It occurs to me…

Today, from Howard Thurman, Deep Is the Hunger:

“All of life is a planting and a harvesting.  No man gathers merely the crop that he himself has planted.  This is another dimension of the brotherhood of man.”

I read this recently and it has been rolling around in my head.  After some time I noted a subtlety that escaped me initially.  Thurman’s use of “and” in place of “or” (planting AND harvesting) is significant.  In that word choice he tracks the sentiment from St. Francis of Assisi: “For it is in giving that we receive.”  That is to say that, in mathematical terms, when you give X you don’t necessarily lose X.  That I can’t quite explain it logically doesn’t make it any less real.  It is what I think of as the Almond Joy conundrum (from the old commercial) – “With Almond Joy,  You can share half and still have a whole.” 

But then it occurs to me that math is not my strong point, nor God’s.  Moreover, concepts like giving and receiving, planting and harvesting, particularly when the “commodities” are grace, love, and forgiveness, to name a few, just don’t fit into any mathematical formula.

I know of no better New Year’s prayer than this one – Through the Coming Year – by Howard Thurman:

Grant that I may pass through the coming year with a faithful heart.

There will be much to test me and to make weak my strength before the year ends.  In my confusion I shall often say the word that is not true and do the thing of which I am ashamed.  There will be errors of the mind and great inaccuracies of judgment which shall render me the victim on my own stupidities.  In seeking the light, I shall again and again find myself walking in darkness.  I shall mistake my light for Thy light and I shall shrink from the responsibility of the choice I make.  All of these things, and more, will be true for me because I have not learned how to keep my hand in Thy hand.

Nevertheless, grant that I may pass through the coming year with a faithful heart.  May I never give the approval of my heart to error, to falseness, to weakness, to vainglory, to sin.  Though my days be marked with failures, stumblings, failings, let my spirit be free so that Thou mayest take it and redeem my moments in all the ways my needs reveal.  Give me the quiet assurance of Thy Love and Thy Presence.

Grant that I may pass through the coming year with a faithful heart.

I know of no better New Year’s song than this one – One Good Year – from Slaid Cleaves:

In these I am reminded that most of my wounds are indeed self-inflicted, or, to take Thurman’s harsher note, most often I am (ugh!) “the victim of my own stupidities.”  Still, God sees past the dunce cap firmly planted on my head and steps in to “redeem my moments in all the ways my needs reveal.”  That, more than anything else, should make this a —

Happy New Year!

In Deep Is the Hunger Howard Thurman provides some perspective, reminding us that while it was once thought that the earth was the center of the universe, we now understand that earth is “a mere speck of stardust whirling mathematically through space,” and that we live in the northern part of the western half of that “speck of stardust.”  This is not, however, cause for despair, it only [only!] means: “significance must be redefined in terms more useful than those of space occupancy.”  That is “in addition to my own intrinsic worth, I must find some movement or cause or purpose that is more significant than my own life.  I must find something that gives some radical test for all that is highest and best in me….  In my relationship with people, with organizations of whatever character, with things, I must be working from one center, my concept of the highest.”

Okay, but I gotta say that some days, I am content just riding on that spinning speck of stardust.

Photo taken where we store some of our stuff. Deep thoughts.

Photo of Trinity Episcopal Church in Galveston.

I sat down to write a haiku and put a photo with it, but this song kept coming out, so I am sharing it.  You all know the song from the Charlie Brown 1965 Christmas special — even if you weren’t born before 1965.  Many people don’t know there are real words to the song as it is difficult to understand the children singing in the cartoon.  So here’s one of my favorite versions, by Sarah McLachlan – or pull it up on iTunes.  Diana Krall also sings a good version. 

Merry Christmas!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBAJoF_ndbY

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly believe they are finished.”  Dan Gilbert

Can’t argue with this one, though I might add as an editorial note that it is so easy to overestimate my own level of completeness, and underestimate that of others.

Photo taken on a run yesterday, the Littlefield Mansion on the University of Texas campus. Text from John Berryman’s Address to the Lord. See the whole poem at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48948/eleven-addresses-to-the-lord

Today from Howard Thurman’s Deep Is the Hunger, this on the hard work of understanding other people:

“The will to understand other people is a most important part of the personal equipment of those who would share in the unfolding idea of human fellowship.  It is not enough merely to be sincere, to be conscientious.  This is not to underestimate the profound necessity for sincerity in human relations, but it is to point out the fact that sincerity is no substitute for intelligent understanding.”

I hear him saying, politely, that one can’t merely feel your way into understanding others, it takes effort, and fighting the inclination to take the easy route.  Thurman continues:

“A healthy skepticism with reference to rumors, gossip, what we read and observe about others must be ever present, causing all these things to be evaluated by our highly developed sense of fact.”

Absent these meaningful efforts, “we are apt to substitute sentimentality for understanding, softness for tenderness, and weakness for strength in human relations.”