Last Things

One more word about The Maybrees...

As she was writing it, Annie Dillard knew it would be her last book. Arthritis in her hands was rendering them useless for the rigors of writing-- the literal, practical rigors. The jacket of her book calls it the "surprising capstone" of her work.

I don't know why "surprising," except that perhaps she knew it would be her "capstone," and we, her readers, would have wanted her to keep at her art, even if she'd lost the ability to craft. [Aside: I wonder what one does with a writer's imagination when one has lost a writer's fingers?]

Knowing this about the author made one short set of sentences in her book all the more poignant. She is writing about how her main character is dying, and she says this: "Comically, when he took his last outdoor shower a week ago, he did not know it would be his last. Nothing marked or would mark his last piece of pie, swim, tune-- as presently he would see his last everything, kid, dawn, spoon, familiar face-- if he had not already."

I wondered: How aware are we when we are experiencing our "last?" And does it help if we more or less know?

I remember what turned out to be my last day with my previous employer. I went about it purposefully enough. My last patient turned to her son, and said to him of me, "He's my pastor. I want him to do my funeral." We were all smiling, and not in the least anticipating that this would be the last time we'd see each other. Just the opposite...

Then, later, when I was sent home portentously, and left my phone on the desk, I knew in some place in myself that it was going to be my last moments at work, but I didn't want to believe it. So I rushed past the meaning in the moments; I did not take them in.

I wonder which it was for Annie Dillard: Did she not realize as she was writing that this would be her last book? And if she did, when? (Writing is a long process...) And did she take in those moments, grasp and hold onto the realization? Or did she fling it from herself, as I did?

How will it be for me when I am coming to my "lasts," including my last breath?

Back in July, while the conspirators were poised for their poisoning, I was facilitating my mother's last discharge from the hospital, and she was taking her last ambulance ride, and arriving at the room and being settled into the bed where she would spend her last days. As soon as the EMTs left, I went over to my mother and asked if she were all right. She looked up at me with open eyes, bright with a kind of excitement, and asked, "Is this going to be my home now?" I was ashamed to say the obvious. I looked at the bare beige walls, the tacky brown furniture, the spare space that it was, and I did not want to believe that this was that to which my mother's life had come. But it was; her last stop.

Save one: For I said to her, "Yes, Mom, this is your home before you go Home."

She smiled at me, and spoke a salve of forgiveness, just as she used to rub Mentholatum on my chest when I was a child; she said, "I like it."

I don't know whether I will be as accepting of my last circumstances as my mother has been of hers. But I know that I've seen a number of "lasts" in my life already, and I suspect that I've a few thousand more to go before I'm experiencing that flood of lasts that comes at the end of living. What I want to do, what I hope to do, is live without taking anything for granted; live, with each of everything as a kind of "last," but not in that sad way that seeps in and ruins things by making them overly damp; more with a kind of wonder.

I wonder whether the wonder at the last of things is kin to the wonder at the first of them? I wonder whether wonder at the last is truly what makes every thing last...

First or last, may we live ever-lasting lives, ever-lastingly blessed!

Invisible Connections

Many have been very kind to me in this time of "being between," their kindnesses often consisting of reminders of what I have NOT lost... I've needed to hear them, since the vacuum created by what I have lost can fill my focus like a Black Hole, and draw into it light from the other stars that still do shine in my heavens.

Among other things, I have not lost my ability to read, nor my ability to learn, nor, as I sometimes fear most, a good quantity of what I had already learned, but perhaps left unused in the attics of my mind.

I was reminded of what I knew but I'd forgotten that I knew in reading Annie Dillard's new book, The Maytrees. It is a glorious read, more a prose poem than a novel in the way she uses language. And she surprises in her references, such as the quote that leads the Epilogue: "Nothing restores the sense of being alive less ambiguously than the birth of the unexpected, the finding of a person who one did not know one loved so much." This, authored by Ralph Harper, in his book On Presence.

I was joyed that Dillard had read On Presence, and that she'd drawn from it this wonderful line. It made me feel a connection with her. Let me trace the heritage: I'd read On Presence years ago, in 1990 or '91. I was pleased to find that someone else, Ralph Harper, had written about the man on whom I'd done my dissertation, Gabriel Marcel. The concept of "presence" was significant to Marcel, and Harper had taken it in a direction I'd appreciated. He'd even connected "presence" to "story" in a way similar to what I'd done in my dissertation! I was pleased to see that someone else had seen what I'd seen.

Not only did I appreciate On Presence intellectually, but I also appreciated it emotionally. I read the book shortly after I'd come to California to serve my second church. I had already begun to put away many of the ideas I had been working on when I was at University. I think I'd begun to shrink-wrap my intellectual vitality. Reading On Presence reminded me that I was still alive from the neck up-- no small consolation for someone who'd lived in that part of himself for the most part for the better part of some 13 years!

So now this little book shows up in a novel I'm reading, and I'm feeling that an otherwise obscure thread from one part of my life is woven into another-- and there is a kind of burst of bonuses! Suddenly I feel that maybe I'm not as dead from the neck up as I worried I was. More, I'm reminded that my intellectual inquiry might have actually taught me something!

Then, later on in the chapter, Dillard references Aristotle's There Will Be a Sea Battle Tomorrow, the wonderful meditation on our capacity for truth. And I remember that someone I knew in seminary was writing his dissertation on that text. And my past is once again relevant in my present. And I feel comforted: I have lost less than I feared...

I realize that these re-minders (that I still have a mind--that I have lost my mind, anyway) might seem a little abstract, but the experience of finding little reminders from my past now meaningful in my present-- this is why our memories are so important: the invisible connections that re-member US, that hold us together, that restore in us a sense that our lives have been continuous, even amid the changes, even when the changes have been cataclysmic.

Today I am thankful for two related things: First, that I have had the time to read, which I seldom did when my work was consuming my days. And second, that in the reading I am re-minded and re-membered and in a real way, re-paired.

It is all part of the Mystery and the Blessing...

Flotsam

It has been too long since I have been regularly at this, and while I have been collecting thoughts about what to write about, I haven't been getting them processed and out of my system! Thus we come to what is essentially a "mind-clearing" column. I'm going to "sweep" through, and see if I've anything worthwhile to say about a number of different things...

Here we go:

...A friend of mine is recently returned from a few days of study with a REAL bereavement professional, and I was gratified to hear that much of what he taught her at least coincides with what I teach, poseur though I may be! (I know, people get upset with me when I disparage my own skills and say I don't know very much about grief. I don't mean to be falsely humble, just true to the facts of the matter. I have no real, academic training in bereavement as a specialty, as opposed to the man my friend went to study with. All I have done is listen to people-- and guessed right about what they meant! It is gratifying to know that I'm more or less in line with folks who really DO know what they are doing!)

Anyway, she came back with a quote, indeed a Truth: "Life is lived going forward, and only understood backward." Or words to that effect...

