It occurs to me…

“Joy is what happens when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things are.”         Marianne Williamson

I love the subtlety of this quote.  Yes, joy happens (or can happen) when things are good, but the significant part of the quote to me is the “when we allow ourselves to recognize” part.  Stated another way, I often get tied up in this other side of the coin:

“Frustration happens when I fail to allow myself to recognize how bad things are.”

It is that inability, perhaps sometimes stubborn refusal, to see how good things are that creates anger, frustration, stress, and any other bad byproduct I want to name.  I am not channeling Pollyanna here.  At times bad things happen, but there is almost always a duality there, an “other side of the coin” that can emerge in the consciousness if I let it.

“Joy is what happens when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things are.”

Here’s to joy.

“Peace has her victories no less renowned than war.”  John Milton

This seems a ripe peach of a quote to bite into the day following MLK Jr. Day, given his lifelong fupport of peaceful protest.

Victory is generally perceived as something one achieves after a battle, and it is (though there must, necessarily be loss there, too), but the battle does not always involve armies and an arsenal of weapons, nor does it always involve sports teams or games.  Still, peace has, and it will continue to have, victories, but (apologies to Milton) they tend to be less renowned, or at least harder to identify, and less set in stone.

The march into Selma over the Edmund Pettus bridge was a victory, though it came on the heels of Bloody Sunday.  The elimination of “Colored” bathrooms and water fountains – victories.  Voting rights, housing rights, employment rights, all victories.  The election of an African American President (regardless of party affiliation) was a victory.  But still, there doesn’t seem to be a “renowned” VICTORY on the racial front.  There will be no signed document one can point to as a “peace treaty.”  (The Emancipation Proclamation doesn’t seem to have done the job.)  There will be no final score printed in the paper.  The battle goes on.  But as King Jr. noted, it is always the right time to do the right thing — renowned or not.

“No one comes into your life unless you reach out to them.”

Joan Chittister, Uncommon Gratitude

I breezed through this sentence on first reading, but the import of it caught up with me a sentence or two later, so I went back to it.  The sentence comes after Chittister describes several characters from her old neighborhood — the woman down the hall with diabetes, the deaf young man down the street, the man who sat on a stool in an alley….  Each is part of her past, but also part of her present, part of her future – part of what makes her what she is.

Some of these people she actually had a direct relationship with, while others were simply regularly observed.  It occurs to me that the “reaching out” noted above can occur in various ways.  Yes, it can occur directly, in the form of communication or interaction, but people we never meet or communicate directly with can also “come into our lives” in various ways – if we let them.

The guy on the street corner with the “will work for food” sign is certainly reaching out, but doesn’t really “come into my life” unless I pause a moment and contemplate him, his presence, his reality, and perhaps smile at him.  The child on the woman’s shoulder, facing me on the airport’s moving sidewalk “comes into my life” without a word and sends the message to slow down a bit and take a deep breath.  I have only “reached out” long enough to lock eyes and receive the message.  And of course there are those folks I will interact and communicate with, presenting ample opportunity to “reach out” and “come into my life.”

All of which I guess begs the questions: Of the people I encounter today, who will I reach out to?  Who will come into my life and become part of my present, past, and future?

“We are not stars of the show.  We are simply part of the cast extras called humanity.”  Joan Chittister, Uncommon Gratitude

I read this today in conjunction with Oswald Chambers’ discussion of Isaiah 6:8:

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’  And I said. ‘Here I am.  Send me.’”

As Chambers notes, it is easy to make two incorrect assumptions here.  It is easy to read into this that God was calling Isaiah specifically, and to think that what makes Isaiah special is that he stepped up and answered the call.  The first wrong assumption is dealt with by a more careful reading.  God did not call Isaiah specifically.  Rather, he tossed out an open invitation in a question —   “Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?”  Using Chittister’s terms, God was calling out to the “cast of extras” to see who would answer.  Isaiah did.  As to the second assumption, what makes Isaiah special is not that he answered the call but that he could hear the call in the first place.  God’s call is out there, is always out there, and is always calling.  The limitation is that I only hear it when I have put myself in a position to hear it.

I read this today in conjunction with Oswald Chambers’ discussion of Isaiah 6:8:

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’  And I said. ‘Here I am.  Send me.’”

As Chambers notes, it is easy to make two incorrect assumptions here.  It is easy to read into this that God was calling Isaiah specifically, and to think that what makes Isaiah special is that he stepped up and answered the call.  The first wrong assumption is dealt with by a more careful reading.  God did not call Isaiah specifically.  Rather, he tossed out an open invitation in a question —   “Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?”  Using Chittister’s terms, God was calling out to the “cast of extras” to see who would answer.  Isaiah did.  As to the second assumption, what makes Isaiah special is not that he answered the call but that he could hear the call in the first place.  God’s call is out there, is always out there, and is always calling.  The limitation is that I only hear it when I have put myself in a position to hear it.  As Chambers notes: If we let the Spirit of God bring us face to face with God, we too shall hear something aking to what Isaiah heard, the still small voice of God; and in perfect freedom will say, ‘Here am I; send me.’”

