The long winter

It's been raining here for days on end -- for weeks and months, actually, and everyone I meet is tired of it, desperate for sun.  It still feels so much like winter -- heck, it was 35 degrees in the middle of the afternoon yesterday, and there was snow on the back of the car in front of me as I was driving across the bridge; we even had a frost last night, despite the cloud cover (thanks to the north wind that was pounding our beach again). 

This is just so NOT April in the Northwest, though we are awash in daffodils and (sadly) downed cherry blossoms, and the tulips are starting to raise their heads.  It's hard to believe Easter's only a few weeks away... harder, still, for many of us to keep our spirits up when sunshine and warmth seem only a distant memory.

But joy is there, I'm certain, as ready and eager to bloom in our hearts as those bright yellow lilac buds at the bottom of this photo.  The potential is always there; we just have a tendency to forget  how lovely life can be when the slog through the darkness gets overly long.

I love the opening lines of Joyce Rupp's "Springtime Prayer", from her book, Prayers to Sophia:

"O Dancer of Creation,
the earth awakens to an urgent call to grow.
In the hidden recesses of my wintered spirit
I, too, hear the humming of your voice,
calling me, wooing my deadness back to life."

I'm just not quite hearing the humming yet.  If I could command it, I'd say -- in the immortal words of Star Trek's Captain Picard -- Make it so!  But instead I just need to be patient and wait; to trust that change is in the wind... 

On mixing shoulds and vocation

The two layers in this image are from San Francisco; The "sails" are a piece of fabric that I found draped at the top of the stairwell in an Asian mini-mall; the sea and sky are the view from the Bay Bridge.

It felt, when I started, like they should go together, but just because they should doesn't mean they actually do, or that they have any particular value as a unit.

It reminds me a bit of something a nun said to me a long time ago, when I went in for spiritual direction about a very demanding job.  "Just because you're good at something, that doesn't mean you're supposed to be doing it."

She's the same nun who asked (when I complained about the demands of my job) how many hours I was being paid to work a week (35) and how many hours I was actually working (80) and then said, "Those other hours are all volunteer hours.  You can choose not to work those hours.  It's your choice."

It's all about the shoulds, isn't it.  These images should go together, but there's no passion in the combined result, so it doesn't really have much to offer.  When I was working, I thought because I COULD do something I SHOULD do it, but there was no passion in it, so it drained me.  And there were so many SHOULDS in the job, and they took so many hours to complete, that I was burning myself out and cheating my family.  But of course, I was working for the church at the time, so the shoulds were compounded by that old religious burden of trying to please and "serving the Lord."

But the truth is we aren't really serving the Lord -- or any higher purpose, for that matter -- if we are working out of shoulds and a sense of duty.  Which takes me to a note I received from one of my readers in response to last Saturday's post.  He said, "most of us spend too much time in trying to find "who I really am" than in giving God "what he really wants."

The challenge, of course, lies in figuring out what it IS that God "really wants."  And I don't have an easy answer to how you discern that path for yourself.  What I do know is that the first commandment is to LOVE God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength.  Which suggests that God is looking, not for a dutiful response, but a passionate response.

Yes, when we love, we take on tasks that we might not necessarily enjoy -- housekeeping and diaper-changing come to mind as clear examples of that.  But when we love, we are blessed, I think, with a deep desire to give the best of ourselves -- which I think, given my understanding of God, is what God really wants.  Because here's the thing: God loves us, too.  Passionately.

If in loving our own children, we wish the best for them -- love, health, happiness; jobs that are both challenging and fufilling... wouldn't it make sense that God would want that the same for us?

I was reading Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak a few days ago, and now that I see where this post is going it seems entirely appropriate to quote what he has to say about this very subject:

"The human self has a nature, limits as well as potentials.  If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you buildd with your life will be ungainly..."Faking it" in the service of high values is no virtue and has nothing to do with vocation.  It is an ignorant, sometimes arrogant, attempt to override one's nature, and it will always fail.


Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be.  As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks -- we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.  True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner asserts when he defines vocation as 'the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need.' "

So.  Where is that place for you?

Deeper waters to visit

I was doing some other reading for class this morning; hadn't yet tackled Richard Rohr's words for today when I came to my computer.

This was the image that caught my eye this morning; I confess I'm curious as to why.  But I opened Richard Rohr's Wondrous Encounters, and the heading for today's reading is this: "The Soul Needs Images and Imaging to "Know" Things."

