Tuesday, September 24, 2013

On A Safe Harbor




Who has not heard and enjoyed the stories of a safe harbor, a place where we can come in from the storm, find respite and feel secure for awhile? Probably we all have run across such tales and maybe experienced such a harbor. Do we know, however, that some harbors can be very active, heroic and life saving in themselves? There is a little known story told of boat owners who were a part of the 9/11 Boatlift the day the twin towers in New York City were attacked and brought down. Many of us do not know that hundreds of thousands of people in lower Manhattan were trapped on the island with no way to leave…except by boat. So the call went out from the Coast Guard for all boats that could do so to come to Manhattan Harbor to evacuate people who needed help. And they came…by the hundreds…Coast Guard vessels, pleasure boats, ferries, commercial boats, tug boats, big, small, constantly picking up people, taking them to safety and returning again for more. All the while no one really knew what was happening behind the billowing clouds of black smoke and ash; no one knew whether they were sailing into more attacks or not. Still they came and continued to come.

Water rescue

At the end of nine hours, 500,000 people had been safely transported to other harbors, a greater water rescue of people than ever done before or since, even more than at Dunkirk in WWII.

Taking in and sending out

This is a magnificent story of a great city’s harbor opening itself for the safety of people’s leaving it for other shores, different than the harbor that welcomes those who need calm waters, but it reminds us that harbors can both receive and send forth. If we think about this a little bit, we will reflect that all harbors do not involve physical geographies; all harbors do not involve the inflow and outflow of water. Some in their ways work with the coming and going of Universal Good, and this makes it possible for human beings to realize that they are themselves natural harbors of Good. Are we not always taking in and sending out energies in life? Some people come into our lives to be sheltered for awhile; they may need our love and support as they heal or simply grow up. Then they leave; they took from us, and they gave to us, and then moved on.

The beckon or the wave

I think it’s good to see ourselves as safe receivers and safe senders. We may know about the giving-receiving continuum that is characteristic of life, but we may not think about how natural this continuum is within us. Left to our own devices we tend to participate in the tides that come and go in the course of our days. There is no question that we have gifts to give, even if they are as simple as the hands that hold the one who weeps or the tiny push that helps a child move off on a new bicycle. The wisdom is in knowing what is needed…the beckon or the wave.





Tuesday, September 17, 2013

On Shades of Gray


American politics are not very pretty these days. Actually they haven’t been for some decades, but they seem somehow to be more unwary and uncivil than ever. I am not so naive’ as to think that legislators will sit down and come up with agreed-upon, bipartisan solutions that will be universally acceptable. I know about the meaning of the “loyal opposition” and the purpose it serves. I also know that something in the governing process is very much out of whack and growing more so. Once legislators understood the meaning of the word, compromise. Now they seem to forbid its entry in simple conversation.

Unmovable ideologies

The wonderful concept of checks and balances, so valued in the American system, appears to have been set aside and replaced by unmovable ideologies. Congressional colleagues are not sitting down to talk; they are setting up oppositional camps. Flexible congressmen who may follow a general ideology are now being forced to become ideologues… guardians of “rightness”, destroyers of “wrongness,” without any concepts of shades of gray.

Other points of view worthy of consideration

Those of us who do not have the power to force others to our will…or maybe have lost it as powerless relatives or companions have flown the coop…have come to understand the meaning of shades of gray. There are very few arenas of black vs. white and very few instances of incorruptible moralities. We sometimes cannot even sort out a viable good that will be recognized by all. We may settle on values and behaviors regarding our own persons that allow for no transgressions by anyone, but we cannot do this for another. So…we get shades of gray, not fully satisfactory, not fully unsatisfactory; not an entire loaf but some slices. Frankly, I think that people grow up when they have to wrestle with good ideas that are tipped with dark overtones. When we sweep away the ideologue’s gavel, we can get down to the difficult, gritty thinking that allows us see that there are other points of view worthy of consideration.

