The Middle Way

yesterday

They just threw their trash on the ground!

This wasn’t some kid, either. This was a grown-ass adult. And they just crumpled up the wrapper and dropped it right on the sidewalk in front of my house.

What kind of person does this? What is the mindset? Who do they think is going to pick that up? Or what do they think happens to it? If everyone did this, and no one ever cleaned it up, the whole city would be a sea of trash. They must know this.

So either they don’t care about living in a sea of trash, or they don’t care that they’re making other people clean up after them.

Well I wasn’t going to pick it up for them, so I called out, “Hey! You need to pick that up.”

They stopped and turned, with a bewildered look, so I continued, “That wrapper you dropped. You need to pick it up.”

They asked, “Are you seriously going to make me pick that up?”

How could they be surprised!? “Yes! It’s your trash! Why should I have to pick it up?”

They bent down to pick it up, and before turning to walk away, muttered, “You’re so mean.”

Mean!? I’m not the one dumping my trash in your front yard!

I was absolutely filled with disgust.

today

Today... I littered.

On purpose.

It was a small piece of paper (biodegradable!) that I dropped in the park, when I was pretty sure no one was looking. And I picked up several pieces of trash on the other side of the park — just to cleanse my karma, I guess?

No, if I’m being honest, it wasn’t about karma. It was to satisfy my ego, my conception of who I am and what kind of person I am. I was trying to prove something about myself, to myself.

And like I said, I had to make sure no one saw me, because what would they think of me? Would they think I’m one of those people, those litterers? I would feel their disgust, and my own shame.

(I’m even a little worried about what you think of me, dear reader. In your mind, am I a litterer?)

This was an interesting experiment. Was it a test? If so, I think I cheated. I was too attached to my concept of myself as one who does not litter, my disgust with those who do, and my fear of becoming the target of the disgust I might induce in others.

tomorrow

Disgust evolved to stop us from poisoning our bodies. But moral disgust is its own kind of poison.

How am I supposed to love everyone with this poison in my soul?

Moral disgust creates a divide between “people like me” and “those kind of people”. It separates us, makes it hard to even understand where another person is coming from. I thought that by littering, I might be able to overcome my disgust and better understand the person who tossed their trash on my sidewalk.

Instead, I learned how deeply rooted my disgust is in my conception of myself and my relation to others. Which was a disappointing finding, but I guess it’s good to know. The path away from my own moral disgust will not be walked in an afternoon.

Moral disgust comes from an attachment to, and over-identification with, one’s virtue. Buddhists speak of The Middle Path, between vulgar behavior and attachment to virtue.

Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.

~ Gautama Buddha

Addiction to virtue… what an interesting thought.

I will try littering again, to break my own addiction. And whatever form your own moral disgust takes, I encourage you to look it in the face. Are you disgusted by people who drink alcohol? Have a beer! Disgusted by people with tattoos? Get one yourself, even if it’s just a single brown freckle-tattoo in a discreet place. Attached to your veganism? Try a slice of the cheese pizza. Hate country music? Go to a country bar and chat with someone there. Is your disgust race-based, class-based, religion-based, sexual-orientation-based, or politically-based? Stare it in the face, find the thing you can’t quite believe you could ever do, and then do it.

Never mistake The Middle Path for the easy path! Following it will take all the courage you have.

What is Waffle Church?

Waffle Church is…

…the nickname for the Church of the Mundane Miracle, a celebration of the sublime magnificence of the universe as witnessed through simple, everyday experiences.

…a collection of loosely connected rituals, beliefs, and ideas. Some of these are documented on this blog.

…not a real church. (But like, it's also not entirely not a church, either?)

…just an excuse to have waffles and mimosas on Sunday, and then maybe work on a jigsaw puzzle together. (But like, it's also not just waffles: these are the most delicious and boundary-pushing waffles ever. Traditionally, a savory course followed by a sweet course.)

…sacrilicious!

