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What would happen if security were not the point of our existence? That we find freedom, aliveness, and power not from what contains, locates, or protects us but from what dissolves, reveals, and expands us. Eve Ensler
Who is the person inside we can trust or love? Toni Morrison
The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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A young woman with a very serious case of hives went to a specialist for relief. She had suffered for some time, living in continual pain because the hives covered much of her body. She needed healing, and hoped that the doctor could prescribe a cure. But his diagnosis surprised her. "There is no medicine I can give you," he told her. "You see, your skin is crying because you cannot."
Whether it is conflict or misunderstanding or sadness or grief or worry or self-pity, you cannot bury pain without mortgaging something else to keep it hidden. In the end, we live life "shunting back and forth between our pain and our defenses." (Merle Shain)
We've all experienced pain. And it has appeared on the doorstep of our heart in a variety of ways; our life takes a left turn, or we find our self emotionally overdrawn, literally heart-weary, or for whatever reason, we continue to feel small. From this tug of war, our hives can be a metaphor for any number of things that afflict us. But in the end, we see them as a blemish--our fault line, our shame.
So. No matter how you slice it, we feel broken or flawed and susceptible to any advice that serves as spiritual duct tape to our fractured spirit. (After the end of one of my relationships, I had unctuous church members approach me saying, "God gave us this Bible verse to take care of your pain." Which left me feeling not only in pain, but inadequate in my faith, and completely derailed from what I assumed was my best self. Just wondering... when did the Bible become a hammer? And I'm curious as to why God never gave these concerned onlookers a Bible verse for their own superciliousness.)
Yes, there are parts of ourselves that we do not like, or do not understand, or avoid, or bury. There's nothing new about that. Except that we fuel the fire with an assumption that our priority is to fix the problem. Or at the very least, to look good trying.
Sometimes we hide.
Sometimes we pretend.
Sometimes we get busy being helpful to others.
And sometimes we go to a specialist for advice.
I have nothing against specialists. (I've spent a fair amount of money on a few.) It's just that when we believe the solution is disease-removal, we tinker and trade one infomercial or Bible verse or well-intentioned guru for another, believing that there is beauty only after the fix.
It sounds like the Islamic parable about the man who loses his camel, but spends all of his time looking for the rope.
Here's the deal: Like that young woman, our assumptions about spirituality and health and perfection need to be shattered. Literally. Shattered.
This is not easy. There is a price to be paid for such honesty. And we have to decide how conscious we want to be, and how much truth we can take. Because the doctor's wisdom is a significant paradigm shift: To be well is not just to get rid of disease, but to waken or resurrect a person who has become soul-dead.
There is a memorable scene in the movie JAWS, when the local sheriff is chumming for the great white shark, and it appears--raising out of the water--out of nowhere. The shark is larger and more terrifying than the crew had imagined, and they are dumbstruck. The sheriff says carefully, "We're going to need a bigger boat."
I get it. But in end I want a bigger boat to eliminate the impediments, or irritation.
But what if the bigger boat is about the deeper knowledge St. Francis of Assisi speaks of: The permission to see God in all things? What if there is beauty deep inside the hives?
I'll be the first to admit that this is not easy to swallow. After all, I was weaned on a God who didn't take to kindly to imperfection.
I relate to Wade Rouse's admission, "It was my time to look God in the eye. I had already spent much of life trying to avoid direct eye contact with God--like I did country dogs that people kept chained to a post all winter--worried that He would see into my soul, see my darkest secrets, know that I was thinking, and want to rip me apart."
'Tis true. The God of my youth is a tough audience, especially when perfection is the goal.
A disciple of Rabbi Menachem-Mendel complained: "I come from Rizhin. There, everything is simple, everything is clear. I prayed and I knew I was praying; I studied and I knew I was studying. Here in Kotzk everything is mixed up, confused; I suffer from it. Please help me so I can pray and study as before. Please help me to stop suffering."
Menachem-Mendel replied: "And who ever told you that God is interested in your studies and your prayers? And what if he preferred your tears and your suffering?"
In contradiction to a world that honors beauty as perfection, we miss the gift of the here and now.
What if spirituality is about here and now, with all of the passions, and the imperfections?
What would it mean to embrace the self--THIS SELF--as imperfect, peculiar, ambiguous, and exquisitely human?
What about the hives? No doubt we want them to go away. But here's the paradox.
You cannot change anything until you can love it. You cannot love anything until you know it. And you cannot know anything until you are willing to embrace it.
Yesterday, I spent a morning with a group in Suquamish, Washington. We talked about what it means to live with soft hearts, and how the culture is bound and determined to tell us it's not worth our while. We agreed that this spirituality is not about a lottery ticket to the next life, but a front-row-center ticket to this one. This life, with its yammering pain-in-the-neck obligations and disquieting hives. This life, where once in awhile, just for a minute, you stop what you are doing and watch the clouds roll through the northern sky, a conveyor belt of fleece. The wind is out of the southwest, filling your lungs, and you catch a glimpse of a blue heron, gliding like a javelin across the sky.
The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. Maya Angelou
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Poems and Prayers
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
CS Lewis
Reverence
The air vibrated
with the sound of cicadas
on those hot Missouri nights after sundown
when the grown-ups gathered on the wide back lawn,
sank into their slung-back canvas chairs
tall glasses of iced tea beading in the heat
and we sisters chased fireflies
reaching for them in the dark
admiring their compact black bodies
their orange stripes and seeking antennas
as they crawled to our fingertips
and clicked open into the night air.
In all the days and years that have followed,
I don't know that I've ever experienced
that same utter certainty of the goodness of life
that was as palpable
as the sound of the cicadas on those nights:
my sisters running around with me in the dark,
the murmur of the grown-ups' voices,
the way reverence mixes with amazement
to see such a small body
emit so much light.
Julie Cadwallader-Staub
(Friends Journal. ©Religious Society of Friends)
Loving God we offer you
Every flower that ever grew
Every bird that ever flew
Every wind that ever blew
Every thunder rolling
Every Church bell tolling
Every leaf and sod
Every wave that ever moved
Every heart that ever loved
Every river dashing
Every cloud that swept o'er the skies
Every human joy and woe
Watch over us today as we strive to understand your word of love
Amen
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Be Inspired
Caine's Arcade
Gabriella's Song (From As it is in Heaven)
Love Hurts -- Nazareth
FAVORITES from Last Week:
60 Minutes -- Music in the Congo
Northern Exposure -- Northern Lights
Terry -- Life as a journey
Andrea Bocelli -- Dare to Live
Mayo Clinic Older Couple Piano Duet
Change your words, change your world
Ben Comen Story
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Notes from Terry
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