Dear friends,
Happy 2014.
If you've known me for a long time, then you know that for
the past decade or so, I've written an annual Christmas letter for my family,
which my parents send out (before Christmas) every year to friends and
relatives. This year, I shirked that duty, going to the desert on a road trip
instead, skipping out on a traditional Christmas entirely. To make up for that,
I promised my parents that I would write a New Years letter, so I did. It used to be an update of the family, but since I don't
live with my parents, it's become more of a rambling digest.
There's some of you whom I talk to every day, others of you
whom I haven't seen in years; and still others with whom I've had only a brief
but meaningful encounter. But like I've written before, I believe that once a
kinship comes into being, it will never cease to exist, even if it is silent,
or latent, for awhile. So for the one time per year when I can flip through the
rolodex of my mind, remember the heartstrings each of you have plucked, think
fondly of every meeting I've had with you, I do so joyously. I write this
letter to all of you, knowing--hoping--that in some way, we're all still
connected to one another.
So I hope you enjoy the letter that I've written to you this
year--about my trip to the desert, about 2013 and beyond. And if you have a
minute or two, please write back and tell me how you are. I'd love to hear from
you.
With candor and affection,
Natalie
----
On Friday night, after 2000 miles on the road over the span
of a week, I arrived at a warehouse in a desolate neighborhood in Oakland. It
was quiet and dark—just parking lots and brick-lined warehouses. My stomach was
knotted and tight. For the past six days, I had been out in the desert, on the
road, and in a convent; beneath a flowering garden of stars in empty stretches
of black sky; in a graveyard of fish bones by a salty, white sea. I had watched
the red sun descend spilling warm waves of color over the mountains, black
smoke billowing like an ominous cloud behind; floated through fields of dusty
blonde cat tails and curlicued reeds of dried desert grass; sailed down a
straight and breathless road snaking endlessly through the chiaroscuro contours
of purple-hued mountains; freely reeled, rambled, rollicked, never in one place
for too long. I breathed in the silence of a monastery, steeped in a wilderness
away from everywhere; walked a yellow brick road on a rainbow hill; wrote
letters to loved ones on a plain wooden desk; napped; stoked a fire in the
still stands of a desert homestead.
Now, in Oakland, at our friend’s dinner party, we were about
to join the bustling throngs of civilization again, and I wasn’t sure I was
ready to encounter, swallow, and sift through all the noise. Or smile and make
small talk, try to yell louder than the music in the background. Wasn’t ready
to return to the patterned routines of my ordinary life with dulled senses and
a twittering heart.
Of course I knew I’d come back, like every other time I’ve
left home, which always begins with a feeling of wanting to leave, wanting
unfamiliarity and novelty and a different breath of air. I am, by instinct, a
hoarder and archivist, always hungry, always trying to fill up, which has often
left me more restless than satisfied, feeling like a wanderer. I read somewhere
about the “capitalism of the heart,” in which happiness and experience are
currencies to be gathered and seized. Maybe I’ve been wanting to get rich,
thinking I could fatten up my spirit by moving from place to place, always
looking for the next place to go, anticipating a deadline to usher me into a
different geography, awaiting some future joy, as if somewhere else is
something better. If you’re lucky or wise, sometimes you won’t desire anything
at all.
Sometimes it’s easier to displace yourself and surround
yourself with strangers you don’t know, people you’re not attached to. That’s
why the first time you leave home, you feel liberated, uninhibited. You’re not
responsible for much more than observing lives in which you have no stake. You
can construct barriers around yourself. You don’t have to care. You may be
living a messy, scrappy life, but you’ve tucked your heart away, falsely
manicured, or festering.
When I first left for college on the east coast—a little
more than five years ago now—I was hopeful for the revelation of a wild and
unhindered life. I was under the impression that the farther I flung myself,
the more people I met and the more things I saw, the more worldly wisdom I’d
gain. I associated this experience consumption with happiness—with the ultimate
pursuit of truth, too—and I constructed my own hierarchy of experiences, which
was based on the way I wanted to be viewed, lauded, glorified.
At school, I experienced major culture shock. People talked
and dressed differently. Social hierarchies seemed more important, as did your
lineage and blood. The details of your résumé and birth certificate carried
much more weight, and your taste—in books, music, art, and clothing—reflected
how cultured and intelligent you were. Your taste was a boon or a shame; either
way, it was judged. As a result, I always felt like I fell short of what I was
supposed to be: my taste was never refined enough, the depth of my knowledge
too shallow. I didn’t try hard enough, even though I felt like I was always
trying and wanting more than what I had. I also felt burdened by the
expectation that I should be grateful—and thus unconditionally happy—for
admission into a school that the world branded as ultimate, the apex of all
college experiences.
