Author: itoccurstocp

“More than anything else, we have to imagine a different kind of life, a different way of living.  We have to reject the shiny, shallow future that will never come, and locate ourselves in the current, flawed moment.”  Heather Havrilesky, What If This Were Enough

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Paul, Romans 12:2

Two similar admonitions, nearly 2,000 years apart.  It occurs to me that the “pattern of this world” had a significant head start on me.  To make matters worse, it seems unfair that I first had to acquire the “pattern of this world” only to then learn that I need to shed it.  I best get busy.

This bit of conversation from the Broken Record podcast involving to legendary music producers:

Rick Rubin: “There is something about people playing together [at the same time, as opposed to one recording over the recording of the other] that no amount of getting it right counters the energy of the interaction

T. Bone Burnett: Yeah, perfection is a second-rate idea. The computer is able to put out perfect music all day long but its not really as interesting.”

I so love that “perfection is a second-rate idea” comment.  I am not a musician or music producer so can’t comment intelligently on their observations beyond noting that live performances (even recordings of live performances) can have that “energy of the interaction” that makes the recording feel better in ways I can’t really explain.  Call me an old-fashioned Luddite, but it occurs to me, and what I can and will comment on, is that to me this same phenomenon seems to be true of digital/social media communication as compared to real live communications — as in people listening/talking TO one another and not AT one another through some electronic means.  Dare I say it – Facebook and Instagram are wildly successful second-rate ideas.

In one of my favorite writings of Oswald Chambers he writes of “the graciousness of uncertainty.”  This seems like an oxymoron.  As he notes: “Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing.  We imagine that we have to reach some end [an end, I might add, that WE have defined], but that is not the nature of spiritual life.  The nature of spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty….”  That in and of itself seems like another oxymoron, but he explains later – “we are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.”

In our faith, Chambers notes, we can easily become advocates of a creed, not of God.  That is, “we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about him – which of course leads us down a perilous path.  We can, in the name of God, become like the guy on the street corner selling “genuine” Rolox watches for $29 in that we start selling a “knock off God,” one we have created in our own image.

I have always liked the way Anne Lamott treats this – “you can tell you’ve created God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do.”

Congratulations to author and mentor from afar, Anne Lamott.  No, I have never met her, though we were once in the same building together when she was speaking.  I read this week that she married recently, for the first time, at age 65.  This caused me to revisit some of her work, including her TED talk from a few years back:

https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_lamott_12_truths_i_learned_from_life_and_writing?language=en

To celebrate her marriage, I thought I would go back over her twelve truths learned from life and writing.  I only take issue with 1, and it relates to chocolate, so probably doesn’t matter that much in the scheme of life.  In her introduction she notes that each of us is a “mixed grill of happy anticipation and dread” which I think pretty much hits the nail on the head.  Anyway, Lamott’s Truth #1:

“All truth is a paradox.  Life is both precious, unfathomably beautiful gift and, and it’s impossible here….  It’s filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together.  I don’t think it’s an ideal system.”

It occurs to me that perhaps the only thing we can all agree on is her last sentence, it’s not an ideal system.  But it is what we got, which leads to Lamott truth #2: “almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes – including you.”  Indeed, unplugging or rebooting, the “CTRL/ALT/DELETE” buttons of life (whatever they are for each person), come in quite handy.

The opening line from Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata: “Go placidly amongst the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.”

I have long admired that first line.  Ehrmann does not bemoan the “noise and haste,” doesn’t go on for lines thereafter about how awful noise is, how I need to slow down, or how in times past things were quieter and slower.  He doesn’t suggest that I find the source of and take it on myself to eradicate the noise, take something to lessen my anxiety, or fire up iTunes and overcome their noise with my own.  No, he instead invites me to remember, to “remember what peace there may be silence.”  This can, if I let it, instantly transport me from the “noise and haste” to a quiet moment under a canopy of trees in a still, sunlit forest, to a summer day sitting on a front porch swing with a good book in one hand and a glass of iced tea in the other.  Granted, when I return the “noise and haste” may still be there, probably is.  But somehow, they seem a bit less troublesome.

From Anthony DeMello’s The Way To Love, this about how to think of “those people you dislike”:

“That means you cannot use labels like proud, lazy, selfish, arrogant.  The label is an act of mental laziness, for it is easy to stick a label onto someone.  It is difficult and challenging to see this person in his/her uniqueness.”

That’s difficult enough, but then:

“Consider the possibility that what you see as a defect in them may not be a defect at all but really something that your upbringing and conditioning have led you to dislike.”

And finally:

“If after this you still see a defect there, understand that the origin of the defect lies in childhood experiences, past conditionings, faulty thinking and perception; and above all in unawareness, not in malice.”

He closes with “…to understand is to forgive.”

Got it, but this may take a while.  The first thing I may need to do is get rid of my “Stereotypes are real time savers” t-shirt.  Or perhaps wear it inside out.

Photo taken recently on a clear spring day.

Reading today from The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis published some seventy-eight years ago, he writes about the need for, and lack of, solitude.  “We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy….”  He bemoans that “even where the planners fail and someone is left physically by himself, the wireless [that is, the 1941 “wireless”] has seen to it that he will be…never less alone than when alone.”

It occurs to me that solitude, silence, and privacy have become less valued (more avoided?) in the seventy-eight years following.  It also occurs to me that if he dropped in on us today, Lewis’ head might well explode.

From Heather Harvilesky, What If This Were Enough.  Bear with me, for this is a bit lengthy, but cutting it in pieces felt like a betrayal of its worth.

“We are called to resist viewing ourselves as consumers or as commodities.  We are called to savor the process of our own slow, patient development, instead of suffering an enervated, anxious state over our value and popularity.  We are called to view our actions as important, with our without consecration by forces beyond our control.  We are called to plant these seeds in our world: to date to tell every living soul that they already matter, that their seemingly mundane lives are a slowly unfolding mystery, that their small choices and acts of generosity are vitally important.

Here is how you will start: You will recognize that you are not headed for some imaginary finish line, some state of ‘best’ness that will finally bring you peace.  You will see that you are as much of a miracle as Mozart was.  You will remember that bit of advice lurking inside one of Shirley Jackson’s dark novels: ‘Somewhere, deep inside you, hidden by all sorts of fears and worries and petty little thoughts, is a clean pure being made of radiant colors.’  You will feel this and know it in your heart and pass this feeling along  to the people around you.  You will breathe inn this moment – this imperfect, uncertain, not-quite-right, heavenly moment.

You will say to yourself, ‘it is enough.’  And it will be.”

Amen!

Glow and Shimmer

From Heather Harvilesky’s essay, The Miracle of the Mundane:

“[W]e have to see that every human is divine.  We have to train ourselves to see that with our own eyes.  It will fuel us, once we see it.  The ordinary people around us, the angry ones and the indifferent ones, the good ones and the bad ones, will start to glow and shimmer.”

Sadly, it does take work to “see that every human is divine,” but the difficulty should not deter the effort.  Thus: “We have to train ourselves to see that with our own eyes.”  That the “glow and shimmer” is more apparent in some than others does not speak to the presence of the “glow and shimmer” so much as to my vision, my ability to see it.