And doesn't THAT sound promising!  So here I am reading Richard Rohr, and he talks about the healing power of imagery, and then water as a healing metaphor for divine abundance, and then he talks about Jesus mirroring a man's best self -- and how "such perfect mirroring also carries further relationship and responsibilities with it."

So how does any of that relate to this image?  Certainly there's water here.  And it's mirroring what appear to be two sticks.  But those numbers feel ominous to me; like those serial numbers tattooed onto the wrists of concentration camp survivors.  And the two sticks become cuts on another wrist I've seen, of a self-destructive teen...  But what is that red leaf?  And I see someone has taken the time to patch what must have been a broken place...

Why did I stop to photograph this, and why am I still staring at it?  Perhaps the image is to reassure us: that though there will always be cruelty and pain in the world, it can become the ground on which we stand and move to higher aspirations?  Perhaps it is an invitation to step beyond past hurts and betrayals into a brighter future? 

Back to Richard Rohr, after staring at this for a bit, I see his prayer for today is also an invitation:

"Healing God, give me the courage to move forward, and help me to see that my deepest sin might be my unwillingness to keep growing."

We could stop here.  We could get all caught up in ruminating on the challenges we've faced, or patting ourselves on the back for having come so far, for having patched things up, for having survived.  It's good, indeed, to take some time to breathe; to pause for a moment of rest and restoration.  But don't assume the journey's done: there are more paths to walk and deeper waters to visit...

Echoes of love

I'm pretty distracted this morning; having a little trouble staying on task.  My thoughts keep drifting off to my older daughter, who moved out over the weekend.  She just spent her first night in her new apartment in Seattle, and this morning she starts her new job.

It's kind of incredible, really -- that such huge transitions don't feel more seismic when they're happening.  It all seems sort of simple: she packed up her stuff, loaded up 3 cars worth, we made a couple of runs, carried things up a few stairs, took her out to dinner... and that's it.  After 24 years, the last 10 months living with us, she's off into the world, ready to support herself.

And as I sit here, staring at this picture of her playing with a neighbor's cat so long ago (a cat who looks remarkably like Alex, the cat she and I love so much now), I find myself haunted by a steady procession of images from her childhood...

There was a lovely bit in the Prayers of the People yesterday about caring for our children; knowing when to love and when to let go; when to hold them safe and when to release them into the world.  There's such an interesting tension there, and such a mix of feelings -- and so much love.  So much joy.  And I'm sure it's only an echo of how God feels watching us...

Which took me immediately to this ancient Doobie Brothers song, recorded before she was even born (ignore the comments, please):

Seeing with God's eyes

There's a wonderful line from First Corinthians that's been haunting me lately: "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."

I finished Desmond and Mpho Tutu's book, Made for Goodness, today, and I think I interpret that Corinthians passage differently now.  Today it feels like we see ourselves, and our relationship to God, only dimly; we do not realize the intensity of the love and affection God feels for us.  And those aspects of ourselves which are dimmed by societal pressures -- or internal pressures -- to be other than who we are; those aspects, those gifts are so clear in God's eyes...

The Tutus ask us to imagine being looked at with love.  Even if we've never experienced that look, we've seen it on other faces -- mothers looking at their adored children; young lovers gazing into each others' eyes... 

Now imagine that God looks at us that way ALL THE TIME.  That is how precious we are.

And now ask yourself: if I knew I was THAT PRECIOUS; if I could feel the intensity of that love, a love that sees into the very heart of me and knows me and knows what I am capable of -- both good and bad -- what would I do differently today?

The book ends with a long and wonderful poem:

You are my child,
My beloved.
With you I am well pleased.
Stand beside me and see yourself,
Borrow my eyes so you can see perfectly.
When you look with my eyes then you will see
That the wrong you have done
and the good left undone,
The words you have said that should not have been spoken
The words you should have spoken but left unsaid,
The hurs you have caused,
Teh help you've not given
Are not the whole of the story of you.
You are not defined by what you did not achieve.
Your worth is not determined by success.
You were priceless before you drew your first breath,
Beautiful before dress or artifice,
Good at the core.

And now is time for unveiling
The goodness that is hidden behind the fear of failing.
You shout down your impulse to kindness
in case it is shunned,
You suck in your smile,
You smother your laughter,
You hold back the hand that would help.
You crush your indignation
When you see people wronged or in pain
In case all you can do is not enough,
In case you cannot fix the fault,
In case you cannot soothe the searing, 
In case you cannot make it right.
What does it matter if you do not make it right?
What does it matter
if your efforts move no mountains?
It matters not at all.
It only matters that you live the truth of you.
It only matters that you push back the veil
to let your goodness shine through.
It only matters that you live as I have made you.
It only matters that you are made for me,
Made like me,
Made for goodness.