Wafflican Coming of Age Ceremony

The coming of age ceremony, which typically happens around a child’s 12th birthday,  acknowledges and honors the transition from childhood to adolescence. The ceremony seeks to ensure that a child is given permission to grow up, and that the adults in their life are given permission to let them grow up.

The term “adult” describes a way of behaving as well as a way of being perceived and treated. Becoming an adult means developing a relationship with society. The entire coming of age process is therefore every bit as much about the adults in a child’s life as it is about the child, and there are expectations on both sides.

For the child, the transition to adulthood centers around demonstrating readiness to take on adult responsibilities, however these are defined in their culture.

For the adults, the expectations are:

• Show trust in the abilities of the child, especially those demonstrated during the coming of age ceremony.
• Foster adult-level independence in the child.
• Welcome the child into the community of adults.

Just as the expectations of the child do not end with the ceremony, neither do the expectations of the adults. This is a big deal, so make sure it sticks. Prepare yourself to say goodbye to the child, and to create a new relationship with the young adult.

The Trials

Demonstrating fitness to live up to the cultural expectations of adulthood requires that the child undergo some sort of trials. As the parent, caretaker, or adult mentor, you must decide what trials would be most meaningful. Keep in mind that success is meaningless if there is no possibility of failure. The trials must be difficult! If you, as an adult, have 100% confidence that the child will succeed, then you have robbed yourself of the opportunity to have faith in the child, to trust that they can handle the unexpected and navigate through uncertainty.

Living in a fairly big city in 201X, we chose three trials to demonstrate our children’s readiness for greater independence:

1. They had to demonstrate an ability to trade goods and/or services for money. Without our help.
2. They needed to be able to get around the city on public transit.
3. Each child was also given a personal challenge specifically tailored to their personality. (One of our children, who is mathematically inclined but has difficulty persevering, was given the task of solving a Rubik’s cube. Another, who has a hard time talking to strangers, was tasked with ordering food from a restaurant and bringing it home.) 

On the day of the ceremony, all three trials had to be satisfied. Our plan was that money had already been earned (and saved) before the day of the ceremony. On the day of the ceremony, we dropped the child off in an unfamiliar part of the city, with their saved money and a specific quest (their personal challenge) that they were required to complete before they returned.

We had chosen a spot ahead of time to drop them off, somewhere that didn't even look like our home city, way out in the suburbs, several busses and several hours away. It was scary for us! It felt like abandoning a child! And that is exactly why it had to be done: because this person wasn’t a child anymore.

One friend offered to tail our child, to make sure that they were fine, without the child knowing. But then we would know. Knowing the child would be fine would have prevented us from trusting that the child would be fine, and we would have missed our opportunity to grow. We declined the offer.

Preparation

We didn't just drop our kids off in the middle of nowhere one day. And, as mentioned before, they had already earned a significant amount of money before the ceremony. We had also organized several previous outings, where they’d practiced using Google Maps and the transit app to get around, or to find their way home.

The first few trips were clear failures. And we let them fail! Nothing proves that a child is ready like watching them miss a stop, get lost, notice that they are lost, and figure out how to get back on track. It's not about avoiding mistakes; it’s about knowing how to recover from them.

The Three Phases of the Ceremony

The ceremony itself is composed of three phases: Separation, Transition, and Re-incorporation. Each phase is crucial for allowing the changes of mind and relationship required for a successful coming of age.

The ceremony takes around 4-6 hours, depending on how you choose to do it. Trusted family and close friends who have known the child for most of the child's life may attend. Others won't be able to participate as completely.

Each phase should be a challenge for everyone involved. If you are not feeling challenged, you aren't working hard enough to make this transformation a success.

Separation

The beginning of the ceremony is a time for saying goodbye to the little child who is no more. It's a time for those who loved that little child to reminisce, and to mourn. We shared our favorite memories, funny or sweet stories, and quotes of the kid-things they'd said. We looked at photos and movies of them growing up, and art/projects they made as a child.

That little child you loved so dearly is already gone. Say goodbye, and make room for the young adult who stands before you.

