God's Job

In January, 2021, we were advised to double mask. (This era did not last long. My second job sent out a notice saying that we were disinvited to use cloth masks at work, and that two surgical masks were not more effective than one surgical mask, so just use one.) At the time, I was trying to order some face shields, such as we have at work, to use at home and that was quite frustrating. There were several items on Amazon that appeared identical to the hospital PPE but proved not to be. There were also a lot of details to keep track of, as PPE procedures and requirements for patient visits differed slightly between the two hospitals where I work.

That month also found me still trying to get a decent sound out of the shakuhachi. Learning over Zoom is far from ideal.

On February first, 2021, I got my second COVID vaccine and had lunch with a friend at Publico.

When I began to work with my board certification mentor, one of the first things she did was to ask to see the report from my first committee. This is a document my next committee would never see, so I felt a bit reluctant: why? Let’s just move on. Then I took a look at the report and remembered how minimal it is. It basically says nothing, so there didn’t seem to be any harm in sending it to my mentor, so I did.

Then we connected on the phone and I could not believe how helpful she was. We spoke for nearly an hour, leaving me with a completely new view of how to proceed with my written materials. She has an exceedingly clear and holistic view of our enterprise and how our stuff manifests and might be worked with.

I got an email from her in which she mentioned her Zen teacher. I of course have a teacher: Howie. He will always be my teacher, and I hear his words in my head often, but I didn’t have a true, ongoing conversation with a teacher, and this I wanted.

I now and then had thought of asking J., the teacher who co-led the street retreat I went on in September, 2019, to be my teacher. Traditionally, in Zen, you have to ask the teacher three times before he or she says yes. I called a friend who is a student of J. to see what the time commitment is, because I had and have none. She said it can potentially be very little. She said J. likes to connect every month or couple of months, and he likes you to come to certain monthly ceremonies (via Zoom) if you can, and he likes you to undertake a course of study of some sort, and he likes you to have a creative outlet.

Speaking of the latter, for a while, I was faithfully practicing the shakuhachi about 30 minutes a day, but it had fallen by the wayside several days before I had this conversation with my friend, and I had been thinking of not scheduling another lesson, but this would be certainly a creative outlet, even if I just practiced 15 minutes a day and had a lesson only once a month.

After I spoke with my friend, I emailed J. to ask if I might speak with him on the phone, and that same afternoon, I had a shakuhachi lesson. I was still working on that same one note: open D, though in my case, it’s more like D sharp. (As it turns out, intonation is not an important value when it comes to the Japanese bamboo flute. My teacher said there’s not really such a thing as a shakuhachi orchestra because the intonation varies from person to person.)

When my teacher and I got on the Zoom call for that lesson, I said, “I haven’t been practicing.”

“Good, good,” he smiled. I really like this fellow.

I made a few attempts to get D to come out, with little success.

“Are you trying to make a sound?” asked my teacher.

“Yes!” I said. (Of course I’m trying to make a sound! What else would I be doing?)

“God’s job,” he reminded me.

I barely got any clear sound out of the flute that whole entire hour. A typical piece of advice from my teacher is to feel the right side of my forehead, and then the left. Which sort of thing often works!