, trite, tiresome, retread movies, extremist political pundits, and the pathetic freak show parade of celebrity culture—and I’m not even talking about the too-easy targets of Palin and Paris, The Situation and the Octomom, and Bush and Beck.

We celebrate ignorance and inanity and incivility—and we like it loud and obnoxious and arrogant.

Are we Philistines? Read the definition and decide for yourself— a smug, ignorant, especially middle-class person who is regarded as being indifferent or antagonistic to artistic and cultural values.

The problem isn’t the occasional consumption of cultural crap. It’s the steady diet of it—it’s not knowing it’s crap.

You may wonder what’s made me so cheery, why a hopeful, glass-half-full-guy like me has suddenly become a sandwich-boarded sidewalk seer wildly and wide-eyedly proclaiming the end is nigh.

Easy. It’s my front-row seat to the apocalyptic end of art and culture, justice and compassion. But the reason I’m ranting about it right now is an incident that happened last week in (of all places) New York at a place known for enlightening events—the 92nd Street Y.

This particular event was a conversation between Steve Martin, the writer and actor, and Deborah Solomon, who writes a weekly interview column for “The New York Times Magazine.”

About halfway through their conversation, a Y representative handed Solomon a note asking her to talk more about Martin’s career in show business and less about the art world, the subject of his latest novel, “An Object of Beauty.”

The following day, the Y sent out an apology for the event and the promise of a refund.

“The Y never told me what they wanted,” Solomon said, adding that Martin, a longtime friend, had asked her to conduct the interview, and that she determined that a conversation focused on the art world and his book seemed most timely and interesting. “Frankly, you would think that an audience in New York, at the 92nd Street Y, would be interested in hearing about art and artists. I had no idea that the Y programmers wanted me to talk to Steve instead on what it’s like to host the Oscars or appear in “It’s Complicated” with Alec Baldwin. I think the Y, which is supposedly a champion of the arts, has behaved very crassly and is reinforcing the most philistine aspects of a culture that values celebrity and award shows over art.”

And I couldn’t agree more.

Entertain us or we’ll whine and want our money back. Make us laugh, not think!

But the event and the response it received points out part of the problem. Steve Martin, who happens to be a good writer and storyteller, is a celebrity. His novels most likely get published and read because he’s a movie star. It seems to me that the very thing that gets him published and reviewed and read (or at least purchased), namely celebrity, is the very thing that came back to bite him in this instance. Celebrity culture sycophants wanted to hear not about art and literature, but mindless movie star trivia.

Celebrity books are a bane for novelists like me. Rare is the day that goes by that I’m not working hard to become a better writer, but because like Emily, I’m nobody, who are you? I send my books out into the loud, crowded world armed with only reviews and word-of-mouth. Recently, I was doing a signing in Tampa at a Barnes and Noble, for which a very modest crowd showed up, when the manager told me that just a few days before, the store couldn’t hold the huge throng that turned out for Tori Spelling’s new book.

Who knew Tori Spelling wrote? Let alone had more than one book out?

How should it make me feel that Tori Spelling, Brittany Spears, and Justin Beiber’s books outsell mine? (By a lot!)

Serious literature, fine film, great art—all still exist, but are too often buried under the loud, crass, kitsch, shallow, hollow, derivative drivel of consumertainment. We’ve blurred the lines between news and entertainment, between art and entertainment, between what truly matters and what matters not at all, and it’s making us trivial, silly people.

We pay for diversion, to be distracted, to keep from truly being moved or inspired or challenged, to fill the void with noise to keep ourselves from meditating on our mortality, from the time and space and silence required for serious thinking and reading and contemplating and the crafting of soul. And we’re doing it everywhere—not just in tiny Deep South towns, but in New York City.

Will you join me in the revolution? Let’s start the avalanche. Just because poison is being served doesn’t mean we have to eat it. When’s the last time you challenged yourself with a work of art? How long has it been since you refused to be bought or distracted or mesmerized into moronity?

Today’s the day. Turn off the TV. Turn your back on the insulting 3D idiocy at the Cineplex. Close the contrivance and crass manipulation of hyper-commercial novels. No longer submit to the artless assault of shallow entertainment. And begin your search for works that challenge and inspire, provoke and nurture, educate and entertain.

What Sven Birkerts said applies to all great art: “If literature survives at all, it is as a retreat for those who refuse to assimilate to American mass culture.”

Refuse to assimilate today! Crack open a good book and join me in a revolution that feels like an inspiriting monastic retreat.

Life is but a Dream

Philip Seymour Hoffman’s sweet, sad, sublime, “Jack Goes Boating” is a small film about the biggest of things—things like love and loneliness and relationships and dreams and imagination and fear and betrayal and unforgiveness and life and death. It deals delicately with the beginning of one relationship and the deterioration and death of another.