Transition

This is the scary part: the trials. If you have designed them well, the trials will be as challenging for you as they are for the child. While the child is out, try to focus on your trust. They are more grown up than you know.

Re-incorporation

The triumphant return! The young adult arrives, with proof that they have successfully passed the trials. Look at this new, capable person as if for the first time! This isn't the child you said goodbye to, the helpless baby who once depended on you for everything. This is an independent and capable person, well on their way to becoming a successful adult.

For demonstrating these capabilities, the natural reward is commensurate privileges. In the case of the public transit trial, we rewarded our children with bus passes, and the permission to travel anywhere they wanted to with them. (But not anytime they wanted to! They still needed to ask permission, get home at a reasonable hour, etc.)

Celebrate with your young adult in whatever ways are most meaningful for them — and never look at your child the same way again.

The Pinpricks in the Universe That Let the Light In

[To be read when looking at the stars, preferably when Andromeda is visible.]

We’re looking up at the stars tonight, looking up, as our ancestors have done for countless generations. We can see the same constellations that the ancient Greeks named when they played connect-the-dots with the pinpricks in the rotating shell of the heavens.

Well, maybe not quite the same constellations. As far as the Greeks could tell, the stars never moved, except for a few they called “The Wanderers”. The word they used was “planétés”, which is more or less the word we use in English today: The Planets. The Wanderers.

But planets are not the only little pinpricks in the universe that move. All of the stars do. The night sky looks mostly the same tonight as it did when those Greeks looked up, but there have been small changes in the last few thousand years.

And that’s how long much of this light has been travelling. When we look at these stars, we are seeing the photons they were emitting when the Greeks were naming their constellations.

We’re not just looking across unimaginable distances. We’re also looking back in time.

Light from the Moon reaches us in 1.3 seconds.

Light from the Sun reaches us in 8.3 minutes.

Light from Proxima Centauri, our closest star (aside from the sun), reaches us in 4.2 years.

Light from the most distant individual stars that the naked eye can see reaches us in a few thousand years.

Light from the center of our galaxy (our very own home galaxy!) reaches us in about 26,000 years.

The most distant object that most people can see unaided is the Andromeda galaxy. Light from Andromeda reaches us in 2.5 million years. If we could see all of it, it would look considerably larger than the moon, and would absolutely dominate the night sky! Even at an incredible 2.5 million light years away, our nearest galactic neighbor is flippin’ huge. But from this distance, all we see of its ONE TRILLION stars is the small fuzzy blob of its galactic core.

One. TRILLION. Stars.

Let me digress for a bit on what I mean when I say the word TRILLION, a word I write only in all caps. When my wife was 31 years old, she gave birth to our youngest child. 11 days later, our newborn baby turned one million seconds old. My wife was still a few months shy of one Billion seconds old. In contrast, the oldest cave paintings in the world are about one TRILLION seconds old.

An eleven-day-old newborn. Her 31-year-old mother. The oldest cave paintings.

Million. Billion. TRILLION. Honestly, it’s a crime against mathematics that these numbers rhyme. The word TRILLION should take at least a half hour to pronounce.

The Andromeda galaxy has ONE TRILLION stars.

You, my dear beautiful people, are made of some THIRTY TRILLION cells. 30 galaxies of cells, you are.

One TRILLION stars, sending out photons that travel for two and a half million years, until their journey ends when they enter your eye. When one of those photons, created in the furnace of a star, began its journey to your eye, our homo habilis ancestors were just beginning to use stone tools. They walked on two legs, but that photon would travel for a half a million years before our ancestors evolved to walk upright.

That photon actually got 90% of the way here before our ancestors uttered their first words!

As it got closer and closer, we developed speech, we developed art, we developed religion. We buried our dead and clothed our bodies and spread all over the earth.

When that photon was almost, almost, almost here, we built towns, cities, civilizations, great monuments all around the world. We created the pipe organ and the electric guitar. We learned how to fly. We learned how to kill with incredible efficiency, destroying an entire city in an instant. We left this pale blue dot and walked on the Moon! We perpetrated injustice and we fought against injustice. We created the mortgage interest deduction, disco, Rubik’s Cubes, the poop emoji, and marketing campaigns based around the poop emoji.

