My commitment to creating has presented me with many media over the years - some art, some not - each of which has its own tools, challenges, and creative outcomes and brings its own unique joy and value to the world. Drawing. Painting. Printmaking. Sculpture. Digital media. Community organizing. Advocacy. Nonprofit management. Educational consulting. Entrepreneurship. Life itself.

Several years ago, I even wrote a book about it.

Last night, for the first time, my medium was flowers. Thanks to a company called Poppy, I had a box of fresh-cut, direct-from-the-farmer flowers delivered to my door to create with as I saw fit.

I had big aspirations of enjoying the process with my two daughters (6 and 8), but the day kind of slipped away from us. So, as they wound down their somewhat hectic day, I actually had some time alone, some me-time, some "studio time" with this big, bunch of color, height, form, movement, rhythm, and rhyme in the medium of Poppy flowers.

Part sculpture, part painting, part meditation - my first experience with flowers-as-medium was a treasured and peaceful and unexpected end to my day.

And, this morning, the results met me at breakfast - presenting me again not only with the joy of the diverse beauty, color, form, and pure nature of the flowers - but also a moment of reflection and self-critique, seeing things in the new light of a new day, showing me how I could have done a better job arranging them.

This is the creative journey that drives life - no matter your medium.

Creating matters.

Thanks, Poppy.

I’ve been lied to. And, I am still living that lie.​

This is not so much a revelation as it is a reckoning.

I’ve been aware of my privilege for most of my life and have written about it from time to time. But, I’ve also quietly accepted and lived its self-reinforcing loop that allows me to forget about it.

I can forget I’m White.

Surely, this is the defining result of white privilege.

On the other hand, when my Black friends walk into a room - into a restaurant, a classroom, an interview, just to buy something at a store - their skin color walks in first. It is their first noted attribute - which happens to come with a flood of systemic, racial bias.

I’ve had this experience - of my skin color walking in first - only as exceptional events where I, as the White guy, was in the minority. These moments of situational minority status have been important, often humbling, and revelatory experiences.

But by default and generally speaking, when I walk into most rooms, the system tells me and everyone else that I am normal. I am neutral. I am right. I am accepted.

My education has only reinforced and ensured that this lived experience becomes a narrative that presents as a greater historical, cultural truth.

I was not taught history. I was taught White history.

I was not taught art. I was taught White art.

I was not taught literature. I was taught White literature. (until a transformative African American Lit class in college).

I was not taught what it means to be an American citizen. I was taught what it means to be a White American citizen.

Lies of omission are still lies. In fact, they are arguably more insidious in that it is difficult to address something that feels absent.

The White American narrative - this lie of intentional omission related to the contributions of pretty much every other culture except in a paragraph here, a chapter there, or a poster that goes up during a special day or week or month - innately instills white supremacy. This is a fact.

If the greatest artists and the greatest writers and the greatest scientists and the greatest theologians and the greatest political figures in our historical narrative are all White, then White supremacy is implicit in the narrative.

And, of course, this means all of my Black friends have also been lied to. Whereas I’ve lived a forgettable lie of privilege, they’ve endured a relentless and ever-present lie of their second-class citizenship - lived currently, and reinforced through a historical and cultural narrative they’ve also been educated on.

The more I read, the more I am aware of and disturbed and angered by the patterns of history. Not just the meta narratives, but the micro narratives. Just last night I was reading about a police shooting in 1964 of an unarmed black man and the subsequent protests of police brutality that ensued.

I am still stricken with grief that John Lewis died amidst the same turmoil he began fighting against 60 years ago. The same lies.

I increasingly understand how White people have leaned on the oppressed to redeem our souls and have taken too little responsibility of our own to do the work ourselves. (Read: Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own) We’ve in turn celebrated racial progress that we have also systemically - both actively and through privileged inaction - resisted. And, we have called this progress our own.

We have perverted and co-opted the narrative of progress to reinforce our own comfort and privilege and to relieve our consciences whenever discomfort creeps in.

