It is our last full day in Santiago. Helen and I ended up with some time to spare. I had calendared enough days from Porto to finish that we would only need to make 10-11 miles per day. But as we fell in with fit and motivated Europeans, in one case hyper-motivated, we smoked along the ol' Caminho Trail and pulled in on the 15th. Our Madrid plane does not depart until Monday the 19th.
Am glad, though, because not only does this give a chance for the soles of the Keens to stop smoking and for the blisters to shrink, but we have a cushion to savor this complex city a bit and, perhaps, savor what has taken place in our souls.
Pilgrims constantly stream into the great plaza from our route, the Via Portuguese, as well as the busier Via Frances. We watch now with something of a veteran's understanding as the exhaustion turns to elation as people, now people we have never met, hug and cry.
This is bittersweet as our own little Caminho family has dissolved. Each continues their pilgrimage by another road. Ramon from Washington has gone on alone to Finisterre on the coast. After drinking wine by a fountain in the sun, Guus and Marian have boarded their bus for Porto then on to Holland. Etan leaves for Switzerland as I write. We will host Marie tonight as we are one more day here, then we fly to Madrid while she, young footpad right out of a medieval story, walks to Finisterre, then bus to Santiago, then walks back along the Caminho Frances to her home in the shadow of Mont Blanc.
There really are such people in the world still.
But Santiago is a holy city, and as such it is complex. The pious, the curious, the adventuresome, the wealthy, the poor, and the bored all flock here. And there is much trade--trinkets, holy baubles, marinated octopus (which is in describable fabulous), simple hostels, luxury hotels all fill the streets. A St James mime slowly swings a huge censer in the square, providing a photo op. You can be a Knight Templar, a weary pilgrim, or just dazed and confused in the streets of the old city.
I like it for its honesty. The Strange Road does not lead to some ethereal bliss, but humanity in all our hustle to make a living and just get by.
At a last dinner, Marian asked what each of us had gained from the Road. I replied that my request of Santiago had been fulfilled. Remembering my romanticized plunge into ancient Celtic mist in Ireland, I had asked the Saint of the Road to let me see the real people along the way, not only my fellow-pilgrims but the people who love and work and get up each day with their joys and sorrows, their loves and losses.
He heard my prayer, Santiago, Big Jim, the majestic and ragged and whimsical Saint of the road. He guided and led and provided, and gave me so much more.
He gave friends, a dear band of fellow-journeyers who understand deeply the Strange Road with the scale of each cobblestone, the weight of wet laundry pinned to your backpack.
The faces...gentle Fernanda who told us of her love of her city Oporto there in her own apartment. The cafe workers who smiled at our efforts to speak Portuguese. The man delighted to give us vegetables. The excited local drunk who encouraged us from his bicycle on that blistering day. The bright and fresh faces of Gonzaga and his choir, the earnestness of Marianna, the inquisitive graduate student and her companions. The kind and the distracted, the indifferent and the concerned. Each and every one who, when we most needed to hear it, blessed is with a "Bom Caminho", "Buen Camino." On some days, only that made all the difference.
On impulse last night, Helen got on the line to enter the Catedral, hug the statue of Saint James from behind, and then pray before his ossuary in the crypt. The evening Pilgrim Mass was taking place as we did so, and as we stood the "botafumeiro " again soared. The cantor's voice again soared with it, and I heard in the lyrics "keep Spain in the faith we received, bless the people of Spain."
Before me a family with adorable preschoolers. The parents pointed out to their curious eyes the baroque statues, the flying censer, and then lifted them to kiss the massive bronze cheek of the great statue eternally gazing over the sanctuary of the great church.
The people of Spain, a nation that guards the Road and the Shrine, tiny children receiving by sight and touch the most sacred of Spain's holy sites, the soul of a nation.
I breathed a prayer for Spain and for Portugal as I leaned on the statue, placed my cheek on his shoulder. His shoulder was massive, heavy, and strong, with the raised ornaments of scallops and stars worn bright from touch.
Gracias, viejo. Thank you, old one.
bom caminho
Saturday, September 17, 2016
Saturday, September 10, 2016
passed by
Pilgrims intentionally straggle. There is a delicate unspoken etiquette that allows one to gently fall in step with another, speak for a time, then quietly experiment with gait that allows
The swifter or more determined, if they wish, to pull ahead.
I am one of the slowest on the Strange Road, ever so slightly hobbled
Of gait with my right foot turned slightly in and the killer blister on my right foot sole. So I am easy to pass.
I have learned that there is a calling in being passed.
The dignified German man who passed me gravely, but stayed for a time, may not have told me that he
lives near Saxonhausen concentration camp. We discussed genocide, how decent German people live with the Nazi legacy, and the hypocrisy of the USA and our genocidal treatment of Native Americans and many others.
I would not have heard of the losses that other pilgrims have suffered, of children and marriages and ways of life, of health, of faith. I would not have heard of the quiet courage to carry on.
I would not have heard myself speak aloud my own pain, doubt, struggle, and fear.
I would not have had my own wounds bound in silence by the quiet acceptance of others.
Deep in the Spanish forest, on an old Roman road, lies a small bridge covered with planks. The local people call it the "fever bridge" because, they say, one Saint Telmo died beside it while on pilgrimage to Santiago. Next the bridge stands a very old stone cross, mute testimony that here Telmo's physical journey came to an end. But another journey began. His death-place became the place that all others would pass by on their journey. The arms and base of the cross are covered with stones, some inscribed with names. What a journey began for Telmo the day he stopped walking to Santiago but allowed others to walk into his solitude, bringing their pain.
Alone, I stood before Telmo's cross and gave thanks that mine too is a vocation to be passed by.
The swifter or more determined, if they wish, to pull ahead.
I am one of the slowest on the Strange Road, ever so slightly hobbled
Of gait with my right foot turned slightly in and the killer blister on my right foot sole. So I am easy to pass.
I have learned that there is a calling in being passed.
The dignified German man who passed me gravely, but stayed for a time, may not have told me that he
lives near Saxonhausen concentration camp. We discussed genocide, how decent German people live with the Nazi legacy, and the hypocrisy of the USA and our genocidal treatment of Native Americans and many others.
I would not have heard of the losses that other pilgrims have suffered, of children and marriages and ways of life, of health, of faith. I would not have heard of the quiet courage to carry on.
I would not have heard myself speak aloud my own pain, doubt, struggle, and fear.
I would not have had my own wounds bound in silence by the quiet acceptance of others.
Deep in the Spanish forest, on an old Roman road, lies a small bridge covered with planks. The local people call it the "fever bridge" because, they say, one Saint Telmo died beside it while on pilgrimage to Santiago. Next the bridge stands a very old stone cross, mute testimony that here Telmo's physical journey came to an end. But another journey began. His death-place became the place that all others would pass by on their journey. The arms and base of the cross are covered with stones, some inscribed with names. What a journey began for Telmo the day he stopped walking to Santiago but allowed others to walk into his solitude, bringing their pain.
Alone, I stood before Telmo's cross and gave thanks that mine too is a vocation to be passed by.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Improbable mercy
We set out from the ancient monastery on rural roads, the shade a grace due to the heat and sun. Later that night German pilgrims would discuss with us the German concept of "redneck."
But the day had far more that contemporary American culture-war references.
Cobble-cobble-conbley stones--we marveled at the stamina of the Romans who had actually laid some of these roads.
A sweet Portuguese pilgrim named Dio, with whom my daughter bonded. A long-distance runner, he courteously kept us company for the morning, then discreetly asked if he could "resume his pace" as he needs to be in Santiago in five days.
A sweet dog who had clearly had puppies recently, who wished to join us and did until she sat in the road looking confused. Perhaps she wished to hit the Strange Road to escape parenthood.
Medieval bridges and weirs,cobbles cobbles everywhere. The Hungarian who walks with me says "It only gets worse."
But the medieval town we stumble into, exhausted, the welcome aubergues, the tale we hear of the pilgrim condemned to death whose judge was shocked by his dinner-chicken jumping up and crowing, while the condemned man was hung but dangled, alive, because Saint James was supporting his legs.
We see the late-medieval cross depicting this as we leave town.
Heat, sun, wildfires into the distance then, that night, so near. We are part of this dry arid landscape, air a dry searing wind in the lungs, each step a conscious command of obedience to sore and heavy muscles.
We round a Romanesque church on a hill. It is locked, but from its door's Windows cool air streams and an enchanted vision of carvings, a distant promise of glory and beauty, can be seen.
I pray to the Saint of the church to help us find shelter from the heat.
Stumping down the last trail, a bicycle hoves in sight. The Most Talkative Man In Portugal engages us, assuring us that shelter is near. He amuses us with his antics yet comforts us with his enthusiastic assurances that deliverance is at hand.
He disappears, and a turn in the Caminho finds us at converted stables run by the efficient Susana. We rest, drink copious amounts of water, arise to be cared for again.
Susana says, with young/old eyes, "The Caminho is first of all an inner journey. We bring ourselves as we are, but we all need to make this journey."
Today, we walk the streets in Ponte de Lima, an historic town with a Roman bridge and the streets thronged with people. It is the fiesta, held since 1826. We walk among them. We are strangers, but with newfound friends among our fellow pilgrims. We have found wisdom we did not know we needed, are content to feel the Road beneath our feet, to not control the outcomes. Tomorrow we walk again. The Strange Road awaits.
But the day had far more that contemporary American culture-war references.
Cobble-cobble-conbley stones--we marveled at the stamina of the Romans who had actually laid some of these roads.
A sweet Portuguese pilgrim named Dio, with whom my daughter bonded. A long-distance runner, he courteously kept us company for the morning, then discreetly asked if he could "resume his pace" as he needs to be in Santiago in five days.
A sweet dog who had clearly had puppies recently, who wished to join us and did until she sat in the road looking confused. Perhaps she wished to hit the Strange Road to escape parenthood.
Medieval bridges and weirs,cobbles cobbles everywhere. The Hungarian who walks with me says "It only gets worse."
But the medieval town we stumble into, exhausted, the welcome aubergues, the tale we hear of the pilgrim condemned to death whose judge was shocked by his dinner-chicken jumping up and crowing, while the condemned man was hung but dangled, alive, because Saint James was supporting his legs.
