Always Come Back to the Center

Re-punctuation, re-calibration, champagne. Hunting for the heart spot, loving effervescently, radically constructing reality. Starting and re-starting again because everything is a circle, thank god.

It’s almost time for one of my favorite punctuation rituals: celebrating the arrival of a new year. Brad and I don’t do much on New Year’s Eve, but we really enjoy the idea of it: marking the end of something and the beginning of something else. Celebrating the New Year is like hitting a giant reset button that everyone has agreed to conjure out of thin air at precisely midnight. Brad and I love hitting reset buttons, especially when it involves champagne. Pop!

I fell in love with Brad, in part, because of his punctuation habits. By that I mean his way of constructing reality, which is what cybernetician Gregory Bateson meant by “habits of punctuation.” Never before had I met someone so highly allergic to lifelessness and so devoted to creative invention (and status quo disruption).

When I first met Brad he was a roaming outlaw therapist in the Mississippi Delta and a professor of creative transformation and circular epistemology. I was immediately struck by his uncanny ability—as a healer and a teacher—to discern when it’s time for a situational reset or benevolent interrupt: when to shift, flip, rearrange, or change course if things begin to spin in an unsavory or icky direction. More recently we started calling these vicious cycles “goofy loops.” If we must slap a diagnostic label on the habitual knots and crazy deep sinkholes human beings get themselves into, let it be that one. The only way out is to interrupt the circling with a different kind of action, one that re-punctuates the situation with less flat talk and more dramatic champagne fizz.

The first drink Brad ever ordered me was a surprise glass of champagne, and since then we have been devoted to making each other’s lives as effervescent as possible. This is not a trivial endeavor. It takes discipline, a commitment to imagination, and a nose for the numinous to creatively turn a goofy loop into a sacred hoop that can sustain its spin. Yet it’s worth the effort, because when two people find they are punctuating the ever-recursing circle of reality in the same mutually exciting way, sparks fly.

But this essay is not about how cybernetics is the secret to romance, or the shamanic healing powers of champagne. Reset! I’m here to share a teaching that recently came down in a dream. It’s one of those calling-home visions, perfect for this time of year when many of us are in the mood to reorient and reboot:

Brad dreamed we were at an outdoor ice-skating rink under the stars, coaching a figure skater. She was dressed in a beautiful, glittering costume as if ready to perform for an audience. It must have been the last dress rehearsal because we were giving her our final instructions. The skater began her routine. After a few moments we interrupted her and advised, “Come back to the center. Always come back to the center. That’s the heart, the concentrated source of all your movement.”

The woman skated over to that spot and began her routine again. As she skated forth from that space, we took brooms and swept the ice in front of her path to ensure nothing would interfere with her graceful, effortless glide.

Curiously, the center “heart spot” was not in the middle of the rink, but off-center, closer to the entrance. That’s because this dream’s lesson is about starting (and re-starting) right. Every day is an opportunity to return to the heart-source and begin again. Because everything is circular, we’re free to conjure a new beginning as often as we like, even multiple times an hour. For necessity, for joy, for the hell of it, or to fulfill our deepest calling—the reason doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are always free! free! free! to start again.

Now in any other context, the phrase “come back to the center” might sound a little platitudinous to me. But under the stars on an ice rink with my beloved and a broom in hand, I’m paying attention. These words are the ones that grabbed me most: “The center is the heart, the concentrated source of all your movement.”

I know it’s common these days to say that “the center” is a place of stillness and silence, like a tranquil inner pond with nary a ripple in sight. But when I need to come back to the center, I hunt for a very specific feeling. The sensation is something alive, vibratory, deep, certain, musical, and in motion. It’s what I feel when a holy dream comes down the line, when a healing session comes to life, when prayers are cooking, singing is strong, and the spirit is circulating in a room. The center I return to is the vibratory sacred elation I felt the very first time Brad and I shared a Kalahari-style shaking embrace.

I try not to visualize where this center is, to give it a static name, or to locate it in a particular place in my body. I just assume it likes to move around. Too much conceptualization gets me lost in unsatisfying vagaries that spin me into one goofy loop after another, far away from the “heart spot” I long to skate back to every minute, every hour, and every night before it’s showtime in the dreamtime.

Occasionally I still catch myself trying to think my way there, but then a dream will come down like this one and I remember what my body never forgets: the center is the concentrated source of all movement. To get there, we must move.

and
sway
pray
rock
dance
hum
strum
drum
shout
stomp
glide
spin
reach
soar
swing
and never forget
to sing.

I enjoy calm stillness like I enjoy a soothing cup of tea. But when the stars are out and it’s the final dress rehearsal before the clock strikes midnight, Brad and I will be tapping into something stronger and more potent to fuel our next dance across this frozen landscape.

More than anything, I want this spiritually hot, soulful, heart-igniting aliveness to punctuate my days, to be the guiding force behind everything I do. Otherwise, I’m lost. Nothing tunes me, comforts me, lifts me, and gets me back on track like returning to this pinnacle holy feeling at the center of my being.

What about the brooms in the dream? Well, ice seems perfectly smooth—until we try to skate on it. Curlers know that sweeping the ice generates heat, melting it ever so slightly to enable a straighter, farther glide in the desired direction.

Just look at that glide! Well done sir. The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch by Sir Henry Raeburn, 1795

But here the brooms also serve another purpose. Life is a web of many competing forces that try to pull us in all directions. While it’s fashionable (and true) to say that “everything is connected,” the more we try to connect to everything, the more disconnected from the center we become. Sweep! Edit! Punctuate! Reset! There’s no need to tap into everything or to try and get to the bottom of it all. That’s a one-way ticket to Goofy Loop Land, a head trip straight to Dilution Station. It’s a new year, so let’s get out the sweepers, dusters, scrapers, or even a whole Zamboni if you need it.

By the way, the first words I saw when I looked at the Zamboni website just now were: resurface, recharge, repeat. So there you go—the signs are everywhere!

Lost? Confused? Missing a fuse? Skate on back to the heart spot, the wellspring of all life-stirring action, healing disruption, Mississippi Delta-style therapeutic intervention, and creative wisdom for taking care of our relations.

We cannot stop the circle of reality from spinning any more than we can stop the Earth from orbiting the sun. But we can choose how we punctuate things—what we emphasize, underscore, feed, and grow. The first choice of action is the most important: “Always come back to the center. That’s the heart, the concentrated source of all our movement.”

Today this center is found near the entrance, the place from which we will all launch into a new year at midnight on January 1st because in 1582, a man named Gregory declared it should be so. For that reason, and in celebration of the Big Love that makes the world go round, Brad and I are pouring each of you a glass of mystical champagne. May its sparkling effervescence tickle and warm all broken hearts and chilly souls. Let’s raise our glasses, get off our asses, dance into whatever’s next, and thank God that we’re still together and alive.

Happy New Year!

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