It occurs to me…

 

Traveling today I found myself searching for a Gideon’s Bible in the hotel room drawer.  Coming to my senses I suddenly felt old.  Yes, I could look up anything I wanted from the Bible on my computer, but still, I would have preferred a Gideon’s.  In the long list of things we have lost or will likely be losing due to the internet, I suspect you can add Gideon’s Bible’s to the list.  Which leaves me to wonder how in the world coming generations will ever comprehend these lines from the Beatles’ Rocky Raccoon:  “And Rocky Raccoon, checked into his room, only to find Gideon’s Bible…..  Gideon checked out, and he left it no doubt, to help with good Rocky’s revival.”

I guess that’s what us old folks are left around for.

At the center of his book, Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr addresses the distinction between “soul” and “ego.”

“The soul doesn’t know itself by comparison and differentiation.  The soul just is.  The soul knows itself through what is now and everything that is….  Everything belongs….  To my ego, my wealth, my intelligence, my moral goodness, and my social class are that they are only in contrast to the person next to me.  But the still center, my true self, does not need to oppose, differentiate, or compare itself….  To the extent our soul is alive, we are satisfied with the “enoughness” of the present moment and are in touch with reality….  As soul we don’t really act.  We just are.  A ego, we cope with the world.  We change it.  We rearrange and constantly try to improve it.”

The soul “just is” — “everything belongs.”  The ego exists only by opposition, differentiation, and comparison.  Put that way, the choice seems easy.  Still….

From Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar In The World:

“Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.  To decide to make things better can cost you bundles of self-interest.  To decide to make things worse generally feels more powerful”

Indeed, that short menu of options presents itself many times a day: a) make things better, or b) make things worse.  Of course, the choice is not always labeled so clearly.  It may take some effort to distinguish ‘better” or “worse,” and yes, it may turn out occasionally that I was wrong, that my choice of “better” ended up being “worse.”  Still, I chose “better” in earnest.  Enter grace, forgiveness, and the chance to choose again.

Too often, it occurs to me, my gratitude is poorly directed — it often gets directed to the object itself (“isn’t this ______ beautiful”) or to me (“I really needed _____”).  Sure, we can appreciate a coat on a cold day, food when hungry, or money when broke, but isn’t my gratitude for those properly directed not to the object or to me but to the giver?  That is, as with so many things, I am called once again to step outside of myself and recognize (damn it!) that it ain’t all about me.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving week, it would be good to remember that life is something to be enjoyed, celebrated, not just endured or tolerated.

This from Summer Storm by Dana Gioa.  Those last four lines are strong:

“Why does that evening’s memory

Return with this night’s storm —

A party twenty years ago,

Its disappointment warm?

There are so many might have beens,

What ifs that won’t stay buried,

Other cities, other jobs,

Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining

For places it never went,

As if life would be happier

Just by being different.”

From Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar In The World, this on the practice of encountering others:

“At the very least, most of us need someone to tell our stories to.  At a deeper level, most of us need someone to help us forget ourselves, a little or a lot.  The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed.”

Well, I guess it is at least comforting to know that MY “main impediment to living a life of meaning” is in line with the great wisdom traditions of the world.  That recognition is, I guess, a start.

I am reminded again today of the power of these words from Romans 12:2 –

“[T]his is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

May the “transforming” continue.

In An Altar In The World Barbara Brown Taylor extols the virtues of getting lost.  She notes: “Most of us prefer to remain on our cow paths, where we know the language and we do not need maps because we know the way by heart.  Some of us even stay behind our fences because we do not want to be mistaken for interlopers in other people’s pastures.”  Indeed, as encouragement she offers this: “Others before you have found a way in the wilderness, where there are as many angels as there are wild beasts, and plenty of other lost people too.”

That is and has been my experience when I get off the path — “there are as many angels as wild beasts, and plenty of other lost people too.”  Soon enough, I usually realize that I am, in fact, not lost at all.

This from Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar To The World:

“Anything can become a spiritual practice once you are willing to approach it that way – once you let it bring you to your knees and show you what is real, including who you really are, who other people are, and how near God can be when you  have lost your way.

Of course, for this last to be true you have to be willing to recognize God in your neighbor.  Once, when I took the wrong train to the New York Botanical Gardens and ended up walking through a pretty scary neighborhood in the Bronx, a bus driver stopped and opened his doors just for me.

‘I don’t have the right change,’ I said, my eyes huge with fear.

‘Get in,’ he said.  God drove a bus in the Bronx that day.’”

She’s right, of course.  I need to be able to recognize God in my neighbor, which (given limitations to my vision) may take a second, third, or fourth look.  On that day, for her, God drove a bus in the Bronx.  What might I see him doing today if I have my eyes, my mind, open?