FilmOnDeepWater

Philadelphia, PA

Last night in a conversation with a friend, I encountered a very common phrase - turning a page. This got me to thinking about this phrase, and this word, turn. What is it in the nature of pages that they be turned? And maybe it is not in their nature, but in ours. I can just as easily say "flip a page" or "thumb through the pages". So, how is turning different?

As usual the answer for me - no, that's not exactly correct - my guide (now that's better) is the word itself. The Old English word was: tyrnan, and later it morphed into: turne and terne. And even earlier there was the Latin word, tornus, and earlier still the Greek word, tornos. All of them originally meant pretty much the same: lathe.

Turning itself, then, at its deepest roots is still the circular motion of a lathe.

As I hold this transformative image of a lathe, I imagine how it "turns" a block of wood into a beautiful rounded cylinder. How a lathe rounds off the sharp edges and reveals a new beauty to the wood, a new way to see the world.

Thinking more about this rotational lathe-like motion to turning, this phrase "turning a page" becomes a profound one. There is less linearity to it. It's as if the spine of the book is the lathe that will reveal what is yet to be seen, known and experienced.

We turn pages because the books that we hold only seem rectangular with their square corners and sharp edges. They only seem so to me because I fail to notice the center of the book that acts as a turnstile - a gateway inviting me to explore what is becoming ¬ all the while allowing me to rest on this page, or to revisit pages already turned.

So, now the pages in my life seem less sequential in this moment. I notice that I feel a little freer. Free to sit with this page in my life. Free to turn a few pages back to make more sense of that time in my life. And free to slide my finger beyond the edge of this page, this moment, and see what the next moment, the next now, has to offer.

And of course in the turning I notice - when I take the time to notice what is truly important, that is - that this page is a spacious one. In that moment of noticing I have the room to ask my two questions, the ones I ask from time to time before filling these empty pages with my scribblings: What is true for me now? How do I feel about that truth? It is in the turning of these two questions that I allow the lathe, the wheel that cuts away all that is not now true, to do its transformative work.

What can be easier than turning a page? I do it all the time.

The more I get myself entangled in this word, turn, the more joy I find. I notice how I begin to create images of children laughing as they twirl round and round. How they take such sheer pleasure in the turning. And then the images of the Whirling Dervishes come to mind. How their turning becomes a gateway for them to feel the ecstasy that comes with their experience of God. They, like those twirling children, actually become the lathe, revealing the world perhaps the way it really is - a world without sharp edges, a world of stunning beauty.

Funny how in this moment I am thinking of a phrase from several generations ago: "a well turned ankle". What could possibly be more beautiful than that?