On Random Acts of Kindness

     After 9/11 we Americans learned that our assumptions of general safety were not as unassailable as we thought. In fact we have become more aware of our vulnerabilities to armed attack, even as we go about our business as ordinary citizens. It seems we have not only nature’s rampages to contend with---hurricanes, earthquakes, fires and floods---now we have nameless, faceless enemies looking for “soft” targets to destroy. I believe in these years we have grown aware of an ambiguous overtone of dismay that overlays us as a populace. It is difficult to view ourselves as a united citizenry right now. Instead we seem to be sorted out into irritable tribes gathering into pockets of alienation, satisfied only when we are with our own. People who would normally be interesting to us now just look like strangers and are not to be trusted.

     After one particularly odious bomb attack, I suddenly became awake to something that always happens after such disasters, and I mean always. Almost in an instant, once the smoke begins to clear, people “come to,” so to speak, and begin to help. Certainly there are rescue workers trained in disaster work and they arrive as soon as possible, but I am thinking of ordinary people who turn to do whatever is at hand. The ubiquitous media coverage and social networking began at once to stream pictures of people carrying injured folks out of harm’s way. They may themselves have had bloodied faces, but they were aiding others. This particular bombing not only killed but also caused great injuries to limbs, causing necessary amputations. In all the reporting coming in, there was a call from a man that was nowhere on the scene who was himself am amputee. He reportedly said, “Call me when I can help people learn to live full lives again, even with missing arms or legs.” Somewhere in all this disarray, someone coined the notion of engaging in “random acts of kindness,” which is exactly what so many were busy doing as a natural response.

     What is it that happens at these times? Is there some chemical, altruistic wiring in us that is activated during disasters? We can be snarling at each other over disputes and complaints one minute, and then jump into action during an emergency the next. I am not satisfied with the idea that some communal, preservative instinct is taking over. I am a believer. I believe that all life is joined in an eternal movement that we all share. Often we blow this off during the course of normal days. But let something out of the ordinary happen that jolts us out of our common lethargy, and the heart-to-heart connection becomes hyper activated. Massive love is mobilized; intense caring is heightened, and we do extraordinary things…going toward destruction to find and serve. Absolutely we are more than we think we are, and maybe we can find a better means of discovery, perhaps in acts of kindness that are intentional, not simply random.

On Dusting Off Home Plate

      Baseball is the only game I really know. Oh, I know what basketball and football intend with their baskets and goal posts, and I understand what the goalee’s job is in soccer, but these sports are way too fast for me. Too much racing back and forth on courts and up and down on fields. When I was a kid there was nothing better than sitting in ballpark in the warm sun watching a pitcher wind up and let loose a 90-mile-an-hour fast ball. And when the game was a little slow, as it often was, you could nip out for a beer (or in my case, a coke) and a hotdog. I understood the calls. I knew what a line drive was, a looping fly ball, or a Texas leaguer. Indeed, these were great, growing up years.

      What memory brings up for me now is something the umpire did many times during a game. When home plate got covered over by too much dust and dirt, so much so that it was hard to find its parameters, the umpire would stop the entire course of the game, pull out a dinky little whiskbroom and dust off home plate. Then, of course, things started up again. Over the years I remembered the clever action, but didn’t think a lot about it. In my sports nostalgia, I think about it now because that small act seems so symbolic of the ways in which the rational mind can work.

      As I think back, it now makes perfect sense why home plate had to be kept clear. If a pitcher’s throw was close, it could be very hard to call a ball or strike if the base was not clearly visible. Only the umpire’s eye could be trusted, and he needed the best view he could get. Naturally he protected his view. Recently I have been wondering if this sweet little metaphor could not find its way into our busy lives today.

      We may not be out in the field throwing pitches or catching flies, but we’re doing a lot of dodging and weaving in the course of the day. Now that we have so much technology at our fingertips, we don’t have to move so thoughtfully through what is at hand. Spell check doesn’t catch everything, though, so we still have to proof our own work, and as much as I love the ease of using a computer, sometimes I fear that I am developing its mentality. I want programs and answers to appear in seconds, no searching, no pauses, no hesitations, minimum effort on my part.

      Good thing I still have a little of the quiet, thinking mind still in me. I can stop the harried actions, the mistakes made due to haste. I can remember the meaning of the umpire’s decision to stop the game’s action for a few moments, and I can take time to dust off home plate and be clear again…naturally.

On It Is What It Is

A Glib Set of Words

     ‘It is what it is.’ How often have we spoken this glib set of words when viewing something in front of us that does not change, or perhaps cannot. They’re a hopeless set of words, subjects and predicates that go nowhere. And, as we soon discover, ‘it is what it is’ always holds pain within its syllables…all the way from a dull, aching disappointment to a heart wound that takes time to close.

      In my later years, after I had completed my pulpit work, I returned to university life to pursue an advanced degree. During this time I formed a very pleasant friendship with a professor that enabled us to spend good time together. She and I enjoyed conversations, lunches, e-mails and university meetings together which continued after I finished my studies. It was easy and effortless and included the gains and losses friends share as their lives march on. Then everything changed, almost from what seemed one day to the next. No more e-mails, no responses to any of my invitations, no answers to my queries. I hesitated to probe outside the limits of good taste, so after a silent year, I simply wrote a note speaking of my sadness that we seemed to have lost our connection. Eventually she wrote back, thanking me for “understanding,” but making it clear that our time together was done.

Understanding?