Compromise is no fun

Compromise is no fun… no fun at all. By its nature it means that no one gets all he or she wants. It contains irritation and unsettling, untracked pathways, but it is fraught with life. We could ask ourselves: Do I want to stick with a perceived idea of truth that may be deadly to some, or am I willing to consider that truth has many faces? Shades of gray do not mean vague, colorless concepts or ways of doing things that are not vital. Shades of gray move from dark to light, in to out, no to yes with lots of maybes along the way. If somehow we have built a seemingly insurmountable barrier between ourselves and the next man, shades of gray provide hammers and shovels for making holes in walls.













Saturday, September 14, 2013

On Telling Our Stories



            Once upon a time when I was young, if a kid told a made-up story, it was either considered a fib or perhaps a significant lie. There were consequences for this, all the way from spending time alone in our rooms or maybe being shamed by an adult, and it looks like we are still telling stories, and there are still consequences. Only we are grown ups now and the consequences are very different. They are often self imposed and the results of what we have been saying. Often we speak of brokenness and unhealed places in the mind that continue to bleed.

 Captives of a story..

  We all have memories…no question about that, but memories are different than stories. Memories let us know we have a past; stories define the past, and they act as a foundation from which we refer. Author, Daniel Quinn, said that “we are all captives of a story.” Well…maybe. We may see ourselves according to the stories we may tell ourselves and others, but they are not all forms of hostage taking.

 Invisible black bag...

Stories become a problem when we can’t step out of them, when no matter what we attempt to do, we drag the stories along with us in Robert Bly’s invisible black bag slung over our shoulders. I remember an old friend who would laughingly say, “That’s my story, and I’m stuck with it” whenever she was delving into a long memory. What she did not realize was that she was cementing a path into place that she could never leave, and in all the time I knew her, she never did.

A clear touch...

When we understand what we are doing to ourselves when story time comes up, that’s one thing. A clear touch can help us recognize an old refrain and maybe begin to write a new song. But if we tell the stories so often that we do not even notice we’re doing so, that’s quite another. We are in danger of forgetting who we really are and becoming the story we tell about ourselves.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

On More Patience

In my last book, Essays on Everything, I wrote on Patience. I’m writing on it again. I’m haven’t made enough ground; I’m not at the still place I want to be, at least not often enough, and I’m still making spaces for my own thoughts to come to me. There is no doubt in my mind that patience is not a natural, soul quality. It must be learned and practiced over time, more so these days perhaps because there is so much information that clamors for our attention. It is easy to pull out the iPhone and be inundated by the world at our doorsteps, and perhaps we have really come to like this, to never be shut off from news, messages, entertainment…and irritation.

Reactive impatience

The irritated mind cannot partake of the clarifying flow of patience; it does not think of one thing at a time and is always hurrying through an army of demands. If things are not occurring as we would wish, we are almost certain to be met with frustration, that quality of mind that fights with itself so that the mind takes to churning. No possibility for patience here. Irritation, frustration and patience simply cannot exist together in the same place at the same time. Let’s not fool ourselves either by thinking that if we do not respond to a frustrating situation, we are being patient. For lack of a better word, I call this “reactive impatience,” a silent appearance…perhaps well learned…that masks buried anger. Many of us just crush a rising inclination to boil into a response so that we can appear in control. It may indeed be some kind of control, but it is not patience. Real patience breeds health; the squelched response eventually breeds illness.

A very simple perspective

There really are just twenty four hours in a day. Are we pushing to fill them so full of stuff to do that we are grabbing for every breath? If we have come to this place, where the body can barely keep up, I think we’re in trouble. My sainted mother, farm girl that she was, kept a very simple perspective about the situations before her. If undue stress was piling up in her life, she would have another “think” about things. This was her way of backing off from a situation loaded with confusion and sometimes heat. People always felt better being around her because of her calm demeanor. She was not disconnected from what was going on; she was one step away from it mentally so that she could see more clearly what needed attention… and what did not.

Another "think"

I think patience is borne of the opportunity to take another “think” about what is in front of us. Mentally we can do this; we can vacate the swirl in our minds and have a space for relief. It is difficult, especially if we are wired for impatience and worry. I cannot always find the patch of grace I need to take another “think,” but I…and my patience…are still a work in progress.

