Listen, my friends.  And believe.

And -- knowing and believing you are this good and this loved, what will you do differently today?

Some days it's not all that clear

There's something about this series of images -- which I've been working on for a couple of years now -- that still really appeals to me; something about the way they are both stark and subtle; crisp and still a bit mystical...

Which is probably a metaphor for how I approach... faith? Religion? Spirituality?  I am uncomfortable with all of those words, which just don't seem to describe what is real for me about that mystical presence that inspires my readings and writings in the realm of Buddhism and Christianity.

And then there's the language around prayer, centering prayer, and meditation, which also seems fraught with pre-conceptions.

And here I am: it's Lent, and I've vowed to spend this time exploring Desmond Tutu and Richard Rohr, and the language they both use is very, well... Christian.  And even though I love what they have to say, I feel it pulling me from my own center, which, though I clearly operate from a Christian perspective, is somewhere a little less... defined.

So my writings here have been feeling a little preachy.  And the images have been more consciously chosen.  Which feels like I'm being more cerebral than usual, and I'd prefer to be operating out of a more intuitive space.

But just when I think, this stuff is throwing me off, I need to steep myself in some Jack Kornfield or something, I read something like this from Desmond Tutu:  "When we listen to the voice of God in prayer... we hear the voice of one who sees and loves the already of us.  We hear the voice of one who knows and loves the not yet of our being."

I can't say I've heard this voice all that often.  But I have heard it, and I know how it makes me feel.  That voice he is describing is unquestionably that same mystical presence that informs my work.  It seems very clear at times, and yet mostly... well, fuzzy; hard to see, or hear, or define...

And so I'm learning to trust that it's all okay: okay sometimes to be preachy, okay to drift back and forth across the line between these two extraordinary faiths, okay to be Christian one month and Buddhist the next, to be clear one minute and utterly confused in the next.  It's all good -- the important thing is to stay mindful and keep honoring the presence, however defined or undefined it proves to be from one day to the next.

And of course Richard Rohr's prayer for today is a perfect response to all of this:


"Merciful God, all I can give you, and all you ever want, is who I really am."

... and if some days that's not all that clear, well, that's okay, too.

Rooted in fear, grounded in love

This morning Desmond Tutu confirmed something I have long suspected: most everything negative we humans are capable of -- greed, laziness, rage, jealousy -- is rooted in fear.  "We hoard and overspend against the fear we will not have enough... we procrastinate lest we prove to be incapable... We get enraged rather than admit that we are confused, hurt, worried, inadequate.


Next time you are angry with your spouse or partner," he goes on, "ask yourself, "What am I afraid of?" 

Why is it important that we understand this notion?  Because as long as we can't face those fears, they have a way of looming over us.  If we can name them, though, they have a way of becoming manageable.  Not only that, but we get better at recognizing them in others -- which makes it easier to understand and forgive.

The truth, he says, is that there will always be enough: enough love, enough material things, enough applause -- more than enough to go around for all of us to flourish.    "But for us to engage in the practices that will ensure that we all prosper, we must come to know that each of us is linked in the chain of our common humanity.  God dwells in each of us."

Which is the lesson at the heart of our Lenten readings for today in Richard Rohr's Wondrous Encounters:  "'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And the second is like unto this: Love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12: 29 - 31)


If we understand that chain of humanity; if we can comprehend that God dwells in each of us, then we know that to honor and love God is to love and honor one another; that the two commandments are truly inseparable.  When on hearing the commandments a student responds, "To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices,"  Jesus affirms the importance of his understanding, saying, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

That fear which drives us to hurt one another: I believe it could actually go away if we could really grasp this concept; if we could finally and completely understand that God's uniting presence resides permanently in each of us; that nothing can separate us from that empowering and fulfilling love.

I'm not there yet.  But I can at least begin to comprehend the awe expressed in Rohr's prayer for today:

"One God, you make all things one.  Even my own heart, and even one with the hearts of others, and most unbelievably one with yours."

I am coming to know this -- at least in part.  I pray that someday this understanding will be more deeply rooted in me; more deeply rooted even than fear.  Actually, maybe that means I'm working toward becoming grounded: grounded in love.