It occurs to me…

“Forgiveness does not chance the past, but it does enlarge the future.”  Paul Lewis Boese

Forgiveness is an amazing thing, isn’t it?  Here, I don’t really mean FORGIVENESS, as in what God provides, but the lower case, forgiveness, forgiveness that we humans dispense and receive (though sometimes that looks and feels like FORGIVENESS).  I mean, in the ins and outs of life we all encounter those “slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune” on a fairly regular basis on both the giving and receiving end both, yet somehow we continue to function.  More than that, we actually (in most cases) interact again (whoa here) even continue to have relationships with those we forgive/those who forgive us.

It occurs to me that if, instead of forgiving them, each day we all just lessened our circle of friends and family by casting out of our circles those who offended us, those we needed to forgive, pretty soon we’d all be alone in our circles.  In that way, forgiveness can enlarge our lives, “enlarge the future.”

From the poet, Wendell Berry:

“The past is our definition.  We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.”

Reading this, I am reminded of this admonition, which is attributed to Seneca:

“Don’t stumble over something behind you.”

Still, I like Berry’s approach.  They way to deal with bad things from life’s past is to add some goodness to life today.  It may or may not resolve the past issue, but it just might make today better.  And if that sounds a bit like denial, then so be it.  Delusion is like a habanero pepper in the kitchen.  It can serve its purpose, if used sparingly.

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”  Proverbs 22:6

Sad, but true, I guess, that only in retrospect can a child (though not then a child) truly, fully appreciate the role of the parent in shaping and creating what he/she becomes.  Though perhaps that is best, lest we become intimidated by the thought/peril of raising our own, and procreation of the species ceases.  Thanks, mom!

“Every time I see the bumper sticker that says ‘We think we’re humans having spiritual experiences, but we’re really spirits having human experiences,’ I (a) think it’s true and (b) want to ram the car.”  Anne Lamott

I can relate to Anne Lamott here.  It is so easy to get tied up in knots about life and miss the life going on around me.  That it takes a bumper sticker, or worse yet, a tragedy or misfortune of some type to bring me back to these realities, to point out what is important in life, is a bit embarrassing.  But then, compared to the alternative – continuing on obliviously – I’ll take the embarrassment and the perpetual Homer Simpson, slap on the forehead “DOH!”

From Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata:

“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.”

Ehrmann’s exhortation hits home, as it reveals how, in a setting where the misdeeds of people, particularly public figures, are public knowledge, it becomes easy to become jaded and cynical.  This is particularly true when there seems to be a lack of remorse, or for that matter, significant consequences, for the misdeeds.  But there I go again being judgmental.  More importantly, Ehrmann is pointing out the indirect cost of such misdeeds.  While the misdeeds of a person may directly impact another person or a group, the larger shadow cast is the one that can make those not directly affected become jaded and cynical, make them oblivious, or at least less open to the reality that “many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life if full of heroism.”  That is, or course, Ehrmann’s point.  While “the world is full of trickery” it is also full or persons with “high ideals” and “heroism.”

I particularly like Ehrmann’s equating “high ideals” with “heroism.”  It becomes too easy to limit heroism to people who run into burning buildings and such, but it occurs to me that it is also heroism to do what Ehrmann suggests, to sort through all the crap coming at you in life yet continue to “strive for high ideals.”  There is heroism in a simple action intended to relieve someone’s burden, an act of kindness, or continuing on in your efforts when you would just as soon quit.  There is heroism in a smile, a kind word, or in some circumstances, just doing nothing when what you really want to do is to react or lash out.

“If we magnified blessings as much as we magnify disappointments, we would all be much happier.”  John Wooden

Okay, I complain a lot.  I mean A LOT.  And if I were thankful, grateful, only half that much….

 

“The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in.  His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen.  The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends?’  Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast.”  Luke 15:29-30 (Peterson’s Message)

I appreciate Peterson’s fresh language in an old story.  Here is the older, obedient son, who, out in the fields five minutes before he heard the music and asked the servant what was going on, was likely quite content with his life.  Yet knowing the insolent younger brother (I suspect they never got along) has returned, and that there is an ongoing celebration over that, the older brother goes into a full-fledged snit about how much is life now sucks.

But isn’t that kinda how life is?  As John Prine characterizes it – “That’s the way that the world goes round.  You’re up one day, the next your down.  It’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown.  That’s the way that the world goes round.”

The parable reminds me that I am like the older brother in that I focus too much on what isn’t than what is, more on what is wrong than what is right, what upsets me more than what brings me joy.  ….  So, if one believes in divine intervention — Literally, as I was typing these previous words, our diabetic cat, Zoe, threw up this morning’s breakfast, depositing it all onto the wood floor.  So here I am, returning to the keyboard after the clean-up, and I realizing that I am faced with the decision.  In an otherwise pretty good life, will I let semi-digested, god-awful smelling cat hurl define my day?  Will I be the older brother?  Where is my snit-o-meter going to point to?

I am a latecomer to poetry, or perhaps better stated, a returnee to poetry, having only recently been able to shed the pall put on it by well-intentioned English teachers who forced me to read, memorize, and, God forbid, recite before the class poetry such as Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade — the “half a league, half a league, half a league, onward” is still wedged in my memory between other grade-school atrocities.   But I am not bitter, and here I am, more than a few decades later, though still in recovery, enjoying a poem now and then.

So today, I was struck by this from Garrison Keillor:

“Poetry is a necessity as simple as the need to be touched and similarly a need that is hard to enunciate.   The intense vision and high spirits and moral grandeur are simply needed lest we drift through our days consumed by clothing options and hair styling and whether to have the soup or the salad.”

Of course, anything that takes us away from being “consumed by clothing options and hair styling and whether to have the soup or the salad” is worthy of celebration.  But poetry (Tennyson aside) is as good or better a means to accomplish that as any.

“And he said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.’  Mark 6:31

Reading today from Henri Nouwen on solitude, he thankfully prefaces his comments on the benefits by noting the challenges, the difficulties that exist in solitude.

“Entering a private room and shutting the door, therefore, does not mean that we immediately shut out all our inner doubts, anxieties, fears, bad memories, unresolved conflicts, angry feelings, and impulsive desires.  On the contrary, when we have removed our outer distractions, we often find that our inner distractions manifest themselves to us in full force.  We often use the outer distractions to shield ourselves from the interior noises.”

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.  Yet it does not (or should not) create a valid excuse for me to avoid solitude.  Rather, it speaks to the importance of doing so.  Turning off the TV, putting down the phone, and removing myself from the people and the noise is half the journey.  The rest of the journey to the core, my core, lies in setting aside those fears and concerns, those inner distractions, the “you should have…,” the “why didn’t you…,” the “okay, what if you…,” the “what about…” (among a plethora of other inner distractions knocking at the door) and creating a quiet space to listen and learn.

From Rodney Crowell’s Till I Can Gain Control Again:

“Out on the road that lies before me now

There are some turns where I will spin

I only wish that you could hold me now

Till I can gain control again”

I guess I have been listening to that song for more than forty years, since Emmy  Lou Harris released it in 1975 (Crowell was in her band).  It never occurred to me until being reacquainted with it recently that it is a prayer – a pretty good prayer.  Of course, it raises the issue of whether I ever had control such that “I can gain control again.”