Let life break your heart
An antidote to despair, from one of my favorite writers
I don’t read the news very often, so I didn’t know that Frederick Buechner died on August 15th until a day ago.
To be completely honest with you, I didn't realize he was still alive. I wasn't keeping close tabs on one of my favorite writers and greatest influences, but it turns out that he was very much living in physical form until age 96 when he died in his sleep at his farm in Vermont. What a way to go.
Since Buechner had refined the art of noticing in his lifetime, I’ve been wondering what has gone unnoticed since August 15th: The optimistic hop of a bunny on a dirt trail? The last ice cream truck of the summer lingering for an extra few minutes at dusk? The cheerful crackle and shivering ache of an Al Green record playing from an open window? A freshly-mopped kitchen floor, a rusty morning sky, a muffled cry, a funeral procession, a swift soft rain?
He wrote about things like the wondrous creaking of a chair while being tipped back on its hind legs, and things like miraculous compassion between strangers.
He also wrote about things like pain. At age ten, Buechner witnessed his father's death by suicide; he also watched his daughter suffer with her own excruciating mental illness. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, it is well to pay the closest attention, he wrote.
He let his heart leap, and he let his heart break.
The reason I don't read the news very often is because, at some point, it stopped breaking my heart. I saw a big problem with that.
When I consume news too quickly (a scan of the headlines in under ten seconds, or, uh, 85 instagram stories within a minute), I feel: anxious, self-righteous, furious, activated, annoyed, superior, arrogant, feisty, sullen, hopeless, numb.
But not heartbroken. Breaking a heart takes time and tenderness, neither of which most media allows for.
I found myself seeing "world events" but not really looking at the world itself. When I see/scan/consume, I fall into despair, and then anything good and beautiful feels like the exception.
When I look at the world, my heart breaks. And in the wide open broken awful space, anything good and beautiful makes sense there too: as though this is what being in the full experience of living on earth is like.
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen, wrote Buechner.
My favorite writers and artists are the ones who I assume are constantly saying, "Look at this" to people around them. They're the ones who point out everything that goes on in this world:
Look at this courage.
Look at this ladybug.
Look at this exuberance.
Look at this period in history.
Look at this storm.
Look at this injustice.
Look at this porch light.
Such as Julian of Norwich, who unflinchingly looked at the raging never-ending Black Plague that took her whole family, and also looked at the sweetness of her companion cat and the majesty of nature. She was present to it all.
Or the art of Marc Chagall, who looks at the vibrancy of 1930s Paris with a juicy dose of whimsy:
And he looks at the horrors of World War II, letting his heart to break open for Holocaust victims like Anne Frank:
'Look at this' is a phrase that Buechner said dozens of times a day, I'm sure.
The marvel of Buechner's work is that it was one big "Look at this," but you never knew if that this was going to be terrible or beautiful. He was present to both, rather than summing up the world as a "dumpster fire" or insisting on silver linings.
Look at this, I've been constantly telling myself today.
A morning scan of the news will tell me there’s a housing crisis in my city, but my heart doesn’t break until I look. At noon, I look at a man who’s asking for change outside of the grocery store, and the plastic tote bag with his belongings depicts a cartoon dog in sunglasses with a speech bubble that exclaims, “Ready for summer!”
My stomach thuds at the sight of this sweet happy golden retriever cartoon whose joyful exclamation was not meant for this purpose. This tote bag was not meant to hold a man’s belongings outside a grocery store as he asks neighbors for coins. This world was not meant to abundantly grow food that is kept in grocery stores where some can afford it and others can’t.
Look at this, I tell myself.
Buechner allowed himself to dip and even almost drown in the pain of being alive. He also allowed himself to be awed, stunned, and overjoyed by the experience of living on earth.
Later I walk past little children crowded around a butterfly, naming its colors and gasping at its flight. There's a neighborhood clean-up at the park where plastic is removed from ponds: fuzzy ducklings can swim free. At the store there's a family buying new toothbrushes; I happily imagine the two large ones and two small ones in a cup by their bathroom sink. Outside, the sun illuminates the rooftop of a library.
Look at this, I tell myself.
And then I tell myself to sign up for the next clean-up. A shift at the food pantry on the calendar. My resolution to spend more time with my friends' kids. The byproducts of letting my heart break and leap.
I let my heart participate in its range of activities in Buechner's honor, and I felt much closer to the world, much farther from despair. I thought about how cracks in the heart keep it from destruction, the way that a lot of minor shakes in the fault lines over time prevent one massive earthquake.
Living on earth should break my heart every day, and living on earth should lift my heart every day.
As I write this, I hear a creak of the door. My cat wanders in, and curls up near me on the little yellow couch. After a scare at the vet, I got a voicemail that she's safe. We are both safe in this quiet room with the creaky door, the yellow couch, and the Buechner books on my turquoise shelf, surrounded by this beautiful terrible world.
Look at this, I tell myself. Tonight, I'm the one who notices.
P.S. The art of noticing is something I've learned from Frederick Buechner, and I'm going to share it as a creative practice at my upcoming retreat on October 7-9 in North Carolina. If you're interested in doing your own art, writing, noticing, and heart-leaping/breaking, I hope you'll join me there.