In his mid 20s, my friend Doug had a good gig. While attending Duke Divinity School he--"amazingly" in his words--landed a summer field assignment at a small interdenominational chapel in Topsail Beach, NC. His duties? Spending a few hours of structured programs five days a week and a few more hours simply giving time to young people, however he chose. So whether water skiing or digging clams or fishing or swimming or sailing with them, Doug was doing his job. (Yes he loved it. Yes he was paid for this. Yes, many years later, he still finds this very hard to believe.) Not surprisingly, Doug did not turn down repeat invitations for summers that followed.
During those academic years and in the years following seminary, he worked on Capitol Hill (a "Church and Society Internship" program), joined the staff of a large church, and became the United Methodist campus minister at UNC-Greensboro. Fortunately, those jobs left his summers relatively free to return to Topsail Beach.
Like many of us when young, Doug pursued his ministry with fervor and passion-including involvement in numerous "saving the city" efforts in Greensboro, and a part of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries-focusing on efforts to "save the world."
"Along the way, while saving the world," Doug tells me, "I lost any sense of the prior need to 'save myself.'"
He tells me about a conversation with a therapist friend (whom he had written off as a hedonist, but someone with enough psychological wisdom to merit seeking his advice about free-floating guilt), "What's wrong with me that all I want to do is hang out at the beach?" Doug asked.
"Maybe what's wrong with you," the friend answered, "is that you don't let yourself do it."
I can relate.
You know: be there when you are there (except for the times you have somewhere more urgent to be).
There is something slightly muddled when we don't merit our own invitation to the present moment.
And yes, there are many reasons why.
We say yes when we mean no.
We say no when we mean yes.
We apologize when we don't mean it.
And when overcome with joy or delight or sadness, we restrict our heart, not sure if we can handle the abundance.
In my first visit with my Spiritual Director 33--years ago (bear in mind that I had no notion of what a Spiritual Director did, save that I was told it would be good for me to have one), I drove to Valyermo, a Benedictine Abbey in Southern California's high desert. My Spiritual Director and I walked and talked for a while--perhaps 40 minutes or so--and it occurred to me that there was something about the conversation not quite right. And then it hit me. He never once asked what I did for a living, or whom I knew, or what I'd accomplished, or even my last name. We talked about the desert and the cool evenings and the rabbits that emerge from the scrub at dusk light searching for food, and the monastic offices (the times for daily prayer).
He stopped, and said, "Terry, I like you. I'm really glad you are here."
And I said, "That's nice, but you can't do that to me. You can't just like me."
(Otherwise, what's the point in trying to be impressive?)
The opposite of self-compassion is not self-hatred (although many carry that DNA), but the absence of mindfulness.
To be mindful means that I stop resisting reality (whether it is sadness or delight or joy or grief), because compassion can hold the experience in nonjudgmental awareness.
In other words, it is about an invitation to this moment without all the addendums (or explanations, or justifications, or excuses, or apologies).
Self-compassion is about making space.
It's one thing to talk about self-compassion; it is another to "do" something about it. Perhaps that's the lesson here. There are no techniques because self-compassion is not about doing.
Invited to guest preach at another parish, Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor asked the priest, "What do you want me to talk about?"
"Come tell us what is saving your life now," he told her.
Taylor writes, "I did not have to say correct things that were true for everyone. I did not have to use theological language that conformed to the historical teachings of the church. All I had to do was figure out what my life depended on. All I had to do was figure out how I stayed as close to that reality as I could, and then find some way to talk about it that helped my listeners figure out those same things for themselves." (An Altar in the World)
Self-compassion is about saving your life.
This is not an easy thing to do when our identity is attached to so many restrictions.
When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.
Pema Chodron
And to be honest, we're not so sure we want to go there.
My pedigree is good. Raised in religious environment and trained in religious colleges and seminaries, I came well equipped to see the world the "right" way. But at the age of twenty-five, I became an ordained protestant clergyman, the fulfillment of a lifelong call: that thorny mixture of skill, desire, and parental pressure (which began its germination at the age of four in my case, when I was prompted and paraded as the "preacher boy"--all of it heaped with lavish and addictive accolades). At the time, of course, it did not seem unforeseen. Molded from Calvinist clay, I knew my place in this world. And I knew the path expected of me. Life was as it should be: intact and well contained. I pursued my calling with a vengeance. And there is no doubt that I was a success. The bigger the church, the bigger the crowd. The bigger the crowd, the greater the applause. The greater the applause, the bigger the plaques to hang on my office walls. And the preacher boy grew up, and made good.
There is one caveat. To find success doesn't necessarily mean that you gain health. We go about our merry and hectic way, accumulating and weighing, measuring and posturing, hoping that the balance sheet of life judges us with kindness. Until that one day when you look into the mirror and ask yourself, "Why?" and you decide then and there to set about reclaiming that which has been lost-namely, you.
I do know this. I did not set out to find answers, health, the good life, or even God. I did not "set out" at all. I know only that my soul felt malnourished. Then one day I found myself in the garden, and quite without fanfare, the journey began.
Joseph Campbell says that we must "have a room, or a certain hour (or so) a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be... if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen."
What is saving you today?
Or, where is your sacred place?
This is non-negotiable.
Here's the deal:
We do not go there merely to fulfill an obligation.
We do not go there just to be a good person.
We do not go there to impress people we know.
We go there because if we don't go, we lose a part of our soul.
For me, it is my garden.
On the patio, I watch the birds bicker about rights to the feeders, and some avoid the skirmish thinking time is better served bathing in the stream. The roses have ended their first pageant and some of the vibrant summer perennials have begun their showcase--including Crocosmia Lucifer, a fire-engine red. But my mind is still on my morning walk--a little past 5:30 a.m., not a car or soul or sound, except for the footsteps and the soft wing-beats of a bird 50 yards in front of me, gliding down the middle of the road (a wingspan over three feet, with some kind of prey in it's beak), flying only 4 feet off the ground. Straight toward me. I froze. Just before me as he veered into the trees and headed for a branch, his head swiveled and he looked at me, as if to say, "Walking kind of early aren't you?" I stood and watched (and cherished) this Barred Owl--my first ever sighting--until he decided it was time to begin his day, and he flew away.
Our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station?
You have to try to find it. Joseph Campbell
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