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.
bom caminho
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
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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