“This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24.
Listening to a podcast this morning of an interview of David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk. He noted the passage, and then gave his take on it, which I like even better:
“This is a wonderful day. I have never seen this one before.”
That seems like a good way to start the day after my birthday – or, for that matter, any day.
I find myself reading once again C. S. Lewis’ discussion on forgiveness in The Weight of Glory. It is masterful writing that takes the tough nut of forgiveness and cracks it open to reveal it simply, understandably. But what jumped off the page at me today was this tidbit from that discussion – “we are all too easily satisfied with ourselves.”
I let that soak in a bit and then came to think of it as truth, but then positioned near its bookend (not from Lewis, but me) that “we are all too easily dissatisfied with ourselves.” It occurs to me that these are the bookends between which I am to compose a life. THAT, I don’t know as truth, but I’ll mull on it a bit.
Reading today from Anne Lamott – 12 Truths I Learned From Life and Writing, I paused at this: “everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it most together…, so try not to compare your insides to other people’s outsides.” This seems to dovetail so well with that quote I so like (which no one seems to know who to attribute it to): “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
It occurs to me that the latter quote is merely the second shoe dropping after the first quote/shoe. What separates us is not our brokenness, our clingy-ness, our scaredness, not the fact that we are fighting battles – no, we all experience that. What separates us is that we have different abilities and use varying resources to disguise those things going on inside us. That is, our rooms are of similar content, but our walls vary.
“Everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.” Robert Louis Stevenson
I guess this is akin to another quote I like – “The best place to begin is where you are.”
I find it easy to get caught up in lamenting where I am and how I got there, or even lamenting where the world (as I perceive it) is and how in the hell it got to be that way. These lamentations occur at the expense of accepting reality and working to change the situation. Which somehow brings me to a quote I recently saw on a card. I liked it so much I had to buy the card – though I can’t think of anyone to send it to other than myself.
“Things happen for a reason. Sometimes the reason is that you made a bad decision.”
Onward.
From The Guest House – Rumi (translated by Coleman Banks):
“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.”
It really makes no sense when you think of it, does it? I have this long-established practice of naming, judging, putting labels on, characterizing these “guests,” these thoughts, these events, these things, these emotions that enter my life. And, I do so most often before they actually create some effect or impact on my life. Some I see coming and lock the doors to keep them out, others I allow in warily, still others I welcome at the front door. Those I keep out, I pat myself on the back for doing so, assured of how things would have turned out had I let them in. Those I allow in have some effect, and I name, judge, label, and characterize them “in real time,” predisposed, I guess, to label favorably since it was I who let them in. Yet I do so knowing, if I am honest with myself, that I can’t predict the future (well, I predict it regularly, but not with any sense of reliability). No, I can’t really know the potential impact of those guests turned away, nor the future impact of those allowed in. Thus, the exhortation – “treat each guest honorably.”
“Go placidly amid the noise and haste…” Max Ehrmann – Desiderata
Picking up on yesterday’s thought – There is much swirling around us lately with the recent events in Charlottesville and the related fallout. What caught my eye and tugged at my heart today is a photo taken by Stephen Lam and published in the New York Times. The photo is of a woman in a rally in Oakland, California, surrounded by others, holding a simple white poster board with this scrawled across the poster: “I CAN’T BELIEVE I AM STILL PROTESTING NAZIS.”
This single shot displays the power of a photo. It conveys, at a glance (though it deserves more than a glance) those feelings and emotions inside me and rushes them to the surface to the point that I have palpable reactions – a wince, a gasp, a rush of emotion. The photo both speaks for me, and listens to me in my frustration, anger, pain, impatience – in whatever emotions I have related to the craziness of recent events.
A picture is or can be worth a thousand words, yes, but more importantly, in this case, it plainly serves to state those thousand words for us. So whatever, your politics, indeed, politics aside, forget the article below it, just go look at the picture and envision yourself standing nest to the woman holding the sign, or better yet, holding it yourself. She nailed it with the poster –
“I CAN’T BELIEVE I AM STILL PROTESTING NAZIS.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/the-test-of-nazism-that-trump-failed.html?mcubz=0
I didn’t need to read deep into Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata today to get the take away:
“Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.”
I am not sure which is more difficult, to “go placidly amid the noise and haste” or to “remember what peace there may be in silence.” I am thinking I need that tattooed on my forearms – both sides, top and bottom.
Photo taken in Hawaii a couple of years back.
This from Barack Obama related to the Charlottesville events, quoting Nelson Mandela:
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
That was like a breath of fresh air – a simple, irrefutable truth stated plainly to point us toward a light beyond our darkness. No blame there. No discussion of statues or flags or who is right or wrong, good or bad. No polarizing, no ____ bashing, no raising one side up and putting another side down. The only finger pointing going on there is pointing back to me, to each of us, encouraging us to take a deep breath and remember that love is more natural than, stronger than, hate.
To quote the old V8 commercial: “Thanks, I needed that.”
It occurs to me... 