I was thinking about this in the context of my present life before my friend brought this summation, only the terms I was thinking of it in were these: I was telling myself that I was not sure why all of this was happening to me now, and I sure was not sure what it meant, but I knew I would one day, and I looked forward to the time when, looking back, I could see the hand of God in all of this, too! A lot more complicated, I know, but essentially the same thing. For we only see the hand of God most clearly when we look back over our lives. Meanwhile, we just have to trust, i.e., have faith, that God is working His Purpose out!

But there is affirmation in this point of view, too, for the dreadful way my previous employer behaved. Did they have to act like the twin angels with the fiery swords that kept Adam and Eve from going back into Eden? Maybe. It saved me, truly, from any delusions of return...

...On Friday, the 24th, my previous employer changed their minds and allowed me to return "after hours" to clean out my stuff from my desk, bookshelves and file drawers. Ten years means a lot of accumulation!

There is more to say, maybe, about the pain of that, the surgery of that, the descent back into Hades of that (an Orphean journey if ever there was one!), but now I just want to observe this:

I looked into the faces of those I'd known for ten years and more, and saw soul-less eyes.

I tried to shield my own eyes, too, to hide my own soul, lest I let them see my pain. Not in the least did I trust them with my humanity.

But I had to ask myself after: Did I not see their humanity because I did not allow mine to be seen? Or would they have appeared to me to be the soul-less zombies they were when I was dismissed with shaming and cruelty? Here I am, a person who prides himself on being able to embrace anyone's humanity-- and yet I found none in my previous colleagues? Nor, perhaps, did I show any of my own...

How truly bizarre and even inhuman it is to be polite!

...In contast, I remembered my time with Lizzie, my granddaughter, and how very differently she looked at me whenever her eyes opened: without focus, she was, yet her eyes were undisturbed pools in which swam an unperturbed soul. I longed for her to see me. I wanted to see and to be seen.

When she was awake! When we wanted her to be sleeping, when sleep was something she wanted for herself but could not seem to find, it was not a matter of her opening her eyes and self at all! Quite the opposite...

At one point she was my charge, my gift while her mother showered and otherwise caught a few moments to herself and recovered a brief interlude of being an adult, instead of an infant's appendage. So I walked Lizzie. I held her, I rocked her, I swayed with her, and I walked her. I remembered: her mother loved the songs I would sing her, made up on the spot songs full of love and also emploring her to sleep! I was not that desperate with Lizze: it was mid-day, not mid-night. And for some inspired reason, a hymn came to me: Just a closer walk with Thee! Grant it, Jesus, if you please... Etc. So I'm walking Lizzie, sometimes waltzing Lizze, around my daughter's Great Room, singing her this old, tried and true hymn. And she slept! She slept, well, like a baby! More, she slept like my parishioners used to sleep through my sermons! She slept... a peace-filled sleep of Grace...

And as I sang to her, I sent up a prayer of my own: "just a closer walk with Thee; grant it, Jesus, if you please..." For while Lizzie was in need of sleep because I and her mother were in need of her sleeping-- I was in need of a "closer walk..." Indeed...

...I found myself opining the other day about the difference between "stress" and "challenge."

"Stress," I said was a choice-- a negative choice. As opposed to "challenge," which one could see as a positive choice. Stress we let into ourselves, and it wears on us. Challenge we rise up to meet; we engage with it. It doesn't happen to us, we happen upon it!

More, when we are stressed, we feel like circumstances have gotten the better of us. THEY are defining us, or we are defined by our circumstances. We are diminished by stress.

But challenges are circumstances WE define. In fact, we define ourselves by the challenges we have faced-- regardless of how we faced them. Our sense of ourselves grows as we face challenges, and gradually we look forward to facing more. For our confidence in ourselves grows, the more and greater challenges we face.

On the other hand, no one looks forward to taking on more stress! Just talking in those terms makes us shrink from the otherwise neutral circumstances which come our way.

So I had a new prayer: Lord, save me from my stresses. And continue to bring challenges, through which I can grow, and see Your hand in shaping me!

...Finally, for this blog at least, a series of thoughts about "companionship," again spurred by my friend's experiences at the foot of the true Bereavement Professional:

You notice that this blog says that I "companion" people. I like the verb, or the verb-making of the noun! The Bereavement Professional teaches that this is what those who are mourning need or want: companions through their grief.

Like him, I know the roots of "companion:" it means "bread sharer," or one with whom one shares bread.

For me, a companion has Eucharistic significance: Jesus says, "This [bread] is my body, given for you." Thus to be a "companion" is to share "bread" with another, in a way like unto the sharing of one's body, one's physical presence, oneself.

Most of the time, the way we do this with others, the way we practice companioning as Communion, is to share stories. Our stories are all we have of ourselves to share, really. Once you have told me your story and I have told you mine, we have become "companions" to each other. We have nourished each other on the "bread" of our own lives. We have "communed." We have celebrated a quiet Eucharist together. The sharing of stories is that holy.

I put this whole and holy exchange in form of a verb, "to companion," because it is an active and mutual engagement. People "companion" each other: they share the "bread" of themselves, the "stuff" of themselves, and each are mutually nurtured and enriched.

This does not happen only when people are grieving, but maybe it has more sacred significance at that time because people need each other through mourning in order to heal. It is a sacred process, this healing through mourning, abetted by the companioning of others. We give each other our "bodies" in giving each other our stories-- and we all are healed in the process.

Note that I did NOT say "we heal each other in the process!" Because, we don't. This is not an inter-human phenomenon, this healing. Healing always involves the Transcendent. Thus God heals us, as we share, as we companion, as we participate in the intimate Communion of sharing our lives and stories with each other.

Thank you for letting me share a little of myself with you... Thank you for the companioning we do of each other... Thank you, God, for the healing that You bring us, as we companion each other, through darkness or light. Amen.

Appreciating Madness

I know-- from the title you may think that all of the stress of this being "in between" and the seeming "time on my hands" of it has finally driven me crazy!

Well, you who know me well, know that it wouldn't take much!

What I have had recently is a couple of long drives in which to evaluate some of my decisions that may or may not have led to my recent "troubles," as they say. Truth is, I've found another perspective, in my working these things through, that has at its core an appreciation of myself-- even if that means appreciating my madness...

I am not, nor will I ever be, a "wild and crazy guy," a la the early Steve Martin. But I read a review of On the Road, Jack Kerouac's classic, now being re-presented to us on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its publication. And the review reminded me of what that book meant to me when I first read it.

The reviewer asks rhetorically, "does anybody over 21 read it anymore?," and the fact is, I was well over 21 when I first caught up with it, flagged it down and took it with me like a hitchhiker to one of what used be nearly semi-annual retreats (a spiritual practice I used to have as a pastor but abandoned as a chaplain, I can't say why...). I know: taking On the Road on retreat seems a bit odd, but it is odd the way I am odd, and it made for good reflection at the time. One theme of the book is about running away to find oneself. I didn't need to run, but I needed at the time yet another run at finding myself... In a way, then, not too different from this time in my life, huh?