Jack (Philip Seymour Hoffman—who also directs the film) and Connie (Amy Ryan) are two single people who on their own might continue to recede into the anonymous background of the city, but in each other begin to find the courage and desire to pursue their budding relationship. In contrast, the couple that introduced them, Clyde (John Ortiz) and Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega), are confronting unresolved issues in their marriage.

Jack is a limo driver with vague dreams of landing a job with the MTA and an obsession with reggae that has prompted him to begin a half-hearted attempt at growing dreadlocks. He spends most of his time hanging out with his best friend and fellow driver Clyde and Clyde’s wife Lucy.

The couple set Jack up with Connie, Lucy’s co-worker at a Brooklyn funeral home. Being with Connie inspires Jack to learn to cook, pursue a new career and take swimming lessons from Clyde so he can give Connie the romantic boat ride she dreams of. But as Jack and Connie cautiously circle commitment, Clyde and Lucy’s marriage begins to disintegrate. From there, we watch as each couple comes face to face with the inevitable path of their relationship.

The four characters who people “Jack Goes Boating” are isolated icebergs, adrift, bumping into one another, the bulk of their beings unseen, floating beneath the surface, each deeper and darker than they appear.

Jack seems simple, even slow, but he is guileless and deliberate. He, no less than Connie, Clyde, and Lucy, is wounded, suffering from insult and injury, but most of all from isolation.

Jack and Connie, at the very beginning of their relationship, bring into it the damage and baggage from their previous lives and relationships. Clyde and Lucy have not only this, but the open wounds they’ve inflicted on one another. Lucy tells Jack, “You’ve never been in a relationship. A lot happens. Lot of good things. Lot of things you wouldn’t wish on your enemy.” Lucy has hurt Clyde in ways she wouldn’t wish on her enemy, and though Clyde says he’s worked through them, there’s real, deep-seated pain just beneath his mask of near constant conviviality, just behind his kind eyes.

Perhaps more than anything else, “Jack Goes Boating” is about dreams. Dreaming—actually imagining a different reality, is the beginning of all things. “Jack Goes Boating” vividly and profoundly demonstrates the connection between imagination and accomplishment, between visualization and manifestation, and shows how closely and intimately related to love they are.

On the shelf beside Connie’s bed, half hidden by a picture frame is a word carved from wooden letters affixed to a stand. Only three letters of the word are visible, but I’m certain the word is dream. It sits there next to where Connie dreams, where Jack and Connie lie as they softly say what they’re looking for in their “dream” partner.

Jack and Connie dream of lives different than the ones they have—lives less lonely, lives lived in love with a loved one.

What is required for such lives? The desire, of course, then the dream—the imagining, the visualizing—and then the leap, the choice to live in love not fear, the action that enables love to conquer, then vanquish, fear.
It all begins with the thing Einstein said was far more important than intellect. Imagination.

In the myth of the Tower of Babel, when the Lord comes down and sees what the humans are up to—building a tower to heaven, building a civilization, making a name for themselves—the Lord says because of their imaginations nothing they dream up and set their collective minds and hands to will be impossible for them, and so confused their language so they couldn’t understand each other. Like Jack, and the people in the story of the Tower of Babel, our greatest limitation is our imagination.

To accomplish what he does, Jack uses visualization—actually, vividly imagining his actions before he takes them—something Hoffman, the director, uses to full affect.

Creative visualization refers to the practice of seeking to affect the outer world via changing our thoughts. It’s the technique of using our imaginations to visualize specific behaviors or events occurring in our lives. The practice is a common spiritual exercise and is often used in sports psychology.

Connie wants to go boating. Jack wants to take her, but can’t swim. Connie wants someone to cook for her, something she’s never had. Jack wants to, but doesn’t know how. Through love—love as an act of imagination, love as an action, love as both the dreaming and doing that conquers all fear—Jack becomes an excellent swimmer and cook, heroic in the way only the truest lovers can be.

“Jack Goes Boating” is witty and funny and charming and likable, but it’s also, by turns, sad, even heartbreaking. Amy Ryan, as ever, is extraordinary. Philip Seymour Hoffman is, as usual, brilliant and beautiful, and in addition to being one of my favorite actors, doing the most interesting and profoundly moving work these days, he may also soon be one of my favorite directors. He’s off to an amazing start. Go boating and swimming and cooking with Jack as soon as you can. Learn from his fearlessness. Be inspired by his love. And like him, visualize the life you want to have.

I drove over a hundred miles to go boating with Jack. The film is so good it’d be worth a trip ten times that. Maybe more. No, definitely more. Infinitely more.

