It occurs to me…

C. S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity on right and wrong:

“People may sometimes be mistaken about them [right and wrong], just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table.”

Hmm!  Yes, 3×3=9, and there is no “almost right” answer to that.  Yet it occurs to me that life, and the situations it throws out to us, are more nuanced than the multiplication tables.  Sometimes I am not always sure a 3 is a 3, or that a 9 is a 9.

In pondering this I am sent back to a poem I recently read.  While it seems to be applicable here, I am not sure I can explain why other than both the Lewis passage and the poem present a conundrum:

The Three Goals – David Budbill

“The first goal is to see the thing itself in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly for that it is.  No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing as unified, as one, whit all other ten thousand things.  IN this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and second goals, to see the universal and the particular, simultaneously.  Regarding this one, call me when you get it.”

Sometimes, I read something and it occurs to me that I need not bother trying to string thoughts and words together today, as someone has done it far better than I could ever hope to, done it so well it compels sharing.

Sometimes – Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don’t go, after all, from bad to worse.  Some years, muscadel faces down the frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail, sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war; elect an honest man; decide they care enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.  Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.  The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

In writing of the Paul’s ministry today, Oswald Chambers notes that the source of Paul’s ministry was not love for men, but love for Jesus Christ, or, if you will, love.

“If we are devoted to the cause of humanity, we shall soon be crushed and broken-hearted, for we shall often meet with more ingratitude from men than we would from a dog. But if your motive is love to God, no ingratitude can hinder us from serving our fellow men.”

I am reminded in this of a mission trip in Honduras years ago.  We worked hard all week to improve a single structure in a small town.  On the last day there, dog-tired and walking over a hill, I looked out and saw hundreds of similar structures needing similar work, and a feeling of hopelessness, a feeling that what I had done that week was insignificant, washed over me.  It occurs to me that this is what Paul, and Chambers, are trying to pass along, that there is danger in measuring success in human terms, by either a result or a response.  The efforts to improve the single structure in Honduras did not “fix” the others.  But that misses the point.  And the point (at least the point as to me) is really not even if the one structure was improved.  I will likely never see that structure again, never benefit physically from its improvement.  In our lives, the person we are moved to help may not appreciate the effort, and may not even be aware of our involvement.  Sometimes our well-intentioned efforts may “fail.”   But if love is our motive, if it is the source that fuels our action, then there is success no matter the result.

Reading mindlessly this morning, this translation of Rumi by Coleman Barks shook me awake and, at least temporarily, pulled me back into mindfulness:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

From Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Weber:

 “I am not sure I trust myself enough to feel confident in declaring that God is involved in something, especially if it’s my own project.  But I can pretty consistently see God in retrospect.  I mean, in any given moment I am so filled with doubt and self-interest and ambition and neurosis that it’s hard to be tuned into God.  But after something surprising or intensely beautiful happens, usually in spite of me and my machinations, then I begin to suspect God.”

Indeed, it is so much easier to identify God’s involvement looking back “in the rear-view mirror.”  I suppose that is in large part because I was not anticipating/expecting/seeking God’s involvement at the time.   (“Lord, help me” is more often an acknowledgment of being in a mess than it is a true request for God’s assistance.)  Most likely, I was just in a mess and was willing to accept relief from any source.  (A drowning man rarely inquires as to qualification or intent of the source of the lifesaver being thrown his way.)   Having the issue resolved, I have time to (and may) take a deep breath, look back, and contemplate the what just happened.  Often, I can rule out attributing the resolution to my own efforts, and attributing it to “just dumb luck” seems such a poor option.  Then, and only then, does God’s grace start to enter as an option.  I’m just slow on the uptake.

“The rose has a gift that you lack; it is perfectly content to be itself.  It has not been programmed from birth, as you have been, to be dissatisfied with itself, so it has not the slightest urge to be anything other than what it is.  That is why it possesses the artless grace and absence of inner conflict that among humans is only found in little children and mystics.” The Way to Love – Anthony DeMello

As humans, or course, we try to improve the rose.  We create hybrids, thornless roses, roses of different colors, shapes, heights, and tolerances.  Despite all that, the rose simply does what it was meant to do, and becomes what it was meant to become.  It occurs to me that perhaps that is one reason we like roses so much.  A stem sits there, color, form, scent — beautiful, yes, but also thorny (and anyone who has grown roses knows, needy and moody).  Still, with all that, the rose is what it is and through that maintains the “artless grace” and “absence of inner conflict” we strive for by relentless effort and “self-improvement.”  There’s a lesson in here somewhere.

“We are circumference people, with little access to the center.  We live on the boundaries of our own lives.”  Richard Rohr

This is the opening line in Rohr’s book, Everything Belongs.  He notes, (in a warning of sorts) that “we can remain on the circumferences of our lives for quite a long time.  So long, that it starts to feel like the only ‘life’ available.”  I haven’t read the book (yet), but it occurs to me that living on the boundaries makes us awfully busy, and perhaps a bit paranoid.  Living on the boundary, the boundary itself becomes the only thing that separates us from the outside, and there is, then, a constant effort to protect the boundary at all costs, and a tendency toward binary thought — to see things as outside or inside, and judge them based on that.  (Stop me if this starts to sound like an election strategy!)  Inside becomes good.  Outside becomes bad.  Those who look, think, act, and talk like me are inside while those who don’t are outside.

There is, of course, difficulty in the journey to the core, away from the boundary  but it occurs to me that perhaps the hardest part in the journey is coming to grips with the thought that the move is a good and necessary thing, that we no longer need or want to be “circumference people.”

Light rain falling outside,

from my window I watched the squirrel

drinking from the grout lines of the tile floor

where the water collects first.

In a heavy rain, a heavy rain,

she would not have to be so precise

and could quench her thirst on any surface.

Still, she seems satisfied

drinking from the grooves between the tiles,

and perhaps feels some sense of pride

that she has figured this out.

She should, because

(as if this is relevant)

it impresses me!

From “The Best Shitty Feeling In the World” in Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Weber:

“And the thing about grace, real grace, is that it stings.  It stings because if it’s real, it means we don’t deserve it.  No amount of my own movement or strength could have held up those plates I’d stacked way too high, I tried, and I failed, and [they] suffered for it, and then they extended me kindness, compassion, and forgiveness out of their silo of hurt and grace….  And receiving grace is basically the best shitty feeling in the world.”

It seems an easy trap to fall into, to somehow feel that I deserve grace, or perhaps worse, that I am owed it.  But that is the sting that is pointed out.  My part in the dispensing of grace is only to have screwed up sufficiently to have created the opportunity for it to be dispensed – hardly something that warrants any accolade or reward.  No, the power of grace, the core, is not in the deservedness of the receiver but in the love of the giver.  Grace doesn’t eliminate my screw up.  It still occurred.  So yes, the sting is there, but I think she’s got it right – that receiving of grace is “the best shitty feeling in the world.”