Author: itoccurstocp

A riff on my earlier note on Howard Thurman in Meditations of the Heart:

Thy shalt love:

              Thy God – “I shall not waste any effort trying to reduce God to my particular logic.”

Thy neighbor – “I shall study how I may be tender without being soft; gracious without being ingratiating; kind without being sentimental and understanding without being judgmental.”

Thyself – “I must have no attitude toward myself that contributes to my own delinquency.”

“I shall not waste any effort trying to reduce God to my particular logic.”  Boy, that’s the starting point of a lot of trouble, isn’t it – “reduc[ing] God to my particular logic.”  Underlying that thought, of course, are two thoughts – 1) that I can in fact understand God, 2) that I can understand how you understand God.  And those two conclusions somehow seem to lead to a third – having reduced God to my own logic and perceiving that I understand how you have reduced God to your own logic, I come (not surprisingly) to the conclusion that I am correct and you are wrong.  Wars have been fought on this. 

What comes to mind here is one of my favorite Anne Lamott quotes: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”  I do struggle a bit with the “waste of time” part.  Much can be learned from that effort.  But the problem is not in the effort so much as in the conclusion that I have in fact “cracked the nut” and have God all figured out. That’s when the trouble starts.

Such beautiful writing and wisdom from Howard Thurman in Meditations of the Heart, particularly in light of Valentine’s Day approaching:

Thy shalt love:

Thy God – “I shall not waste any effort trying to reduce God to my particular logic.”

Thy neighbor – “I shall study how I may be tender without being soft; gracious without being ingratiating; kind without being sentimental and understanding without being judgmental.”

Thyself – “I must have no attitude toward myself that contributes to my own delinquency.”

Photo taken of our kitchen sink at home.

Back today, thanks to Anthony DeMello in Awareness, to a recurring theme:

“We see people and things not as they are but as we are.  That is why when two people look at something or someone, you get two different reactions.  We see things and people not as they are, but as we are.”

Seems like infallible logic to me, particularly given that the principle is supported by the sage wisdom of Brad Paisley in I’m Still a Guy”

“When you see a deer you see Bambi, I see antlers up on a wall.

When you see a lake you think picnics and I see a largemouth up under that log….

When you see a classic French painting, I see a drunk, naked girl.

You think that ridin’ a wild bull sounds crazy, but I’d like to give it a whirl.”

Two people, two different perceptions/reactions.  That is not, of course, an inherent problem – people can and do see things differently.  However, conflict can arise when (hypothetically speaking, of course) when (not if, when) one person insists that his/her perception/reaction is the correct one, and in fact the only correct one (think “fake news” and “alternative facts”).  That is where the trouble starts, the trouble being directly proportional to the insistence.

The grace in all this hides in the problem itself.  If I see things as I am, it follows that when I change, it changes how I see things.  Or as DeMello puts it: “The day you are different, they will become different.  And you will see them differently too.”

Miraculously, it is the same for everyone. 

Howard Thurman writes today about “the nourishment of the Great Exposure.”  A nice phrase, no – the “Great Exposure.”

“We are surrounded every day by the exposure to sudden and devastating calamity. Despite all efforts to the contrary, there is no device by which we might get immunity from the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.’”  Granted, some may seem to by and large escape the more outrageous misfortunes, some not, yet my experience is that I am not only a poor judge of my own misfortunes, and perhaps more so (if I perceive them at all) the misfortunes of others.  As Thurman puts it: “Life is vulnerable – always there is the exposed flank.”  This is where I hear Thurman offering the “good news/bad news” conundrum: “It is the way of life that it be nourished and sustained by the constant threat, the sudden rending.” 

I am reminded here of Coleman Bank’s translation of Rumi’s The Guest House:

A joy, a depression, a meanness

Some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor

Welcome and entertain them all

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be cleaning you out for some new delight.

In his book, Awareness, DeMello writes about the four steps to wisdom. (I know, you’d think it takes more than four!)  Step four relates to changes, and his analogy is quite good. 

So you have an ailment and get your neighbor (who you don’t care much for, but is your only option) to take you to the doctor.  Sitting in the examination room with your doctor and neighbor you explain all the symptoms.  The doctor listens patiently, then hands you a prescription.  As you get up to leave you note than the prescription has been made out for your neighbor, not you.  So you ask your doctor how he expects you to get better by your neighbor taking the prescription, to which your doctor replies – “Exactly.”

All of which points to step four – most of the change that needs to occur in order to attain wisdom (or happiness, or such) is on me, not them.  As DeMello puts it: “We always want someone else to change so that we will feel good….  You are the one who needs to change, who needs to take the medicine.”

Howard Thurman suggests in Meditations of the Heart: “Every judgment is self-judgment.”  Those absolutes always bother me (pun intended).  Still, he has a point.  Later, he puts it in a more acceptable (less absolute) format: “What I condemn in others may be but a reflection of myself in a mirror.”  That I can declare as truth. That, or we have the same mirror.

Photo taken of the wall in my office.

The excuses I make so readily for my own transgressions should be equally available for the transgressions of others.

Photo taken on a recent run.