Plus, as the reviewer indicates, the book is also about a man's search for God, and if Kerouac concludes that "God is Pooh Bear," well, at least there is in that a "capacity of grace and forgiveness," as the reviewer rightly points out. And at the time, I found something spiritual in the model of wandering, of seeking, of discovering, of being largely dependent on the kindness of strangers... When Jesus sent out his disciples, his first instruction was, "take nothing with you...". And so it is, so often when we travel, especially in our motor homes, we buttress ourselves against the dependence of being "on the road"... Unless or until our defenses break down, of course.

But the blessing of madness comes in what is arguably the best known quote from the book-- or at least, the one most found on refrigerator magnets in upscale boutiques: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centered pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'," Kerouac writes.

One needn't look too hard at what Kerouac is driving at to see that such people have in common the madness of the mystics, the Desert Fathers, Hildegaard of Bingen, Theresa de Avila, even Ghandi, maybe Luther, even a little bit of Wesley, tamed though he was by English propriety. But you see my point: it takes a bit of madness to be thoroughly spiritual, enlivened by the Holy, and on Fire with the Sacred.

I've led, in contrast, an even more staid life than Wesley! But those moments, those brief times when I've given myself over to that holy madness: Awww! Yes, those decisions have some times come back to haunt me; and others who will never know God in that way, with that fervor and depth of feeling, have turned my momentary lapses of reason against me, and used guilt and shame and other weapons of conformity in the effort to make me regret.

But the truth is, at those moments, in the heat of them, in the Light of them, there have been for me Discoveries that make most of the other moments in time simply commonplace and every day. When our lives are well-aimed, and we follow only well-aimed paths, we never know God amid the aimless. When all we seek from God is a blessing of our self-control, then we never come to appreciate how losing control can be the best way of finding God. Only when we are dis-ordered can we feel God's presence in chaos, as well as in order.

There really is on a magnet on my refrigerator the following quote from Nietzsche: "One must still have choas in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star." By the grace of God, I hope I still have at least a little chaos in myself!

May you, too, be blessed with a touch of Divine Madness!

Witnessing the Impossible

I am sorry to have left off this blog for as long as I have, but I have been traveling, a journey for my heart. I've been up North-- that vague term that many of us in SoCal use for anything on the other side of the San Fernando Valley, it would seem-- visiting my granddaughter and her parents, and my flown-the-nest son. It is remarkable what solace living into these relationships can bring.

Holding my granddaughter, Lizzie, took me back to the time of holding her mother, who was even smaller at her daughter's age. The look of her is one thing: she the joining of rivers of life with their sources in Europe and China, now come to be in her. And whence the flow therefrom? Who would have thought THAT was possible? Probably not her forebears... Only her parents!

But beyond the singularities of her, she has every infant's impossibly small toes and fingers, feet and hands, lips, ears, and eyes. And her scent is impossibly sweet, her touch impossibly gentle, her weight impossibly light. How is it? How can it be? I am reminded of what Jesus says in Mark, that the other Synoptics preserve: "For humans it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."

Indeed, only in some divine sense was this bundle of impossibilities swaddled in my my arms possible at all. By the Grace of God, there she was!

A similar intuition overtook me during time with my now 21 y/o son. He's his own adult now, truly, and while we may be unaccustomed to viewing the growth and development of our children into adulthood with a corresponding sense of awe, I couldn't help myself. Yes, when he was as fresh into this world as Lizzie is, his features also inspired wonder in me and his mother. But so has his lurching progress since! So that now, to walk the mall with him, and share adult conversation, and to listen to him laugh at an outrageously puerile movie-- all locate him in his own path along this wondrous journey that is Life.

When I came home, I called my mother, who is making her final turns around the mountain, pointing herself toward the Sky, and living every day with the hope that it may well be her last before God lifts her to heaven. Her "activities of daily living" are few, yet her appreciation for what occurs for her in the course of them is great. So in her interactions with her caregivers, in her conversations with her husband, in her too brief phone calls with me (and I imagine, with her other children, and her grand- and great grandchildren), there is this thread of wonder, an awe of what each breath brings, a gratitude for the simplest things.

Nothing is or can be taken for granted in any of this. Not in Lizzie's seeming limitless possibilities, nor in my son's age-appropriate claiming of his own, nor in my mother's allowing whatever is possible simply to be for any given day. Who is to say what might happen next? Who is to know? What will be the turnings of the "winding paths" of each of these pilgrims?

Only God, for whom ALL is possible...

And what of me, here at this point in my own life's journey? I am far from infant, and from 21 y/o, and not yet of my mother's condition. Yet I take from each this lesson: An encouragement to maintain a sense of wonder with each day! To find in the marvel of this moment something awe-affirming. To seize from the confluence of impossibilities from which this time in my life has poured, a greater sense of what is possible than I sometimes feel.

Since with God, all things are possible, I do myself no service to say this or that is "impossible!" Lord, let Your infinite possibilities be in me-- and may I continue to be awed by what comes to be...

Blessings, each and all.

Fallow, not Shallow

I am 59 today! Yes, I don't believe it either. But one's birthday is a good day, I'm telling myself, to pause, to reflect, to look back and see where one has been, and to gather oneself for the going forward again of tomorrow.

I can hear God laughing! I can hear God laughing because I can't escape the conclusion that my life has literally been all over the map. My children can say, "a wondering Aramean was my father," for I have been led from East to Midwest to West, from city to country and back to city again. Joni Mitchell used to ask in song, "doesn't anyone stay in one place any more?" Maybe some people do, but that has not been God's plan for me. In the manner of Joan Rivers, I could tell you stories, but the plots would all be similar: every time I make an effort to settle down, I am uprooted.

And so it may be again... We will see...

But my awareness of today is: In my sojourns, I did have my share of time in rural communities, and I have been as grateful for those years as I have for the years I spent in New York, Chicago, and recently, this strange hybrid we call "the beach cities!" Living in a farming community in Southeast Michigan, I learned a lot about crop rotation: corn, soy beans, and the importance of leaving a field fallow for a time.

I was always fascinated by the fallow fields. They were the wild ones, the ones where any and every thing grew. Some were planted with soil rejuvenating plants. Others seemed to be just left to be... In the fallow fields grew "volunteers:" corn and soy beans from previous plantings, and whatever else wanted to come up. Whenever my congregants would remind me that a church is a "volunteer" organization, I would understand that they were telling me what a fallow field a church really was! Those who grew there wanted to grow there.

Now I'm sure that not all churches are fallow fields full of volunteers' growing. I'm certain that some churches and organizations function like vineyards, where there is order in the planting and reasonable expectations of growth and harvest. But I never served those sorts of churches, and the bereavement program that has been my most recent planting worked much more like a volunteer organization-- small, but with great variety, and not much order!

I have come to realize that God has led me again to a fallow time. Fallow is that time "between" plantings. Fallow is that time, in fact, when nothing in particular is to be planted, in order that some rejuvenation be allowed to take place. Fallow is not a "shallow" time, for depth of meaning is seldom well measured by level of activity. Rather, fallow is a time, as bereavement folks are wont to say, "between normals."

