That space between

This morning, having finished Befriending Life, I sat down with a stack of books, planning to read a bit from each to see what called to me.  (And the winner is...) Henri Nouwen's Genesee Diary hooked me from its first paragraphs; clearly I am hungering (again) for a taste of the monastic life. After having read the first chapter or so, I sat down to meditate and found my time absorbed in questions around simplicity -- how can I achieve a more satisfyingly monastic lifestyle -- but heavily leavened with "what am I supposed to be doing here?"

Part of that is because the other three books were about linking contemplation and art; I found myself asking, "Why are you not publishing books?  Why are you not out speaking and giving workshops?"  And I'm asking because I just applied last night for another marketing job.  I'm sure the appeal of the monastic life, for me, at this point in my own life, is the thought that, supported in a monastery, I wouldn't feel this pressure to earn money; I could just be a blogger and photographer and spend my spare time in prayer and reading...

Part of the appeal of Henri Nouwen's work, of course, is that, like Thomas Merton, he, too struggled mightily with the tension between his longing for silence, solitude, and contemplation and the conflicting longing for attention and self-expression.  I think I have to just trust that it's that tension that feeds my writing and my art, and learn to live in that space between.  It's a bit like this picture, I think: all the juiciness lives in the space between, at the intersection between the earthiness of the fields and the airiness of the sky.

Speaking of such things, I loved these charming words from Nouwen, written at the end of his first week in the monastery:

"I'd better start thinking a little more about my attitude toward work.  If I have learned anything this week, it is that there is a contemplative way of working that is more important for me than praying, reading, or singing.  Most people think that you go to the monastery to pray.  Well, I prayed more this week than before, but also discovered that I have not learned yet to make the work of my hands into a prayer."

That's the challenge of living the contemplative life, isn't it: how can we become more conscious while walking through our daily tasks?  How can we make the work of our hands a prayer?

Keepers of possibility

Well, the one thing we all know is this: just because WE go away, doesn't mean our TO-DO list goes away.  So after a restful alone time I am back in the thick of things; prepping for exhibits-to-come and working on a number of projects for my husband. 

Meditation time this morning -- already delayed because he awoke when I did, and we had a lot of catching up to do related to these projects -- was twice interrupted after he left, so I decided it just wasn't going to happen today, although I did at least get to finish the Henri Nouwen book I've been reading, Befriending Life.

So then when I sat down to blog, the images that arose all had this rushing quality -- lots of lights disappearing into the distance, things flashing by, disappearing perspectives...  I finally settled on this one, which, though it has similar qualities, is at least about fields instead of traffic.

What's throwing me off a bit, I think, is that with this new technique the original image doesn't actually need to be in focus any more.  Which means I can't do the automatic discard of un-focused images I used to do: if I'm trying to cull through a set of new images, I have to be aware that (thanks to the wizardry of Photoshop) weak compositions can be strengthened, low contrast can be heightened, dull colors can be sharpened, sloping horizons can be straightened, and now even focus can be repaired.  So all these decisions have become much harder to make, and require a certain amount of experimentation to investigate.

It's a bit like the difference between the harsh fundamentalism of my youth and the broad ecumenism I now espouse, or like the development of compassion and tolerance: it's no longer clear what has the potential for value -- everything has possibilities.  But that's so time-consuming, to pay that kind of attention to what's going on around us -- especially when there's so much information out there. Which, I suspect, is why corporations let computers do the initial culling-through and rejecting of resumes: every employee has potential, but there are so many applicants that it's just too much trouble to take the time to explore the possibilities, so they automatically drop them from the pile of possibles if the experience isn't an exact match, or the age is too young, or too old.

Maybe (she said, upon hearing that yet another organization was curtailing its art/communications budget) that's the function of art and artists: perhaps we artists exist to bring awareness to the forgotten, the ordinary, the less-than-perfect aspects of existence; to remind people of all the other possibilities in the world.  And if we are disappearing from the corporate or community landscape, what else, what other potential is being lost?