We see the late-medieval cross depicting this as we leave town.
Heat, sun, wildfires into the distance then, that night, so near. We are part of this dry arid landscape, air a dry searing wind in the lungs, each step a conscious command of obedience to sore and heavy muscles.
We round a Romanesque church on a hill. It is locked, but from its door's Windows cool air streams and an enchanted vision of carvings, a distant promise of glory and beauty, can be seen.
I pray to the Saint of the church to help us find shelter from the heat.
Stumping down the last trail, a bicycle hoves in sight. The Most Talkative Man In Portugal engages us, assuring us that shelter is near. He amuses us with his antics yet comforts us with his enthusiastic assurances that deliverance is at hand.
He disappears, and a turn in the Caminho finds us at converted stables run by the efficient Susana. We rest, drink copious amounts of water, arise to be cared for again.
Susana says, with young/old eyes, "The Caminho is first of all an inner journey. We bring ourselves as we are, but we all need to make this journey."
Today, we walk the streets in Ponte de Lima, an historic town with a Roman bridge and the streets thronged with people. It is the fiesta, held since 1826. We walk among them. We are strangers, but with newfound friends among our fellow pilgrims. We have found wisdom we did not know we needed, are content to feel the Road beneath our feet, to not control the outcomes. Tomorrow we walk again. The Strange Road awaits.
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Sleepless in Madrid, welcome in Porto
The upside of that big flight from Portland OR to Amsterdam is that they pamper you, but that does not really mitigate the impact of a 9 1/2 hour west to east flight.
My daughter and I deplaned with that thin, exhausted, brittle sort of buzz come from all those hours in the air, finding that time has totally misplaced you.
Settled into the Hostel Viki, a clean but no-frills place free of anything like diversion, and a night of near-sleeplessness ensued.
Both of us dissolved into our personal vulnerabilities, Helen frightened that her own body would not sleep when she wished it to, me feeling guilt that I led my daughter into this deeply disruptive moment.
But a great deal of comforting and using the brain, sheer emotion and reason all at once, coupled with a very raw form of prayer, got us through the night and to this day, awakening in Porto.
The day dawns late for us. I awakened at 1:30 and was up until 4. Strange how raw is prayer at that hour, but how good is tr sense that one is heard.
Snapshots...
The plaza near the hostel in Madrid, deserted during interviews the day, awakening at 6 pm to fill with people of all ages, families with young kids, the elderly, young adults--a neighborhood come alive.
Rotten night attempting to reason with our Oregon physiology that it is indeed nighttime.
The human body often does not respond to reason. We comforted each other and, when the day dawned, headed out for a cafecito in the same plaza.
Again, a neighborhood coming alive, this time to a new day. Kind Spanish shopkeeper,
Clearly amused that we found the local prices so
low.
Feeling caffeinated, a Portland normalizing state, in better spirits we boarded the plane for Porto.
Porto--a swirl of images and impressions...
The new-old city, built on colonial exuberance and prosperity. The visually explosive baroque and rococo churches, faith and confidence and prosperity all at once.
Friendly patient people. The question"fala Ingles?" results in some form of effective communication, especially when peppered with Spanish.
Good coffee.
Cobblestones.
Narrow "roads" with an occasional truck, more brave than prudent, making its way where only feet and perhaps some horses were meant to go.
My daughter and I placing our "credenciales" for the carimbo, the stamp of the pilgrim, then placing them at the feet of a 16th c statue of St James tucked away in the second story of the cloister.
Tears flowed in a silent moment that startled a tourist who paused in his photography, but glanced at the credentiales and stepped back in respect, bowed his head and waited for us.
Outside, my daughter discovering a yellow arrow, a waymarks. "This is where it gets 'realz'" she said.
We discussed our reasons for taking the Road. Helen is openly more skeptical than I, not as caught up in the mysticism of the Strange Road. She has more questions than answers, says she is here to see Europe, walk the Road, and see what it may be about.
I think that is a fine reasons to follow the yellow arrows.
My daughter and I deplaned with that thin, exhausted, brittle sort of buzz come from all those hours in the air, finding that time has totally misplaced you.
Settled into the Hostel Viki, a clean but no-frills place free of anything like diversion, and a night of near-sleeplessness ensued.
Both of us dissolved into our personal vulnerabilities, Helen frightened that her own body would not sleep when she wished it to, me feeling guilt that I led my daughter into this deeply disruptive moment.
But a great deal of comforting and using the brain, sheer emotion and reason all at once, coupled with a very raw form of prayer, got us through the night and to this day, awakening in Porto.
The day dawns late for us. I awakened at 1:30 and was up until 4. Strange how raw is prayer at that hour, but how good is tr sense that one is heard.
Snapshots...
The plaza near the hostel in Madrid, deserted during interviews the day, awakening at 6 pm to fill with people of all ages, families with young kids, the elderly, young adults--a neighborhood come alive.
Rotten night attempting to reason with our Oregon physiology that it is indeed nighttime.
The human body often does not respond to reason. We comforted each other and, when the day dawned, headed out for a cafecito in the same plaza.
Again, a neighborhood coming alive, this time to a new day. Kind Spanish shopkeeper,
Clearly amused that we found the local prices so
low.
Feeling caffeinated, a Portland normalizing state, in better spirits we boarded the plane for Porto.
Porto--a swirl of images and impressions...
The new-old city, built on colonial exuberance and prosperity. The visually explosive baroque and rococo churches, faith and confidence and prosperity all at once.
Friendly patient people. The question"fala Ingles?" results in some form of effective communication, especially when peppered with Spanish.
Good coffee.
Cobblestones.
Narrow "roads" with an occasional truck, more brave than prudent, making its way where only feet and perhaps some horses were meant to go.
My daughter and I placing our "credenciales" for the carimbo, the stamp of the pilgrim, then placing them at the feet of a 16th c statue of St James tucked away in the second story of the cloister.
Tears flowed in a silent moment that startled a tourist who paused in his photography, but glanced at the credentiales and stepped back in respect, bowed his head and waited for us.
Outside, my daughter discovering a yellow arrow, a waymarks. "This is where it gets 'realz'" she said.
We discussed our reasons for taking the Road. Helen is openly more skeptical than I, not as caught up in the mysticism of the Strange Road. She has more questions than answers, says she is here to see Europe, walk the Road, and see what it may be about.
I think that is a fine reasons to follow the yellow arrows.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Leaving yourself?
On the eve of our departure for Portugal, this from Thomas Merton's journals, as he prepared for his journey to Asia:
"A journey is a bad death if you ingeniously grasp or remove all that you were before you started, so that in the end you do not change in the least. The stimulation enables you to grasp more raffishly at the same, familiar, distorted illusions. You come home only confirmed in greater greed--with new skills (real or imaginary) for satisfying it."
These words resounded as I spent one last day on-line with literally sundry details, running off docs, and gazing once again at the small untidy pile of what I wonder will be needed, or only wanted, or a product of my compulsions and anxiety. Merton's stark and uncompromising words are a reminder to not undertake this journey in some egocentric hope of gaining one more spiritual bullet-point on the invisible resume, not to assume a temporary false "spiritual" mantle. It is a gift that my youngest daughter is my companion, a living embodiment of the past decades that finally do not belong to me or me alone, but to spouse and children and their own unique history independent of my own. Or inextricably intertwined with my own, as marriage and parenthood rescued me time and time again from terminal self-absorbtion.
Wonder what would happen if Delta lost the pack, after all the maundering and wondering? The Osprey is getting tired of being empty and re-packed, I imagine, all without leaving the house!
But for perhaps the first time in any sizable journey, I do not wish to leave myself behind. I'll risk a heavy pack.
"A journey is a bad death if you ingeniously grasp or remove all that you were before you started, so that in the end you do not change in the least. The stimulation enables you to grasp more raffishly at the same, familiar, distorted illusions. You come home only confirmed in greater greed--with new skills (real or imaginary) for satisfying it."
These words resounded as I spent one last day on-line with literally sundry details, running off docs, and gazing once again at the small untidy pile of what I wonder will be needed, or only wanted, or a product of my compulsions and anxiety. Merton's stark and uncompromising words are a reminder to not undertake this journey in some egocentric hope of gaining one more spiritual bullet-point on the invisible resume, not to assume a temporary false "spiritual" mantle. It is a gift that my youngest daughter is my companion, a living embodiment of the past decades that finally do not belong to me or me alone, but to spouse and children and their own unique history independent of my own. Or inextricably intertwined with my own, as marriage and parenthood rescued me time and time again from terminal self-absorbtion.
Wonder what would happen if Delta lost the pack, after all the maundering and wondering? The Osprey is getting tired of being empty and re-packed, I imagine, all without leaving the house!
But for perhaps the first time in any sizable journey, I do not wish to leave myself behind. I'll risk a heavy pack.
Saturday, August 27, 2016
eve-things
The eve of leaving on the Road is filled with contradictions.
Contradictory feelings: feeling "out of school" as I took my leave for a month from Good Sam Hospital. Such a rich work and ministry there, such fine colleagues and admirable co-workers, a pang deep beneath my heart as I said good-byes for a solid month. And yet a near-skip in my step as I walked out the front door, feeling very young again. I do not often feel young at the hospital. At rounds and other places I am surrounded by clever, talented people who are sometimes decades younger than me. I figure I bring the kind, safe uncle into situations, which is useful.
Delighted to be traveling with my youngest daughter, to whom I first mentioned the Camino de Santiago years ago amidst high school turmoil. She remembered and saved her money. Sad and rather guilty not to be traveling with older daughter and with spouse. But, schedules and money and life are all what they are.
Comfortable at the thought of being on the Iberian Peninsula, as I speak Spanish and have long been blessed by Hispanic culture, first and foremost mediated by my Mexican-descended wife. Less comfortable, beneficially so, as we have chosen the Portuguese road--I do not speak Portuguese, and the little Lonely Planet book has convinced me that the languages are and are not familiar one to another at the same time.
As far as pilgrims on the Camino go, the Portuguese Road is the "read less traveled by" compared to the familiar "Via Frances" across Galicia from the Pyrenees, although it is gaining in popularity.