Even beyond school, I searched for a place where I could be
more than an observer and outsider. I lived amidst constant noise, hoping that
the voices of each place I sojourned would light my way through a labyrinthine
maze of discovery. There were stretches of time when I lost sight of God, who
isn’t forceful, but is easily forced out, if you’re constantly searching for a
home in this weighted world. In this relentless pursuit of gratification, of
what you think is self-enlightenment, you begin to collect every shard of
tragedy that breaks open along the way, while little joys fall through your
fingers like pixie dust. You’re the perambulating ruffian pushing a shopping
cart full of useless artifacts. Your cart is brimming, but you’re still looking
for more.
******
The desert is empty and sparse, a thinly veiled landscape
that is purposefully uninviting. Everything protects itself. The physiology of
its fauna and flora are telltale signs: spiny, prickly, precarious and
beautiful, guarded by needles that stab lest you try to steal its treasure.
But the emptiness of the desert calls you to pay attention
and fully inhabit your consciousness. You see the desert quail scurry across
the road; notice the detritus laying haphazardly on the open plain; watch the
trails of steam rise up from the hot sands. Like a monastery in which lack
strengthens presence, silence focuses your attention; sometimes it sharpens
sadnesses and amplifies joys. A fermata is held over every feeling. Solitude
beckons. You have everything you need in this moment. Nothing is urgent. The
future does not require your attention. Your heart is filled because you are no
longer in want. The horizon, a bottomless basin that cleanses you with its
smooth wash of colors, filters out all the thorny noise that was pricking you
just days ago in the city. Now you have space and time to listen to God, and
the first principles by which you want to live your life float to the surface,
a buoy so achingly clear in an infinite blue: love God first, and love others.
By that principle all else will fall into place.
Another year of moments is passing: moments of indefatigable
ecstasy, moments of grief-worn insanity, moments of wondering why and how I
ended up here, and whether I’m okay. This year I began to invest deeply in one
place, in a real community in San Francisco—and how delightful that has been,
to have a family of friends in this ever-changing city, while living so close
to the family who raised me—both are gifts. Since I left home, I’ve never felt
more anchored to a place than I do here—but I think it’s more than the place:
I’ve begun to anchor myself to a way of living that gives up everything that
school taught me to cling onto: productivity, success, being good enough,
worrying that I don’t have enough or am not enough, stressing out.
In a letter to my sister, Naomi, I recounted to her ten ways
of living that were important to me in 2013. Here’s what I told her: Live in
community. Live vulnerably. Live freely. Live with God. Keep searching for God.
Prioritize your life so you have no regrets. Let things go. Leave room for
serendipity. Rest. Call Mom and Dad. And in all those things, love deeply,
unconditionally, and sacrificially.
******
On the night of Christmas Eve, we arrived at a Cistercian
abbey after hours of silently winding through the dark dirt roads of the
Sonoita Mountains. At midnight, we attended mass in a small chapel on the hill,
with a few other guests scattered among the plain wooden pews. Faded paintings
of saints lined the white brick walls, and potted poinsettias graced the
aisles. Guests sat in one room; nuns in another. We could not see the sisters.
We saw only Father William, a visiting priest, who sat behind a massive pulpit
carved out of a gnarled tree trunk. Between scriptural readings, a sister sang
unaccompanied, a single, shrill voice quivering, warbling, humbly following a
melody line. Father William urged us to “enter more deeply into the mysteries
of the son of God,” and retold the story of The Velveteen Rabbit, a children’s
book by Margery Williams. He read these lines, in which the Rabbit asks the
Skinned Horse what it means to be real:
“Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse.
"It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long
time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does
it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was
always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.”
So often we wait for the whisperings of the world to teach
us how to exist, and we let the whistling winds blow us from one place to the
next, with a vague vision of where we want to end up, but no idea of how we
want to live out the moments that will get us there. So we continue to fill our
lives with momentary pleasures, aesthetic pursuits, crafting and arranging a
life that is fit for the person we imagine ourselves to be. In the process, we
forget our souls; we forget the one true love that makes our hearts real.
In the coming year, let love guide your every action and
thought. May you experience the joys and heartbreaks of intimacy, baring your
soul shamelessly, fearlessly. May you welcome the discomfort of the change you
cannot control, and patiently bear the little battles of a mundane existence.
May you continue seeking God, a changeless face that never bores, never turns
away. May you breathe in every moment, listen to the silence, fling doubt away,
and let faith and prayer inhabit your being. May you remember God, even when
you are weak and hurting. May you call a friend, ask for help. Thank God for
every meal, blessing, and heart you touch. May you love God first, and love
others accordingly.
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