On prayer and brokenness

“The thing prayer has taught me is that I’m loved. Even though sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that, I’ve found that there is a place where it’s really, really safe and welcoming, and I can really be my broken self. There is a safe place, and that’s in prayer. I can’t bring all of my brokenness to any one place in this physical world, but I can bring it to prayer. And I can let go, and still know that I’m loved. And that, I think, is the essence of what Henri tried to teach me.” -- Lorenzo Sforza-Cesarini, speaking of Henri Nouwen in Befriending Life

“After Henri met Anton Boisen, founder of the clinical pastoral counseling movement, he wrote of how Boisen’s ‘deep wound had become a source of beauty in which even the weaknesses seem to give light.’ … The wounded healer becomes a transparent icon, a window through which we can see who we are and why we are.” -- George Strohmeyer, in Befriending Life

I’m up on Shaw, just for a day, and went out this morning with my camera; somehow the beauty here never ceases to amaze me. For some reason I find this shot of the ferry leaving the island very moving, but I think it’s because I’ve been spending my time here carrying my goodbyes and losses and other broken bits into prayer.

I’ve been listening to a series of lectures by Pema Chodron on getting unstuck, and one thing she said particularly resonated: it’s that everything that arises during meditation is fresh, and the essence of realization. As a regular practitioner of Centering Prayer, I have this tendency to believe I need to step away from what arises and go back to center. So to honor what arises in this way is quite lovely.

Making a decision to accept and honor what arises somehow makes meditation feel closer to prayer; somehow makes it more acceptable to be me, to carry all that I am into that meditation space and lay it before God. So then, reading the first quote above, I found myself thinking, Oh, I could bring that broken part of me into meditation? I don’t have to leave it behind or shut it down when it speaks up?

And of course the second quotation confirms and expands that, saying that our wounded and broken places have value, and have a gift to offer the rest of the world; that they allow us to become another window into divine truth.

And so I can look at the ferry, leaving, and allow it to be a symbol without asking any more or less of either myself or the image. I can just feel, let the feelings arise, and that’s okay. And I can share it with you without shame, just allow it to be what it is for you – which might be something completely different than what it brings up for me.

I’m liking the openness in that.

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Making space, making time

This charming winged foot was created by Michael Alfano; it was another of the treasures we found in the sculpture garden at the Millbrook Gallery in Concord, NH.

It seems an appropriate symbol for the sort of rushing around phenomenon, that restless busy-ness that gets in the way of our spiritual lives.  As I wrestled this morning with some decisions around that conflict -- whether to take off for 24 hours of alone time or to get caught up in the growing pile of to-dos here, I appreciated these words from Henri Nouwen:

"The spiritual life demands a discipline of the heart.  Discipline is the mark of a disciple of Jesus.  That doesn't mean, however, making things difficult for yourself, but making available the inner space where God can touch you with an all-transforming love.  We human beings are so faint-hearted that we have a lot of trouble leaving an empty space empty.  We like to fill it all up with ideas, plans, duties, tasks, and activities.

It strikes me increasingly just how hard-pressed people are nowadays.  It's as though they're tearing about from one emergency to another.  Never solitary, never still, never really free but always busy about something that just can't wait.  ...The more agitated we are, and the more compacted our lives become, the more difficult it is to keep a space where God can let something truly new take place.

The discipline of the heart helps us to let God into our hearts so that God can become known to us there, in the deepest recesses of our own being.  This is not so easy to do; we like to be master in our own house and don't want to admit that our house is God's house too." (from Letters to Mark about Jesus)

I've decided to set the to-do's aside and re-schedule a few appointments.  It's time to create a little space in my heart...

Hope in a stone

While sitting in the coffee shop of a bookstore in Manchester, Vermont, I decided to check my email and found there an announcement of great import regarding my former bishop.

The announcement was shocking, not because of what it said about my bishop ("a credible allegation of recurrent marital infidelity") -- I'd been aware of his activities for some time -- but because the church had actually moved to discipline him.