It is something in me, something at once adventurous and individualistic and stubborn and ornery, that gravitates to the lesser-known road. That may be one reason why, instead of asking one of the local pilgrim associations to bestow scallop shells on us and bless us on our way, Helen and I took shells we found on the beach and had put in our garden, cleaned them off, and spent a day at the Trappist Abbey where my spiritual director blessed them in the monastery church after the Midday Office. We will bring that community with us, spiritually speaking, and place their concerns at the feet of Saint James, God willing.
Above all, I welcome the unknown and the unexpected.
You'll meet my daughter Helen in these pages as we go, with her elegantly close-cropped hair and her passion and her questions. I remember being 20, vaguely, but there are few survivors from those days when mail was on paper and Tricky Dick Nixon masks were still popular on Halloween and when Fleetwood Mac roamed the earth. You'll meet the people we meet, I hope, because I hope to pay close attention to the people of Portugal and Spain that we encounter and not simply treat the Camino de Santiago as one long religious theme park. You'll presumably meet me, and you may or may not like whom you meet, but that like the steps along the Road is utterly beyond my control.
I have named the 'blog the Strange Road as I read, perhaps from Paolo Coelho's book "The Pilgrimage" that began my dreaming of the Camino in the late 1990's, that one traditional title for the Camino de Santiago is "el Camino Extrano", the Strange Road. (Spanish readers, forgive the lack of a tilda on the N, but I do not know how to activate Spanish conventions on Google 'blogs). If we take the pilgrim road as pilgrim, we take it on faith amidst anxiety and hope, betting on the God of journeys. It is our life, symbol and metaphor and brief literal enactment of our life, with all of its unpredictability and tragicomedy and irony and sudden, savage beauty. It cannot help but be strange, if we pay attention.
From that thought I go to clean the bathroom, as the fam gathers tonight to grill something as a "despedida", a leave-taking. Then I will lay out the contents of my pack, my rather embarrassingly expensive Osprey pack with many mysterious zippers and pockets. I fear we shall know each other intimately before long, Osprey pack and I. I hope it doesn't mind sweat from a 50-something male body that appreciates Oregon microbrews perhaps a little too much. I'll fret again at what I am taking and what I am not taking, trying to keep the weight to 14 pounds as it was at the last weigh-in. Fretting about a small book or not is a safe neurotic way to not fret about the journey itself and the leave-taking from 2/3 of my beloved Portland family.
Saint James may await in Santiago, but I am asking him to stay here and look after the fam, after my home, after my friends, after the hospital with all its brave staff and those who come seeking healing. If you have a prayer or a hope or a grief that you wish us to take to Santiago Cathedral and lay before the bones of the Apostle, feel free to use "comments" or, for confidentiality's sake, text or FB Message me. Apologies to those who may find this a quaint and somewhat pretentious invitation, but this whole business is bringing out the latent medieval romantic in me big time. And besides, we may undertake pilgrimage for ourselves, but I have learned that in the end we have not gone for ourselves alone. The Strange Road is thronged with the seen and the unseen, and among those latter are those who cannot physically make the journey but whose cries and prayers, hopes and dreams, make the journey to the shrine and beyond.
Glad there's extra space in my Osprey.
Contradictory feelings: feeling "out of school" as I took my leave for a month from Good Sam Hospital. Such a rich work and ministry there, such fine colleagues and admirable co-workers, a pang deep beneath my heart as I said good-byes for a solid month. And yet a near-skip in my step as I walked out the front door, feeling very young again. I do not often feel young at the hospital. At rounds and other places I am surrounded by clever, talented people who are sometimes decades younger than me. I figure I bring the kind, safe uncle into situations, which is useful.
Delighted to be traveling with my youngest daughter, to whom I first mentioned the Camino de Santiago years ago amidst high school turmoil. She remembered and saved her money. Sad and rather guilty not to be traveling with older daughter and with spouse. But, schedules and money and life are all what they are.
Comfortable at the thought of being on the Iberian Peninsula, as I speak Spanish and have long been blessed by Hispanic culture, first and foremost mediated by my Mexican-descended wife. Less comfortable, beneficially so, as we have chosen the Portuguese road--I do not speak Portuguese, and the little Lonely Planet book has convinced me that the languages are and are not familiar one to another at the same time.
As far as pilgrims on the Camino go, the Portuguese Road is the "read less traveled by" compared to the familiar "Via Frances" across Galicia from the Pyrenees, although it is gaining in popularity.
It is something in me, something at once adventurous and individualistic and stubborn and ornery, that gravitates to the lesser-known road. That may be one reason why, instead of asking one of the local pilgrim associations to bestow scallop shells on us and bless us on our way, Helen and I took shells we found on the beach and had put in our garden, cleaned them off, and spent a day at the Trappist Abbey where my spiritual director blessed them in the monastery church after the Midday Office. We will bring that community with us, spiritually speaking, and place their concerns at the feet of Saint James, God willing.
Above all, I welcome the unknown and the unexpected.
You'll meet my daughter Helen in these pages as we go, with her elegantly close-cropped hair and her passion and her questions. I remember being 20, vaguely, but there are few survivors from those days when mail was on paper and Tricky Dick Nixon masks were still popular on Halloween and when Fleetwood Mac roamed the earth. You'll meet the people we meet, I hope, because I hope to pay close attention to the people of Portugal and Spain that we encounter and not simply treat the Camino de Santiago as one long religious theme park. You'll presumably meet me, and you may or may not like whom you meet, but that like the steps along the Road is utterly beyond my control.
I have named the 'blog the Strange Road as I read, perhaps from Paolo Coelho's book "The Pilgrimage" that began my dreaming of the Camino in the late 1990's, that one traditional title for the Camino de Santiago is "el Camino Extrano", the Strange Road. (Spanish readers, forgive the lack of a tilda on the N, but I do not know how to activate Spanish conventions on Google 'blogs). If we take the pilgrim road as pilgrim, we take it on faith amidst anxiety and hope, betting on the God of journeys. It is our life, symbol and metaphor and brief literal enactment of our life, with all of its unpredictability and tragicomedy and irony and sudden, savage beauty. It cannot help but be strange, if we pay attention.
From that thought I go to clean the bathroom, as the fam gathers tonight to grill something as a "despedida", a leave-taking. Then I will lay out the contents of my pack, my rather embarrassingly expensive Osprey pack with many mysterious zippers and pockets. I fear we shall know each other intimately before long, Osprey pack and I. I hope it doesn't mind sweat from a 50-something male body that appreciates Oregon microbrews perhaps a little too much. I'll fret again at what I am taking and what I am not taking, trying to keep the weight to 14 pounds as it was at the last weigh-in. Fretting about a small book or not is a safe neurotic way to not fret about the journey itself and the leave-taking from 2/3 of my beloved Portland family.
Saint James may await in Santiago, but I am asking him to stay here and look after the fam, after my home, after my friends, after the hospital with all its brave staff and those who come seeking healing. If you have a prayer or a hope or a grief that you wish us to take to Santiago Cathedral and lay before the bones of the Apostle, feel free to use "comments" or, for confidentiality's sake, text or FB Message me. Apologies to those who may find this a quaint and somewhat pretentious invitation, but this whole business is bringing out the latent medieval romantic in me big time. And besides, we may undertake pilgrimage for ourselves, but I have learned that in the end we have not gone for ourselves alone. The Strange Road is thronged with the seen and the unseen, and among those latter are those who cannot physically make the journey but whose cries and prayers, hopes and dreams, make the journey to the shrine and beyond.
Glad there's extra space in my Osprey.
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Plenary nunc dimittis
Had planned to sit in at least some of the governing council sessions, be a good soldier. But my guts, under a potent combination of rich hotel food plus the ubiquitous jalapeños in many of the dishes, cast a dissenting vote. So I have an excuse from my innards to hide out and enjoy the antiseptic solitude of my room, mine for another 2 1/2 hours at least, when "my room" abruptly becomes someone else's room.
Hotels and motels create a jarring sense of ephemeral "home". They use lots of homey images and gestures of hospitality, and they are sincere so long as the terms of the transaction remain in force. If the card is declined, then relations become far less warm.
But this is thus far not the case, and so I have a few more moments to reflect in solitude before travel and the rest of life take their hold.
At risk of being somewhere between melodramatic and credulous, I feel this conference has changed me. The shape of this change has been...
a) Belonging: I have, almost to my surprise, a new tribe, one that overall I like and find admirable and with whom I have a surprising amount in common. This commonality is related to profession; to a similar desire to dig deeper within ourselves, among one another, and with the people we serve; and to a genuine sense of being on a journey.
b) Challenge: the Tavistock material, although I am far from being able to say "I get it", is rich and compelling and is deeply germane to my present life and work. Uncovering the depth of dream and of body-knowledge, "body within a body within a body", and experiencing vocation as interplay of self, role, and larger structure makes sense. The points of stress and crisis, wherein an individual or a structure reverts to fight/flight especially, I recognize as playing out in my former parish, in the hospital, and in many other aspects of my personal and professional life. It's visible in national life now, as people talk openly of fleeing the country in case of a Trump presidency. Much to masticate, and to try and put "on the road", step by step.
c) Future: most of the folks I met are in process, towards clinical certification as chaplains, or as pastoral counselors, or as "diplomates" or CPE supervisors. And some with whom I spoke accomplished much of their supervisor-in-training work on-line. Two years ago I found myself pondering seeking CPE supervisor certification, but decided I did not wish to move across the country and/or take a drastic salary cut in order to do so. Discovering that just maybe things could be "worked out" is very intriguing indeed!
One of many "ahas" that I experienced here is that, at age 57, I had begun to see myself as old and done with further vocational development. I think that is far from true and, whereas I do not intend to go $40,000.00+ into debt to get a PhD, I could go in some other directions that would be a better fit for my gifts, passions, and circumstances.
Who knew that Salt Lake City could make one younger? I don't think even Brigham Young imagined that.
Hotels and motels create a jarring sense of ephemeral "home". They use lots of homey images and gestures of hospitality, and they are sincere so long as the terms of the transaction remain in force. If the card is declined, then relations become far less warm.
But this is thus far not the case, and so I have a few more moments to reflect in solitude before travel and the rest of life take their hold.