I have to say, if, as Kermit the Frog would say, "it is not easy being green," in the same way, it is not easy for me being fallow. I keep wrestling with myself, fighting the urge to "do" when, really, at least for a little while here, there is nothing to be done. I have difficulty letting this time just "be." I want to "work" it, "worry" it, and thus wear it down, wear a grove in it, make a mark. How difficult it is for me, this "letting be!"

Being fallow takes a different kind of breathing: easier, yes, but then I realize how difficult it sometimes is for me truly to relax! Being fallow takes a different kind of appreciation of the day: "this is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it" was easier to say when the day involved activity, and a sense of usefulness, and a quality of being of service to others. Now, I am merely being... And still I am to rejoice? Yes... Yes...

The thing is, I understand from my rural days that there is a price to be paid if there are not fallow periods in one's life-- either chosen, or chosen for, as this one is for me. The price for continual planting, for working one's fields always, is depletion. And while in modern farming we have the means for constantly augmenting the soil with chemicals; and while by the same token we have the means for constantly augmenting our personal energy, again often with chemicals: in neither case does this bring about a true replenishment. (I like that word, "replenishment:" to be filled again, literally.)

I know that when I was working I probably asked a lot of God to "replenish" me, to keep me full enough to be having enough spiritual energy to, as Garrison Keilor would say, "get up and do what needed to be done!" But in this fallow time, I am disengaged, stopped, or at least slowed enough, that God can replenish me.

The promise of this fallow time is gratitude: "My cup runneth over! Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me ALL the days of my life! I shall dwell in God's house forever!" Amen!

On this, my natal day, I celebrate Life! My own-- and the lives in which I have been intertwined, interlaced, and implicated! HA! We are blessings to each other...

Cutting Back

Sometimes I imagine statements I wish Jesus had made-- and it is only when I look in vain to find them that I get my comeuppance!

I had such a time this morning. I was watering my flowers and noticed how much better they are doing now that I've trimmed them. Cutting them back has helped them grow better.

It put me to mind of something I'd thought Jesus had said, about how sometimes the kingdom of God is experienced in the pruning, as a preparation for God's growing us better. I thought for sure that Jesus had said something like this because, back in the day when the congregations I was serving would shrink and grow, as people would go and then new folks would come, I would refer (in my own mind, anyway) to such passages. I figured God was doing the pruning, and that God would supply the growth.

But no such luck, finding the passage I thought for sure was there!

Still, as in most things horticultural, I'm just as certain that there is a lesson for me to find, in order to help me with the living of these days. Yes, I'm feeling quite "pruned," definitely cut back. And yes, there is a kind of "ouch" in that!

But there is also a promise.

Sometimes I focus too much on what I have lost, and not enough on what remains in and with me. Yes, I have lost some of my blossoming. But my roots, my grounding in God, my ability to bear fruit-- a great deal is still there! There is much capacity in me for new and re-growth.

Across from my front balcony, in the neighbor's yard, there is a rubber tree. (At least, that is what I think it is!) Every July since I have lived here, they have cut it back. Right now it is quite denuded, as a matter of fact, the few spared leaves look less like they were there before than that someone added them later to the carcass that was left. But each year that tree recovers, abundantly. By late Fall, it has resumed being its Gauguin-inspired self, and the birds coming to my balcony are the better for it. I am, too, actually, since it makes a great privacy screen and provides a cozy beauty.

Then there is my hibiscus. Early this Spring it was quite sickly; it pruned itself. It would struggle to bloom, as it would struggle for health. I began to water it differently, cleansing the leaves, seeing what worked. A week or two ago, it gave a burst of blooms, maybe 10 or more all at once, and now it has new, light green growth all over it. It is growing again!

The resiliency of plants may be matters of course for most people, but for me, being as brown-thumbed as I am, this is all pretty remarkable. And metaphorical: I'm taking courage from my plants' behavior! I'm seeing them as promising possibilities for me! If on the one hand, I'm feeling pruned, on the other hand, I'm feeling that this, too, is in accordance with God's purpose.

And I know one thing for certain: God is a LOT better gardener than I am!

Blessings...

Holy Blues

Psalm 137 begins, "By the rivers of Babylon-- there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion." And it goes on to ask: "How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"

Ah, in my current state of Exile, this psalm has been coming to mind-- and my remembering of it is assisted by the tune Linda Ronstadt set these verses to, some decades ago now... Funny how secular music can make sacred messages all the more memorable!

Anyway, I felt sorrowful yesterday-- hence my silence in this blog... Sometimes it truly IS difficult to "sing the Lord's song," when I feel so far from singing. But I'm learning (again) that sometimes the Lord's song is a "blues," and that's OK, too.

And I'm growing more comfortable, if that is the right word, with this whole notion of being in Exile. Not that it is a pleasant state! But if I'm remembering my Biblical history well enough, it was when Israel was in Exile that Judaism grew spiritually. Much of what we've come to recognize as the Hebrew Scriptures were written during the time of Exile, precisely "by the rivers of Babylon," maybe watered by tears, and nourished on fears that what made Judaism distinct as both a religion and a way of life would be lost to forgetfulness and assimilation. Again if my memory serves, a great deal was accomplished in Exile. Judaism gained its basic expression then, and also experienced God in a way that perhaps they would not have: God's presence in a foreign place.

Ok, so maybe in my sorrowing I am not comfortable, really. But maybe hope is only as comforting as it can be. And maybe hope linked to my determination to make this a productive time in my life keeps me from despair. And maybe God's strengthening Presence gives power to my determination-- and maybe God's tender mercy provides an arm over my shoulder and an embrace when I'm feeling sad, as I was yesterday.

One thing's for certain: I've not "hung up [my] harp" on any "willow!" If there's a song to be sung, I want to sing it. Even if it means singing the blues...

Thank you, God, for giving me many ways to sing about your abiding Presence!

Clean Slate, Blank Mind!

Here it is a Friday, and I find as I go about my business that I am wished, "Have a nice weekend!" Just another reminder of how out of step I am with the rest of the world...

This time of being "between" jobs has its own challenges. Being out of step with the rest of the world is not necessarily one of them, at least not for me, since I learned long ago that I am one of those who follows a "different drummer!" Instead the challenges have to do with how each day is its own. Let me explain what I mean.

When I was working, my day was planned before I got there. Before I even got out of bed, there were places to go and people to see. And I would!

Now, each day is its own "clean slate." I greet the morning, thank God for the day, and set out into the sea of it (I sometimes call it the "Let's See Sea!") with a scant sense of things that need to be done, and an even less clear sense of destination or direction. Whereas before, others would to some great degree arrange my day for me, now I am totally responsible for arranging it myself.

This makes living each day a bit of a challenge, since like most folks, I find at least some routines comforting. Getting up by a certain hour, having breakfast, lunch, dinner, putting myself down to bed again-- all used to occur "on schedule," in a more or less routinized kind of way. Now, these little benchmarks for where I am and what I am doing as the sun courses across the sky, all can occur in a much more random fashion-- or really not at all! Whatever "routine" there is, it is up to me to make!

