It occurs to me…

Oswald Chambers offers this advice today:

“Be careful of the production of contempt in yourself, [it] causes you to go about as a walking rebuke to other people because they are more shallow than you are.  Beware of posing as a profound person; God became a baby.”

Ouch!  It occurs to me that phrases I utter and hear these days – “how could anyone” or “I just don’t understand how” or worse – are signs of the very contempt Chambers warns of.  Indeed, it seems quite easy these days to “go about as a walking rebuke to other people.”  We have turned it around and become quick to speak and slow to listen.

On my current playlist is Most People, a song by the group Dawes – a song my kids beat me to.  Anyway, the line in the chorus that grabs me is this: “Most people don’t think enough about how lucky they are.”  I suppose I could quibble and replace “lucky” with “blessed” or some other word, but I will resist the urge and simply agree with them.  It is easy to bitch and moan about what is wrong, about what should be but isn’t – so easy that I forget to think enough about how lucky I am.

Photo taken of Painted Church near LaGrange, Texas

In my meanderings today I read this from Omid Safi:

“I fail often. We fail often.
I fail in moving towards the kind of human being that I want to become.
I fail in getting to the gym.
I fail in living the true meaning of these very words here.

Life has detours
And along the detours I have met wondrous friends,
Unanticipated experiences.

The breaking of the heart along the way
has brought a healing
and I am the combination of the wound and the healing.”

Two lines struck me here.

That last line resounded with me – “I am the combination of the wound and the healing.”  Encompassed in that is the thought, the reality, that I am the combination of my success and the failure, my wins and my losses, my joy and sadness, my “good,” my “not so good” and my “bad.”  Try as I may, desire as I might, they are me, they make me.  I of course have some say over just how they make me.  What happens to and around me is the raw material I have to work with in creating me.

The other line, however, is more subtle but seems even more powerful – “unanticipated experiences.”  I may seem like wordsmithing, but it occurs to me that “unanticipated experience” reflects an attitude, a desire, as Samuel Beckett said, to “fail better,” a desire to see things that don’t go my way, don’t go as I planned, not as failures but as opportunities.  That is, perhaps the bumper sticker should not be “Shit Happens” but “Unexpected Experiences Happen.”  When an election does not go as I had planned, I could move to Canada, but I could also sit tight and “fail better” right here – plus, I am not a huge fan of snowbound winters.

In his sermon today our priest spoke of beginnings and endings, and of the recent election.  In doing so he said something that I’ll paraphrase here, but I believe I have the gist correct.

Regardless of what you think of Hillary or Trump, remember that the people who voted for each are neither Hillary of Trump.  Each voter casted a vote for his or her own reasons.

It occurs to me that this is a good place to start the healing process.  Yes, one could move to Canada, and while it might address individual concerns, it does not resolve the issue – besides, it gets really cold there.  No, the starting point, and perhaps this can be done now that “win or lose” of the election is over, is to try to listen and understand what those individual concerns were and are that cause(d) people to support Trump or Hillary, or neither.

In still coming to grips with the recent election results I revisited an old favorite —  Show the Way by David Wilcox:

“Look – if someone wrote the play, just to glorify what’s stronger than hate,

Would they not arrange the stage, to look as if the hero came too late

Almost in defeat, looking like the evil side will win

So on the edge of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins

It is love the mixed the mortar, it is love that stacked these stones

It is love that built the stage here, though it looks like we’re alone

In this dream set in shadows, like the night is here to stay

There is evil cast around us, but its love that wrote the play

And in this darkness, love will show the way”

Indeed, love will show the way.  It is not always apparent when, or how, nor does love show the way on my time schedule — but it will show the way.

Today Oswald Chambers has much to say about surrender.  Much is difficult to read, much less contemplate and type onto a page.  This snippet will have to suffice:

“I have to learn that the aim in life is God’s, not mine….  When I stop telling God what I want, He can catch me up for what he wants without let or hindrance.”

It occurs to me that letting go is, at the same time, the most difficult and the easiest thing I am called to do.

Is it just me or is there a lot of anxiety in the air?  Four lines came to mind this morning:

From Max Ehermann’s Desiderata:  “Do not distress yourself with imaginings.”

From Matthew 6:34:  “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”

From Bobby McFerrin: “Don’t worry.  Be happy.”

From Baz Luhman’s Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen): “Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.”

I’ll get some Double Bubble on the way to work this morning.