taking the bench

When I lived in Portland, Oregon I often visited the Rhododendron Gardens. At the far end to the south in the gardens was a bench I liked to sit on. For long periods of time, and most often alone. The bench.

Sitting on that bench was a meditative experience for me. Before words like zazen and shikantaza, there was sitting on the bench by myself in the Rhody Garden, sharing space with the breeze over the pond; with ducklings and red-winged blackbirds; with friendly squirrels and Canadian Geese. Mostly with my own thoughts: my gratitudes; my worries; my joys and my wonders.

I never felt poor on the bench – the one you see here – even with five dollars in my wallet. There was something so generous in just sitting here. Daydreaming and scheming. Once in a while accepting calls from one of my sons, or one of my friends – like Andy on Cape Cod saying his magazine I had invested in was about to publish – or from my wife.

A few years down the road I found myself on another bench. This one just in from the Moonlight Beach parking lot in Encinitas, California. High on a bluff above the beach, with its iconic single palm. After the divorce. The fact is there were a number of benches on the bluff above the beach, and I’d find myself on a different one from time to time. But mostly it was the same one, which nearly always held its availabile arms open to me.

My experience on the bench at Moonlight Beach was different. Rather than red-winged blackbirds and flocks of geese, it was surfers and boogie boarders; fleets of magical pelicans; a guy making these huge bubbles down on the beach, kids flocking around him as if he were a Pied Piper, running off to chase, and if they were fast, pop the rainbowed bubbles. The never-ending wave action of the Pacific Ocean. That bench, at that time of my life, was for healing. And long phone conversations with a host of friends, checking on my well-being. “How’s it going?” “How are you?”

Back in January of 2006 – long before the Rhody Garden and Moonlight Beach – I accepted a position of and began working as Director of Adolecent Services for Walden House in San Francisco. Walden House was a long-time, been-around-the-block-nearly-forever statewide drug treatment organization, and as such had cultivated a number of its own slogans, better understood as directives than guidelines. One of which was this – “Take the bench.”

Being told to “Take the bench” was reality testing regarding current behavior which was not acceptable – and wasn’t going to work for you – there at 214 Haight Street or pretty much anywhere else. Go sit on the closest bench – and they were scattered around the building – and hopefully reflect on what it was that earned you this particular opportunity. Someone will come and fetch you in five or 10 minutes, and before they do, there’s time to answer this question – “What brought me here?”

Giving someone the gift of taking the bench was one of my favorite aspects of the WH adolescent program. In fact I created and facilitated a group one late afternoon on “Taking the bench,” and at the end of the group I walked to the center of the circle of young men and Gavin, picked up the bench there as a prop, put it over my shoulder, and walked through the auditorium to the exit door – and out. Far beyond metaphor, and exactly metaphor. You can take the bench with you wherever you go.

Or, as a Koan might put it, the bench takes you. Like my bench at Moonlight Beach – “Surf watching forever.” Like the bench just above the Willamette River in downtown Portland. Like the bench just between the railroad tracks and the bank of the Wareham River back there in my hometown of Wareham, Massachusetts. The Little League bench. The Daytona Beach boardwalk bench. A bench, now close by, in Balboa Park.

Man, I’ve been taking the bench all along.