At risk of being somewhere between melodramatic and credulous, I feel this conference has changed me. The shape of this change has been...
a) Belonging: I have, almost to my surprise, a new tribe, one that overall I like and find admirable and with whom I have a surprising amount in common. This commonality is related to profession; to a similar desire to dig deeper within ourselves, among one another, and with the people we serve; and to a genuine sense of being on a journey.
b) Challenge: the Tavistock material, although I am far from being able to say "I get it", is rich and compelling and is deeply germane to my present life and work. Uncovering the depth of dream and of body-knowledge, "body within a body within a body", and experiencing vocation as interplay of self, role, and larger structure makes sense. The points of stress and crisis, wherein an individual or a structure reverts to fight/flight especially, I recognize as playing out in my former parish, in the hospital, and in many other aspects of my personal and professional life. It's visible in national life now, as people talk openly of fleeing the country in case of a Trump presidency. Much to masticate, and to try and put "on the road", step by step.
c) Future: most of the folks I met are in process, towards clinical certification as chaplains, or as pastoral counselors, or as "diplomates" or CPE supervisors. And some with whom I spoke accomplished much of their supervisor-in-training work on-line. Two years ago I found myself pondering seeking CPE supervisor certification, but decided I did not wish to move across the country and/or take a drastic salary cut in order to do so. Discovering that just maybe things could be "worked out" is very intriguing indeed!
One of many "ahas" that I experienced here is that, at age 57, I had begun to see myself as old and done with further vocational development. I think that is far from true and, whereas I do not intend to go $40,000.00+ into debt to get a PhD, I could go in some other directions that would be a better fit for my gifts, passions, and circumstances.
Who knew that Salt Lake City could make one younger? I don't think even Brigham Young imagined that.
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Plenary IV
At breakfast, a woman from New Jersey said "You know everybody!"
I laughed aloud and told her that my advantage was that I know nobody. As such I never have anything to lose, and I can sit down with any group and start with a clean slate, tabula rasa. "Hey, I'm -------, and you are?" That, and name tags are my friend.
So today I present, and am looking forward to it. Last night I opened my mouth to say "Me" in the group, but two other people were quicker on the draw. But last night I was grateful, as each presentation has allowed me to ask the question, "Is this really what I wanted to present?"
I thought I would chat about spiritual assessment and my exploring a narrative-based approach to assessment. But my slow-growing "aha" is that what I need is to share my own "assessment", ask for some insight about how to tell the story of my transitions of the past several years, how I find myself still slightly out of breath back in this clinical chaplaincy world after a 25+ year break. How to integrate, what needs re-telling, what needs healing, what needs reconciling, what needs re-owning, what needs to be left behind?
People are already starting to come and go for their own reasons. Most folks seem replete with input, many speak of struggling to understand the Tavistock material while appreciating the presenter's thoroughness and obvious mastery of both the material and the art of presenting.
Much undercurrent as well as, at lunch yesterday, speech about CPSP having come through turmoil in 2012 centering on mission and identity and resultant structures and procedures. I assume that the new certification process with a reviewing board is one of the results of this. The dynamics of the conversation are familiar to me--the stress and strain and anxiety that accompanies re-interpretation and some breaks of custom with the founding customs. It's hard, engenders anger and flight/flight, and apparently has given birth to a new spin-off group. What pleases me is my impression that everyone is trying hard to be civil and to keep speaking to one another. I met one person who is certified in and participating in both groups.
As a board-certified chaplain who completed the process just under the wire of the new regime, I feel like I straddle both worlds.
Meanwhile, it snowed a little last night, and today I heard that Trump and Cruz and Rubio and the rest of the Little Rascals are coming into Salt Lake City tomorrow. That'll make the airport just delightful! Woo hoo!
I laughed aloud and told her that my advantage was that I know nobody. As such I never have anything to lose, and I can sit down with any group and start with a clean slate, tabula rasa. "Hey, I'm -------, and you are?" That, and name tags are my friend.
So today I present, and am looking forward to it. Last night I opened my mouth to say "Me" in the group, but two other people were quicker on the draw. But last night I was grateful, as each presentation has allowed me to ask the question, "Is this really what I wanted to present?"
I thought I would chat about spiritual assessment and my exploring a narrative-based approach to assessment. But my slow-growing "aha" is that what I need is to share my own "assessment", ask for some insight about how to tell the story of my transitions of the past several years, how I find myself still slightly out of breath back in this clinical chaplaincy world after a 25+ year break. How to integrate, what needs re-telling, what needs healing, what needs reconciling, what needs re-owning, what needs to be left behind?
People are already starting to come and go for their own reasons. Most folks seem replete with input, many speak of struggling to understand the Tavistock material while appreciating the presenter's thoroughness and obvious mastery of both the material and the art of presenting.
Much undercurrent as well as, at lunch yesterday, speech about CPSP having come through turmoil in 2012 centering on mission and identity and resultant structures and procedures. I assume that the new certification process with a reviewing board is one of the results of this. The dynamics of the conversation are familiar to me--the stress and strain and anxiety that accompanies re-interpretation and some breaks of custom with the founding customs. It's hard, engenders anger and flight/flight, and apparently has given birth to a new spin-off group. What pleases me is my impression that everyone is trying hard to be civil and to keep speaking to one another. I met one person who is certified in and participating in both groups.
As a board-certified chaplain who completed the process just under the wire of the new regime, I feel like I straddle both worlds.
Meanwhile, it snowed a little last night, and today I heard that Trump and Cruz and Rubio and the rest of the Little Rascals are coming into Salt Lake City tomorrow. That'll make the airport just delightful! Woo hoo!
Monday, March 14, 2016
Plenary Deax: surprise and exhaustion
The first evening was replete with surprises.
CPSP serves good Irish whiskey.
CPSP folk are from all over, and even though there is a venerable white male contingent with whom I fit uncomfortably well there is some significant diversity of skin tone, language to a limited extent, gender, and experience.
It rains CPE supervisors. I remember those folks being less accessible. Or maybe I was, out of intimidation, oh so many years ago.
I sat down with a circle of elder statesmen on a patio and sipped Jamesons. A Ken, a Dave who is Co-President-Elect, a George who turned out to be from Ireland and proved it with a disarming unself-conscious way of storytelling. An Al, who asked me to remember him to Kevin Henne and said something about palliative care.
A young man who is a "Community Chaplain" in urban New York. Still want his stories.
The day proved rich and it started at breakfast. Ate with a couple of exuberant personalities, a sophisticated multi-lingual tall man from Quebec named Orville and a delightfully gregarious woman named Paula and I spoke first about their work. Both supervisors, they told of the joy upon seeing both new ministry dawn in their own lives as well as seeing realization and insight and integration dawn in their students' lives.
Something clicked inside of me. I thought of how I had assumed that, at age 57, I was on the downward slope of my active years, that my present job was my last gig, and that if I made it to 65 tops with my health intact I would be hanging things up, doing a little dabbling here and there.
I resonated with their description of bringing something to birth inside of seekers, as that has been my greatest joy lo these many years, whether with youth or with parishioners earnest about deepening their lives with Christ or with those seeking a more explicit and public ministry or with Academy students in the Diocese. I spoke aloud the word "midwife" and both of my companions stirred, reacting. I spoke also of the dual role of midwife and hospice worker in the context of leading a congregation, the slow death and new life visible there, and they understood. Orville remarked on how the Plenary process begins early.
And so it did.
The speaker, Richard, is quietly compelling. Near as I can ascertain this early in, the "Tavistock approach" he represents invites the unacknowledged and unintegrated experience of individuals and groups. The starting point is the body, somatic experience. Tavistock explores how the experience of the body, intersecting with the mind, engages one's role, which is an expectation or charge within an organization. One "embodies" an organizational role, and there is a dynamism between the individual impacting organization and the organization shaping (or contorting) the individual, often in suppressive ways.
If that is all wrong, I shall be interested, or should I say "curious", to be further enlightened.
Didactic sessions alternate with group work, for the essence of change, according to this understanding, happens in relation to individuals.
The day was long and exhausting, but very rich, and after dinner with a pair of Mormon CPE students, who patiently answered my questions about the Mormon epic historical narrative of the 19th century, I dove into solitude, grateful for my private room. I intended to 'blog last night but found myself exhausted and instead gazed glassy-eyed at an impenetrable sci-fi movie then tried to sleep.
In spite of my exhaustion sleep proved harder to come by than I had hoped. I had my journal at hand, intending to catch a dream, as there is a dream-workshop built into the morning. I think my unconscious decided to be mischievous and petulant, irritated at my intent to violate its privacy. But I did catch a dream in the wee hours of the morning, suitably bizarre to be grist for the mill, and so type sleepy but satisfied, sipping the cup of hotel-room coffee that the little machine obligingly chugged and huffed for me.
I did not know what to expect coming here--a gathering of good old boys/girls and walking about politely among a lot of back-slapping, insider-talk about the inner politics of an organization that I have joined without knowing much about beyond the life of our Chapter, some speaker speaking. There have been elements of all of these, but frankly there has been so much more. I did not expect the almost-audible "click" of shared call, insight and inner exploration, and new possibilities. I like this group of people, the geographic and ecumenical mix, the variety of ministerial and professional experience, the graybeards (among which I get beginner seating due to my own hoary hairs), at least some diversity of faiths and skin-tone and language.
I like the openness and frankness of many of the conversations, the commonality amidst diversity. It's already worth the journey.
CPSP serves good Irish whiskey.
CPSP folk are from all over, and even though there is a venerable white male contingent with whom I fit uncomfortably well there is some significant diversity of skin tone, language to a limited extent, gender, and experience.
It rains CPE supervisors. I remember those folks being less accessible. Or maybe I was, out of intimidation, oh so many years ago.
I sat down with a circle of elder statesmen on a patio and sipped Jamesons. A Ken, a Dave who is Co-President-Elect, a George who turned out to be from Ireland and proved it with a disarming unself-conscious way of storytelling. An Al, who asked me to remember him to Kevin Henne and said something about palliative care.
A young man who is a "Community Chaplain" in urban New York. Still want his stories.
