The Keys to Spiritual Practice

It’s easy to fall prey to the illusion that our most masterful teachers will be human, or perhaps divine. But when the entirety of the earth is suffused with wisdom, our teachers may be the animals beside us, the plants, the soil, or even what we term inanimate.

I was reminded of that last week when I was given a wise lesson by a pair of salt and pepper shakers.

The salt and pepper shakers I’d been using were perfectly functional, but aesthetically as miserable as an ‘80s hair band. (Don’t ask what made me choose such tragic ugliness as a reference point.) I’d been looking for months for just the right pair to replace them, without success. No problem: I was looking patiently.

Before Christmas, I wasn’t even consciously looking at all. In fact, we were driving north from Ashland after I returned there to emcee the annual Gypsy Soul holiday benefit concert for the WinterSpring Center for Transforming Grief and Loss. It was a fine show for a great cause, and for the past decade, one of the holiday traditions I cherish the most.

I don’t cherish driving in conditions of winter ice. The storms were setting in and the passes were looking risky—until they looked impassable due to some form of colossal accident. Interstate 5 was completely stopped for thirty miles south of the disaster, and we suddenly found ourselves sitting motionless in the “fast” lane, wondering what speed is slower than zero. It was a bit of a Zen koan. The offramp to Grants Pass was a mere hundred feet away, but how to get there? A line-up of semis sat motionless between us and it. We pondered our gathering need to go to the bathroom. We pondered our existence. We pondered the apparent impossibility of anything except sitting there until darkness fell.

Fortunately, several vehicles ahead, someone managed to squeeze their car between two of the trucks onto the shoulder of the highway, then another car followed, then another. Several of us were able to sequentially weave between the trucks onto the highway shoulder, and therefore onto the offramp and the relative freedom of Grants Pass. On a Sunday in Grants Pass most things remain closed, unlike in most cities, which have decided that commerce must never stop, like voices on a television set. Grants Pass remains wiser, though losing that wisdom slowly.

Looking merely for someplace to kill time—preferably one with a bathroom—we wandered into what appeared to be a wine shop, although the odd metal sculptures wrapped around some of the display-window wine bottles should have been an indication that it might not be an ordinary one. We wandered back farther in the store where the wine racks suddenly turned into a large selection of lamp parts. A catacomb of sorts appeared behind that, with an ancient intriguing sign pointing up the stairs to the mezzanine, warning that no one under the age of 18 would be allowed to go there unsupervised. X-rated lamp parts, perhaps? Things too frightening for impressionable minds, such as vintage pictures of Joseph McCarthy?

Actually, more vast catacombs of odd items. More rooms of lamp parts. Toys from eras before my lifetime. Assorted second-hand oddities defying description, most of it exceptionally well-organized, and unsold for at least a generation. It was a remarkable collection of… something. It was a delightful cross between a thrift store, a haunted house, a museum, and that random dream I had last Tuesday.

It included a very large collection of salt and pepper shakers. I immediately found the exact pair I’d been looking for, where they’d been resting for months, years, decades. Beautifully sculpted and polished wood, in perfect condition, a little dusty, but who isn’t? Six bucks. I took them down with us to the first floor, where the shop’s dog began to follow us around as if we knew something important. We begged use of the bathroom, after promising not to bother the cat sequestered there. We checked the road cameras, praising the wizardry of the iPhone and other modern gadgets, and saw traffic now moving enough to make a run home before the ice and darkness set in. We bid our adieus to the kind shop owners and dog, and went off into the journey.

It wasn’t until later, smiling at the beautiful salt and pepper shakers on my table—again remembering how one of my radio colleagues once accidentally called such things “salt and pecker shapers” on the air—that I realized what a great lesson the random experience and the salt and pepper shakers had given me. It’s a reminder of a lesson already known, in truth, for I’ve found it in many places across the bizarre path of my life and so-called “career.” It is this:

If you know what you’re looking for, you’ll most likely find it eventually—but not in the expected form or place. You have to have open eyes at all times, for the biggest challenge is in recognizing that what you seek is right in front of you when you least expect it. With relationships or career opportunities as much as with objects, it’s often harder to recognize open doors at hand than it is to create them. The obvious doors, which are most frequently knocked upon the hardest, are rarely the ones that open to you. It’s the unnoticed ones that are begging for you to knock them up, so to speak. The goal is to live a life of calm presence; the inner stillness then allows you enough attentiveness through open eyes to recognize what you seek, when it appears in unexpected form. Life gives you a daily test, with a bit of a smile and smirk: Are you paying attention? Life seems to think it’s funny to find out.

I’ll be reminded of that every time I grind pepper on the salad or salt the potatoes. I‘ll be taught by them as I am by fire hydrants, ever since I read of someone’s vision of a fire hydrant as a saint: just standing there with infinite patience, waiting to be of service.

We made it home safely. With that caveat, I recommend random experience.