      What “understanding?”, I thought. I understood nothing; I was clueless about what had changed. But then…quietly, almost without mercy, creeping into my unwilling awareness… ‘it is what it is’ appeared. I was not going to know why, and my only healthy choice was to let it all go. My western mind, which wanted reasons, fixes and nice, neat completions, was not going to get any. There would be no making peace, except within myself. ‘It is what it is.’




Some Convergences Are Unhappy

      These few words need to be part of our mental landscape, I think, for there are going to be instances that just will not line up. Some things will change, and we won’t know why. And despite our best efforts and outpourings of love and energy some things will not change, and we won’t know why. Some convergences are happy but seem not to last, despite our desires. Some convergences are unhappy and seem to last a lifetime, resisting healing at every turn. Once ‘it is what it is’ enters the picture, it can free us. Once it resounds in us securely and firmly, we are the ones who can change…and walk away. Sometimes we can literally leave a personal situation, and sometimes we are more closely bound to it, but in our minds and hearts we can give up the desire for an outcome we would have preferred. I think the love and energy seemingly given to no avail is not wasted because we come to know to what ends we are capable, and this knowledge is wonderful.

     The wheel has turned; ‘it is what it is;’ time to move on.

On Compassion

We are not born with it

            To be fully human I believe we have to learn and practice compassion.  We are not born with this very human quality.  We have to come to it through desire and a certain amount of civilizing because it is the effort to become a civilized person that makes us aware of others.  We have to outgrow the cave man mentality and come together as caring humans, part of a group that thinks of the good of the whole as well as each individual member.

            The nature of compassion is such that it causes us to think of the needs of others as well as our own.  The idea of this is very simple, certainly not rocket science, but the practice of it takes the best of us to make the extension to another when his needs are clear.  It is also clear that we may have to forbear when something we might do could harm another.  I believe that when we behave in these ways, it is our spirituality that is in action.  Perhaps we could even consider the compassionate “us” as God-like, even if we have to work at it.  And why not, for love and compassion certainly go hand in hand, and I’m not sure we can have the one without the other.

Giving without asking for something in return

            There is no pain in being compassionate.  We are not asking others to do what we want them to do.  The person who assists someone who is disabled is not asking that person to become whole again, at least not physically.  Rather, the love that accompanies the compassionate worker is part of the expertise that a care giver brings.  It is part of the giving without asking for something in return.  There may, of course, be a return, through smiles and gratitude on the part of the receiver, but the compassionate act is the choice of the one who assists.  So many have said that doing for others brings a great sense of well being.  I think there is something  mystical in this because others watching a compassionate act being done are themselves affected.  I have asked myself:  What is taking place?  What has been engaged or set off?  As a believer I think it has to be shared Oneness energized, pulling in everyone in its orbit.

Perhaps we could open to love ...

            The great spiritual leader, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, has long been recognized as a champion of compassionate living, and to this he has dedicated his whole life, so much so that he has said that “love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.  Without them humanity cannot survive.”  Steller thoughts, but often relegated to the “soft” side of life, good aims if we did not have to maintain the warrior cultures we have long established.  If we did not have to protect ourselves from warring “others,” perhaps we could open to love and compassion.  On the other hand, what might happen if we opened instead with loving concern for the other?  Could it be possible we might change the world?

On Brailling

           My husband and I got together in the middle of our lives, which meant that we brought into our relationship our already established opinions, attitudes and behaviors, formed long ago in our young lives.  My, were we capable of heady conversations, and, shall we say, “spirited discussions!”  Quiet exchanges actually did take place and were always possible, but often loud and noisy were more the norm, especially during our early years together.

Without Committing Mayhem  
          Then we got smart.  We both knew that, as controlling as we both were, we were not about to change one another, so we had to find a way to make it through verbal communications without committing mayhem, and we invented…brailling.  Everyone knows about the splendid language called Braille, created by French teacher, Louis Braille, in the 19^th Century, that enables the blind to read using a coded system of raised dots that they could touch with their fingers.  Quite simply they “read” with their fingers, and if they wish, not make a single sound.  Well, as my husband and I discovered, there were lots of ways to be blind that did not necessarily involve physical sight.  There were lots of ways to exhibit deafness as well that also did not involve physical hearing.  We loved each other very much and were also quite blind and deaf at times to one another, not listening and not seeing what the other was trying to say.

            So we taught each other to braille our bodies.  We learned to recognize the point of no return in our heated discussions, the point where if anyone said one more word, one more syllable, one tiny snort…we were into it!  Full-on hollering!  No opportunity to say anything lest it stoke a verbal forest fire.  Instead we reached out to use the language of touch.  We might not have had the sense to say “I love you,” but we could pass the words through our fingers, and we did.  Quite often for awhile.  The wonder of a soft touch on the arm or shoulder, a finger or two brushing the back of the neck…and the anger backed away, the fires blew out.  We were wise enough not to intrude any sexual overtures in the touching, which would have lost us the chance to simply love as people growing in love again.

Belonging Can Be Conveyed In Many Ways
            By now we’ve learned a couple of things.  We don’t engage in much silly stuff anymore, so the need for big-time brailling isn’t there.  Still, we both learned a whole, new language together.  Belonging can be conveyed in so many ways; Oneness shows up when we least expect it sometimes.  We have come to know each other so well that the exchange of a single touch can speak more volumes than the spoken word ever could.  Riding together in the car, no words exchanged yet the desire to speak love surfacing,  it is so natural, so easy to touch a knee, rest a hand on the thigh, saying once more for the zillionth time…I love you.