The day proved rich and it started at breakfast. Ate with a couple of exuberant personalities, a sophisticated multi-lingual tall man from Quebec named Orville and a delightfully gregarious woman named Paula and I spoke first about their work. Both supervisors, they told of the joy upon seeing both new ministry dawn in their own lives as well as seeing realization and insight and integration dawn in their students' lives.
Something clicked inside of me. I thought of how I had assumed that, at age 57, I was on the downward slope of my active years, that my present job was my last gig, and that if I made it to 65 tops with my health intact I would be hanging things up, doing a little dabbling here and there.
I resonated with their description of bringing something to birth inside of seekers, as that has been my greatest joy lo these many years, whether with youth or with parishioners earnest about deepening their lives with Christ or with those seeking a more explicit and public ministry or with Academy students in the Diocese. I spoke aloud the word "midwife" and both of my companions stirred, reacting. I spoke also of the dual role of midwife and hospice worker in the context of leading a congregation, the slow death and new life visible there, and they understood. Orville remarked on how the Plenary process begins early.
And so it did.
The speaker, Richard, is quietly compelling. Near as I can ascertain this early in, the "Tavistock approach" he represents invites the unacknowledged and unintegrated experience of individuals and groups. The starting point is the body, somatic experience. Tavistock explores how the experience of the body, intersecting with the mind, engages one's role, which is an expectation or charge within an organization. One "embodies" an organizational role, and there is a dynamism between the individual impacting organization and the organization shaping (or contorting) the individual, often in suppressive ways.
If that is all wrong, I shall be interested, or should I say "curious", to be further enlightened.
Didactic sessions alternate with group work, for the essence of change, according to this understanding, happens in relation to individuals.
The day was long and exhausting, but very rich, and after dinner with a pair of Mormon CPE students, who patiently answered my questions about the Mormon epic historical narrative of the 19th century, I dove into solitude, grateful for my private room. I intended to 'blog last night but found myself exhausted and instead gazed glassy-eyed at an impenetrable sci-fi movie then tried to sleep.
In spite of my exhaustion sleep proved harder to come by than I had hoped. I had my journal at hand, intending to catch a dream, as there is a dream-workshop built into the morning. I think my unconscious decided to be mischievous and petulant, irritated at my intent to violate its privacy. But I did catch a dream in the wee hours of the morning, suitably bizarre to be grist for the mill, and so type sleepy but satisfied, sipping the cup of hotel-room coffee that the little machine obligingly chugged and huffed for me.
I did not know what to expect coming here--a gathering of good old boys/girls and walking about politely among a lot of back-slapping, insider-talk about the inner politics of an organization that I have joined without knowing much about beyond the life of our Chapter, some speaker speaking. There have been elements of all of these, but frankly there has been so much more. I did not expect the almost-audible "click" of shared call, insight and inner exploration, and new possibilities. I like this group of people, the geographic and ecumenical mix, the variety of ministerial and professional experience, the graybeards (among which I get beginner seating due to my own hoary hairs), at least some diversity of faiths and skin-tone and language.
I like the openness and frankness of many of the conversations, the commonality amidst diversity. It's already worth the journey.
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Plenary blues
So I told Chi and Julie on the way back from Chapter that yes, I have a 'blog, and as quick as that I had agreed to 'blog posts from the Plenary.
So here I sit in the sumptuous yet rather arid comforts of the Sheraton, having been wished most sincerely a good stay by most sincere staff, sincerely.
I am sure I am grumpy because I was oddly nervous traveling today, even though by air standards Salt Lake City is not much more than a good steep climb, enough level flight to hand out the peanuts and come back around, attendant toe almost tapping, to collect the trash (none from me--I palmed the peanuts in an odd regressive scarcity gesture worthy of my Irish aunt). Then down, and I somewhat grudgingly admit that the mountains surrounding the Salt Lake City are impressive in a more stark and fierce desert way that our lush green peaks in Portland.
I awoke this AM feeling very grateful for my life, and for my vocation, and for our lovely jumbly chaotic family life in our aging little SE Portland house that is now worth a ridiculous amount of money because it is Where It Is. I left my wife engaged in a final push to finish her teaching Masters synthesis project, so it is well that I am out of her hair.
I know I was rattled because a lazy, glutinous drop of dark blue juice splotting on my lap, as well as all my feelings, so disheveled me that I forgot my hat, my brown pub cap, somewhere in the airport. I liked that hat.
So my head feels naked amidst the Stetsons and Caterpillar Tractor and other miscellaneous male headgear strutting about the lobby and the premises. Perhaps it is symbolic--bare vulnerable head. This is a passel of people unknown to me save for a couple of e-mail exchanges here and there. But I'll fumble through just like I've fumbled through all the new starts of my life, and there have been many.
The organizers had advertised an early registration to satisfy us compulsives rolling into town early, so once having been checked in and checked out and keyed and sincerely welcomed I dragged my rollie-bag off to find it. Empty halls.
I stood relishing not having a clue, when a grizzled 21st century Western type made his way slowly up the stairs. He mumbled something about "a conference" and "CPSP" and hauled out a cellphone, spoke into it for a few moments, then with something of a cowboy swagger moved with authority down the hall. I grinned, suspecting that in this new club of mine my Lone Ranger was probably Somebody, and decided to take the same trail back to the lobby. He deigned not to interrupt his reverie to address me, so I left him to seek his own destination and found my room.
Free WiFi, not bad. But I had forgotten how desolate a hotel room alone can be. But not so desolate that I want a roommate; I already feel the need to feed the introvert.
So writing this 'blog post feels good, like a connection. In a few minutes I will see if praying Evening Prayer from my Episcopal Daily Office Book will help me feel better oriented. I'll be on the lookout for the clinical cowboy figure later, and if indeed he turns out to be Somebody or at least Somebody You All Know I shall be sure to update you.
But damn it. I really liked that hat.
So here I sit in the sumptuous yet rather arid comforts of the Sheraton, having been wished most sincerely a good stay by most sincere staff, sincerely.
I am sure I am grumpy because I was oddly nervous traveling today, even though by air standards Salt Lake City is not much more than a good steep climb, enough level flight to hand out the peanuts and come back around, attendant toe almost tapping, to collect the trash (none from me--I palmed the peanuts in an odd regressive scarcity gesture worthy of my Irish aunt). Then down, and I somewhat grudgingly admit that the mountains surrounding the Salt Lake City are impressive in a more stark and fierce desert way that our lush green peaks in Portland.
I awoke this AM feeling very grateful for my life, and for my vocation, and for our lovely jumbly chaotic family life in our aging little SE Portland house that is now worth a ridiculous amount of money because it is Where It Is. I left my wife engaged in a final push to finish her teaching Masters synthesis project, so it is well that I am out of her hair.
I know I was rattled because a lazy, glutinous drop of dark blue juice splotting on my lap, as well as all my feelings, so disheveled me that I forgot my hat, my brown pub cap, somewhere in the airport. I liked that hat.
So my head feels naked amidst the Stetsons and Caterpillar Tractor and other miscellaneous male headgear strutting about the lobby and the premises. Perhaps it is symbolic--bare vulnerable head. This is a passel of people unknown to me save for a couple of e-mail exchanges here and there. But I'll fumble through just like I've fumbled through all the new starts of my life, and there have been many.
The organizers had advertised an early registration to satisfy us compulsives rolling into town early, so once having been checked in and checked out and keyed and sincerely welcomed I dragged my rollie-bag off to find it. Empty halls.
I stood relishing not having a clue, when a grizzled 21st century Western type made his way slowly up the stairs. He mumbled something about "a conference" and "CPSP" and hauled out a cellphone, spoke into it for a few moments, then with something of a cowboy swagger moved with authority down the hall. I grinned, suspecting that in this new club of mine my Lone Ranger was probably Somebody, and decided to take the same trail back to the lobby. He deigned not to interrupt his reverie to address me, so I left him to seek his own destination and found my room.
Free WiFi, not bad. But I had forgotten how desolate a hotel room alone can be. But not so desolate that I want a roommate; I already feel the need to feed the introvert.
So writing this 'blog post feels good, like a connection. In a few minutes I will see if praying Evening Prayer from my Episcopal Daily Office Book will help me feel better oriented. I'll be on the lookout for the clinical cowboy figure later, and if indeed he turns out to be Somebody or at least Somebody You All Know I shall be sure to update you.
But damn it. I really liked that hat.
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
the solitude
When I am with others, there are usually ample opportunities to have hope confirmed for me. There may be moments of praise, or the quiet affirmation of work well-done, or the simple joy of being with co-workers whose presence makes me happy.
In the evening, when the hospital quiets, solitude falls like a familiar, comforting blanket.
I quietly choose when I shall eat, if at all, when I shall sit at the computer terminal and peck away at the endless charting that is the repetitive task of all health care workers. I remember to breathe deeply, to relax my shoulders which is where my tension gets stored, sit more upright, and move through my list the way one would move through an overgrown garden pulling weeds.
I stand, gather myself, not forgetting my loose-leaf binder with my lists and census. I have colleagues who seem to keep this in their heads. I congratulate them--long ago I made peace with having a 1.0 memory in a 3.0 world.
I quietly pad down now-empty hallways trying not to tromp in my worn Keen hiking shoes. I pass through units, checking on any so-called "hot spots" where a patient's acuity or a family's distress has emerged.
Or I seek a patient who has asked for one of us. As they go about their evening, poking at the remnants of dinner usually with the TV droning eternally in the background, I enter, utterly unknowing as to why I have been called. Loneliness? Religious devotion? Fear of an upcoming surgery? Confrontation with the truth of their lives, the isolation or the regret or the broken relationships or the deep disappointment upon realizing that they have lived their lives and they are far closer to its ending than its beginning? This last is the hardest. "This has been my life..." The most awkward and destructive lie our culture teaches is that life is endless possibility and in a sense never-ending. Many's the time I have sat in silence with someone whose rage or tears or silent despair fills the room as they realize that they have lived their life, and there it is, and what if any sense is made by all those empty promises of unending possibility?
All these conversations, disclosure of deeply human realities, face me with my own questions, draw from me moments of connection or identification or recognition.
