Pages and Lines

We take a blank page, and we put something on it — a line, a quality, a criteria, some point of reference to orient us and them. Then we decide where we each are in relation to that; “right” or “left,” “above” or “below,” “for” or “against,” “in” or “out,” even “good” or “bad,” ignoring all the while the obvious truths: there is no line, and no matter where we place one we are all still on the same page.

Libraries

In When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron writes on how our emotions control us (pleasure and pain, loss and gain, praise and blame, fame and disgrace), particularly when we undertake to eradicate (as opposed to rolling with) them.  She writes:

“The human race is so predictable.  A tiny thought arises, then escalates, and before we know what hits us, we’re caught up on hope and fear….  Before we know it, we’ve composed a novel on why someone is so wrong, or why we are so right, or why we must get such and such.”

I know I have a library full of those novels, even more short stories, and my head is full of drafts in progress.  In not so many words, she suggests a book burning.

Refraining

From Pema Chodron in When Things Fall Apart, this on “refraining”:

“Refraining is one of those uptight words that sound repressive.  Surely, alive, juicy, interesting people would not practice refraining.  Maybe they would sometimes refrain, but not as a lifestyle….  It’s the quality of not grabbing for entertainment the minute we feel a slight edge of boredom coming in.  It’s the practice of not immediately filling up spaces just because there’s a gap.”

I do that a lot, try to fill in the gaps.  In conversation (no one likes that awkward silence), in my calendar (productivity, “the idle mind is the devil’s workshop,”…), the empty bookshelf shelf in my office that empty spot in my garden.  A lot of time and effort is spent filling in the gaps, as if there is something inherently wrong with a gap.  Yet it occurs to me (or perhaps I should say, it seems $%*#@ obvious on reflection) that the gaps are where the peace is.  Chodron notes: “It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space.”  Maybe the gap, the space, needs to be filled in, maybe not.  Maybe someone else will handle it, or not.  This is where the refraining comes in.

Haiku of the Whenever

Photo taken at the MARTA Peachtree Center stop on my last travel — what seems long ago and far away.  While I knew I was standing at the bottom and looking up, it was a bit disorienting, and looked like an M.C. Escher print.  I should note that I did edit this a bit.  In reality it is not quite so foreboding.

telling up from down

The Perfect Teachers — Fear and Trembling

From Pema Chodron in When Things Fall Apart:

“[F]eelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back.  They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away.  They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck.  This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.”

Chodron goes on to explain that when (not “if”) we get to that place “where you have no choice except to embrace what’s happening or push it away” we are most genuinely in the moment, yet the moment is not so important — at least not as important as what follows, the “what next”, or as my friend Jim Mulford used to say, the “so what.”   In those “what’s next” or “so what” moments do we awaken to the reality that “it takes death for there to be birth [or do] we just fight against the fear of death?”

Then comes the hard part:

“Reaching our limit is not some kind of punishment.  It’s actually a sign of health that, when we meet the place where we are about to die, we feel fear and trembling.  A further sign of health is that we don’t become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us.  Things like disappointment and anxiety are messengers telling us that we’re about to go into unknown territory.”

Which of course sounds a lot like Paul’s exhortation in Philippians 2:12: “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and act according to his good purpose.”

The perfect teachers — fear and trembling!

Oswald & Mick

From Oswald Chambers in today’s reading in My Utmost for His Highest:

“God answers prayer in the best way, not sometimes, but every time, although the immediate manifestation of the answer in the domain in which we want it may not always follow.”

From Mick Jagger:

“You can’t always what you want.  You can’t always what you want.  You can’t always what you want.  But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but the mere thought of Mick Jagger and Oswald Chambers being on the same page, heck, even in the same book, is enough to get me through the day with a smile on my face.

When things fall apart

From When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron:

“When we think that something is going to bring us pleasure, we don’t know what’s really going to happen.  When we think something is going to give us misery, we don’t know.  Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.  We try to do what we think is going to help.  But we don’t know.  We never know if we are going to fall flat or sit up tall.  When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story  It may be just the beginning of a great adventure. “

It is, of course, the experience of life.  Setting all hubris aside, looking back at our experiences, we don’t ever know.