It occurs to me…

Reading today from Kate Bowler’s Advent devotional, the season of almost, where she is speaking of Advent and the pandemic:

“Yes, things have changed.  Yes, life looks different and our limitations are so much more obvious.”

There is certainly lots to dislike about a pandemic, the list is too long to start, but I like how Bowler boils it down to its essence – in a pandemic, at least this one we are experiencing, “life looks different and our limitations are so much more obvious.” 

I am never comfortable when “life looks different.”  After all  [Hubris Warning!] I spent a whole lot of time and effort making it look like it did, or at least getting used to/resigning myself to how it looks.  And oh, how I hate for my limitations to become obvious.  It is bad enough that I recognize them, but the pandemic seemingly puts them on display in the holiday window at Macy’s.  And of course Bowler’s/Advent’s solution to all this does not sit well – her admonition to wait.  Doesn’t she know that I, along with many others, suck at waiting.  This society of fast food, home delivery, buy today get it delivered today sucks at waiting and prides itself in NOT having to wait.

Which is, I suppose, the lesson to be taught, if not learned, in advent – have patience, wait.  On this, Bowler quotes Bonhoeffer’s writing from the 1940s (so these issues with waiting are not new):

“Celebrating advent means being able to wait.  Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten.  It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot.  For the greatest, most profound, tenderest things in the world, we must wait.  It happens not here in a storm but according to the divine laws of sprouting, growing, and becoming.”

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

“To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven” (Pete Seeger)

Whether you come to this through Ecclesiastes 3:1 or through the 1965 #1 hit by the Byrds (Turn, Turn, Turn; written by Pete Seeger), the message is (excuse the pun) timeless.

Photo taken a few years back in Huntington, West Virginia

From Howard Thurman, Deep Is the Hunger:

“The fact that a man can always be in error with reference to the things that he thinks he understands most clearly is an ever-present reminder of human frailty.  It is a challenge to humility even in the presence of one’s deepest convictions.  The truth is we are never able to get our hands on all the facts in a given situation; some thing that is important always escapes our consideration and may lead us to a false conclusion honestly arrived at….  We are all creatures of limitation and it behooves us to recognize this fact at every point  This does not mean that we are excused for our errors due to a lack of knowledge, experience, or patience.  But it does mean that even when we have done our best thinking, our most honest proving of our own motives, plumbed the depths of our innermost cumulative experience of living, we may arrive at a point less than right.”

So much to unfold there, but what I am drawn to in reading this today is the lesson in humility.  No matter how much I know about “x”, there is something, perhaps some things, that I do not know about “x.”  Or to dredge up a saying, it is not what I know that gets me in trouble so much as what I think I know. 

It is not so much that I need to fix anything.*  In fact, given the above, it seems the first step toward humility is recognizing that I can’t  fix this.  That is, I need to recognize that I am one of Thurman’s “creatures of limitation,” and even my well-intentioned analyses often take me to (Thurman is kind here) “a point less than right.”  But here’s the payoff — once I step out of my solipsistic self I am in a new place and on the verge of recognizing that perhaps someone else has some of the answers I don’t have, and perhaps I have some answers they don’t have.  That is, it becomes easier to see that because no one knows it all, we are all in the same boat, or at least we are all adrift in the same ocean.   Good to know I have company.

*Of course, I would think that.

Sunrise photo taken in Galveston recently. Text inspired by a line from a John McCutcheon song, One Hundred Years — “Have we packed well for the journey, have we done all that we could, or in trying to be great again, forgotten to be good?”

Happy Thanksgiving!

From Howard Thurman’s Deep Is the Hunger:

“Perhaps the simplest definition of art is that it is the activity by which [people] realize their ideals….  We are all artists in the sense that we are all engaged in some kind of activity by which we are realizing our ideals.”

Then comes the zinger:

“What kind of ideals are you realizing?  There is no neutrality here.  Everybody is engaged in this activity.”

I like that.  Our art is the activity through which we reach our ideals.  Which of course begs the question – through what activity(ies) am I reaching my ideals. Thought of another way, we are all painting pictures, writing stories, composing music [pick an artistic endeavor] in our pursuit of our ideals.

I suppose the planet is our collective museum.

Photo taken recently in Galveston. Emily Dickinson text. It reminded me of another favorite quote of mine from Justice Felix Frankfurter: “Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.” I guess the combination of the two is that truth dazzles gradually resulting, if we are lucky, in wisdom.

Today, from Howard Thurman:

“A man who depends upon externals for his significance, who must look to others for the nod of the head, is one whose life is constantly at the mercy of whatever it is he is courting in his environment.  He can easily become the victim of envy and jealousy.  Often, he ends up by stretching himself out of shape in trying to be to others what he can never be but what someone else could be without trying.  Where do you place your emphasis.”

Boy, there’s a lot to unwind there: “stretching himself out of shape in trying to be to others what he can never be but what someone else could be without trying.”

That brings to mind the Emerson quote: “Make the most of yourself, for that is all of you there is.”

Photo taken in Portland a few years back from/looking at one of the bridges to/from downtown.

It occurs to me that we are perhaps at our human best when we set aside our hubris and recognize our imperfections, our challenges, our humanity – that is, that we are all just feeling our way through.  This occurred to me today reading an Emily Dickinson poem, untitled as many are.  Never a Dickinson fan, but this one wins me over for her ability to convey much in little space, and to do so with some dry humor mixed in – at least I think she was being humorous.  Oh, and I love her free use of dashes, which I rely on a good deal, always assuming that such is frowned on by those who know.

We grow accustomed to the Dark –

When light is put away –

As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

To witness her Goodbye –

A Moment – we uncertain step

For newness of the night –

Then – fit our Vision to the Dark –

And meet the Road – erect –

And so of larter – Darkness –

Those Evenings of the Brain –

When not a Moon disclose a sign –

Or Star – come out – within –

The Bravest – grope a little –

And sometimes hit a Tree

Directly in the Forehead –

But as they learn to see –

Either the Darkness alters –

Or something in the sight

Adjusts itself to Midnight –

And Life steps almost straight.

Wow. 

“We uncertain step for the newness of the night – Then – fit our Vision to the Dark –And meet the Road – erect — “

“But as they learn to see – either the Darkness alters – Or something in the sight Adjusts itself to Midnight – And Life steps almost straight.”

Such hope in those last words – “And Life steps almost straight.”

Each time I cycle back around to this poem in Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems collection seems to be the right time to do so – though I am not sure there would ever be a bad time to read Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh.  In part:

Sometimes things don’t go wrong after all….

Sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss;

Sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

Only after reading this poem a few times have I come to recognize the hope, the expectation, the faith imbued within that single word – “sometimes.” Hearing it or reading it, I have come to understand the importance of focusing on what follows — which often has a prayer-like quality