It occurs to me…

From Richard Rohr, in Everything Belongs:

“I hope we can say ego is not bad.  It is necessary.  The only problem is that our culture teaches that ego is the only game in town.  We take it a little too seriously and take the private ego as if it is full reality.  The nature of the ego is that it tries to fix, name, control, and insure everything for itself.  We want predictability.  But that fixes us in the past.  What was, is, so we are trapped in repeating it and nothing new happens.”

Wow!  There’s a lot to unpack in there, but at the center of it all seems to be the assumption that others see, feel, and experience things as I do – and if they don’t, well, they damn well should.  One would think that decades of experience to the contrary would have worn my ego down on this belief, but that ego is, it seems, one tough, resilient sucker!  That is, it occurs to me, Rohr’s point.  The ego is not bad.  We want/need it to be tough lest we melt into a puddle with each adversity, but at the same time, it needs to be a bit more open-minded, less cocksure.  Which I guess takes us back to metanoia, and that constant Romans 12:2 renewing of the mind.

Recently I read a story about a long-time restaurant in town that was closing – closing today after more than sixty-five years in business.  The restaurant happens to be one of my favorites.  I have had many meals there.  Driving by it recently, shortly after the closing announcement, I noted it was very busy, I guess because people want to get one more memory of the place, though maybe they just want a good plate of cheese enchiladas.  Whatever the reason, it occurred to me that I already had good memories of the place, and Lord knows I have had my share of cheese enchiladas there.

It occurred to me that this was yet another reason (as if we needed any) to live in the present, to savor those moments in life whether they come in the form of a light rain while sitting on the porch swing, the solid crack of the bat from a well-hit baseball, or a warm, almost too hot plate of cheese enchiladas, beans, and rice.  All which lead me to this thought:  One can spend so much time and effort looking forward (plans) and looking back (regrets) that the power of the present (now) is lost.

Today I came across one of my favorite C. S. Lewis quotes from Mere Christianity: “Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive….”

This is both humorous and true.  I am rather free in my expectation to be forgiven (I didn’t mean it, it was a mistake, a momentary lapse in judgment, I forgot…) but the stakes rise when the insult or injury is to me (how dare you, I can’t believe that you,  just wait until, WTF?, you #$%@…).  It seems to be that the righteous indignation of newfound “victim status” instantly overcomes any intellectual understanding of the concept of forgiveness. This is, I suppose, why Lewis refers to forgiveness as “this terrible duty.”  Still, we keep trying.

Heather Harvilesky, writing on “enough,” suggests this as a starting point: “You will recognize that you are not headed for some imaginary finish line, some state of ‘best’ness’ that will finally bring you peace.”  I know something of the “illusory finish line,” having set up many, crossed some number less, and still being on the journey to cross others.  I have imagined that completion, happiness, contentedness can only occur “then” — only when I cross that finish line as a result of some act, accomplishment or occurrence.

The “finish line,” it turns out, is just a product of my own imagination, or that of someone else, and the reality is that no sooner than I cross one finish line (if not before) another appears.  The image of a hamster running inside a wheel comes to mind.

All of which points to the thought that Havrilesky may have this right.  Maybe, it occurs to me, just maybe, as is true in many races, the starting line and finish line are the same – they are both present in the spot we call “now.”

“…in a world so full of love, but not enough to go around.”  A World So Full of Love, Roger Miller

I found this song recently listening to some old Roger Miller tunes and it stuck with me.   While Miller is known mostly for his upbeat, funny songs (You Can’t Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd, Dang Me…) he has this gift for writing songs that convey both hope and despair – which this song, this line, certainly does.  That mixed message seems to resound with me, I guess in part because it seems to accurately reflect reality.  In this I am reminded of Max Ehrmann’s closing line in Desiderata:  “With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”

Reading today I came across the word “metanoia.”  After following a few trails on the internet, it became obvious that the meaning of “metanoia” was a matter of deep scholarly debate – a debate which I am not qualified to enter.  Still, in reading it seemed that “metanoia” means afterthought, from meta meaning “after” or “beyond” and nous meaning “mind”.  It has, it seems, in religious context, generally been translated to “repentance.”  As Richard Rohr points out, that translation to “repentance” misses the deeper meaning.  Webster defines “metanoia” as a “transformative change of heart” or a “conversion.”

It would be easy to get bogged down in the debate, but my stopping point is something Rohr writes in Everything Belongs:

“We have to see that others don’t see things the way we do.  We need to have our fundamental assumptions questioned.”

In other words, I need metanoia.  Absent metanoia it becomes easy to simply rest in the assurance that I have things figured out – and I most definitely do not.  I most definitely do not.

“Never attribute malice or other deliberate decision what can be explained by human frailty, imperfection, or ignorance.”  Rabbi Harold Kushner

It does seem to be the knee jerk reaction, or at least my reaction often suggests that I attribute malice to the offender.  I fume (or worse) at the driver who cuts me off in traffic, certain this was done intentionally.  How could the other driver not see me right there in his/her blind spot?  Of course, I should find it easy to attribute the acts of other humans to “human frailty, imperfection, or ignorance” since I have displayed my share of all the above.  Still….

On this point I usually think of Eugene Peterson’s loose translation of James 1:19: “Post this at all intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.”  And, I might add”…and assume the other person is human, like you.

 

“For my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”  Luke 15:24

That sentence should take our breath away.  We’ve all been there.  We’ve given something up for lost, searched for hours, days, to no avail, only to find it later.  That is what the father felt, but he felt something more than that, much more intense, as this was a person, not a thing.  It was his son.  Imagine his joy!

From Everything Belongs by  Richard Rohr:

“We Western people are goal-oriented consumers, and we can’t imagine doing anything that won’t get us something.  But with full deliberation we need to understand our exploration is not an effort to get us anywhere.”

That caught my attention, “our exploration is not an effort to get us anywhere.”  I mean, isn’t exploration exactly that.  But that thinking falls into the trap of which Rohr speaks.  That explains why there is a “find yourself industry” that is willing to sell us books, retreats, classes, and other tools to help us find ourselves.  When we are seeking to know ourselves, we can forget that we already ARE ourselves, or as Rohr puts it, there is no “there” to achieve because “we are already there.”  He writes:

“Little do we realize that God is maintaining us in existence with every breath we take.  As we take another it means that God is choosing us now, and now, and now.  We have nothing to attain or to learn.  We do, however, need to unlearn some things.”

And that unlearning can make learning look easy.

On the first tee at a particularly difficult golf course, discussing the course with the starter, he wryly commented to me that “it is easy to play the course with a single ball – so long as you aren’t particular as to whose ball it is.”  That is, when I hit into the rough, or beyond that to the trees and find myself looking for my Bridgestone E6 white ball with a “4” stamped on it, I may or may not find THAT ball, but in any event I will find plenty of errant balls to choose from in making my next shot.  The rules of golf, however, to the extent I choose to follow them (throat clearing) require me to play my ball, or take a penalty and drop a new ball.

It occurs to me today that happiness is a little like that.   I create in my mind the belief that happiness comes, if at all, in a particular shape, form, or fashion that I have imagined, or societal rules and norms have imagined for me.  I can get so intent in achieving THAT form of happiness that I can ignore all the other possibilities.  I am wanting the weather to be sunny and ignore the peace that a light rain brings.  I am looking for a certain song on a playlist and stumble upon another.  That is, perhaps it is easy to be happy, so long as I am willing to set aside those expectations and formulas as to what delivers happiness and be open to happiness that might come in other shapes, forms, and sizes.