Doorways to God

On Cultivating Nepsis: Noticing & Taking Note

A couple of years ago, I started sharing stuff on my Instagram story with the caption “Today’s Doorway To God.” Things that I found fascinating, or beautiful, or hilarious, or compelling.

In the words of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, whose book New Seeds of Contemplation felt like a hinge-point in my life (thank you, mom), “The gate of heaven is everywhere.”

My doorways are as incomprehensible as some physicists thinking that our universe might exist inside of a black hole to dog memes that I send my mom to some of my favorite poetry to creativity that I find inspiring to whatever Keri Ladouceur sends me.

I have a couple of friends on here, too, who do what seems to me a similar thing —

Gabby Llewellyn

, who writes about her Weekly Delights, and

mouse

, who just put something out about romanticizing your life, and told me about ways in which she collects “antidotes to fear.”

Doorways are a good catch-all for recognizing my own aliveness, I think, and since I started naming them, I get DMs all the time from people sharing their own with me, or tag me in their stories.

What are some of your Doorways that you’ve experienced recently? What about those experiences, moments or Glimpses (or, in the words of

K.J. Ramsey

“Glimmers”) made them so?

They don’t have to be profound. Could be, but could be the most mundane of things. (Here I remember working on the It’s All Worth Living For video, and prompting y’all to send me simple, iPhone moments in your days that remind you it’s true.) That thing’s full of your Doorways.

Last year, I bumbled my way through The Center For Action & Contemplation’s Living School: Essentials of Engaged Contemplation (the bumbling was my fault—the program was great), and one of the first things students were asked to practice was “noticing and taking note.”

It was called cultivating nepsis—the contemplative skill of paying attention to our lives:

“Try to simply notice moments of quiet that manifest in your day: moments of love, moments of gratitude, moments of curiosity, or moments of sitting quietly with a challenge… you may even discover that as you practice this noticing and taking note, you will notice even more moments and lean into them a little longer.”

Anyway, my Doorways To God are something like that—things which give rise to an experience of the ineffable—and I’ve tried pay more and more attention (both on and off the internet).

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Here are a few from my week.

A video: Marina Abramovic e Ulay MoMA. In April 1988, Marina Abromović and Ulay staged a performance titled “The Lovers” where, beginning at opposite ends of the Great Wall of China, they walked their halves to meet in the middle. When they got there, though, Ulay confessed that his translator was pregnant with his child. Their relationship ended. In 2010, Marina performed “The Art is Present,” where she sat in silence with strangers for 8 hours a day without words or touch—only eye contact. Then, for the first time in the 22 since their breakup, Ulay appeared and sat across from her. She broke her own rule and reached for his hands.

“You were not just another visitor. You were my life.” This one brought tears to my eyes, today. The loss, the longing, the surprise, the way life goes on and circles back ‘round again.

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A podcast. Life is a Cosmic Joke: Finding God, Wonder & Freedom in the Unknown. Pete Holmes is really tall. I shook his hand one time in LA and stared up at him like good god, man, how’d you get all the way up there? Anyway, I’m a fan and I’ve been on a kick. I listened to this episode and every part of me said, “Yes.” Then I jammed his conversation with Rich Roll and—more recently—Father Greg Boyle.

I share a quote by the poet William Stafford often: “…things you know before you hear them—those are you, those are why you are in the world.” That’s the way this podcast made me feel. They’re talkin’ spirituality, myth, psychedelics, non-dual Christianity, separation/forgetfulness and union/consciousness, the experience of God, comedy, and an absolutely beautiful take on the story of The Prodigal Son.

I love it so much and it spurred an aliveness inside of me that is the epitome of that by which I measure Doorways to God.

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My Mom Visited Me. I’ve been in Nashville for two years now, give or take. A week ago, my mom visited me for the first time, and we had so much fun together. She wanted to walk everywhere, so we went wandering parks and estates and neighborhoods and Broadway (couldn’t not introduce her to the spectacle that is seven-billion white cowgirl boots). We talked about God and girls and how I really need to freeze the Carne Adobada that I made (I haven’t) and watched Nate Bargatze skits.

I’d say my mom and I have a good relationship, but over the years, I’ve struggled to bring my adult self to my the table, often devolving into a four-year-old-puddle of a person. This was different. It was nice having her here, and I was happy to both see growth in myself, and to get to experience her as more of a friend. We laughed a lot, cried a little, and ate the best Ceasar Salad that exists.

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A couple books. Two friends have books that either just came out or will, shortly. I received both of them this week, and they were both Doorways, to me, which I endorsed.

Eat The Dirt 🔗 by

Heather Hamilton

.

“In a world where so many of the words we have are used as divisive, or violent, or protective, what a gift it is, indeed, to receive this heart as open, as inviting, as vulnerable. It is an enormous risk—to give oneself away to the world—but what a bittersweet delight to hear the sound of that emptying. Heather’s poetry… sings.”

(Heather also just had a great conversation with

👉🏻jonathan_foster

if you’d like to hear more about her and her work.)

In The Low 🔗 by

Scott Erickson

& Justin McRoberts.

“I’ve heard someone describe art and poetry as ‘language in service of the Unsayable.’ There’s nothing like finding those kinds of words in seasons when they’re so often absent—let alone paired with images so capable of stoking ashes into awe. I felt seen and loved (at the same time?!) in these pages. I found words my spirit has only been able to groan (I even caught her dancing with the Low). Scott and Justin created a hand to hold in the valley, and I’m grateful to the both of them for how warm it is.”

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A concert. I remember first hearing La Dispute’s record Somewhere At The Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair on my west-coast tour in 2010. Someone had assumed I was already a fan (spoken-word-ish weirdos weren’t as common a thing back then), but I’d never heard of them.

(Video TW: lyrics referencing suicide, “King Park”)

I was driving up the coast, on the HWY 1, and headed north toward Portland. I remember that the scenery was beautiful, and I loved how beautiful/aggressive the record was, and have been a fan ever since. I saw them a couple times back in the day on the road with Thrice, but those were huge rooms, and I was stoked, last night, to get to see them in a comparatively more intimate space.

Jordan talked about the way music and the scene gave him a sense of purpose and direction in life, and it resonated with the way the hardcore / underground community felt to me when I was getting into it back in 2007, in Albuquerque, and then, on the road for so many beautiful years. These kinds of shows—for me—have always touched on transcendence, the same way an audience becomes one voice and speaks to our mutual immanence by the very nature of whatever the thing is it touches in each of us. I continue to be awed by the way that people take their lives and shape them into a kind of artful heldness through which others can enter into that connection.

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Alright, well… if nothing else, it’s fun for me to take an inventory of the stuff that brings me life. Maybe Doorways are like gratitude journals, or something, and I think that what or how these reflections are, will evolve. I’m talking to a friend about some ideas right now. Whatever. For now, it’s this. Different than what I normally post, I know, but it was energizing to write, and maybe one of mine will become one of yours, and brighten up your day.

Do you have a Doorway or two from your week that comes to mind? I’d be stoked to hear about it.

“Behold, the One beholding you, and smiling.”

Levi