I’ve witnessed this scene countless times (and I’m sure you have, too).
In fact, I feel I watched it at least twice this week in Netflix binges I’ve already forgotten.
Our hero needs some vital information.
She/He sits before a stony bureaucrat who has the necessary intel, pleading their case.
The seemingly implacable civil servant quotes official rules and regulations.
They explain why they cannot possibly provide the desperately needed info, even though they have it right in front of them.
And, just when hope seems lost, the bureaucrat rises from their chair saying something like…
“But if you were to glance at my computer screen
while I go get a refill of coffee,
I suppose there’s really nothing I could do about it.”
It’s a sly defeat of the status quo, a passive-aggressive act of heroism…and everybody wins.
And it’s exactly what happened to me and Vlad this week.
The drama around our local baseball field somehow merited an article in The Daily News.
(I’m happy to link to it HERE but I don’t see a way around the $6 subscription, thus I’m summarizing below).
I don’t think the headline is accurate on any level –– “Dogs vs. Kids” sounds like a bizarro-world Disney film –– but it does successfully detail the drama around why the baseball field has been locked since early fall.
This summer, the NYC Parks department took an unpopular action.
New fences were added at all entry points with combination locks, the combos only revealed to those with official sporting event permits.
Since the article, however, those combinations were wildly leaked (something anyone who doesn’t hate puppies could have foreseen).
Thus, quite recently, hefty padlocks replaced the combination locks.
And then one weekend a month ago, someone took bolt cutters to one of those.
After a few days of canine freedom, that was replaced by an even thicker lock.
But then this week … something truly unexpected happened ….
something which took me and the other half-dozen 7 am witnesses completely by surprise.
Our core group (Miku, Moon, Bruno, and Rufus –– alas, again, I don’t know any of the owner’s names) and I were reasonable content, enjoying the concrete prelude to the field.
From the other end of the park, the grizzled custodian of the washrooms––this must be wrong but he seems easily mid-70s––silently walked through the empty outfield.
Without a word, he opened the lock, leaving it dangling on its chain.
Then he shuffled silently away.
As he departed, my fellow dog owners and I stared at each other in disbelief.
Was this guy secretly on our side?
Did he share our belief in the absurdity of locking up an unused field in December?
Was he, like the official stepping away from their laptop, really defying the nonsensical park policies?
Could it really be this easy to be invited in?
Wisely, without calling out to the custodian to clarify his worldview, we simply entered the field, we and our dogs delighted by our suddenly expanded frolicking possibilities.
I have no idea how many times I’ve shared the Rumi poem “A Great Wagon” in a yoga class or workshop.
And, as the baseball field gate swung open, I couldn’t help but recall these lines from it:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
They resonated strongly because earlier in the week, Bruno’s mom had told me further details about the controversy from the recent city council meeting she and her husband had attended.
(They go to those things because they own a hipster neighbor bar, one they opened a month before the Covid lockdown so it’s a miracle they’re still in business.)
Although the details of the infighting evaporated as I was listening to them, I heard myself volunteering to write the proposal the city council requires to reevaluate padlocking the park.
It’s unlikely I’ll include this in my official proposal for the Spring board meeting, but I’m delighted to share with you more of that open-field Rumi stanza here:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”
Here’s an update from Vlad’s Tree Lighting party.
It may have been the favorite party I’ve ever given.
One thing that really makes an event, by the way, is to have the World’s Cutest Baby in attendance (which we did).
Another is to have two puppy half-siblings meet for the first time.
There was one person there I technically didn’t invite but was delighted to include nonetheless.
And while a few people I genuinely love were not able to attend, ultimately everyone who was meant to be there was.
Sometimes––maybe always––you can trust the invitation will be perfectly received and accepted.
Here’s the other section of Rumi’s The Great Wagon that always resonates.
“Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty
and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
In particular, I love those last two lines.
There’s something so elliptical about “Let the beauty we love be what we do” … and yet at the same time somehow it makes enormous and total sense.
And, knowing that every yoga posture has endless variations and countless ways it can be approached, I cannot help but agree that “There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
In fact, right now, according to the United Nations Population Division, there are over just over 8 billion.
Since the theme of this month’s new meditation is Honoring the Invitation (HERE), I was particularly delighted by the opportunity to experience this novel, wordless one from the groundskeeper.
Indeed, sometimes invitations arrive engraved and special delivery.
And sometimes a friend brings you along to a tree trimming party as an unofficial Plus One.
Other times, the door is simply unlocked and left open.
You, however, are always the one who has to decide whether to accept and enter.
Try to stay open to all the invitations life offers you.
And that way, perhaps one day we’ll meet each other on that amazing, beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing, Infinite Field.
Namaste for Now,
