It occurs to me…

“The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.”  Oswald Chambers.

I ran across this today and it echoed in my mind for a while.  I guess we read for different reasons at different times.  Sometimes I want a “mindless read” while at other times I am up to having my mind stimulated, even challenged by the words on the page.  But the words that stick with me and roll around in my head the longest (might I go so far to say that they actually change me) are indeed those that “give expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in [me] for utterance.”

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”  Blaise Pascal

This quote was part of a reading at church today.  As I reflected on this over the course of the day it became apparent that my world is indeed full of those incredible things waiting to be known.  It occurs to me that the greatest obstacle to knowing these incredible things is not the scarcity of incredible things so much as my failure to see them for what they are, my lack of patience, and my self-centeredness, my busyness, ….  Well, the list could be longer, but I’ll stop there.

Photo taken from an office window in Portland this morning.  Lyrics, with a twist, from In the Bleak Midwinter.

Listening to a podcast recently I heard this from Eboo Patel.  “You see the light on the path.  You walk the path.  You don’t become particularly impressed with yourself.”  That seems like a pretty good rule of life, one that calls up Psalm 119:105: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”  But it occurs to me that Patel’s admonition — “don’t become particularly impressed with yourself”–  is a critical addition to the equation.  When things are going well, it is easy to believe that in my walk I am responsible for not just putting one foot in front of the other, but also for creating the path and the light.  Conversely, when things aren’t going so well, someone else is responsible for the darkness and the boulders in my path.

I just finished a book by Alan Light titled The Holy or the Broken.  It is a book solely about the Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah.  I suppose one has to be somewhat of a music junkie to really like such a book, which makes sense, because I really liked it.  In short, Cohen wrote the song over several years and it frustrated the heck out of him.  Reportedly he wrote more than fifty verses.  The version he originally selected to put on an album had five verses – and his record label refused to release the song, indeed, entire album.  When Hallelujah was later ultimately released in 1984 it was essentially unnoticed.  Ultimately, Cohen’s original was covered by John Cale.  Cale contacted Cohen and asked him for the lyrics and came home to a a floor full of pages spewed from the fax machine.  Cale picked a handful of verses, only two of which were on Cohen’s original release.  Cale’s version received no great response.  However, a then  unknown singer named Jeff Buckley, while house sitting for someone, pulled an album from a stack and listened to Cale’s cover of Cohen’s Hallelujah.  Buckley’s version, arguably the most famous (though it did not become popular until after Buckley’s tragic death) is then, a cover of Cale’s cover of Cohen’s original.  Many versions we hear are then, covers three-times over.  Most bear little in common with Cohen’s version other than the title and the fact that they use some of Cohen’s many verses.  Prior to his death, Cohen generally played in concert some version of Cale’s or Buckley’s covers.

In reading the book I kept thinking of the quote from Samuel Beckett:  “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

There, that’s a long way to get to the punchline.  It occurs to me that life is full of failure.  The failure is a given, and not the end of the story unless we allow it to be.  The trick is to, as Beckett wrote – “Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.”

Having entered into December, it is, by all accounts, time for Christmas music.  I know that because I have been hearing it for weeks now.  The stores have long ago been playing it and put up their Christmas decorations and displays, airports and hotels have too.  Heck, they lit the trees at the Capital and at Rockefeller Center.  Yep, its Christmas music time.  I’ll wear out my play list and add some new songs.

There is, of course, a plethora of Christmas music.  So, where do I start?  Ignoring those early adopters who have been blasting me with “jingle sells” music for weeks now, what is the first official listen that opens my Christmas music season?  It is a close call, but for me, the first Christmas song played is the last one I play each year before I retire my Christmas play list — A Christmas Wish, performed by Asleep At The Wheel.  My understanding is that it was written by the late Johnny Gimble, a legendary fiddle player.  I like it because it openly recognizes and embraces the bridge between secular and religious Christmas, between Santa Claus and the birth of Jesus.  It allows both to exist, both to be celebrated, with the agreed end being the desire for the season to be giving and receiving, yes, but giving and receiving of more than packages with ribbons and bows.

“May Santa fill your stocking, and Jesus fill your heart

With peace and joy this season, and when the new year starts

May his love lead and guide you, every step of the way

And every day, of every year, become thanksgiving day

May friends and family gather, to celebrate his birth

With songs of praise and glory, and prayers for peace on earth

His grace and love will keep us, if we’ll only believe

So trust in him throughout the year, as well as Christmas Eve

So every day, of every year, becomes thanksgiving day.”

Happy Holidays.  Merry Christmas.  Let the music begin – even that horrid “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer!”

As I drive and fly I am becoming more and more grateful for podcasts.  Yesterday, I listened to a TED Talk on gratitude.  One of the speakers was Mark Davis, a volunteer firefighter, who described his first call out to a fire on a cold rainy night.  The second story of the house was in flames, and on arrival Davis asked his Captain what he could do.  He was sent in to retrieve a pair of shoes for the homeowner, who was standing outside shoeless.  Another firefighter was sent in to rescue the homeowner’s dog.  The latter was obviously a more “heroic” effort and Davis reports feeling some envy, some thought as to the relative smallness of his assigned task.  Both tasks were accomplished.  Later the homeowner wrote the fire department thanking the firefighters for saving her house.  She specifically mentioned the recovery of the pet, and also noted that the firefighters were even so kind as to get her a pair of shoes as she stood outside.

All that is background for the quote that resounded with me as I was driving through east Texas yesterday:

“It is so easy to miss the opportunity to do something good while looking for the opportunity to do something great….  Not every day offers us the opportunity to save a life, but each day offers the opportunity to effect one.”

Davis is of course correct.  Abundant opportunities to do good are right there if I pay attention.  They come in all sizes and shapes, and pop up in even the most unexpected places.  I may miss most of them on a given day,  but that’s okay.  Good is good, even if there is a “better” or “best.”  Do some good.

Photo of our cat on his bed he allows us to use.

“The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.”  Oscar Wilde

As I watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and the debut of a new season of Christmas themed commercials that tug at heartstrings, this quote came to mind.  The holidays are filled with emotions, yes, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but unless that feeling is accompanied by action, those emotions fall in the “if a tree falls in the forest but no one is there to hear it, does it still make a noise” category.  Go ahead, put money in the kettle.  Smile at the harried cashier.  Act on the emotions – the good ones anyway.

Here I am two days after Thanksgiving and still thinking about gratitude.  It might be a new record!  Hang with me here.

Recently I pulled an old pair of socks from the sock drawer and I noticed the feet were full of holes, really full of holes as in they had more holes than feet.  I realized the time had come to toss then, so I did, but reluctantly, with some regret.  That seems pretty mundane, I know, but I really liked those socks.  Really liked them.  Initially, after processing through wondering if I could find an identical pair (I tried, I can’t) I tried to dredge up a memory of the last time I wore them, and couldn’t.  Heck, I should have appreciated them more then, and each time I put them on.  (Yes, that is the Catholic Guilt a youth of catholic school and nuns trains you for.)

That got me to thinking of various songs and passages that go to that point – that I should be filled with gratitude for what is and treat each experience, each interaction, even each breath as if it were the last – because it just might be.  It seems a nice sentiment, but that last part is what I got hung on.  Yes, I should be filled with gratitude, but can’t I just stop there.  Need my gratefulness be tied to dark thought that what I am grateful for is ephemeral and might be ripped away from me in some tragic event?  Need I guilt my way to gratitude?

In this I was reminded of a quote from Thomas Merton: “Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.”

Gratitude is vigilant awareness and responsiveness to the wonder occurring around me – and there’s plenty of that.