Friday, September 6, 2013

On Growing Brilliance




We tend to think there are brilliant people …and then there are the rest of us. We think that some have a special intelligence that is given only to a few. I don’t. As a believer, I think that we all have a path into the Infinite Mind that is particular to us, particular because we shape it and form it as we will. We all have our own shining part of the Mind, and maybe some of it seems “showier” than others, but make no mistake; if Oneness means anything, it means that Intelligence is not locked away. We simply have to find our own keys to access it.

We "grow" brilliance

I think we “grow” brilliance. We are growing up all the time, and once the body has come to its full stature, the mind in us keeps getting taller and taller all our lives. Mixing it up with ideas insists that we become more than we think we are. We can’t “un-know” what we know, but we can grow past mind sets and mental habits that have held us hostage and chained to small boundaries.

Growing brilliance is contagious

We cannot stop creating and inventing, and, in fact, I believe that growing brilliance is contagious and can be done in groups as well as individually. After all, dying is a little less fearsome today because we know more about living. Baby shoes are fine for toddlers, but sprinters need a whole different set of footwear. And while we’re at it, couldn’t we grow some brilliance intentionally instead of by accident? Couldn’t we become really smart in governing so that we may deal with situations like Syria from a level of essential, over-all well being, not just suspicion and self interest? Couldn’t we wise up enough to know that cooperation goes a lot farther than unabated partisanship? Couldn’t we find enough light to know that we really are all in this thing called life together?

Planetary citizens

We are discovering that we are planetary citizens in ways we had never imagined. Now we have to grow into this status with greater wisdom and understanding.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

On The Cancer Experience



 I am not a cancer survivor. I consider myself a post cancer thriver, which may sound like a clumsy parsing of words. It isn’t to me. It is the way I choose to think about a cancer experience I had over a dozen years ago. A routine medical examination indicated that I had uterine cancer; this was unexpected to say the least , and it took a good amount of mental integration for me to take it all in. Several emotions collided within me, fear, dismay (I had just entered into a course of study at a local university), concern about the upset to my family life. I did not resist the medical solution set before me, a complete hysterectomy, and I went into “training” for it, so to speak.

It was natural to put things in order

I took care of household and family needs, which was a godsend to my fragile state of mind. I walked; I took care of myself physically, and being a believer, mostly I prayed. None of this was a particular effort to me because of the way I do things. It was natural to put things in order; it was natural to enter more deeply into the spiritual practices I engaged in daily. Before me was a deal, but I hoped to make it no bigger than it had to be. Eventually the surgery came and went and was very successful…physically, mentally and emotionally.

We are not at the mercy of events

After the experience, on my own time, I thought more carefully about the whole business. In my spiritual system, frames of thought influence our lives. We are not at the mercy of events that come and go; we participate in them and can control much of what we want to experience. Using this logic I could and did ask: Did I cause this cancer? I didn’t really know. Did I participate in some way? Very likely, but I decided not to remain in regrets around such a possible lapse in good thinking. Instead I decided to make sure my Infinite connections and thought processes were clearer than ever.

I accepted it...and moved on

I think that when threats pass through our lives, questions will always come. Did I dodge a bullet? Did I get lucky? Did God love me more than others who did not survive physically? These thoughts made no sense to me. They only created confusion when clarity was needed. Not all things resolve themselves into plain facts, and I was not going to waste time trying to find reasons for everything. Anyone who has experienced cancer of some sort casts an occasional, side-long look at the beast in the corner. We always know in a quiet place in our minds that it could come back. Not to acknowledge this is to throw fairy dust around, but no one said we needed to stare obsessively at the beast either. I think that wisdom and love would have us live our lives with as much equanimity as we can, weighing possibilities but not losing our balance either. I never claimed the cancer as “my” cancer. It was an episode like many others that was a part of my experience. It opened me, but it did not define me. It was a part of the history that added to who I am. I did not welcome it, and I did not despise it either. I accepted it…and moved on.