Part of my disaffection with the church over these last 15 years or so has been the sense that the hierarchy has a tendency to protect its own; that the clergy are not always held to standards that reflect what I believe to be the values Christ espoused.  And of course my views on my bishop's behaviors -- and his tendency to protect other clergy behaviors in the diocese -- were significantly less tolerant due to my own experiences of recurrent marital infidelity (in a former marriage, not this one); I know first-hand what that feels like to a wife, and have perhaps less sympathy for those of God's creatures who venture into this realm, and for those who close ranks to protect them.

So it was curious, indeed, to walk out of the coffee shop with this new information and see before me in the walkway the words on this granite slab.  I have for some time known that marriage vows do not appear to be written in stone, that the 10 commandments do not appear to have been written in stone, and that the laws of our country and community are not written in stone: in most of these cases the rules seem to become more flexible for those who have power and money.

Knowing such things can make you cynical; it sometimes takes considerable effort to remain upbeat and optimistic about faith and the human condition.  I am thankful that, over the years, I have found great solace in meditation and study, but I have consciously held myself somewhat apart from faith communities for fear my cynicism might leak.  And that has been challenging:  I've missed the connection and innocent optimism inherent in church community involvement.

But it was surprising to note that I had assumed "the church hierarchy protects its own" was pretty much written in stone.  And, understanding that, I am intrigued to see that, for me, this message has shifted from one of discouragement to one of hope.  Perhaps things are not, as so many people tell me, "going to hell in a handbasket."  I'm not certain where this takes me, or if, in fact, it will have any lasting effect on me.  But I am determined to pay attention to my responses; to remain conscious and alert to any shifts that may occur in my faith as a result.  Because a little glimmer of hope would be lovely.

When Calling includes Entertainment

"I travel here and there giving talks, make people feel safe or excited, and help them come to terms with their feelings of loss, failure, and anguish, as well as their feelings of growth, success, and joy. Am I -- like circus people -- an entertainer?  Do I try to hold people up in between the many fragmented moments of their lives and give them a glimpse of "the beyond?"  

It fascinates me that the word entertainment comes from the latin words inter (between) and tenere (to hold.)  What's wrong with being an entertainer?  Isn't Jesus the greatest of all entertainers?  Isn't he holding people up in a life that constantly wants to go flat?  Didn't Jesus come from another world and travel from place to place to let people look up for a moment and relize that there is more to life than they might have thought?"
 -- Henri Nouwen, in the New Oxford Review, June 1993

I suspect that the edginess I get around the possibility of entertainment has to do with the fine line between entertainment and marketing, and the other, even finer, line between marketing and selling.  Yes, the great televangelists have been consummate entertainers.  But where that goes wrong is when they use that charisma to get money for themselves.  Politicians must also be entertainers, aware of how they present, aware of what their audience wants and needs to hear.  But where that goes wrong is when they use that charisma to put money or favors into the hands of special interests -- including their own. 

And yet the circus performer, the spiritual director, the council candidate, the artist and the farmer all need to draw attention to themselves if they are to support themselves and succeed at what they do.  So doesn't that mean they need, at some level, to be entertainers; to promote their work and draw attention to it; to spell out the essence of what they offer? 

It's a conundrum.  I'm thinking the only way we can stay on the right side of those fine lines is to be intentionally, constantly, present and conscious; always asking for discernment: Is this right?  Is this good?  What is my goal; what am I attempting to achieve?  Who benefits?  How could I strive for a better balance here?  What am I really offering?  And how am I being called to utilize my existing gifts and resources?

Grace

Isn't this a glorious sculpture?  Her name is Grace; she was sculpted by an artist named Liz Fletcher, and we found her at the Millbrook Gallery in Concord, NH, on our way down to visit friends in Boston.

I think we all know what grace feels like in our lives, but I've rarely seen it as beautifully captured as it is here.  And if I am -- now back in the Northwest -- to look back over my time in New England, it seems clear (despite occasional torrential rains and other minor challenges) it was a time infused with grace.

The beauty of the landscapes, the serendipity of finding dear friends available when stopping by unannounced, of beautiful works of art and unexpectedly moving times with family, of delicious dinners and rich conversations with both friends and strangers... everywhere we looked, there was grace, and I feel incredibly blessed to have had such a wonderful time.