And it isn't just that this messes with my previously adapted sense of "being in the right place at the right time." It is also that the kind of energy required of me these days is quite different from what was required of me before. When I was working, I liked the adrenaline rush of having more to do than could be done in a given day. Now that I am on my own, a different sort of energy is required. I still always have more to do than could be done-- but I also seem to have no particular deadline for doing it... The urgency is gone. The weight of "need" that drives accomplishment is lifted. And the scrutiny! I have only myself to report to! Especially now with Daniel having fled the "nest" to establish himself in SF, I have no one in particular to cook-- or clean the kitchen--for.

What I'm trying to say is: Having a clean slate is its own state, has its own discomforts, its own advantages-- and may not lead to a clean house!

Ah, and then there is the realization that not only are each of my days clean slates, but at the moment, the rest of my vocational life is as well...

I remember when I was first writing my dissertation. I had all of these ideas in my head, all of these notes from my research surrounding me, and all of these good intentions of bringing things all together into some sort of coherent form. And yet, initially, I would sit looking at the blank piece of paper in the typewriter (this will tell you something about my age! HA!), and my mind would be as blank as that page! Sometimes clean slates lead to blank minds... It happened to me. Very uncomfortable feeling, I can tell you...

Well, at this point in my life my future is unclear, and the slate is as clean as it can be (given the residues of my past), and there are days when I stare at it and its prospects-- and my mind goes blank... It just does...

I am blessed, though, for having been through several creative processes before, and I am telling myself that I am immersed in yet another one at the moment! I tell myself to be more comfortable with the awkwardness of this time, to adjust to the feelings of being at sea, unmoored, not easily fitting in. I remember times past like this, and how God took the seeming nothing of the time and made... well, whatever it was God would make of me!

I am grateful when my mind is blank that God's mind is not! Creatio ex nihilo is God's forte, how God works! Let God be at work with my "nothingness" now...

Job or No Job

I want to say a word of appreciation about how valuable communications from my friends have been to me since I was plunged into this time...

Lots of folks have suggested that I compare myself to Job, the righteous man from whom God takes everything. I am understandably resistant to seeing myself as being Job-like. For one thing, far from everything has been taken from me! For instance, I still have my family and my friends.

Of course, Job had his friends, too... And those who have an understanding of the story of Job know that the phrase "friends of Job" has a rather mixed connotation! This is another reason for me to resist thinking of myself as being in Job's shoes: the support I have received has been quite remarkable, and gratifying.

I might even say, the support I have received has been sustaining, and I mean that in a very particular way. When I was cut off from my former employment, I was cut off from a network of relationships that gave me some sense of who I was, and more, how I mattered to people. In the living of these days, I simply do not have the kind of frequency of contact with folks that I did when I was working. Thus every phone call, each letter, every wish for my well-being takes on greater significance.

It sometimes amazes me how easily it is for me to lose sight of who I was, or what I've meant to people over the years. I forget. I discount. I unravel. I realize that I need help to remember.

I need, in fact, to be remembered, in the sense not just of not slipping from people's memories, but also of being "re-membered," which is to say, "put back together," in some way. Being remembered not only lets me know I am not forgotten, but it also has the dual gratifications of being reminded that I might have had a positive impact upon peoples' lives in the past, and that I might again have that positive impact in the future.

In that way, being remembered keeps me together through days that otherwise lack a certain coherence. Once the scattering of the Usual Schedule of Things begins; once one's days are a series of seemingly haphazard occurrences; once one begins to rise each day knowing that one's life is more likely to be shaped by the unexpected than the expected: everything, including one's sense of oneself, can seem rather tentative! Who am I to be-- today?

In this context, it is helpful to me to know who I was, to some at least, before; and from that, who I might be to others, in some time to come. You who have responded to these blogs, you who have written me, you who have called-- even you who have simply held me in your prayers and expressed your confidence in God's leading: you have helped me immeasurably to maintain a sense of continuity of myself amid all of the outer changes I am going through.

Thank you! I am grateful to believe that I am not Job. And I am even more grateful to have a very different experience of my friends than Job had of his!

Blessings, all!

Just One of the Blessed

Looking over the Beatitudes, one gets a wonderful hint of Jesus' sense of irony. Several of them refer to situations in life when one is not necessarily feeling like things are going well!

Take one of our favorites: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. I can never read that without having this thought: Yes! But in the meantime... So the comfort is a-comin', but the present is pretty sad and painful indeed?

Well, yes... And then there is the matter of the "divine passive," where the voice of the verb looks like it is in the future tense, but it actually refers to an action of God in the present. So the impact of that Beatitude is that mourning makes us more aware of the Presence of God, providing comfort beyond whatever it is we are receiving from those who care about us. God is present in our mourning, is another way to say what Jesus is meaning.

The Beatitude I am living right now is in Mt 5:11: Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account... It took me a little while to embrace this. I mean, I know that an evil had been done to me, of that I was sure. And I suspect that lies were told. And I sure have felt "reviled" in a way I never have before! But the part of "on my account:" now that was a bit slow to come to me.

But the fact of the matter is, the people who have made themselves my enemies are atheists. I've hesitated to mention that before, but they are. They are suspicious of "spiritual care," and they view ministers with suspicion and disdain. I knew this about them. I just didn't think that being atheists in itself would make them hostile to me, as a person, as a pastor.

I know. It becomes cliche to imply "some of my best friends are atheists," but always before my openness of mind and spirit had led to a kind of mutual positive regard. I recall an event this past Spring in which, afterward, as the attendees gathered around us speakers before they left for the night, I found myself in conversation with two or three couples. One of the people remarked about how unusual it was for them to be finding it comfortable to speak with me, because he was a scientist and an atheist or at least an agnostic-- and the others all said they were, too! They asked why I thought that was.

I gave them the "hospice maxim," that "anyone may or may not have a religion, but that everyone IS spiritual," and they seemed to agree. But it is more than that for me. There is a way in which we were able to meet each other as people, as human beings only, with a mutual respect and a kind of appreciation of the moment. There was no fear, not even any apprehension, certainly we were not threatened by each other's beliefs or lack thereof! Instead we were able to engage, and trust each other enough to ask the questions that mattered most to us in the moment.

You who know me know the value I place on questions. The better the question, the better the conversation-- and sometimes the deeper the understanding. No caring inquiry happens with a sense of coercion or self-righteousness. In our questions we express a willingness to be vulnerable, and the compassionate response is always to respect that vulnerability, not to take advantage of it in order to trap or embarrass the other. Mutual self-understanding by persons of diametrically opposite views can happen when questions are asked and answered within the trust of conversation.

That was what was happening among us after the Spring event. And on a greater and more lengthy scale, that was what I thought was happening between me and the one who attacked me. And here, I have come to think that the atheism of my adversary came into play. My vulnerability was taken advantage of. And the level of self-disclosure I felt I could offer because I am a Christian became instead an invitation to do me harm.