As Chambers notes: If we let the Spirit of God bring us face to face with God, we too shall hear something akin to what Isaiah heard, the still small voice of God; and in perfect freedom will say, ‘Here am I; send me.’”

Photo taken over (so my phone tells me) La Jara, Colorado on a flight headed to Portland.

Clouds

A recent flight gave me yet another opportunity to look at the clouds from above, somewhere over Oregon.  One can’t (at least I can’t) dwell on clouds long without Judy Collins’ voice coming in singing “Both Sides Now,” a classis song actually written by Joni Mitchell.  You know the line, so go ahead and sing it now so it will be in your head all day:

“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all”

But what stuck in my head today was the line just before that:

“So many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way”

I don’t know why, but it just stuck in my head – how many times do I let clouds get in my way?  Of course, a cloud has little substance, just some moisture you can fly through, even walk through.  And actual clouds never stop us from doing anything.  No one says: “No, I think I won’t go ______ today, its too cloudy.”  Still, I get Mitchell’s point – “so many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way.”  All of which leads me to the simple question: What clouds are in my way now, preventing me from doing____?  And can’t I just walk through them?

Grace

My on-line dictionary defines “grace” as “free and unmerited favor from God.”  I looked the word up this morning as it came to mind last night while watching the NCAA Championship Game between Georgia and Alabama.  In that game the Alabama kicker missed a relatively short last-second field goal that would have won the game.  Georgia kicked a field goal in overtime to go ahead, but Alabama won minutes later with a touchdown pass in overtime.  With that ending the Alabama kicker had some “free and unmerited favor” pass his way, or more colloquially, had the weight of the world lifted off his shoulder.  His missed field goal was transformed from a potentially crushing blow to a necessary piece of a miraculous ending.  I mean, if you are going to be remembered as the guy who missed the field goal in a story, you want this ending, not the other one the game was headed to.

Thinking on this, it occurs to me that while not to this magnitude, life is full of grace.  Often, quite often when I think of it (IF I think of it), when things appear to be headed one way (toward the shitter) some “free and unmerited favor” appears and things head the other.  That is, if/when I think on it, I recognize that my life is grace-full.  And for that I am grateful – or should be.

From Joan Chittister – Uncommon Gratitude: —

[T]he vagaries of life give us all a chance over and over again to do today what we did not do last year or in another place or yesterday. Life, however interrupted, is one long moment of coming to be the best we can be. Life, we come to understand, is simply the process of growing into God.  But the growing is not linear. It is at best a process of stops and starts, of moments apparently without meaning and times that test the fiber of the soul. Growing into God is not so much, then, the process of becoming perfect. Perfection is a human ideal, an arrogant one at that, but it is not a human state. Perfection is not ours to have. On the contrary, to aspire to perfection is to doom ourselves to the kind of failure that can lead either to depression or to despair—neither of which is healthy, both of which only distract from the real purpose of life.”

Whew!  That takes a load off.  “Perfection is not ours to have.”  Rather, it “is a human ideal, and arrogant one at that.”  I’ve been arrogant for quite a while, and you’d think after so much time and effort at perfection, I would have come to this conclusion on my own.  Of course, that’s where the arrogance comes in.

Back home from three days in near zero and below zero temperatures, I find myself grateful just being warm.  Sitting in a warm room and knowing that cold, at least THAT kind of cold, has lost its grip on me, what comes to mind is classic Joni Mitchell: “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you got ‘til its gone.  They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

I don’t know if it is human nature to take things for granted (a friend will tell me there is no such thing as “human nature”) but it sure comes easy to me.  Sure, it is easy to be grateful for big, good things that occur.  (I swear, God, I’ll be SO grateful when I win the Powerball Lottery!)  What is difficult is being grateful for, hell, even just noticing to be grateful for, those small things I take for granted.  Things like warmth, wellness, water to drink, a roof over my head, a job, an easy breath, movement with no aches and pains….

So here’s to warmth, a dry pair of socks, and life below the Mason-Dixon line.  (Can you still refer to the Mason-Dixon line these days?)

“If, in an hour of noble elation, I could write a bit of glorified prose that would soften the stern ways of life, and bring to our fevered days some courage, dignity, and poise – I should be well content.”  Max Ehrmann

Ehrmann wrote this years before Desiderata, which never really “took” in his lifetime.  In fact, in the tenure of his life he would likely be properly classified as a “failed poet” assuming there is such a thing (I am a believer that there is not).  In any event, the quote stands strong on its own, but stronger knowing that Ehrmann accomplished his goal.   It occurs to me that there’s something to be learned there.