The click of the front door closing echoed through the house. I was in my studio painting. Had been since morning. The only times I had paused were to change music at the end of an album. I suppose they are still called albums although they are just digital downloads on my iPad. I was listening to piano compositions by John Cage. Before that “Drif” by Heilung. The music was low and I heard my wife Deborah walk straight from the front door to her own studio. She had been at a meeting of the artist guild, then the meeting of a subcommittee of the guild developing its new website. I skipped the meeting to paint. And I was not about the stop now. I was in the midst of flow. 

What I didn’t know was how long I had been painting. Not, that is, until I heard her in the kitchen, rustling up a bite to eat. I thought to myself that I should eat some lunch too, as soon as I got to another stopping place. 

Walking into the kitchen a few minutes later, she was sitting at the island munching on a piece of cheese. I glanced at the clock. To my surprise, it was not noon, but four o’clock in the afternoon. At that moment, two things struck me: one, I wasn’t yet finished with the painting on which I was working — and couldn’t yet stop for long; and, two, I was bushed. And no wonder. I had been painting without more than a few moments’ pause for six hours. 

I poured a glass of milk, smeared some almond butter on a slice of bread, and went back into the studio. An hour later, I was done for the day. But, stepping away from the painting, I felt let down. Like someone had tripped over an extension cord and unplugged me from the electrical outlet. And I realized my body was stiff. “You sure don’t notice posture much when you are inside that canvas,” I said to Debbie, stretching, as she walked into the studio. 

“I love this,” she said. 

“Really?” I said. “I’m not happy with it at all.” 

To which she said, “You’re not in any shape to evaluate it right now. Let it be. Come back tomorrow and you’ll have better perspective.” 

She was right, of course. 

We made dinner together, cutting up vegetables, boiling water, quickly preparing fresh basil, spinach and cheese tortellini, tossing it into a salad, pouring out a favorite wine. After dinner we watched the next installment in the Swedish mystery we were following on Prime. Then we went upstairs to read until bedtime. Then slept. 

Each morning I rise at 5:15 to sit zazen, usually with the Thousand Harbours Zen community in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After meditation via zoom, I listen to a podcast dharma talk by my Zen teacher, Koun Franz, and sometimes to another talk by one of the many teachers from the San Francisco Zen Center. Then, usually, about the time the sun is rising this time of year, I go out back of our house to sit and listen as the island wakes up. 

Ordinarily a few bats are still out scooping up mosquitoes at dawn. There are always mosquitoes and sand gnats around. A family of cardinals has called our casa their casa for years now, generation upon generation. I hear them in the live oak. The butterflies, moths, bees, dragonflies and hummingbirds are big fans of our pollinators garden, though it is nearing its ragged seasonal end. Lizards of every conceivable size and shade play among the rocks and foliage, and the neighborhood squirrels are beginning their antics, rehearsing their daily torment of our dog. 

Many years ago, something struck me, an idea, perhaps heretical, that I was then living all wrong. Back then I would exhaust myself, pushing myself for days, weeks, months even, get to the verge of emotional burnout, and then just collapse either into illness or into a state where I had to “get away to recuperate.” Then, as soon as I regained enough energy to get back to it, I’d be off and running self-destructively again. A board chair with whom I once served when I was a seminary president called me their “Energizer Bunny.” And, back then, I took that as a compliment. 

It took a couple of brushes with death — literally — to get my attention. And it took some time after those experiences to find the right balance of life. But somehow I learned, the hard way, that pushing until we collapse isn’t a healthy way to live, physically, emotionally or spiritually. I needed to learn to care and feed, nurture and nourish myself if I want to live a beneficial human life. 

Nobody can live by exhaling alone. 

But everyone has to find their own way into health and wholeness. Maybe that’s what the Bible means by “working out our salvation with fear and trembling.” 

There are many disciplines and practices that can be undertaken, some explicitly spiritual, some not so much. Our needs are as varied as we are. But this morning, after those precious hours of darkness and meditation, when, with my first morning cup of tea in hand, I stood before the work I did yesterday, I knew the painting was not only finished, but that it is good.