Their solitude becomes mine as I pad about. If the encounter fills me to the brim with their own desperation and despair, I may stop in the chapel and, respectfully, ask the Silent One to allow all that pain to pass through me into the bottomless depths of the Divine Heart. I can't carry it.
If an urgent need does not drop from the ceiling or come at a run into the ICU or whip with a screaming siren into the ED, I leave for my solitary drive home. Solitary, except for the mute little grey box that may suddenly awaken and beep insistently, calling me back to those halls for God only knows what. But, if it sleeps, I shall sleep.
And that is the solitude. That is the life. Who heeds the solitary chaplain coming and going, walking the empty halls, quiet but ready? Solitude descends like a comforting cloak. For it is my turn to take this shift.
But that is the solitude. That is the life.
In the evening, when the hospital quiets, solitude falls like a familiar, comforting blanket.
I quietly choose when I shall eat, if at all, when I shall sit at the computer terminal and peck away at the endless charting that is the repetitive task of all health care workers. I remember to breathe deeply, to relax my shoulders which is where my tension gets stored, sit more upright, and move through my list the way one would move through an overgrown garden pulling weeds.
I stand, gather myself, not forgetting my loose-leaf binder with my lists and census. I have colleagues who seem to keep this in their heads. I congratulate them--long ago I made peace with having a 1.0 memory in a 3.0 world.
I quietly pad down now-empty hallways trying not to tromp in my worn Keen hiking shoes. I pass through units, checking on any so-called "hot spots" where a patient's acuity or a family's distress has emerged.
Or I seek a patient who has asked for one of us. As they go about their evening, poking at the remnants of dinner usually with the TV droning eternally in the background, I enter, utterly unknowing as to why I have been called. Loneliness? Religious devotion? Fear of an upcoming surgery? Confrontation with the truth of their lives, the isolation or the regret or the broken relationships or the deep disappointment upon realizing that they have lived their lives and they are far closer to its ending than its beginning? This last is the hardest. "This has been my life..." The most awkward and destructive lie our culture teaches is that life is endless possibility and in a sense never-ending. Many's the time I have sat in silence with someone whose rage or tears or silent despair fills the room as they realize that they have lived their life, and there it is, and what if any sense is made by all those empty promises of unending possibility?
All these conversations, disclosure of deeply human realities, face me with my own questions, draw from me moments of connection or identification or recognition.
Their solitude becomes mine as I pad about. If the encounter fills me to the brim with their own desperation and despair, I may stop in the chapel and, respectfully, ask the Silent One to allow all that pain to pass through me into the bottomless depths of the Divine Heart. I can't carry it.
If an urgent need does not drop from the ceiling or come at a run into the ICU or whip with a screaming siren into the ED, I leave for my solitary drive home. Solitary, except for the mute little grey box that may suddenly awaken and beep insistently, calling me back to those halls for God only knows what. But, if it sleeps, I shall sleep.
And that is the solitude. That is the life. Who heeds the solitary chaplain coming and going, walking the empty halls, quiet but ready? Solitude descends like a comforting cloak. For it is my turn to take this shift.
But that is the solitude. That is the life.
Monday, February 15, 2016
sympathy for the devil
Kerlin Richter's homily on the first Sunday in Lent gently turned the "temptation of Jesus" narrative on its head. Acknowledging that we generally place ourselves in Jesus' shoes when we hear this text, thinking on how we deal with our own temptations, Kerlin invited us to see ourselves in the devil's shoes, or cloven-hoof Crocs as it were (perhaps the devil does wear Prada).
Are we the accuser who wants stones turned to bread, who wants our God to give us what we want or crave when we want it? Do we want a super-hero God, one who flies in to fix all our ills? Do we want a rock-star personality who easily gathers our worship, gathers crowds and paparazzi wherever he goes, no matter what cost to his integrity or vision?
The homily left open these questions as well as this: what will we do when Jesus proves to not be any of those things? What if the Liberator is poor, humble, humiliated, and above all ordinary? "Hey Fred, you still have those heavy nails and those wooden beams lying around?"
But mercy is shown richly to all, even to those of us who are, to our shock, in sympathy with the devil. Thomas Merton noted once that Saint Antony the Great, the early hermit whose life-story took the late classical world by storm, remarked that even the devil has some good in him since God created him. I'm told that the Eastern Orthodox believe that the mercy of God is so boundless that even the devil shall be redeemed.
Some Western Christians no doubt would find this thinking disturbing, because we prefer our theology and world-view to consist of winners and losers, we prefer to have a villain who wears black and is terrifying and utterly evil, we prefer a shining hero who will destroy him (usually him) and confirm our view that there is light and darkness, the old dualism that is far more Manichean than Christian. That dualism, where it is clear and clean who are the good guys and who are the baddies, and where ultimately we deserve the rescuing we hope for as we are of course part of the good guys...well, I don't think this has any place in the world of the Gospel, and I don't think the world can withstand any more of this kind of thinking. The earth is littered with the bones of those slain because we in the West have adjudged them to be on the side of darkness, or they unfortunately lived too close to those allied with darkness and they are, in that terrifying banal phrase, "collateral damage." See the towns and fields of Syria for one.
I am more comfortable, on this first Monday of Lent, acknowledging my sympathy for the devil, because today I choose to trust in the mercy of God and since this mercy is boundless I am capable of owning my kinship with the accuser who gazes skeptically at the solitary dusty figure of Jesus fasting and trembling in the desert. That devil, that tester, poses questions out of my own hopes and fears and prejudices. I think I am safer here, rather than holding out for a hope that is cleaner and more powerful and more, well, unreal, a Jesus who belongs more in a Marvel Comic than in the pages of the Gospel.
And I'm not feeling pessimistic or despairing about any of this. This Monday starts gently as I am not due at the hospital until 11:30. Am continuing with Merton's journal readings daily; today the selection ends with "I am happy that I at least want to love God. Perhaps that is all I've got, but it is already all that is essential. And He (sic) will take care of the rest."*
*A Year With Thomas Merton, Jonathan Montaldo ed., p. 47.
Are we the accuser who wants stones turned to bread, who wants our God to give us what we want or crave when we want it? Do we want a super-hero God, one who flies in to fix all our ills? Do we want a rock-star personality who easily gathers our worship, gathers crowds and paparazzi wherever he goes, no matter what cost to his integrity or vision?
The homily left open these questions as well as this: what will we do when Jesus proves to not be any of those things? What if the Liberator is poor, humble, humiliated, and above all ordinary? "Hey Fred, you still have those heavy nails and those wooden beams lying around?"
But mercy is shown richly to all, even to those of us who are, to our shock, in sympathy with the devil. Thomas Merton noted once that Saint Antony the Great, the early hermit whose life-story took the late classical world by storm, remarked that even the devil has some good in him since God created him. I'm told that the Eastern Orthodox believe that the mercy of God is so boundless that even the devil shall be redeemed.
Some Western Christians no doubt would find this thinking disturbing, because we prefer our theology and world-view to consist of winners and losers, we prefer to have a villain who wears black and is terrifying and utterly evil, we prefer a shining hero who will destroy him (usually him) and confirm our view that there is light and darkness, the old dualism that is far more Manichean than Christian. That dualism, where it is clear and clean who are the good guys and who are the baddies, and where ultimately we deserve the rescuing we hope for as we are of course part of the good guys...well, I don't think this has any place in the world of the Gospel, and I don't think the world can withstand any more of this kind of thinking. The earth is littered with the bones of those slain because we in the West have adjudged them to be on the side of darkness, or they unfortunately lived too close to those allied with darkness and they are, in that terrifying banal phrase, "collateral damage." See the towns and fields of Syria for one.
I am more comfortable, on this first Monday of Lent, acknowledging my sympathy for the devil, because today I choose to trust in the mercy of God and since this mercy is boundless I am capable of owning my kinship with the accuser who gazes skeptically at the solitary dusty figure of Jesus fasting and trembling in the desert. That devil, that tester, poses questions out of my own hopes and fears and prejudices. I think I am safer here, rather than holding out for a hope that is cleaner and more powerful and more, well, unreal, a Jesus who belongs more in a Marvel Comic than in the pages of the Gospel.
And I'm not feeling pessimistic or despairing about any of this. This Monday starts gently as I am not due at the hospital until 11:30. Am continuing with Merton's journal readings daily; today the selection ends with "I am happy that I at least want to love God. Perhaps that is all I've got, but it is already all that is essential. And He (sic) will take care of the rest."*
*A Year With Thomas Merton, Jonathan Montaldo ed., p. 47.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Lent, rants, and solitude
I've spent a lot more time thinking about what Lent is not, rather than what Lent is.
The way we "do" Lent as North American Christians, especially privileged North American Christians who understand our lives as being filled with choices, ends up being very individualistic. We trade thoughts on "what am I doing for Lent?" Frankly I think this tends to water down Lent for us. Lent becomes my exercise and connection with what everyone else is doing is nebulous. I have frankly envious of Islam in this regard: Ramadan is something they do together, as a community, with clear demands upon each believer mitigated only for the very young, the sick, and the elderly. Perhaps there are First World Muslims who chat on some level about "what I am doing for Ramadan", but I myself have never heard a word of such conversations breathed. The community engaging in Ramadan is reinforced by evening gatherings after sundown to share food and common identity, the "iftar". In the late 1970's, in the international student dorms at Stony Brook University, I remember the Iranian guys gathering in small groups, sometimes only two or three, and cooking food together in the student lounge at the end of the hallway. It looked comforting amidst the disjointed fragmented nature of life in the dorms.
In my parish days I longed for something similar, a communally expressed Lent. Some echo of this occurs when a congregation adds a weekday evening "soup supper" and devotion or study group, a nod to the notion that we are all in this together. But God help us, here we are, individualistic and entitled (for the most part) developed world Christians, we are who we are, it is what it is, and the question remains--what are we to do for Lent? What am I doing?
I find that, even after all these years, I am still a recovering Roman Catholic and at no time is this made more clear than during Lent. In the Irish East Coast Roman Catholicism that was my initial formation back in the mythical land called the mid-20th Century, the message was heard loud and clear, conveyed in both words and attitudes by church publications as well as my mom's attitudes, that if you're not suffering somewhat in Lent then you're clearly not with the program. "What are you going up?" peppered conversation before and even, for the procrastinator, shortly after Ash Wednesday. And you weren't supposed to cheat by giving up canned beets or spinach or the opera--it had to hurt. Twinkies, baby, or Snickers bars at the very least.
