getting lost is another way to be found...

One of the inward insights I have gleaned over the past year of repairing our deck, rebuilding stairs, constructing raised bed terraces for our garden, building steps, and painting a great deal inside and outside our home is that I am a kinesthetic learner with an aesthetic disposition. In Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Inventory - a useful summary of the various ways different people learn best - I am off the charts when it comes to Musical as well as Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence. I knew the former as I hear answers, questions, and even solutions to so much in life in terms of songs, but the later is new to me. (O Lord, do i LOVE this song!)          

I knew I had an eye for beauty in my worship and home settings. It was equally clear that I am drawn to the clean lines of Zen/Mission interiors as well as the bold blocks of balanced color of Rothko, Mondrian and a host of French expressionists and impressionists. What I did not understand is that I learn best by doing. Trial and error and beginner's mind come natural to me. Di tells me this is an affinity for what business jargon calls "lateral decisions." Only after I've given a project a shot or two am I interested in reading what others have learned. Out of the box resolutions pop up first. And the lessons that stay with me for the long haul begin with trying to fix something, taking it apart when it doesn't work, and trying again. And again. And again to make it work. I rather like the way Rumi puts it the interpretation Coleman Barks shares in "The Guest House."

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Today, after researching and writing about the early celebrations of All Hallow's Eve and All Saints and All Souls Days, I spent four hours up on a ladder painting shutters. I am uncertain of heights and it takes me a while to get my bearings. To be sure, for that first shutter I had a headache and I was sure I was going to puke. But after a glass of water, I kept at it - and incrementally learned how to keep my balance 17' off the ground. I knew that if I left the higher shutters brown while all the others were sky blue, I would have an aesthetic collapse. It would be so ugly and unbalanced. So, I tried. And learned how to make it work as I went along. Along the way I saw that the window sills need to be repainted, too. I will get to that after more writing about the lesser feasts born of ancient Celtic wisdom.

Funny how getting older can resolve some of the questions and doubts of my youth - mostly by pushing through fear with beginner's mind.