This is a White problem. And, until it is recognized as such, we will build and rebuild and live - actively and passively - the lies of our own privilege and force our Black friends to live its inverse.

So, today as I try to work on myself first and understand how that relates to the larger world, I am left with this one reflection: If our country is going to live up to its premise and promise that all men are created equal, if racial justice is to become a reality, our white privilege must feel as urgent a lie to White Americans as oppression and injustice feel to Black Americans.

To overcome our lies, the burden of truth must be collectively borne.
​

Last week, my girls (6 & 8) got their first email account through school. They were totally psyched. They felt so big. ​

They had already found and were “chatting” among friends and neighbors by the time I knew they even had an account. (I’ll worry about that rabbit hole later and I feel certain it will show up in numerous blogs over the coming years.)

But, for now, presence.

Today, it’s kind of awesome just how excited they are.

Today, it’s fun to see them enabled by technology.

Today, it’s about a new tool for connecting with people they care about.

Of course, I wanted in, so I gave them my work email.

Now, they are spamming me…

And, it absolutely makes my day.

It’s a good reminder that the tools we use, whether email or Facebook or Snapchat or anything else, are not the problem. How we use them is the problem. How they reflect who we are is the problem.

As a result, we - not the technology - are also the solution.

So, today, I say email is a beautiful thing, a joy in my life, as it reflects, in the briefest moments of my day, the thoughts and love of my girls in the briefest moments of their day.

Someone asked the other day: “how are you guys doing.” It’s a question we are all asking a lot and being asked by those who care about us. It’s a pretty complicated answer given the times, but I now feel like I have an honest - if not short - response.

If you’d asked me three months ago how I would be doing if a tornado ripped through my community and then two weeks later we started hearing about hundreds and then thousands of Americans dying of a strange virus that would ultimately be killing upward of 100,000 in the U.S. alone with the epicenters being in states where much of my family lives and then another week or so later schools would be canceled and businesses would all be forced to close and we would need to wear masks to go to the store and stay at least 6 feet apart from people wherever we are, that this condition would last for two months and counting with the kids never returning to school and my wife and me not returning to work outside of our home and much of my community still looking like the tornado just happened…

Stress.
Anger.
Disillusionment.
Loneliness.
Fear.
Sadness.

If you’d asked me to imagine all of that back then and how I would be doing two months in, all of these emotional responses would have been easily assumed. But, my imagination would have colored them far more intensely than reality has. All of us are more resilient in life than we are in our imaginations. Anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one knows this. But, resilience is about bouncing back. We are still in it! We still don’t know how or when or if this thing will end - or when it will come back. Dealing with this requires something different: less wild imagination - more observation, less reaction - more reflection, less action - more stillness.

Presence.

Presence asks: what of this situation can I control?
Stress scleroses around all of it that I can’t control, thus constraining my ability to control what I can.

Presence allows me to maintain agency in the face of what feels like chaos.
Anger reduces agency to reaction - a destructive behavioral loop.
​
Presence asks what I know differently today, and based on that, what will I do differently?
Disillusionment wanders and wonders in all that I don’t know, thus leaving me unsure of what to do at all.

Presence makes the most of the connections and the tools within my grasp.
Loneliness feeds on what I don’t have or is no longer within my grasp given the circumstance.

Presence builds muscle.
Fear builds scar tissue.

Presence reminds us that our sadness must be accepted and tended to. It won’t go away. It may be stuffed or hidden or put aside for a variety of healthy and unhealthy reasons. But, it will be expressed at some point, in some way, and its easiest expression is in the present - as sadness.

It is important for me to note that I am fortunate to-date to have remained healthy and to have not been touched by Covid-19 directly. That’s first and foremost. I am also fortunate to still have work and a home that was only modestly damaged by the tornado. So, let me be clear, I feel very fortunate despite the times.

And still, Presence isn’t easy for me. In fact, it’s a discipline that, as often as not, loses out to all of these other emotional responses. So, Presence must also be a principle as much as it is a practice - a principle that drives and encourages the practice in the face of all the rest.

Presence in the time of…whatever happens next.