on such things as courage. failure. words. and silence.

I think it's tremendously important to develop a powerful relationship with failure. If you're a coward and stopped by failure, there's no way to develop. My teacher used to say you can't play great music unless your heart has been broken. So maybe the answer is to have more broken hearts and get on with it.

BENJAMIN ZANDER | International conductor, composer

courage. |ˈkərij; ˈkə-rij|

When it first came into the English language, it's derivative was latin, from the latin word, cor, which means heart.  Brene Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston, expounds on the original definition of courage in a TED talk. She says, "[courage meant] to tell the story of who you are, with your whole heart.

This, my friends, is my starting place.

There was a brief moment in time when I let myself go completely public, when I declared to the world my own nakedness. It was a kind of toast to failure, and in the second I let the world be told of this toast, this vow, I felt an insurmountable beauty, whose depths could not span the breadth of the oceans, empty into me, and then well up. All at once while driving home from work, on a less than ordinary day, at some stoplight, in perfect time, and feeling the swell of something revelatory breaking over me: I am beautiful.  Though misfortune, and heartbreak, and loss had befallen  me, I was still beautiful, maybe even more. And yes, I am that woman. The kind of woman who every woman hopes to be, not because I have measured myself, but because I realize that I cannot be anyone else, just me. just me. and that is enough.

And I don't mean to diminish the aches that made me a mess of a woman in that time, but I think the mess made me beautiful... Truth be told, something did die in me at the end of that season, absolutely; but then also, life was boundless and willing. Willing in the sense that heaven's hands were palms up, opened, and for the first time in the entirety of my life, I was made aware of all the possibilities (and impossibilities) of life. As a certain Mr. Dan put it, "Life can go any way."

  

It is said that when bravery |ˈbrāv(ə)rē| was first introduced into spoken language, before it entered into Middle French and became synonymous with valiant, it was a word suggestive of adornment, as in the way one adorns themselves with fine clothing. It was something one possessed, set aside for your finest moment.

Divine Providence had drawn a cloak of bravery to hang about me. In exchange for my misfortunes, and in exchange for a realized flawed relationship with guilt, I began a relationship with failure. This was bravery, at least to me. And it was good. I was having this relationship with failure that enabled me to live more deliberately, more freely. It was this sort of bond that led me on several excursions to the post office in which I submitted application after application, in hopes to get into a graduate school of my choice.  I made efforts to attend to my dreams and ideals. Things like attempting to establish a life centered around creativity and imagination, which looked like giving attention to my love for craft as in gardening, sewing, and eating well among other things (and yes, those are crafts in a way that they involve art. and process. and thought. and production). Many of these things I failed at... nonetheless, I was living. 

But when making such commitments to failure, no one tells you what emotions one is put through after really failing. and i mean failing bad. failing horribly and terribly. You can expect it, but you're never ready. Shame and guilt are always anomalies to the human soul, we react to it as if we've never known it, even though we have.

So I failed, and in the last month or two, I have been in process. I have realized though, when treading the valley, sometimes we ought to set ourselves in healing places. When words, from thin air, become thick with sentiments that leave us feeling a bit more whole.  So I'm giving myself a little medicine, letting myself heal a little by reclaiming lost words. Like, for example, when caught in mid-eagle, my birkham yoga instructor utters the words, "Outside events happen, not to create chaos, but to grow us... and to reveal our magnificence." reveal my magnificence. oh please oh please, reveal it. reveal my resilience too. Or I'll lean into the lick of lyrics sung through the car stereo as it goes, "I'll give you the mountains, I'll give you the seas; I'll give you wisdom, but I won't give you safety..." I'll recall the words of a man who, whiskey in hand, said, "You can't will it, but you can test yourself."  Or, on a paper bag, I'll read over and over again a letter written by the most beautiful man I have come to know, sprawled in black ink, I'll take in every bit of good writing and good revelation, and then, somewhere at the close of its contents, to read, "May God pursue you until you cannot deny it." until i cannot deny it.

So I've been filling myself with words. and also silence. because I am processing. and when processing, sometimes the only thing left to do is to love well, live fully, and let go deeply. And by letting go, I mean re-understanding the words, "It is finished," as my Jesus even said it. The way he let silence fill the air. the exhale of letting go. the exchange of wills. And so now, I too say, "It is finished," letting all that quiet at the end of that breath be a tribute to the imprint of a Divine Being at work in my life, recognizing also that it is not my will, but his will be done.

So I begin anew, with a grace to follow me, and a bravery that anoints me, and whatever foolish ambition I might follow, may it be for a greater glory than my own.

[Silence] permits us, in short, to be who we are and could be if only we had the openness and trust. A chapel is where we hear something and nothing, ourselves and everyone else, a silence that is not the absence of noise but the presence of something much deeper: the depth beneath our thoughts . . . They are the one place we can reliably go to find who we are and what we should be doing with our lives — usually by finding all we aren't, and what is much greater than us, to which we can only give ourselves up.

PICO IYER | Chapels

images via here.
and here.