Aimless Meandering

Bernie introduced me to aimless meandering on my first street retreat, and I’ve blogged about it before. On the street, there was time with no work and no responsibilities. It was a time for wandering in Manhattan before our rendezvous at Tompkins Square Park. I wandered south to the ferry terminal and then north in the park along the East River. I sat for a while and watched the water.

Meandering, I remembered a childhood game. Walking with a friend, at each corner, we flipped a penny. Heads, we turned right. Tails, left. There hadn’t been much time in my life for childish meandering.

When, a few years later, New York State, in a budget cutting maneuver, offered me an early retirement buy-out, I flew to La Honda to see Bernie. I wanted his advice. Should I take the buy-out? Bernie didn’t answer; but on the plane home, I knew I would take it. I was going to find out where my peacemaker path would take me. This too was aimless meandering. Where would the Universe take me?

A consulting practice? Dharma brother, Paco Lugovina, and I set out together. It was fun, but where was it leading? Strange: back to South Beach Psych Center where, as a chief of service, I’d created a not-for-profit, a conduit for funding some great initiatives – supportive visiting programs for families caring for chronically, mentally ill adult children and for homebound psychogeriatric patients as well as a therapeutic nursery for children who’d been victims of abuse and neglect. South Beach wanted me to train the current generation of chiefs to do what I’d done.

The training was a total failure. None of current chiefs were willing to do the extra work. South Beach surprised me, asking that I create a funding conduit for the whole hospital. That initiative which became The Verrazano Foundation would level the playing field for people living with mental illnesses. This did sound like a Bernie peacemaking initiative, a healing for myself and others. Out of nowhere it seemed, The Verrazano Foundation embarked on a charter school initiative which would become Integration Charter Schools.

It took us three years to get our first charter, and, as soon as it opened, the school took all my time. Twelve years later, when I retired for the second time, we were operating four schools, serving 1500 kids with a staff of 350 and were still growing. Flying back from La Honda, I could never have imagined this. This was aimless meandering.

Until I heard Thomas Merton talking about pilgrims and crusaders, I thought that Bernie had invented aimless meandering. But here was Merton: “The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey…, an exercise in ascetic homelessness and wandering. He [the pilgrim] entrusted himself to Providence, setting out with no definite aim, abandoning himself to the Lord of the universe” (92-94).

There is a famous Zen koan, “How do you step from a hundred-foot pole?” One of Bernie’s answers was, “Aimless meandering.”