It occurs to me…

“Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.”  Madeleine L’Engle

The “throwing oneself away” here is startling, but on reflection, it occurs to me that L’Engle has it right.  There is this seemingly innate, or perhaps learned, tendency to focus on me/myself, and I.  Merely considering others’ interests along with mine is not “throwing oneself away,” and there is a seemingly high risk that in doing so my interests (knowingly or unknowingly) bubble to the top of the food chain.  (It is easy to convince myself that others want or like the same things I want or like – I mean, why wouldn’t they!)

So in that sense, humility does require “throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.”  Granted, there is that “but what about me?” voice nagging at me here, but no worries, my experience is that before long, I’ll be back to throwing others away in complete concentration on myself.

More from Rachel Remen on befriending life:

“You do not need money to be a philanthropist.  We all have assets.  You can befriend life with your bare hands.”

I like that thought – “befriend life with your bare hands.”  Yes, I can give money or time to someone, some cause, to some end, but much more often I am presented the opportunity to “be a philanthropist with my bare hands,” to provide an encouraging word or a smile that need not wind its way through some bureaucracy or to some far-away place to impact a life.  Bare-handed, empty wallet, no credit card philanthropy.

 

“I know nothing, except what everyone knows – if there when Grace dances, I should dance.”  W. H. Auden

Writing on grace, Anne Lamott notes that grace is “the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed.”  Been there, experienced that!

That said, it would seem to follow that “when Grace dances” I would jump up and dance.  Granted, as Lamott notes, in doing so I may look “a little like Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein, putting on the Ritz” (she apparently has heard about my dancing).  Still, I find it easy to “sit this one out” even with Grace dancing right beside me.  But here’s the kicker – no matter my response, Grace keeps dancing, inviting me to do the same.  As Lamott writes, Grace “can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or tiny tastes.”  That is, I think, what makes Grace Grace.  It appears unobligingly, uninvited, and does its thing no matter my response.  And I think Lamott defines “its thing” as well as anyone.  Whether we get up and dance with Grace or not, it “meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”

“And he divided unto them his living.”  Luke 15:12

It is easy to lose this early text in the Prodigal Son parable amongst the rest of the story.  In a hurry to get to the “riotous living”, the feeding of the swine, the regret, the return, the rest of the story, it becomes easy to forget that in the beginning, the father had to divide unto them his living.  He is called to literally divide his living and hand a portion (apparently 1/3 based on the commentaries I have read) over to the younger son.  So he does.

Perhaps that is the power of this verse, the matter-of-factness of it.  We get no sense of angst from the father.  Indeed, there is, at least implicitly, an acceptance, if not a willingness on the part of the father to provide to his child what he has labored for, worried over, and treasured – no strings attached, no “you’re gonna wish you hadn’t,” no “don’t screw it up,” no side of guilt along with the gift.

That is, of course, how God hands things over to us – freely, no strings attached.  The “you’re gonna wish you hadn’t,” the “don’t screw it up,” if they come at all, have to come from others, or internally.  The parable makes no reference to the younger son, at this point, expressing any gratitude to the father.  Later, yes, but here, no.  When does that gratitude show up in my story?

The song line that echoes in my mind here is from Dan Fogelberg’s Leader of the Band.

“I thank you for the freedom when it came my time to go.  I thank you for the kindness and the times when you got tough.  And papa, I don’t think I said ‘I love you’ near enough.”

“Everybody is wondering why and where they all came from.  Everybody is worried ‘bout where they’re gonna go when the whole things done.  No one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.  I think I’ll just let the mystery be.”  Iris Dement, Let the Mystery Be

This song popped into my head today on reading from this from Rachel Remen.

“One of the things that I have learned since my medical training is that it is possible to study life for many years without knowing lie at all.  Often things happen that science can’t explain.  [In this instance, a spontaneously cured “fatal” cancer.]  Life may not be limited by the facts”

Remen sums it up later:

“Sometimes knowing life requires us to suspend disbelief, to recognize that all our hard-won knowledge may only be provisional and that the world may be quite different than we believe it to be.”

This of course channels us directly to Judy Collins from Both Sides Now – “I really don’t know life at all.”

It occurs to me that the (or one of the) difficult part(s) in life (particularly given Google) is not in gaining knowledge, not in knowing what I need to know, but recognizing what I don’t or can’t know and having the strength, faith, courage, to “let the mystery be.”  That, as Remen puts it, “can be very stressful, even frightening.”

This from Rachel Remen:

“Learning from life takes time.  I rarely recognize life’s wisdom at the time it is given.  Sometimes I am too distracted by something else that has caught my wandering eye, and not every gift of wisdom comes nicely gift-wrapped.  I have often received such a gift only many years after it was offered.  Sometimes I needed to receive other things first, to live through other experiences in order to be ready.”

This identifies two hurdles to wisdom.  First, wisdom doesn’t always come packaged with a big “WISDOM” label in bold red letters on it.  Sometimes wisdom may arrive in a passing observation, or it may even arrive looking a whole lot like a problem.  I just may not recognize wisdom for what it is.  Second, I may need to collect a few more additional bits of information for it to all fall together and make sense.  That is, I may just not have all the pieces for the puzzle.

In all this I am reminded of this from Justice Felix Frankfurter: “Wisdom too often never somes, so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes too late.”

From Sam Baker’s song Pretty World, a reminder, as Ehrmann notes in Desiderata: “With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”

“Before the sun, before the heat, before we untangle from our sheets, before this summer day unfurls – pretty world”

Which in turn sends me to Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

And then, here I am.

In My Grandfather’s Blessings Rachel Remen writes of “befriending life.” On my initial reading that sounded a bit silly.  But it occurs to me that “life” and I aren’t always on the best of terms, and in fact sometimes I develop a rather antagonistic attitude towards it, particularly (throat clearing) when it sends something other than peace and joy my way.  This from Remen seemed to address that:

“I’ve spent many years learning how to fix life, only to discover at the end of the day that life is not broken.  There is a hidden sead of greater wholeness in everyone and everything.  We serve life best when we water and befriend it.  When we listen before we act.”

There is a gem buried in there, perhaps more, but this one sticks out to me – “There is a hidden seat of greater wholeness in everyone and everything.”  Perhaps it is that recognition that allows the befriending of life.

A guy in a backwoods area has never seen, heard of, had any knowledge of elephants.  None. Wouldn’t you know it, an elephant escapes and finds its way to the guy’s backyard, where he makes it to and starts helping himself to the guy’s garden.  The guy calls the cops, describes the creature as best he can, and tells the 911 operator that the creature is pulling up the cabbage from the garden with his tail.  “What is he doing with them?” the operator asks.  The guy replies “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you!”  Buh Dumph!

I am reminded 1) of my love of bad jokes, and 2) that often in life I come upon things I don’t understand and try to fill in the gaps by making assumption based on my limited world experiences.  Some of those assumptions are just wrong.  Sometimes it may be best just to keep quiet and withhold judgment.

From Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata:

“Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.  Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.  But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.”

Indeed, life IS full of heroism.  It occurs to me that in many, perhaps most instances, the “heroism” is  being the best person one can be even when life hands out a bad situation.  That is, not letting the bad “blind you to whatever virtue there is.”