I had remembered that it’s important to keep a sense of balance and not just work, but I’d forgotten that each part of the circle gets equal credit.
So I reviewed my day—what I had done and what I was doing—and saw that it was all good. Then I put on a Beatles CD and started dancing as I cooked, feeling grateful for these many parts of my life. I loved how the house looked so neat and clean. I was relieved that we were finally set for Gillian’s wedding. The rice and beans smelled spicy and nourishing. And as I watered the plants, I enjoyed their beauty and touched their soft leaves.
This is it, I thought. This is my life. And sometimes, living sacred just means being present—moment to moment, day by day.
When my grandson Brendan was four and a half,
I asked him if he ever had a bad day.
“No,” he said.
“Never?” I asked.
He thought a bit and then said,
“Yeah, but it ended good.”
THE LORD IS WITH ME . . .
OR WHATEVER
When my mother was eighty, she read a line in a hymn that she really liked. In English it meant “The Lord is with me, I shall not fear.” And since my mother doesn’t read Hebrew, she looked at its transliteration and found that to be “Adonai lee-la ear-ah.”
Soon, she started saying it to all of us whenever we were about to fly, or have surgery, or felt scared in any way. “Let’s say it together,” she’d insist, and we’d recite along with her, “Adonai lee-la ear-ah”—The Lord is with me. I shall not fear.” It kind of became our family prayer.
I liked it, and I liked saying it with her—so much so that I’d call her from my cell phone each time I’d board a plane. We’d say those words together, and I’d feel a wondrous calm.
Then, one day, I found that line in a prayer book. But the true transliteration was “Adonai lee-V’LOW ear-ah” and not “Adonai lee-LA ear-ah.” So! All these years we’d been saying the wrong words, and God knows what they meant. Some family prayer!
I didn’t want to tell Mom and get her upset. Still, I was a little annoyed by her habit of muddling up words (a habit I’ve inherited that annoys my daughter). So I decided that whenever we’d say it together, I’d say it correctly and loudly, thinking sooner or later she’d switch to the right words. But she didn’t. I worried it wouldn’t work for her—I mean, if a mantra has powers, it helps to say the right words, no?
Then I read a Zen story about a poor peasant who wandered for miles to find a master and ask for his guidance. The master asked him if he had a spiritual practice. The peasant said he had one prayer that he’d repeat all day, which he then recited for the master.
“No!” the master shouted. “You’ve got it wrong! That prayer goes like this.” He taught the peasant the correct prayer and felt relieved that he helped save this poor man’s soul.
The peasant thanked him gratefully and walked away. But when he reached the river, he just kept on walking, walking on water as if it were land. When the master saw this, he ran after the peasant shouting, “Wait! Forget what I said! Stick to your old prayer, and never stop!”
So my mom kept on saying “Adonai lee-LA ear-ah,” and now I do too. It’s catchy, you know? And so was her faith.
DO THE RIGHT THING
I was a beatnik in college. I wore black tights, smoked French cigarettes, and majored in philosophy. The boys I dated also majored in “phil.” It felt very Jean-Paul Sartre/Simone de Beauvoir. But as my mother noted, it didn’t put me on a career track. It didn’t even have staying power. I read umpteen books, yet all I remember now are a few sound bites (“God is dead”—Nietzsche), or some motif, like the caves in Plato’s Republic. Worse still, I recall endless discussions on What Is Real and little guidance on What Is Right or how to do the right thing. With one exception, Kant’s categorical imperative. It goes like this:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Right. In poor man’s English that means before you do anything, imagine everyone else doing the same thing and it still being okay. Kant called this the ultimate moral dictum, and I called it brilliant. I could no longer tell “just one person” a piece of gossip or stay silent if our government did something grievously wrong.
It was Kant’s categorical imperative that helped me explain to my second-grade students why littering “just one candy wrapper” could lead to an environmental disaster. And it was Kant’s CI that let me tell my own young children that they couldn’t pick “just one flower” from Central Park, because if everyone did it, there’d be no flowers left.
“But,” Tony protested, “not everyone is going to do it.”
“Tony,” I said, “don’t be a smart-ass.”
Still, there are conflicts that require a more subtle measure than Kant proposed. For those, I go to my heart or gut. Deepak Chopra says that sensations in our body can help us make the right choice. I find it’s true. As I prepare to heal a friendship or share something I’ve repressed, I imagine what I’m about to say or do and check how it feels inside. If it feels bad, I drop it; if it feels good, I move ahead.
And in those times when I’m truly confused—or know what to do but feel too angry to do it—I reflect on a picture on my office wall. A sepia print from the 1920s, it shows a Native American man looking up at the mountains, and the words