Alone With All That Can Happen

The morning after watching “Solitary Man,” I woke up feeling utterly and completely alone. I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with the movie—I often experience an intense sense of isolation—but the timing was interesting and thought-provoking.

Being alone isn’t the same as being lonely. Many times I feel the most connected when I am most alone—something Lord Byron captured so beautifully in his phrase, “In solitude, where we are least alone.”

Being with others isn’t the same as not being lonely. Certain people, certain settings and situations, make me feel more lonely, not less. A social gathering involving small talk, cocktail chatter, mundane, surfaces inanities—and what social gathering doesn’t include such things—usually makes me feel far more isolated and alone than when I’m actually by myself.

Whether we’re alone or with others, in one sense we’re always ultimately alone. As Thomas Wolfe said, “Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every human.”

Even as we appear to be sharing the same experiences—including intensely intimate experiences like making love or sharing a meal or talking about God—we’re always having our own unique experience. Oscar Wilde’s observation that there are as many publics as there are people is true of everything. It’s why I say there are some six and half billion gods. No two of us have identical notions of what the word ‘god’ means. So whatever God is and is not, we’re left with our beliefs and perceptions, and though heavily influenced by culture and family, indoctrination and education, they’re still utterly and uniquely only our own.

Beneath all our labels, beyond all our associations and group identities, it’s just us. Ultimately alone. Solitary us. Yet there is an us. We are part of a planet, a species, an interdependent system. We are able to connect, to touch each others’ souls, be inside one another in profound and meaningful ways. At this very moment, you and I are having a personal, intimate (hopefully) meaningful exchange. I am offering you the water of my words and you are drinking them in.

And yet. And yet.

Even as we have truly deep and intensely intimate connections, we remain, in a very real and certain sense, alone. And it’s out of that aloneness, that sometimes painful experience of isolation, we reach out—out of our solitude—to an other.

Solitary means “being, living, or going alone or without companions; saddened by isolation; keeping a prisoner apart from others; being at once single and isolated; occurring singly and not as part of a group or cluster.”

Occurring singly and not being part of a group is a good thing. Emerson said, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”

In one sense, the more evolved and self-actualized, the more true to our quidity, the more we refuse to conform, the more alone we will be—less able to fit, less a part of group think and speak. We will not benefit from the safety found in numbers. But this evolution of our beings will also simultaneously, counter intuitively, lead us to a greater awareness of our connectedness with all people, with all things. Connected at very deep levels; completely unconnected at shallower levels.

These are thoughts I’m having as I think of solitude and my experience in proximity to the film. They are not necessarily in the film except in very implicit ways. Ben Kalmen’s solitude originates from the deepest most profound place—his mortality—but his outward isolation isn’t from self-actualization, but its opposite, not out of love, but fear.

“Solitary Man” tells the story of Ben Kalmen, a fifty-something New Yorker and former successful car dealer, who through his own bad choices lost his entire business.

When the film opens, Ben’s on the verge of a comeback, but some of the same motivations that led to his demise are threatening to take him down again. He’s divorced from Nancy, his college sweetheart and the one person who knows him better than anyone. Although he still finds the time to hang out with his daughter Susan and his adoring grandson, she breaks off contact when she discovers he's seeing one of her friends. His girlfriend Jordan is the daughter of a very influential businessman who's on the board of a major auto manufacturer.

If Ben can just keep his hubris in check for a little while longer, he will be back as big as ever. But circumstances place him in very close proximity with the one girl he shouldn’t touch, throwing everything into jeopardy.

“Solitary Man” is solid story elevated by great performances. Michael Douglas is brilliant as Ben, and the other players hovering around the edges of his solitariness hang right there with him.

Ben’s isolation is more an acting out, a childish, defensive way of actually isolating others that leads him to himself be isolated. He’s a solitary man because of bad behavior, because he’s incapable of intimacy.

The sense of isolation—even the experience itself—is part of the human condition. It is not the same as never connecting, as being unable or unwilling to—which seems the case for Ben.

Even in our ultimate aloneness we can connect with others. In fact, we can connect because of it, through it. Sharing our feelings of isolation with another human who is open about his or her own feelings of separation frees us from our solitary confinement prison cell.

Solitude is a good and necessary part of existence. We are our best selves when we have the time and space to be ourselves, to just be—in the beauty and stillness of silence and solitude. Einstein said, “I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”

It comes down to balance. Too much or too little or the wrong kind of solitude negatively impacts our souls. Finding trusted friends who are themselves seeking this same balance and committing to each other to aid in the process is invaluable. As Rilke so wisely put it, “I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.”

Learn from Ben’s mistakes. Identify those in your life who protect your good solitude and make sure you’re protecting theirs. And in those times when you feel all alone, be fully present, and don’t just be alone. Be alone with the promise and possibility of all that can happen.