Author: itoccurstocp

One can have happiness as long as one is not too particular as to the size, shape, or form in which it arrives.

Read yesterday at a church event, from The Layers by Stanley Kunitz: “Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformation is already written.  I am not done with my changes.”

Indeed.  I am reminded of this from Richard Bach: “Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.”  To (with apologies) merge Kunitz and Bach, I suppose the same can be said for my book of transformation – if I am alive, it ain’t done.

“Peace – It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work.   It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.”

That is a quote on a candleholder I pulled out today while putting a new candle on my desk.  It always rings true every time I read it.  The best response I have come up with to date is this – “I’m working on it.”  It occurred to me today that perhaps the kind of peace we are talking about here is not something you work on so much as you get out of its way and let it happen.  Keeping in the spirit of the season (jeez, twenty days away!), it is the kind of peace one gets by stopping the frantic holiday activity and listening, really listening, to “Silent Night” or “O Holy Night” or even “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

 

Traveling today I found myself searching for a Gideon’s Bible in the hotel room drawer.  Coming to my senses I suddenly felt old.  Yes, I could look up anything I wanted from the Bible on my computer, but still, I would have preferred a Gideon’s.  In the long list of things we have lost or will likely be losing due to the internet, I suspect you can add Gideon’s Bible’s to the list.  Which leaves me to wonder how in the world coming generations will ever comprehend these lines from the Beatles’ Rocky Raccoon:  “And Rocky Raccoon, checked into his room, only to find Gideon’s Bible…..  Gideon checked out, and he left it no doubt, to help with good Rocky’s revival.”

I guess that’s what us old folks are left around for.

At the center of his book, Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr addresses the distinction between “soul” and “ego.”

“The soul doesn’t know itself by comparison and differentiation.  The soul just is.  The soul knows itself through what is now and everything that is….  Everything belongs….  To my ego, my wealth, my intelligence, my moral goodness, and my social class are that they are only in contrast to the person next to me.  But the still center, my true self, does not need to oppose, differentiate, or compare itself….  To the extent our soul is alive, we are satisfied with the “enoughness” of the present moment and are in touch with reality….  As soul we don’t really act.  We just are.  A ego, we cope with the world.  We change it.  We rearrange and constantly try to improve it.”

The soul “just is” — “everything belongs.”  The ego exists only by opposition, differentiation, and comparison.  Put that way, the choice seems easy.  Still….

From Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar In The World:

“Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.  To decide to make things better can cost you bundles of self-interest.  To decide to make things worse generally feels more powerful”

Indeed, that short menu of options presents itself many times a day: a) make things better, or b) make things worse.  Of course, the choice is not always labeled so clearly.  It may take some effort to distinguish ‘better” or “worse,” and yes, it may turn out occasionally that I was wrong, that my choice of “better” ended up being “worse.”  Still, I chose “better” in earnest.  Enter grace, forgiveness, and the chance to choose again.

Too often, it occurs to me, my gratitude is poorly directed — it often gets directed to the object itself (“isn’t this ______ beautiful”) or to me (“I really needed _____”).  Sure, we can appreciate a coat on a cold day, food when hungry, or money when broke, but isn’t my gratitude for those properly directed not to the object or to me but to the giver?  That is, as with so many things, I am called once again to step outside of myself and recognize (damn it!) that it ain’t all about me.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving week, it would be good to remember that life is something to be enjoyed, celebrated, not just endured or tolerated.

This from Summer Storm by Dana Gioa.  Those last four lines are strong:

“Why does that evening’s memory

Return with this night’s storm —

A party twenty years ago,

Its disappointment warm?

There are so many might have beens,

What ifs that won’t stay buried,

Other cities, other jobs,

Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining

For places it never went,

As if life would be happier

Just by being different.”

From Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar In The World, this on the practice of encountering others:

“At the very least, most of us need someone to tell our stories to.  At a deeper level, most of us need someone to help us forget ourselves, a little or a lot.  The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed.”

Well, I guess it is at least comforting to know that MY “main impediment to living a life of meaning” is in line with the great wisdom traditions of the world.  That recognition is, I guess, a start.