Author: itoccurstocp

In my meanderings today I read this from Omid Safi:

“I fail often. We fail often.
I fail in moving towards the kind of human being that I want to become.
I fail in getting to the gym.
I fail in living the true meaning of these very words here.

Life has detours
And along the detours I have met wondrous friends,
Unanticipated experiences.

The breaking of the heart along the way
has brought a healing
and I am the combination of the wound and the healing.”

Two lines struck me here.

That last line resounded with me – “I am the combination of the wound and the healing.”  Encompassed in that is the thought, the reality, that I am the combination of my success and the failure, my wins and my losses, my joy and sadness, my “good,” my “not so good” and my “bad.”  Try as I may, desire as I might, they are me, they make me.  I of course have some say over just how they make me.  What happens to and around me is the raw material I have to work with in creating me.

The other line, however, is more subtle but seems even more powerful – “unanticipated experiences.”  I may seem like wordsmithing, but it occurs to me that “unanticipated experience” reflects an attitude, a desire, as Samuel Beckett said, to “fail better,” a desire to see things that don’t go my way, don’t go as I planned, not as failures but as opportunities.  That is, perhaps the bumper sticker should not be “Shit Happens” but “Unexpected Experiences Happen.”  When an election does not go as I had planned, I could move to Canada, but I could also sit tight and “fail better” right here – plus, I am not a huge fan of snowbound winters.

In his sermon today our priest spoke of beginnings and endings, and of the recent election.  In doing so he said something that I’ll paraphrase here, but I believe I have the gist correct.

Regardless of what you think of Hillary or Trump, remember that the people who voted for each are neither Hillary of Trump.  Each voter casted a vote for his or her own reasons.

It occurs to me that this is a good place to start the healing process.  Yes, one could move to Canada, and while it might address individual concerns, it does not resolve the issue – besides, it gets really cold there.  No, the starting point, and perhaps this can be done now that “win or lose” of the election is over, is to try to listen and understand what those individual concerns were and are that cause(d) people to support Trump or Hillary, or neither.

In still coming to grips with the recent election results I revisited an old favorite —  Show the Way by David Wilcox:

“Look – if someone wrote the play, just to glorify what’s stronger than hate,

Would they not arrange the stage, to look as if the hero came too late

Almost in defeat, looking like the evil side will win

So on the edge of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins

It is love the mixed the mortar, it is love that stacked these stones

It is love that built the stage here, though it looks like we’re alone

In this dream set in shadows, like the night is here to stay

There is evil cast around us, but its love that wrote the play

And in this darkness, love will show the way”

Indeed, love will show the way.  It is not always apparent when, or how, nor does love show the way on my time schedule — but it will show the way.

Today Oswald Chambers has much to say about surrender.  Much is difficult to read, much less contemplate and type onto a page.  This snippet will have to suffice:

“I have to learn that the aim in life is God’s, not mine….  When I stop telling God what I want, He can catch me up for what he wants without let or hindrance.”

It occurs to me that letting go is, at the same time, the most difficult and the easiest thing I am called to do.

Is it just me or is there a lot of anxiety in the air?  Four lines came to mind this morning:

From Max Ehermann’s Desiderata:  “Do not distress yourself with imaginings.”

From Matthew 6:34:  “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”

From Bobby McFerrin: “Don’t worry.  Be happy.”

From Baz Luhman’s Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen): “Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.”

I’ll get some Double Bubble on the way to work this morning.

This practical advice today from Max Ehrman’s Desiderata:

“Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.  But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.”

I wrote recently about the concept of “disordered affections.”  It occurs to me that “heroism” is a reordering of affections to put someone/something in front of me.  So yes, rushing into a burning building is heroism, but so is smiling at the “Will Work for Food” guy on the corner, regardless of whether or not you hand him a dollar.  So is donating money I could spend on myself, or spending time working for this or that good cause.   So is showing up.  So is listening when I want to speak.  So is staying when I want to leave….

Indeed, life IS “full of heroism” – really full.

In reading Oswald Chambers I am often dragged reluctantly back to my days in Catholic school with the nuns – like they dragged us around (only when they were pissed at us) by the collars (if we were lucky) or the hair or ears.  The message, to a young boy, seemed to always be about suffering, about Jesus on the cross.  Today is an example as Chambers entitles today’s reading “Partakers Of His Sufferings” and writes:

“In the history of the Christian Church the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; men have sought to procure the carrying out of God’s order by a short cut of their own.  God’s way is always the way of suffering, the way of the ‘long, long trail.’”

It is easy to see how the perception is that Christianity needs a new marketing strategy.

But seriously, I’ve now had more than a few decades of reflection and see Chambers has a point (the nuns likely did too, but their methodology remains questionable).  But to Chambers’ point – I am guilty as charged.  Who wants to spend time at the foot of the cross?  (The question is, of course, rhetorical, as the only company Jesus had there were two thieves who had no choice and Roman Centurions who had to be there.)  I would rather take the short cut directly to the post-resurrection Jesus, or at least to the pre-resurrection Jesus that strolled the holy land dispensing knowledge and performing miracles. It occurs to me that all that means is that I want God, but on my terms.  But in all this I am reminded of a sermon my friend Sid Gervais once gave where he noted that people fussed at him because they believed he preached too much about the cross and not enough about redemption.  (Sid, I am paraphrasing; forgive me.)  His response was direct and to the point – we have to preach about crucifixion, about the cross, otherwise, redemption has no meaning.

Sid is right, of course, as is Chambers.  Still, I’ll likely keep looking for shortcuts.  I suspect God knows and even expects that.  I am not the first, and won’t be the last.  So He’ll sow ample grace in my path while He redirects me back to His.

From Oswald Chambers My Utmost for His Highest today:

“Is He going to help Himself to us, or are we taken up with our conception of what we are going to be?”

It occurs to me that the simpler the question, the more complicated the answer.  But saying that, I recognize the source of the complication.

Today brings one of my favorite sections in Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest.  Chambers writes: “My personal life may be crowded with small petty incidents, altogether unnoticeable and mean: but if I obey Jesus Christ in the haphazard circumstances, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God.”

It is easy to try and focus on some grand scheme I have worked out in my head, schemes and plans full of me, and to insist that everything play out as I have planned it.  God, of course, gets a good chuckle out of that.  For what I am called to do is “obey God in the haphazard circumstances” laid in front of me.  I am called to not rant about the person at work who frustrates me, but listen a bit longer to hear what they are saying.    I am called to listen to those whose culture, upbringing, ideas and views are different than mine.  I am called, sometimes, to just sit back and observe, not to step up and deal with.   If I do that, those “haphazard circumstances” can “become pinholes through which I see the face of God.”  It occurs to me that I can see a lot through those pinholes.