If one was unwise, one mentioned this to one's mother, who would kindly offer you the precious gift of shame if your hand reached out to the forbidden rack at the check-out line: "It's Lent, what are you doing?" Then would follow what, for my mother, the phrase that I now know helped her make meaning of suffering self-inflicted or visited on her by her exhausting life: "Offer it up."
"Offer it up." Oh great. All this stuff must be making God happy on some petty and nasty-spirited level. Springtime on Long Island consisted of long months of school with summer only a distant hope, chilly sunlight, and the creeping fear that I was not, on a growing daily basis, putting enough numbers up on the heavenly suffering scoreboard.
So, a confession: Lenten renunciations have never worked well for me. Hey, props to you if they do, for whatever they mean for you. Nor do I regard my personal Lenten baggage as, at age 57, a problem that someone can do me the favor of fixing. When I try to adopt some self-imposed measure of fasting, the end result is that it makes me secretly anxious and self-absorbed, and I am of the firm belief that this does no one any good, least of all myself. So other than gently trying to be in some solidarity with my fellow privileged Christians on days such as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, I leave the imposed renunciation thing alone for the most part. So if you're looking for someone with whom to have a Lenten beer, I'm your man.
As such I can fortunately bypass Western Christianity's distortion of Lent, which is to make of it a self-improvement project. I'm thinking like "I'll lose 15 pounds for Lent this year", or "I'll give up junk food." One firm conviction I do hold is that Lent is NOT a Christian self-improvement project, a pious Springtime version of New Year's resolutions. Rare is the New Year's resolution that lasts until March, and if we run Lent through the same self-centered sieve I don't think we'll much like the crud left behind. Lose weight, eat healthier, exercise, fine--all great, worthy, but just do this on one's own time and don't enlist Jesus or the church year as one's support group.
Again back in parish days, God always planned a more demanding and authentic Lent than I could ever choose. Lent is when people got sick and died. Lent is when we inhabited the dark and horrifying story of betrayal and torture and execution and cowardice that is what we read in the Gospel during Holy Week. As such, all of us, especially the more wounded and more fragile, got even more fragile and anxious and on edge. Fights and divisions happened. Someone always had a meltdown near or during Holy Week. No accident that clergy resignations nationwide spike up right after Easter. "That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more!"
Amidst this, I came to appreciate how Benedict in his Rule phrases it--that "the life of the monk should be a perpetual Lent", but that maybe to tip one's hat to the season, doing something extra small thing may be called for. We all are about the business of following Jesus in whatever confused and foggy fashion we can manage. But yes, maybe something extra. Benedict goes on to say that none of the monks should do anything extra without the abbot's knowledge and permission. I think this is because there are abundant opportunities for pride, self-absorption, and even self-destructive behavior subtle or overt in personally adopting disciplines. In these cases, better to not do anything extra, and just walk around with the humility of knowing that your life is nothing special.
This latter is more like my Lent. I know I am a pretty tepid fellow on most days, and deeply self-absorbed. I do better to stay put and centered in my own life as it is, in its devastating ordinariness, aware of my limitations and, increasingly with the years and with the work in critical care that I do, aware of my mortality.
I think on this especially when I draw the 6 AM shift at the hospital. I like padding down the empty hallway that will soon be filled with bustling staff and patient's families, bearing about their array of emotions ranging from hope to deepest grief. There is something sweet and even innocent about the hospital as it awakened and yawns, stretches. If there are not an overwhelming number of pre-surgeries, I make stopping in the chapel an early item on my list. A man from the neighborhood is often there, praying in solitude. I stand in the back so as not to disturb him, quietly adopt a modified Tai Chi stance so none of my joints are locked and energy can flow. I ask God to allow the divine energy to follow through me to those whom I meet, and in turn I ask that all the pain and sadness and anger and disappointment and regret and fear and despair I will encounter today flow through me and not remain, instead flow into the endless depths of the well of Christ's compassion. I have long learned that if it remains in me, it will son destroy me.
Minute by minute the hallways fill with those arriving to work, arriving for care, arriving to visit. I walk among them all, just another human being, greeting friends, trying to be hospitable to those especially who come wearing bewilderment or fear on their faces. I am, strangely enough, alone, inhabiting myself who am so in need of the minute by minute mercy of God, and who has slowly learned through the years that this mercy may be trusted. But none of this is resolved, none of this is a done deal, none corresponds to some sort of finished self-project that is complete and ready for public consumption.
After the rant about all my objections to Lent, a confession--I have added a small thing, reading the daily quote from "A Year With Thomas Merton." Today the reflection from his journals is about this sort of solitude: "...the solitary knows least where he (sic) is going, and yet he is more sure, for there is one thing he cannot doubt: he travels where God is leading him. That is precisely why he doesn't know the way."
The way we "do" Lent as North American Christians, especially privileged North American Christians who understand our lives as being filled with choices, ends up being very individualistic. We trade thoughts on "what am I doing for Lent?" Frankly I think this tends to water down Lent for us. Lent becomes my exercise and connection with what everyone else is doing is nebulous. I have frankly envious of Islam in this regard: Ramadan is something they do together, as a community, with clear demands upon each believer mitigated only for the very young, the sick, and the elderly. Perhaps there are First World Muslims who chat on some level about "what I am doing for Ramadan", but I myself have never heard a word of such conversations breathed. The community engaging in Ramadan is reinforced by evening gatherings after sundown to share food and common identity, the "iftar". In the late 1970's, in the international student dorms at Stony Brook University, I remember the Iranian guys gathering in small groups, sometimes only two or three, and cooking food together in the student lounge at the end of the hallway. It looked comforting amidst the disjointed fragmented nature of life in the dorms.
In my parish days I longed for something similar, a communally expressed Lent. Some echo of this occurs when a congregation adds a weekday evening "soup supper" and devotion or study group, a nod to the notion that we are all in this together. But God help us, here we are, individualistic and entitled (for the most part) developed world Christians, we are who we are, it is what it is, and the question remains--what are we to do for Lent? What am I doing?
I find that, even after all these years, I am still a recovering Roman Catholic and at no time is this made more clear than during Lent. In the Irish East Coast Roman Catholicism that was my initial formation back in the mythical land called the mid-20th Century, the message was heard loud and clear, conveyed in both words and attitudes by church publications as well as my mom's attitudes, that if you're not suffering somewhat in Lent then you're clearly not with the program. "What are you going up?" peppered conversation before and even, for the procrastinator, shortly after Ash Wednesday. And you weren't supposed to cheat by giving up canned beets or spinach or the opera--it had to hurt. Twinkies, baby, or Snickers bars at the very least.
If one was unwise, one mentioned this to one's mother, who would kindly offer you the precious gift of shame if your hand reached out to the forbidden rack at the check-out line: "It's Lent, what are you doing?" Then would follow what, for my mother, the phrase that I now know helped her make meaning of suffering self-inflicted or visited on her by her exhausting life: "Offer it up."
"Offer it up." Oh great. All this stuff must be making God happy on some petty and nasty-spirited level. Springtime on Long Island consisted of long months of school with summer only a distant hope, chilly sunlight, and the creeping fear that I was not, on a growing daily basis, putting enough numbers up on the heavenly suffering scoreboard.
So, a confession: Lenten renunciations have never worked well for me. Hey, props to you if they do, for whatever they mean for you. Nor do I regard my personal Lenten baggage as, at age 57, a problem that someone can do me the favor of fixing. When I try to adopt some self-imposed measure of fasting, the end result is that it makes me secretly anxious and self-absorbed, and I am of the firm belief that this does no one any good, least of all myself. So other than gently trying to be in some solidarity with my fellow privileged Christians on days such as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, I leave the imposed renunciation thing alone for the most part. So if you're looking for someone with whom to have a Lenten beer, I'm your man.
As such I can fortunately bypass Western Christianity's distortion of Lent, which is to make of it a self-improvement project. I'm thinking like "I'll lose 15 pounds for Lent this year", or "I'll give up junk food." One firm conviction I do hold is that Lent is NOT a Christian self-improvement project, a pious Springtime version of New Year's resolutions. Rare is the New Year's resolution that lasts until March, and if we run Lent through the same self-centered sieve I don't think we'll much like the crud left behind. Lose weight, eat healthier, exercise, fine--all great, worthy, but just do this on one's own time and don't enlist Jesus or the church year as one's support group.
Again back in parish days, God always planned a more demanding and authentic Lent than I could ever choose. Lent is when people got sick and died. Lent is when we inhabited the dark and horrifying story of betrayal and torture and execution and cowardice that is what we read in the Gospel during Holy Week. As such, all of us, especially the more wounded and more fragile, got even more fragile and anxious and on edge. Fights and divisions happened. Someone always had a meltdown near or during Holy Week. No accident that clergy resignations nationwide spike up right after Easter. "That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more!"
Amidst this, I came to appreciate how Benedict in his Rule phrases it--that "the life of the monk should be a perpetual Lent", but that maybe to tip one's hat to the season, doing something extra small thing may be called for. We all are about the business of following Jesus in whatever confused and foggy fashion we can manage. But yes, maybe something extra. Benedict goes on to say that none of the monks should do anything extra without the abbot's knowledge and permission. I think this is because there are abundant opportunities for pride, self-absorption, and even self-destructive behavior subtle or overt in personally adopting disciplines. In these cases, better to not do anything extra, and just walk around with the humility of knowing that your life is nothing special.
This latter is more like my Lent. I know I am a pretty tepid fellow on most days, and deeply self-absorbed. I do better to stay put and centered in my own life as it is, in its devastating ordinariness, aware of my limitations and, increasingly with the years and with the work in critical care that I do, aware of my mortality.
