Foreground and Background

Last month, I had the luxury of spending three days walking on the beach on one of the Dutch North Sea islands: Texel. A Winter Walk to pause and be still. We listened to the sound of silence and resonated with each other’s stories. The metaphors, images, poetry, pictures and songs we shared at the very end with each other about what we experienced indicated that the depth of silence had a revealing aspect to it. We went inward to go forward differently - moved by creativity and curiosity, chaos, confusion and clarity, dreams and desires, insight and inspiration, pain and pleasure, consolation and connection.

For me the experience was a modified and somewhat upscale version of the Venice Beach desire I wrote about in my previous post. We listened to the sound of silence, to ourselves and each other accompanied by the interplay between earth, sea and sky. I pondered the life of a snowflake and the relationship between a drop of water and the sea. I was reminded that the Search is really the Journey, and was confronted with the depth of the desire for silence and solitude.

One insight was through an experience of painting. At home I have been working on a painting - the sketch above gives an impression of the actual painting - but the painting does not quite work. I kept working on the piece, quite a number of layers over previous layers, yet the painting does not emerge. It just does not let itself be painted. I did not understand why, but suddenly it became clear to me: I thought I was painting the painting, but I am actually only working on the background of the painting. It is a very powerful realization especially related to life.

At times our experience that seems so important in the moment is actually only the preparation of the next experience, background instead of foreground. Eventually all experiences fade into the background, except for a sliver here and there. Like in a painting, the background ‘colors’ the foreground or current experience – the one cannot exist without the other. During painting – and during life – it is not always so clear what is background and what is foreground, but it is helpful to question which is which.

The insight makes me think of capturing this in some art form. I would like to do a painting and keep working on that same painting for the rest of my life. It will change all the time. Once a month or so, I would take a picture and once a year exhibit the painting, the same – yet different – painting.

The moments that we don’t paint are possibly the reflective moments, the moment of the Winter Walk when we look at our lives and can make room for discovery and distinguish foreground and background.

To be continued…

Group Relations International organized this winter walk. This was the invitation…

Winter Walk



Pause and be still


with what was 


what will come



Give space

to a moment of reflection in our life



Be still



Meet the other and our self



While walking on the beach

with a small group of people 



Around the Winter solstice



When the days 


lengthen and
change

from shorter to longer

from dark to light



A moment of reflection on 


how we spend our days



A still journey

Will you join our walk

Simplexity

The desire to live a simpler life shows up quite often. My picture of it is to be a homeless person at Venice Beach in California, to make enough money every day to eat and drink a nice cup of coffee, for example by telling people about themselves using my intuition, reading tarot cards, being silent with people, or having spiritual conversations of some kind. I would sleep in the warm open air, meditate, look at the sea and look at the sea of people, ponder life and try to be in the moment. The desire is a bit extreme, yet quite real. It is a different version of being a monk, trying to find meaning through the simplicity of life. Herman Hesse portrays it so beautifully in his book Siddharta when he describes how Siddharta lives at the river and learns from the water while taking travelers across the river with a ferry. The desire is real and at the same time a mixture of fantasy, projection and escape.

The fact is that I have created and live a complex life. I left my family’s life style and moved abroad to become a celibate priest and spiritual director, subsequently left the priesthood to share my life with a man, a man with a different color, nationality and language. Eventually, we decided to adopt children and entered a set of unusual relationships with the mothers of our boys. The navigation of the legal system and agencies seemed like a walk through the wilderness. Currently we live in Holland, yet work abroad and created an international organization. There is nothing simple about our lives.

The tension between the desire to live more simple and the creations of a more complex life is at times a serious challenge.

And yet, in my better moments I can see how the seemingly extreme opposite sites of the spectrum inform, enrich, inspire, and influence each other. The complex becomes more manageable applying the concepts of simplicity. And simplicity becomes richer and fuller knowing about and living complexity.

In a meeting with a dear friend today, we talked about complexity and simplicity. In a moment of insight a new word came: simplexity. Simplexity is when simplicity and complexity are complimentary (thank you Anjet and thank you Wikipedia), when the complex is in the service of the simple and right. Adopting our children was a complex and simple act. Being a shoe fairy for a family in need requires the complexity of enough money being made to let the shoes magically appear. Being the chair of the local arthritis foundation is an act of simplexity. Creating a silent event in a chaotic 90-people conference is also about simplexity, and so is the five-minute meditation together before the children go to school. Understanding and valuing the complexity of the simple acts and bringing some simplicity to complex acts is simplexity.

This simplex life that we have created seems - at least for the moment - less challenging and more inviting.