Hence the "falsely for my sake (or on my account)." I have come to the conclusion that my being a Christian pastor played a significant role in motivating my enemy to do what was done.

As I've said, I've resisted coming to this conclusion, but in trying to assess what would motivate a person to do what was done, this reason keeps suggesting itself.

I have been asked how I feel about this person for whom I cared and who has now betrayed and harmed me. I have the usual range of human emotions-- anger, confusion, exasperation, hurt. But I also have one other inescapable tenet to which I continue to hold: God made us both. And in each of our lives, God continues to be at work-- even if that person does not really believe that!

As the saying goes, God believes in us, whether or not we believe in God! And so it is...

Blessings...

Re: "Re-"s

It has been two weeks now since I heard The News about my fate. It seems a lot longer than that! And yet, it has been a time in which time itself has gone by differently than when I was working. There has been a different pace, and a different content to each day, different reasons to experience my reliance upon God, and different reasons to be thankful...

In fact, one of my surprises, I suppose you could say, has been that I could be thankful, that I could experience a grateful heart, even in the midst of this sort of enforced transition. I believe that this, too, has been one of God's Gifts in these moments.

What I have been increasingly aware of is how many words that begin with "re-" seem to be cropping up in my speech these days. I want to mention just three of them.

First there is "recover." I feel I am in a period of "recovery," for I have sustained a blow from which I must recover. But maybe it is that I am, like many people, always in a state of recovery-- only now I am more acutely aware of what it is precisely I'm recovering from!

You might know that, along with a professor of social work in Arizona, I am writing a book about how addiction affects grief and what the role of being in recovery from addiction has in mourning. I've learned that mourning is itself a kind of recovery, that it takes the discipline of a program, and that perhaps the spirituality of the 12-Steps is itself a suggestive guideline to the spiritual recovery that can happen within us as we mourn.

Near the beginning of my present mourning, I referred to the Serenity Prayer's first line: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...". And over the last week, I have been praying the second line: "Grant me the courage to change the things I can...". And I can say honestly that the last few days have been a process of discovery: what things, really, can be changed, and what things, not? In that way, I have been completing the prayer: "Grant me the wisdom to know the difference."

Ahhh... this is one learning of this time: wisdom. Recovery means gaining wisdom.

Another "re-" word I have been using frequently has to do with "restoration," or more to the point, "being restored...". Restoration seems to me to be different than recovery. Recovery has to do with healing, but restoration has to do with getting something back.

In my case, what I am praying to be restored is my reputation (another good "re-" word!) and my honor-- my sense of myself as worthy of the dignity that used to be "attributed" to me! (Remember, I talked about this in an earlier blog?) Several times in my life I have been through exercises designed to help us participants discover what it is we most value. We'd be asked to list the "things" we valued most, and most people would respond with a range answers, from "family" or "friends" to their "home" or other things they owned. Then we'd go through a process of eliminating things from our lists until there was only one thing left. What it was would tell us something about ourselves.

Always, at or near the top of my list would be my honor, or my reputation, or my name-- something like that. Well, what has happened to me has struck at or near the top of my value-list! So praying for "restoration" means to me engaging with God in that "getting back" of what has been damaged or lost.

In this context, I have been relying on the line from Psalm 23: "[God] restores my soul." Yes, there is a need now in me for "soul-restoration," for that deep inner replenishment that only the Divine can accomplish.

Which leads to the third "re-" word that has come to my prayer repeatedly recently (see, once I get started on those "re-" words, it is hard to "refrain" from using them!), and that is "resurrection." I have often thought that we Christians do ourselves a disservice when we confine resurrection to something that happened to Jesus only, and long ago at that! In my preaching days I would proclaim that one of the "messages" of Easter is that God made plain God's "resurrecting power," and our human "resurrect-ability!" I meant by this that more than being able to "renew," God had the power to "resurrect" us, to transform us thoroughly, and to bring us through "transitions" wherein we have "died" to what was in order to be "raised" to what is and what is to come.

I experience my present transition, not just as transitory as I spoke about yesterday, but also as transforming. Whatever life I had before, I am now "dead" to, or at least, it is "dead" to me. There is no going back; there is only going forward, into the future that God has for me. As in so many things, this, too, is part of the experience of mourning, namely the limits of recovery and restoration. I can be healed, and recovered. This is at the core of my faith. And I can be restored, deeply, and I place my hope in this. But I pray also to continue to be led, through and out of this "grave" situation (please forgive me my puns!), into a new life, again of God's own choosing, beyond my ability to see at the moment.

I am always interested in how, in the resurrection narratives, Jesus' disciples recognize both that he has changed and that he is somehow the same. Someone said to me the other day, "This is going to age you." You can imagine that I didn't view this at that moment as the most positive of comments! But yes, it is true. This transition will "age" me. But in that way, I would have gotten older anyway! Why not "age," as wine ages, if it is to be "fine?" For me, resurrection is about how God makes us better as we ourselves get older!

This thought leads to yet another "re-" word: "re-fine!" There is a Praise Song that invokes the Holy Spirit as a "refiner's fire." So be it! "Re-fine" me, Lord, by the power of your Holy Spirit!

May you be so blessed as well...

Impermanence

I was going to write about something else today, but this Buddhist concept kept coming to me as I wended my way through a day of phone calls and shifting emotions and the persistent feeling that maybe nothing was lasting-- except perhaps this "tire" around my middle, and even that, my trainer says, can be vanished with enough sweat and sit-ups!

Anyway, I'd like to think that this Feeling of having been tried and convicted in secret and then ignominiously exiled would be impermanent, but it is becoming like an unwelcome relative, who arrived unannounced, and simply has not let it be known when s/he would leave! So I talk with the Feeling, because even if I don't, the Feeling hangs out in the corners of my mind or the room or on my shoulder when I'm out walking. But no matter how much I talk to it, I don't come to a better understanding. I am about to think I may never understand, really, and I'll just have to wait until the Feeling has sampled enough of my psyche, and it moves on to become unwelcome company for someone else.

Impermanence is become my hope! Just as impermanence became my lesson: So I thought I was to be continuing to work where I was, do what I did, develop what program I could, serve those who were given to me to serve? Evidently not! But now, after the Fall (as it were), I am still in impermanence... This too shall pass...

So today I took some comfort from that, and fed the birds, and watered the geraniums, and exchanged kindesses with callers and emailers. Impermanent though we may be, in this constant flux, there are residues that last, imprints made, the transcendent confirmed.

Although it may be (and there is ample evidence of it in my life this year!) that we live in a world of constant change, that impermanence IS indeed the nature of things, and so we are to live without too much attachment to things, or even to each other... still, at the end of my everyday I give thanks for those who have not ostracized me nor otherwise viewed me and our relationships as impermanent. And as I rise from what is sometimes these days a rather more fitful sleep than I usually have, I greet the day in hope of what more will come down the pathways of friendships I enjoy...

