It occurs to me…

Prompted again in thought today by a reading from Rachel Remem’s My Grandfather’s Blessings:

If you have ever walked a labyrinth you may recall the deception inherent in the journey.  In the beginning, and at points thereafter, it feels like you are headed to the center, then in a few steps there is a sudden change and it feels like you have your back to the center and are headed in the wrong direction.  This process repeats itself with frequency.  It is on these twists and turns in life that Remen writes:

“Could events that seemed meaningless, or even wasteful [perhaps even cruel] be taking me to a destination as surely as the twisting and turning path I had just followed?  Perhaps my path only seemed random because I was still on it.  At the end, from the center, would I someday see my life as complete and whole and recognize a hidden direction and patterns that redeemed loss and failure and pain and utterly changed their meaning and value?”

I think she is on to something.  Even now, thankfully, the path contains (if I recognize them) occasional moments that invite reinterpretation of some of life’s twists and turns and allow me some understanding as to how (and perhaps why) they got me from there to here.

And like the labyrinth, that’s a long way, circuitous way to get from the start to Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  Onward.

Reading today from Rachel Remen’s My Grandfather’s Blessings, she writes of integrity, or as she titles it, “keeping it together.”  She describes giving a group of 73 physicians a list of 21 life values, things like admiration, control, wisdom, competence, love, power, compassion, happiness….  First she asked them to rank the values in what was most important to them in their work.  Then, taking those up, she asked them to rank the values according to what was most important to them personally.  No one had two identical lists.  Her comments are thought provoking, to say the least.  Perhaps “challenging” is a better word:

“It has been surprising to see how often people do not realize that their deepest values ae as personal as their fingerprints.  Not knowing this many of us have sacrificed certain things in order to have other things that we have been told are more important.  Some of the things we have let go of in order to be seen as successful may have been far more important to us personally in the end than some of the things we have held on to or even fought for.”

She concludes on more of an up note: “Deep inside, our integrity sings to us whether we are listening or not.  It is a note that only we can hear.  Eventually, when life makes us ready to listen, it will help us find our way home.”

 

Reading the Prodigal Son story again this morning (Luke 15:11-32), tempered by something else read earlier, I saw the parable through a different lens and it occurred to me that in that parable there is a lesson that had previously escaped me.  Based on the facts given, the family itself was apparently affluent.  It was not until the younger son took his inheritance and  “wasted his substance with riotous living” that he “came to himself” (in some translations, “came to his senses”) and realized the value of what he had left behind.  Similarly, the father, did not realize what he had in the prodigal son until he lost him.  It was only in their loss that the father and prodigal son could realize the value of what they lost – yet still had.  The older son remained blind to that as he had not (at least in his mind) sustained any loss.

All that to say that sometimes, to borrow from Joni Mitchell, “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.”    Perhaps that is one of the issues with having much – it makes it difficult to fully appreciate all you have.

“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”  Epicurus

Well, I am not sure I need help in defining what is NOT enough so much as what IS enough.  That said, this points out that until “enough” is defined, it will always be that distant point on the horizon.

New Year’s Eve is ripe with anticipation, what Webster defines as “the act of looking forward.”  There is, of course, some danger in looking forward as it takes my eyes and mind off now.  In this I am reminded of an exchange I had with my departed (but obviously still with me) friend Jim Mulford.  When, in late December, I started telling him of my new year’s resolutions, he simply replied: “If it is a good resolution, you ought to start doing it (or not doing it) today.”  He had/has a point.

I have long been taken by the lyrics of the Don Goodman and Becky Hobbs song (made popular by the group Alabama) Angels Among Us.  The story song is powerful on so many levels.  There’s the chorus: “I believe there are angels among us, sent down to us, from somewhere up above.  They come to you and me, in our darkest hours.  To show us how to give, teach us how to live, and guide us with the light of love.”  Most powerful to me, the “lump in the throat” line, is this: “Ain’t it kind of funny, at the dark end of the road, someone lights the way with just a single ray of hope.”

The magical thing here is that we can (are called to) be the giver and the receiver there.  Others can light our way, and we can light the way for others.

From Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata:

“Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.”

This is an interesting sentence as it juxtaposes two competing thoughts – “discipline” and “gentle.”  Note I said “competing” and not contradictory.  In this I am reminded of Dan Fogelberg’s description of his father in Leader of the Band:

“He earned his love through discipline, a thundering velvet hand
His gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand”

What a phrase – a “gentle means of sculpting souls.”  That is, I think, Ehrmann’s point – you can and should push yourself (who wants to get up every morning and go to work?), but don’t beat yourself (hitting the snooze button is not a punishable offense).  Be gentle with your soul, and those of others.

Back to Thomas Merton’s prayer, one I have written of before.  I picked it up today and the first line jumped out at me: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.”  It occurs to me that at this end of year time, when we are making resolutions, planning out how next year is going to be, and more importantly, how next year is going to be different, that this line from Merton’s prayer should be in the mix also.  For all my planning, my intentions, my resolutioning, the reality is that “I have no idea where I am going.”  If I need proof of that I only need to recognize the path that brought ne to here, now, was only partly of my own making.  I am not suggesting that this should stop me from planning, intending, or making resolutions – only that in doing so I should recognize that it is not all about me.

I was reading Advice to Myself by Louise Endrich recently.  The poem is, as you might expect, full of advice, yet one piece sticks out for me – her admonition to only pay attention to “what strikes at or what shatters the ruse you call necessity.”  Now there are five words full of meaning, begging for thought and introspection – “the ruse you call necessity.”

That said, it doesn’t take much thought or introspection to declare “necessity” a fraud, at least as I commonly use it in the more common form – “need.”

So we get to Christmas and it has all unfolded.   Mary and Joseph fled, they end up in a stable in Bethlehem where she gave birth to Jesus.  There is all this hubbub, the angels, the shepherds, ….  Only one person has really been through this from the beginning – Mary.  Perhaps that is why I like this verse so much:

“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

Though she has been through it all Mary, it seems, can’t make full sense out of it.  She can’t just wrap it up into a neat package and move on.  No, she has lived through all these events and still “pondered them in her heart.”  Such a great word – “ponder.”  (In my on line dictionary: to “think about something carefully, especially before making a decision or reaching a conclusion.”  But it occurs to me that if Mary can be in the midst of it and still has to ponder it, then it follows that I am not supposed to have it all figured out.  I, like Mary, am allowed to read and think of these events and ponder them in my heart before reaching a decision or conclusion.  And I do.