And still this photon came, unimpeded for that entire, inconceivable journey, until that journey ended, just now!

Just now!

Just now! Just now! Now, now, now, now, now, now-now-now-now…

 . . .

That incredible journey this photon has taken, from the nuclear furnace of a star in the most violent of births, all the way into the gentlest death in your eye, in an unbroken two-and-a-half million year line, connects you to that star. And now, at the end, that energy is absorbed inside of you, a piece of that star, transformed into signals to your brain, into the experience you are having right now, seeing this night sky.

This experience. This human experience.

Because we are what make this experience even possible. The night sky doesn’t really look like this. It doesn’t really look like anything. The same photons come through the same atmosphere during the day. The sky isn’t really blue during the day. That’s just the experience we have because of the particular way our eyes function: the wavelengths of light we can see, our range of sensitivity, etc. Glass isn’t really transparent, just as rocks are not really opaque. It depends on which wavelengths of light you care about. The earth isn’t really solid, as the atoms that comprise it are mostly empty space. What feels hot or cold to us is really just the kinetic energy of the particles of a substance. Our experience of hot and cold has almost nothing to do with what we might call “objective reality”.

The earth turns in space, but you make it feel solid. The universe vibrates, but you create ‘hot’ and ‘cold’. A distant star fuses atoms that emit photons, but you create the starlight.

YOU create the blue sky in the daytime. YOU create the twinkling lights at night.

BECAUSE YOU ARE THE PINPRICKS IN THE UNIVERSE THAT LET THE LIGHT IN.

Happy One Billionth!

[Traditional Wafflican reading upon someone turning one billion seconds old, a bit over 31.7 years.]

One billion years ago, something amazing happened. For the first time, individual cells came together to live as a single organism, and the world saw perhaps the greatest invention of all time: sex. A billion years ago was a time of love.

Here's to a billion years of sex!

 . . .

By a billion months ago (~83 million years) so much had happened! Tons of evolutionary diversity: from simple multicellular organisms, up through dinosaurs, and all the way to primitive mammals. And for the first time, mammals were growing their babies inside the mothers' bodies, so they could be born more grown, more developed, more ready to survive. (You'd never know it looking at human babies, but that's a very special case: think of gazelles standing immediately after birth.) The first placental mammal was born a billion months ago.

Here's to a billion months of mammals!

 . . .

By a billion weeks ago (~19 million years), mammals had become hugely successful. Primates had evolved, and some had even lost their tails and grown bigger brains. The first apes were born around a billion weeks ago, just as you were born a billion seconds ago.

Here's to a billion weeks of apes!

 . . .

Around a billion days ago (~2.7 million years), some of the apes learned to walk upright, and lost all of that unsightly body hair, allowing them to run great distances and sweat all over to keep cool. They learned to use basic stone tools. Homo habilis and homo erectus become the greatest long-distance runners in the animal kingdom (as are their ancestors, modern humans, today).

Here's to a billion days of standing upright!

 . . .

You, dear human, were born a billion seconds ago; the first humans were born a billion hours ago. About 120,000 years ago lived Y-chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve. Also around that time was the birth of speech. Adam and Eve and The Word were born a billion hours ago — and you were born a billion seconds ago.

Here’s to a billion hours of humans!

 . . .

A billion minutes ago (around year 100) was the peak of the Roman Empire, the Pax Romana, and the birth of Christianity. Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii. Bookbinding was invented, and the first codex (precursor to the modern book, much superior to scrolls or clay tablets) was born.

Here’s to a billion minutes of books!

 . . .

One billion years of sex.

One billion months of mammals.

One billion weeks of apes.

One billion days of standing upright.

One billion hours of humans.

One billion minutes of books.

And one billion seconds (so, so many seconds!) of you.

Here’s to you!