It is my one, true comfort, every day: knowing that I am not forgotten, that I am not alone, that I am loved. "Now abide faith, hope, and love-- but the greatest of these is [indeed] love." In these, some of my most difficult life-circumstances, I find I am able to reaffirm what transcends impermanence... and feel blessed.

May y'all feel blessed, too!

Answered Prayer

Last night, I was working on a poem, out of my journal entries, that was going something like this:

I say to myself: I am who I am
but I know I am not who I was.
I say to myself: I am who I am
but I do not know who I will be.

I can be in this moment,
on the phone
in conversation
by myself or with a friend.

When suddenly I am aware that I have left
my body behind,
and I have dropped
into this other world.

I am on a short path in the woods,
round a corner
and come to a place by a lake.
I sit. I look. I listen.

I am enveloped in the stillness.
It is quiet, but not silent.
It is undisturbed.
It is where I am undisturbed.
It is the Lake of the Lost...

I say to myself: I am who I am
but I am not who I was.
I say to myself: I am who I am
but I do not know who I will be.
* * *

There's more, but really, that's as far as I got.

Then, this morning, I woke with a prayer playing in my mind.

Each first Thursday of every month I worship with a small group of people at a church, in the style of Taize, a form of singing mediation. For a few months now, that worship has been an oasis for me-- its own "place by the lake," if you know what I mean. Last Thursday was my first since my firing. I went, for consolation, and to celebrate life as I know it: the three transitions: my mother's away from this life, my granddaughter's toward this life, and my own from life as I knew it to life as I will come to know it to be. I was consoled, and life was celebrated, and in the being still I was refreshed and renewed.

This morning, one of the Taize songs returned to me: "I am sure I will see the goodness of our God in the land of the living; yes, I will see the goodness of our God! Hold on! Trust in the Lord!"

As I sat by the edge of the Lake of the Lost, this song found me. And these words:

My God said to me: I Am Who I Am
and I Am Who I Ever Have Been.
My God said to me: I AM Who I AM
and I Am Who I Ever Will Be.

Amidst the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," and the changes bidden and unbidden in my life, I am comforted by God's constance. I WILL see the goodness of our God in the land of the living! I WILL hold on! I WILL trust in the Lord!

Praise God! And may you be blessed this day and always...

Loving Enemies

One of the saddest aspects of my present predicament, and one of the most difficult for me to accept, is that I have an enemy. I've probably said before that I don't think of myself as someone who makes enemies. I like to think of myself as a reconciler or conciliator, someone who brings people together. For someone to have set themselves over against me, for whatever reason, and maliciously so, simply stuns me. I find the whole notion difficult to integrate into my reality.

But it is true. So I must.

Thus, maybe for one of the few times in my life, I have to ask myself what value my enemy is to me? This question poses itself this way because, I ask myself, why else would Jesus tell us to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, (Mt 5.43f)" if we are not to value them in some way.

Sure, Jesus goes on to give us the divine perspective: the sun shines and the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. Adversaries should always be wary of claiming God's exclusive affection on one side or another. And Jesus appeals to our sense of our being "better" selves, by asking us to strive for a higher moral behavior. Clearly there is no moral advantage to returning evil for evil, hate for hate.

At the same time, there is no moral benefit to denying that one's enemies truly are one's enemies! To think of them as anything other is simply to provide inadequate response and to underestimate their destructive power. I mean, my enemies are certainly NOT thinking of me as their "neighbor!"

Which takes me back to my question: Of what value are my enemies to me, as enemies?

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that my enemies have forced me to examine myself, to, as the words of the hymn go, "see if there be any wicked way in me." Enemies force us to examine ourselves; they hold up a mirror for the parts of ourselves we least like to see. In that way, they make us wonder who we really are.

Moreover, along these lines, our enemies help us define ourselves. They make us say who we are, and who we are not. We cannot let our enemies define us-- how could we live with that? So we have to do this for ourselves, often under the most tense circumstances.

In my case, I cannot believe myself to be the person my enemies say that I am. I cannot let that stand, and I cannot live with myself by their sense of who I am and what I've done.

This is another way our enemies are of value to us: not only do they present negative images of us, and demand that we declare who we truly are, but they also make us fight for that sense of ourselves, over the one that they hold. I think this is truly the value to me of my enemies in this present situation. I see myself as someone who is more likely to assume that people think well of me, and to roll with those who may not be entirely convinced! But in the face of my enemies genuine hostility-- in truth, they would destroy me-- I must find an "opposing forcefulness" in myself.

It is no exaggeration to say that I am in a situation in which I truly must stand and fight for myself, for my self-understanding, for my dignity, my truth, my reputation, my identity-- indeed for everything that goes in to making me who I am. I know that this has never been true for me before-- and I must trust that it will not have to be true for me again. But just as certainly, I've never before had to tap into such a deep certainty and resourcefulness in myself.

These days, I am put in mind of Martin Luther, who gave us perhaps the ultimate example of self-definition in the face of those who would oppose and even harm him. He said, "Here I stand. I can do no other." These days, as I stand up for myself, I know better what he meant.

This may be my most "Lutheran" moment!

Blessings...

Not Worrying, Part Two

"Don't forget to breathe!" It is my physical trainer, Richie, talking, as he's putting me through my paces, but it might just as well be spiritual advice he's giving me. Breathing is at the center of all things-- physical, spiritual, emotional.

So today I am not fretting. I am not exactly in the clueless state of MAD magazine's Alfred E. Neuman ("What? Me worry?), but I am paying particular attention today to the spiritual side of my sense of being lost. I know it is a frequent theme in my current state, so it is interesting to me how I turn this dilemma over and over in my soul, and what I experience each time I do.

Like the worries for basic needs that arise in their way, my concern for what this all means, and where do I go from here, all come in their turn. As I've said, I've not only trusted before in God's leading, but I'd always felt that God had led me to where I was, to that place of service. Now that I am not serving there, where then, O Lord?

It has become apparent to me that this is a good time for me to learn once more, and as always, the lesson on Matthew 6:33-- the importance of "seeking the kingdom of God" primarily and above all. I am certain that in that aim is my ultimate solace and learning.

And I'm finding a new meaning to the word, "first." Not only as in, "first thing in the AM," as I begin my day. But now also as in, "first, before embarking on any of the activities with which I must occupy my day." I sit, before I phone, or write, or read, or whatever, and I pause and say, "Teach me where your kingdom is in this, O Lord." Or, "Manifest your kingdom in this..." Or, "Let your righteousness be clear in this..." "First" now more than ever for me means: at the beginning; in the aim of what I think, feel, and do.

In other words, in the midst of my loss, when I am most aware of the magnitude of what I have lost, and most likely to be affected by it, I turn my heart to two things I know about God.

One is: God is leading. So when I feel lost about my own potential to find my way out of this, then I am comforted to know that it is not entirely up to me! And may not even be as "up to me" as I sometime think or fear! God is leading.

Lead me through this day, too, O Lord!