I think on this especially when I draw the 6 AM shift at the hospital. I like padding down the empty hallway that will soon be filled with bustling staff and patient's families, bearing about their array of emotions ranging from hope to deepest grief. There is something sweet and even innocent about the hospital as it awakened and yawns, stretches. If there are not an overwhelming number of pre-surgeries, I make stopping in the chapel an early item on my list. A man from the neighborhood is often there, praying in solitude. I stand in the back so as not to disturb him, quietly adopt a modified Tai Chi stance so none of my joints are locked and energy can flow. I ask God to allow the divine energy to follow through me to those whom I meet, and in turn I ask that all the pain and sadness and anger and disappointment and regret and fear and despair I will encounter today flow through me and not remain, instead flow into the endless depths of the well of Christ's compassion. I have long learned that if it remains in me, it will son destroy me.
Minute by minute the hallways fill with those arriving to work, arriving for care, arriving to visit. I walk among them all, just another human being, greeting friends, trying to be hospitable to those especially who come wearing bewilderment or fear on their faces. I am, strangely enough, alone, inhabiting myself who am so in need of the minute by minute mercy of God, and who has slowly learned through the years that this mercy may be trusted. But none of this is resolved, none of this is a done deal, none corresponds to some sort of finished self-project that is complete and ready for public consumption.
After the rant about all my objections to Lent, a confession--I have added a small thing, reading the daily quote from "A Year With Thomas Merton." Today the reflection from his journals is about this sort of solitude: "...the solitary knows least where he (sic) is going, and yet he is more sure, for there is one thing he cannot doubt: he travels where God is leading him. That is precisely why he doesn't know the way."
Friday, February 5, 2016
better conditions
I find myself shuddering when I open any form of media that may speak of current events.
I immediately catch at least the whiff of fear that underlays so much conversation, so much concern, so many motivations, so much rhetoric.
It took me years to own up to the role fear plays in my life. Some years ago now I spent one month in residence with the Trappist monks here in Lafayette. After a couple of weeks the abbot, seemingly satisfied that I was not going to run shrieking from the silent Catholic sensory deprivation-tank that is the abbey's silence (considered it, but decided to be stubborn instead), he asked me how things were going. "I feel like I am swimming in my own cesspool" I replied. The abbot tilted his head back and laughed in recognition. I told him that anger, fear, and pride, the there, arose in the silence especially when I tried to meditate or pray. I asked him if it ever got better. "Better?" he responded. I think I grew a half-inch that day in terms of understanding ascesis, spiritual work, and finally getting all those references to monks struggling with demons.
Of the three, it is fear that is strongest for me. As such I feel uncomfortably at home in today's culture of fear. I recognize it, and strangely enough I try to not shut the door on it each day. Fear can be a perfectly reasonable, sensible friend and member of one's inner counsel, a voice among others. When I try to ignore my fear, or play games or deceive myself as to the role that fear plays in my life, then things get weird. Reminds me of a friendship that works well as a friendship, but when one is dishonest about one's feelings and begins to cross boundaries, spend too much time or the wrong kind of time, then the friendship becomes something else, something compulsive or even toxic, something that can fill the space that belongs to healthier thoughts and goals.
I wonder if that is what is abroad these days with fear. Fear--fear of the other. Fear of change, because change means loss rather than newness and richness. Fear of the gender conversation and of all those who have lived with discrimination and shame and rejection. Fear of the upcoming election. The recent spectacle of armed people descending on Burns, Oregon treated us to fearful monologue, strange to hear, from the occupiers day after day.
As I say, fear is a sensible voice among others (see that charming animated movie Inside Out for how that may be). But allowing fear to monologue? Living in the house of fear? Perhaps that is a good working definition of hell, a hell that the fearful try to force us all to inhabit.
After having a book of Hafiz's poems on the shelf for some time, I am finally reading through his limpidly clear and playful words. His poem "Your mother and my mother" starts like this:
Fear is the cheapest room in the house.
I would like to see you living
In better conditions,
For your mother and my mother
Were friends.*
*from The Gift: Poems Of Hafiz , trans. Daniel Ladinsky. New York: Penguin Compass, 1999, p. 39.
I immediately catch at least the whiff of fear that underlays so much conversation, so much concern, so many motivations, so much rhetoric.
It took me years to own up to the role fear plays in my life. Some years ago now I spent one month in residence with the Trappist monks here in Lafayette. After a couple of weeks the abbot, seemingly satisfied that I was not going to run shrieking from the silent Catholic sensory deprivation-tank that is the abbey's silence (considered it, but decided to be stubborn instead), he asked me how things were going. "I feel like I am swimming in my own cesspool" I replied. The abbot tilted his head back and laughed in recognition. I told him that anger, fear, and pride, the there, arose in the silence especially when I tried to meditate or pray. I asked him if it ever got better. "Better?" he responded. I think I grew a half-inch that day in terms of understanding ascesis, spiritual work, and finally getting all those references to monks struggling with demons.
Of the three, it is fear that is strongest for me. As such I feel uncomfortably at home in today's culture of fear. I recognize it, and strangely enough I try to not shut the door on it each day. Fear can be a perfectly reasonable, sensible friend and member of one's inner counsel, a voice among others. When I try to ignore my fear, or play games or deceive myself as to the role that fear plays in my life, then things get weird. Reminds me of a friendship that works well as a friendship, but when one is dishonest about one's feelings and begins to cross boundaries, spend too much time or the wrong kind of time, then the friendship becomes something else, something compulsive or even toxic, something that can fill the space that belongs to healthier thoughts and goals.
I wonder if that is what is abroad these days with fear. Fear--fear of the other. Fear of change, because change means loss rather than newness and richness. Fear of the gender conversation and of all those who have lived with discrimination and shame and rejection. Fear of the upcoming election. The recent spectacle of armed people descending on Burns, Oregon treated us to fearful monologue, strange to hear, from the occupiers day after day.
As I say, fear is a sensible voice among others (see that charming animated movie Inside Out for how that may be). But allowing fear to monologue? Living in the house of fear? Perhaps that is a good working definition of hell, a hell that the fearful try to force us all to inhabit.
After having a book of Hafiz's poems on the shelf for some time, I am finally reading through his limpidly clear and playful words. His poem "Your mother and my mother" starts like this:
Fear is the cheapest room in the house.
I would like to see you living
In better conditions,
For your mother and my mother
Were friends.*
*from The Gift: Poems Of Hafiz , trans. Daniel Ladinsky. New York: Penguin Compass, 1999, p. 39.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
quiet
Am returning to a voice after a year of what, according to my standards, was silence. Leaving a demanding and often draining ministry, coping with early elderhood, and re-entering critical care chaplaincy have all taken my focus.
Today a couple of days off in our rota of shifts at the hospital. Two weekdays, to theoretically prepare one for a seven-day shift starting on Saturday, on-call from Friday midnight until Monday morning. To get ready.
As Robin Williams said in that fun old '90's movie Jumanji, "There is no ready."
This sort of work/ministry/vocation calls for radical expectation in very concrete ways. The mischievous lithe grey pager slumbers until it chooses the right time to stop what one is doing--sleep, eat, sit, or more private affairs--and call one to God knows what. All too often death, sorrow, loss are involved.
One must go and be as completely present, appropriately vulnerable, to strangers in what may be one of the most intimate and tragic moments of their lives.
But still, today a break, some space. Have read Parker Palmer's thoughts during a recent week-long retreat of his. Strange how a stranger's intimate thoughts may become one's own.
This one that fits today, on an open day in which, if I am not watchful, I can import tons of my own inner tension:
"After breakfast, I read the January 12 entry in A Year With Thomas Merton, a collection of daily meditations:
'It seems to me that I have greater peace… when I am not 'trying to be contemplative,' or trying to be anything special, but simply orienting my life fully and completely towards what seems to be required of a man like me at a time like this.'
"Simple and true, but so easily lost in Type-A spiritual striving! What was required of me this morning was simply to make breakfast despite my well-documented ineptitude. The deal is to do whatever is needful and within reach, no matter how ordinary it is or whether I’m likely to do it well." *
Inhabit the day as it is. Inhabit oneself as one is. I never cease to be amazed at how the most profound "spiritual" truths are the most simple, the most open of secrets.
Remembering to breathe helps me. So does laughter. So does Tai Chi. After a recent weekend of Tai Chi, I wondered why people at the hospital seemed to smile more at me, seemed to draw physically closer when they spoke. Another chaplain said laughing, "You are at home in the you that is you."
http://www.onbeing.org/blog/parker-palmer-notes-from-a-week-in-the-winter-woods/8362
Today a couple of days off in our rota of shifts at the hospital. Two weekdays, to theoretically prepare one for a seven-day shift starting on Saturday, on-call from Friday midnight until Monday morning. To get ready.
As Robin Williams said in that fun old '90's movie Jumanji, "There is no ready."
This sort of work/ministry/vocation calls for radical expectation in very concrete ways. The mischievous lithe grey pager slumbers until it chooses the right time to stop what one is doing--sleep, eat, sit, or more private affairs--and call one to God knows what. All too often death, sorrow, loss are involved.
One must go and be as completely present, appropriately vulnerable, to strangers in what may be one of the most intimate and tragic moments of their lives.
But still, today a break, some space. Have read Parker Palmer's thoughts during a recent week-long retreat of his. Strange how a stranger's intimate thoughts may become one's own.
This one that fits today, on an open day in which, if I am not watchful, I can import tons of my own inner tension:
"After breakfast, I read the January 12 entry in A Year With Thomas Merton, a collection of daily meditations:
'It seems to me that I have greater peace… when I am not 'trying to be contemplative,' or trying to be anything special, but simply orienting my life fully and completely towards what seems to be required of a man like me at a time like this.'
"Simple and true, but so easily lost in Type-A spiritual striving! What was required of me this morning was simply to make breakfast despite my well-documented ineptitude. The deal is to do whatever is needful and within reach, no matter how ordinary it is or whether I’m likely to do it well." *
Inhabit the day as it is. Inhabit oneself as one is. I never cease to be amazed at how the most profound "spiritual" truths are the most simple, the most open of secrets.
Remembering to breathe helps me. So does laughter. So does Tai Chi. After a recent weekend of Tai Chi, I wondered why people at the hospital seemed to smile more at me, seemed to draw physically closer when they spoke. Another chaplain said laughing, "You are at home in the you that is you."
http://www.onbeing.org/blog/parker-palmer-notes-from-a-week-in-the-winter-woods/8362
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