It occurs to me…

“[W]e are all here to grow in wisdom and learn how to love better.  As we each do this in our own ways, we slowly become a blessing to those around us and a light in the world.”

Rachel Remen

 So much is packed in here.  I am not here to be wise in an absolute sense, none of us are.  We are just to “grow in wisdom,” to be a little wiser today than last week, last month, last year.  The same thing with love, I just need to love better.  Baby steps, so far so good.  But then there is the recognition of the source of much frustration, we “each do this in our own ways,” and to make it worse, we do so “slowly,” in our own time.  So, I have to not only be patient with myself as I (hopefully) grow in wisdom and love, but with others also.  Only then can I/we “become a blessing to those around [me]us and a light to the world.”

Lord-o-mighty, no one told me it was going to be this difficult!

 

From Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata:

“[W]hatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.”

So much is captured in these 16 words:

“Whatever your labors and aspirations” – Not “if you have any.”  We all have them.  Different ones, yes, but we all have “labors and aspiration.

“In the noisy confusion of life” – A recognition that life is both noisy and confusing.  My experience certainly validates that.

“Keep peace with your soul” – Keeping peace is difficult.  Keeping peace with others is difficult, and at times, aspirational.  But most important is keeping peace with yourself, your soul.

What comes to mind here is Guy Clark’s song, The Cape, and its great chorus:

“He’s one of those who knows that life is just a leap of faith.  Spread your arms, hold your breath, and always trust your cape.”

Perhaps “keep peace with your soul” and “always trust your cape” are guiding us in the same direction – the direction that is Clark’s last line:

“He didn’t know he couldn’t fly – so he did.”

More on “must be present to win,” at least sort of:

An old Hebrew prayer:

“Days pass and years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles.  Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing.  Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illuminates the darkness I which we walk.  Help us so see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed.  And we, clay touched by God, will reach our for holiness and exclaim in wonder, “How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it.”

Sad but true – “we walk sightless among miracles.”  This weekend, walking the neighborhood, I was listening to a podcast talking about the wonders in our everyday lives, and the person being interviewed used trees as an example.  This caused me, for the first time in this walk, to gaze up at the tree above me.  She was correct.  I took this picture.

Sometimes, “we walk sightless among miracles,” at others, we recognize “how filled with awe this place is.  Photo attached.

Sitting down at my desk to type this morning I noticed out my south-facing window that things outside had this unique, calming, pinkish tint to them.  I pondered that a moment before the dots connected, then looked to my left (east) to see a magnificent sunrise over the roof of the house next door.  As Homer Simpson would say – Doh!  It is so easy to miss that which surrounds me, either miss it completely, or miss its significance.  This brought me to the title of one of the things I read this morning, a phrase we have all heard countless times in relation to contests – “Must be present to win.”

It occurs to me that the phrase applies not just to contests, but to life also – “MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN!”  Note to self: Doh!  Don’t be a Homer.

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.