May 15, 2026
Dear Leland,
I had a strange experience this morning that I want to unpack. We’ll see how I do: this may be hard for me to write about.
I went to yoga today. At the end of pretty much every yoga class, we lie flat on our backs in something of a meditative state. Normally I pretty much zone out, or just focus on the different parts of my body that ache and are stretching out in this final pose. At the end of a yoga class we’re usually pretty tired, so it’s not hard to go pretty deep in a meditative, calm state. Yoga typically requires enough of my focus that my mind can’t wander, such that by the time we lie on our backs, my mind has been quieted to the point where it effortlessly remains still.
Today was different. For whatever reason (and I don’t remember how it came to be – again, my mind was likely pretty blank up to this point) I suddenly envisioned speaking publicly. The circumstances weren’t totally clear, but the nearest approximation would be to suggest I was giving a eulogy at your funeral. Someone had murdered you, and I was standing on stage, speaking into a microphone in front of an audience about you and your death.
I found myself understanding something about the task at hand, and asking the audience for support. Related to what I discussed in yesterday’s letter to Everett, I understood that I was about to open myself up and let something go, and that I needed the audience’s support, protection, and grace to do what needed to be done. This was going to cut deep, and it was going to require a full team effort.
The task at hand was forgiveness. I was being called to forgive your killer. I started off by making clear that killing you wasn’t okay. I enumerated your great qualities (truth be told: I experienced this in shorthand. I am realizing, as I write this, that you deserve to have me enumerate those qualities explicitly. I will take this as an assignment to do so.)
The purpose of enumerating your great qualities, at least in this context, was to let your killer know what he had done. What beauty he had taken from the world. The full consequences of his actions. It was very important to me that the killer understood, in no uncertain terms, that his actions were not okay, and required change.
And then I forgave him.
The act of forgiving was not the climax of the experience. In fact, I don’t really remember that part of the experience. What really sticks out is what came next.
I proceeded to explain why I forgave him. Because light is more powerful than darkness. Because love is more powerful than fear or anger or hate. Because only in the face of everything, when that which is most precious gets taken from us, do we get to show our true colors. And from that place we can shine the brightest light the world can fathom.
And so, this forgiveness was not just letting the killer off the hook. This was a call to action. This was shining the full light of God onto him, so that he might see himself in stark relief. This was as clear an invitation as one could imagine to let that light in, to let it heal the wounds that led to the despicable act of killing you, and to become the version of himself he was always meant to be.
The alternative would have been challenging. That much light, channeled in his direction, would have taken great effort for your killer to avoid. Of course, one can always run away from the light. In this case, the path of doing so would have brought himself unimaginable pain and suffering, simply by virtue of the size and brightness of the light being brought onto him.
Channeling that light wasn’t just meant for the killer. It was also meant for those in attendance. They were experiencing more light than they had before. They were exposed to what it means to channel light in the darkness, that they might find the strength to do the same when their time came. I think it was also meant to lay in stark contrast the difference between the light and the dark, to invite everyone to lean into the light while beginning to comprehend the potential costs of hiding in the dark.
When the class ended, my face was covered in tears. Someone turned the lights on as I sat processing what I had just experienced. I found myself still wanting to feel the depth of that emotion. An older woman came over to talk to me. I looked up at her, somewhat horrified at what she would say when she saw my face. She proceeded to give me some advice on how to improve one of my poses; she seems to enjoy giving advice as a way of connecting with other participants in class. If she noticed my face, she betrayed nothing; no part of her expression changed when I looked at her. I proceeded to wipe the snot away from my lips and nose with the sleeve of my shirt, and went on with my day.
What does it mean? F*** if I know. I think on some level that’s what I wanted to explore with this letter.
The one thing that seemed clear to me right away was that you are about the most precious thing in my life. I would struggle with nothing more than losing you.
[Obviously, at this point I need to interject and leave a note for Everett. The prior paragraph in no way implies that I love your brother more than you. It simply means that my relationship with Leland is simpler, cleaner, and easier for me. Your brother reminds me of your mom, but he also reminds me of my sister and my dad. I’ve been with versions of Leland my whole life, to the point where I almost feel incomplete without them. Leland looks like me, and he has a few characteristics that remind me of myself. But most of the time, Leland reminds me of people I love, not myself.
You are different. You remind me of me every day. Your energy level. Your enthusiasm. Your musicality. Your laugh. The way you swing from high highs to low lows emotionally. And perhaps most of all, the sense that you are so eager to be loved by those around you that you really struggle to know who you are.