The other is: God and God alone truly is "the domino that doesn't fall down!" I used to tell my bereavement volunteers that they could rely upon me, because I would be for them "the domino that doesn't fall down." I knew I could be that for them because I was always relying upon God, as my unfaltering Domino! So when I fell... several asked: who will be our "domino that doesn't fall down?" Ah, but this is what we all discover eventually, don't we? There really is only One Domino-that-Doesn't-Fall-Down!

These days, more than ever, when I so frequently feel knocked on my "keester," as one of my Scout leaders would say, it helps me to feel again the certain leaning on that Sturdy Domino.

And then, having reached my feet, sometimes on days when it truly does take some effort just to stand, to follow God's leading for that day.

At least, I make that my constant aim.

Blessings, all...

Not Worrying, Part One

My home is a place of refuge. I come here to get away from the world, and I've made little niches of comfort and solitude throughout my home, different places I can go, depending on my moods-- and the weather! Today is a very cool day, cloudy, almost gloomy. We are as close to Gothic in the weather as maybe SoCal can get! So I am indoors... and chilly!

My front balcony has plants on it, and a bird feeder-- not exactly the "field" of birds and lilies of Matthew 6:25-33, but as close as I'm going to get at the moment. My birds and flowers have taught me a thing or two about living in this world, and what they've taught me may or may not have been what Jesus had in mind.

For instance, we hear a lot these days about how much better it is to view life and living as "abundant," and sure enough, whenever we feel like we are living in scarcity, we are going to find ourselves worrying about whether we are going to "have" enough. Like our insurance companies, I get that connection.

The thing is, Jesus talks as if the birds are free of this, and perhaps in many respects they are. But the ones who come to my feeder are definitely living in a world of scarcity! Even the little sparrows and finches scuffle with one another, and do their best to fend off the mourning doves, just for their share of seed. There is an unmistakable anxiety about their behavior. And from the man at the seed store, I understand that they are right to be anxious! Evidently, since we are in a drought, there simply are not the food resources available to the birds and other wild animals around us that there would be in other Summers. So they are struggling to survive. And the struggle to survive breeds anxiety-- even among the birds on my balcony.

I have no lilies on my balcony, but I do have geraniums. And my flowers teach me not just about the effortlessness of beauty, as Jesus observed, but also about the cycles of change. For my flowers do bloom, but they also lose their blooms. They decay, and they fall away. At any given time, I can see among my geraniums, fuzzy buds, brilliant colors, faded hues, and brown leaves and stems from which life has gone. The entire cycle of life is there, reminding me that it all fits together some how: we do not get the "hello" of buds without also the "good-bye" of dead stems; but then, as life flows from what has passed, it also flows into what is coming. And there is always both passing and coming happening with my geraniums!

At least now... This was not always true... No, really, I mean, it was always true, but I had to learn how to water and prune and feed and care for my plants in order to see it! I had always told myself I had a "brown thumb," but it is more likely I needed to learn how to garden. I needed to learn how to pay attention, to my flowers, and to the birds. Both the flowers and the birds are, I learned, dependent upon me... What a thought!

Not exactly the one Jesus had in mind in Matthew? Perhaps... Maybe one of the things Jesus was saying was that in God the birds and the flowers of the fields had a reliable caregiver. "Your heavenly Father feeds them," he said of the birds; and God "clothes" them, he said of the flowers. So why be anxious if they are not?

Well, it is truly difficult to be as reliant upon God as birds and flowers might seem to be! I mean, the birds would go elsewhere if I didn't feed them, but the flowers would die if I didn't water them. So I take from this two complementary truths.

On the one hand, ultimately, like birds and flowers and all that is, yes, I must rely upon God-- and no, worrying does not add to my growth! It only diminishes each day, each hour, each minute I spend in its acid. But on the other hand, I cannot get by each day without relying on caregiving: on the care I give to myself; and the care I receive from others. If I do not "feed and water" myself nor otherwise avail myself of the "feeding and watering" of those who care about me-- then, well, the result would be truly decay...

So I listen to Jesus, and I hear from him more than Bobbie McFarren's "Don't Worry! Be Happy!" I listen, and I try to attend both to the mundane, and to the ultimate... To each, without losing sight of the other...

I can see that I'm going to have to talk about this from the other side, tomorrow... Ah, what do you know-- some unfinished business! And the promise of another day...

Blessings to you all, and thank you for your care of me!

Unfinished Business

I am not a stranger to being unemployed. At an earlier time in my life, the early 80's, I was "riffed," which is yet another euphemism for finding myself in a similar position to now. I vowed then that this would not happen to me again-- but such vows do not prevent greater forces from breaking them. And I have served between then and now, churches and other employers who were, shall we say, "non-union"-- meaning there has never been in my employment history a kind of "third party protector" of my job. But I can say, whenever my employers (sacred or secular) have seemed to act unmercifully, I have always been that much more aware of God's mercy! And perhaps the quality of the divine would not be so apparent to me if the quality of the way of the world were not what it is.

In any case, I have often said that in my experience, it is more difficult to be out of work than to be working. The reasons are legion, from the generalized anxiety over where one's financial support is coming from, to the feelings of isolation and displacement, to the worry about worth (one's value often being casually measured by one's vocation and one's income), to the very practical toll taken on one's day.

Just to take this last point: without a job to ask me to get out of bed in the morning and keep me occupied all day, what am I to do wtih my time? How am I to organize my day?

Well, I've learned a thing or two over the years, and whether I've grown in "wisdom and stature and in favor with God and [humans]," or whether I've simply gradually adjusted to the constant living on thin ice which has been my employment history, in one way or another I accumulated some resources for the living of these days.

What I've done is this: I have divided my attention into four areas. One is Self-care: exercising gentleness and patience with myself; reading fiction and poetry; going to movies, maybe; being with friends; and sometimes simply exercising, and letting a certain exhaustion take me over...

Another area is Putting my Past to Peace: So there are some things that require my speaking with my former employer, about how I got here and why; and there are loose ends to tie up; and there is my grief...

Another area has to do with Looking to the Future: I have got to look for work! And I must spend time in prayer, allowing God to speak to me about God's leading... "Where do I go from here?" is an ever-present question, as you might imagine.

And the remaining area has to do with Attending to this Day: There are the slough of practical matters anyone has, from bill paying to housecleaning. It is amazing what sort of things I could easily put off before, that now I supposedly have time to attend to! HA!

Anyway, as you can see, there are "inner" and "outer" aspects to each of these quadrants: things to be done, and things to be felt, and stuff to be dealt with, always.

In that "always" is a kind of secret motivation. In that "always" is a kind of hidden encouragement. For in the unfinished business of this day, there is implicit the demand that it be finished or at least attended to on the next. And when one is as aware as I am of the living "one day at a time," I find it important not to be completely "done" on any day, but to allow the undone to give me a sense of purpose for the morrow.

So while I try to pay at least a little attention to each quadrant every day, I also allow myself to recognize that what I do not get to is a reason for the "getting up" and "getting going" of the next day.

At a time in my life when my over-riding question is "What's next?," it is importat to me to know at least in part that the next day holds something that needs doin'!

At least, that is where I am today! Blessings!