See, the idea of losing you gets complicated. Not that it would hurt any less, but it would hurt in a profoundly different way. I would struggle with existential questions, I would wrestle with the meaning of your being and what it implied about my own. Losing you would confuse me, and I would spend a lot of time rediscovering my identity as I metabolized your loss.
My point being: for the lessons this experience was meant to teach, Leland served the better avatar. Losing you would cut no less deep, but it would require me to wrestle with my own identity in ways that would have confused the lesson I believe I was meant to learn today.
And what is that lesson? Well, if you’ll stop interrupting me, that’s what I’m trying to figure out!]
Where was I? Oh, right: Leland, there’s just something clean about my relationship with you, at least to this point. Which does make me wonder: to what degree was today’s experience meant to prepare me for what is to come? As you grow older, you are almost certainly going to need me less. And dads and sons tend to butt heads when the sons reach adolescence (as far as I can tell, this is something of a mammalian truth that extends beyond humans). Was today meant to help me say goodbye to the relationship we’ve had? I think that’s part of it, but not all.
Because that doesn’t explain the eulogy. That doesn’t explain my sense of the need to forgive, and the extent to which I found myself gaining access to a light of love in the process of forgiveness. There was a ferocity to that light, one I found immensely powerful, but challenging to access and hold, even in that state of utter vulnerability and openness.
There was something profound in that part of the experience, and I think it signified something about how we can summon the light in times of darkness. It takes bravery, it takes courage, and it takes strength. It takes some sense of protection, security, and grace (as signified by asking the congregation for support; I sensed they would form something of a protective cocoon around me while I found what needed to be said). It takes a willingness to let go of those things that might be in the way; even those things most precious to us (like the desire to have back my cherished son). It takes a willingness to go to the deepest parts of ourselves, not knowing what we will find and terrified by the possibilities. All of these things I already knew and understood, even if this experience made the understanding all the more visceral. What was new today was experiencing the ferocity of that light and love. I wonder if I am for the first time understanding, at least to some degree, what Jesus meant when he said (in Matthew 10:34) “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Before I started this journey I’d always assumed experiencing the depth of God’s love would be peaceful. Along the way I learned that the process of surrendering to God was by no means always peaceful. And in conversation with others, I’ve come to realize how common my misconception was: many people assume the purpose of the spiritual journey is to achieve a sense of peace. Indeed, peace is certainly available at resting points on the journey; but peace is by no means the final stop.
Until recently I still believed that peace was the ultimate stopping point, that once we achieved some version of enlightenment we could permanently exist in a state of peace. I no longer believe this to be true. From what I can tell, waves of discomfort continue to rock us no matter how hard we try to avoid them. One thing that has come up in several of my spiritual conversations with fellow seekers is the idea of “steering into the storm”. My idea is that we spend our lives trying to steer around or away from certain storms, but there are some storms we simply must steer into. This idea is complicated and requires discernment. Not every storm is ours to steer into; ours are the storms we most wish to avoid but inherently understand we cannot (at least not forever). Those storms meant for us keep recurring until we steer into them. When we finally relent and steer in, those storms rip away those part of us we might be tempted to hoard and cherish too preciously. And then those storms yield to new discoveries that we would not have found without navigating the storm. In this way I’ve started to think that underlying our trauma and negative emotions are our sources of inspiration (almost like gifts we’re repeatedly unwilling to accept).
I’m still not entirely sure I’ve unpacked all there is to unpack from that experience. Often I need days or weeks, and sometimes even months or years, to realize the full significance of these types of experiences. But I wanted to share this one today, while it was fresh; I wanted you to experience alongside me as I attempted to digest and make meaning of the experience, so that you could see how the sausage gets made.
What I do know is that that experience was pretty powerful, to the point that I still (several hours later) feel the fatigue of someone who cried cathartically.
What I also know is that there was some significance to the ferocity I felt when channeling as much of God’s light as I could muster. This portion of the experience yields a learning for me to carry and savor and ponder, to be sure.
The experience (I’m tempted to call it a vision, but find myself reluctant only because I was growing used to those being a thing of the past) revisits a recurring theme in my current explorations, very much related to the idea of being the light in the storm. I seem to be learning, using different methods in different forums, what it means to be the light in the storm. I lean into these experiences precisely because they seem, well, almost preordained as part of my journey. As far as I can tell, these are lessons I am invited to learn, and it is just up to me whether or not I accept the invitation. I anticipate more to come on this topic in coming letters.
Okay, I think that is enough for today. If I discover more, I will share.
I love you. I am so glad I don’t have to say goodbye to you today. We’ll see if I treat you (or experience your presence) any differently as a result of this experience. I wouldn’t be surprised either way.
I love you.
Love,
Dad
Letters to Leland 