It's a Jungle Out There

First, a disclaimer: I never go to Starbucks. Never. I'm a Peet's man, through and through.

Except when I travel, and there are no Peet's in the airport terminals, but plenty of Starbucks, you can bet your life.

So I was surprised to find that, along with my coffee, I got words of wisdom. "The Way I See It," Starbucks calls these quotes. And they are numbered, like Snapple Facts, only longer, because you can print more on the side of a Venti than you can in a little circle under the cap. But same principle. Opportunities to learn abound!

The thing was, I really liked #233, from Maria Fadinian (I think; I had to copy it down and I can't be sure of my own writing any more; I'm a casualty of the computer age; soon I won't be able to spell, a casualty of the texting age...), who was listed as a Geographer, ethnologist, and National Geographic Emerging Explorer. This is what she said:

"I used to think that going to the jungle made my life an adventure. However, after years of unusual work in exotic places, I realize that it is not how far off I go or how deep into the forest I walk that gives my life meaning. I see that living life fully is what makes life-- anyone's life, no matter where they do or do not go-- an adventure."

I took this initially as great consolation, simply because I don't go anywhere. I am the least well-travelled person I know. Unless you count the wild places of other people's lives that they have shared with me, or the forest of feelings I am invited to visit. But the many-miled Starbucks user, I am not.

Except on this trip something happened that made me realize how strange a world it is out there. I went with my family to see a professional baseball game, something I hadn't done in years. Things in the ballpark were pretty much as I remember them-- meaning, the home team lost, again. But on the way out, as we made our way to the car through the jungle of disgruntled fans and all-too-eager peddlers of bottled water and soft pretzils, one young African American man was standing in the gate, selling T-shirts. At the top of his lungs, he was shouting what was written on the shirts: "Romo is a Homo!" (Referring of course to the Dallas Cowboys QB...)

Then, when I got home, an email acquaintace sent me a picture, of a man on a motorcycle, stopped in traffic. The back of his shirt read, "Nigger, please!" Then something I couldn't make out...

OK, so I'm a recluse who travels in genteel company when he travels at all. But I have to say, I haven't heard or seen such blatant homophobia and racism in, perhaps, far too long. I'm not so naive as to think that these feelings are no longer out there. But evidently I was something of a babe in the woods to think that people would be more ashamed to express them in public.

I wondered what our Starbucks geographer and ethnologist would make of these places and ethnicities in our own country. Sometimes around the corner can be an unusual and exotic place.

But maybe its up to us all to become "emerging explorers!" Certainly, it is important for me. Because these peoples' prejudices give their lives meaning-- even as I find them appalling. Perhaps the adventure is in this discovery of comparative meanings, of persons and cultures.

As I pursue my own life's adventures, sometimes I can't help feeling dismayed but what I find.

Confession

Not much to say today, but something to share, again from the writing of Henri Nouwen:

"How often is the intimate encounter of two persons an expression of their total freedom? Many people are driven into each other's arms in fear and trembling. They embrace each other in despair and loneliness. They cling to each other to prevent worse things from happening. Their sleep together is only an expression of their desire to escape the threatening world, to forget their deep frustration, to ease for a minute the unbearable tension of a demanding society, to experience some warmth, protection and safety. Their privacy does not create a place where they both can grow in freedom and share their mutual discoveries, but a fragile shelter in a stormy world." (from Intimacy)

I confess the rarity in my own life of "intimate encounters" that were an expression of mutual "total freedom." Too often I have preferred "a fragile shelter" to what it seemed was no shelter at all.

So, Fr. Nouwen, how do two persons encounter each other intimately in "total freedom"? If there is this Possibility, then there must also be this Promise: that such relationships can happen for any of us... Even me.

Sea of Love

I was startled in reading Henri Nouwen recently, to see him say of God, "Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover." This in the midst of an extended metaphor: God, "you are the sea." Thus, God's is a "sea" of love-- in Nouwen's word, "unwavering."

It might seem unfair to deconstruct Nouwen's beautiful prose and, er, deep thoughts, like this. He may not have succeeded in helping me understand God better, but he certainly made me think about what it means to be a "faithful lover."

Now Nouwen was a priest, and so his sense of how faithfulness actually works in love may be a bit on the imaginary side. But his insights into the human condition are consistently charitable and compassionate, and there is something to be affirmed about someone who views us less cynically than most.

So what does it mean to be a "faithful lover"?

My first thought goes to a comparison often made between "attachment" and "detachment," the latter more often than not being held in higher regard than the former. Nouwen himself implies this when he writes that "sadness is the result of attachment. Detached people are not the easy victims of good or bad events in their surroundings and can experience a certain sense of equilibrium." Ah, but this is not the "equilibrium" of the sea, which could easily be said to be an "easy victim" of the events of its environs. And if fidelity in love has to do with "detachment," well, how involved in the actual loving is that lover? I've been in love before (as the song goes), and I cannot seem to love without a certain degree of attachment, and therefore sadness. But I've also been loved before, and I can tell you, that being loved by a "detached" lover is like being embraced by an idea: it might warm the heart, but it does nothing to keep the body warm on a cold night. So, for me, I want a little attachment in my loving and being loved. And if that means sloshing about in the events of each others lives, then so be it.

My other thought turned to those I've known whose "faithfulnes" would almost universally be confirmed. (And heavens, I do NOT mean myself! It probably could be said of me that I practice a form of fidelity that best suits me and does not likely meet any universal standard.) A friend of mine is one of these people. He is a "faithful lover" to his wife and children. He knows himself to be such, and his family sees him that way as well. But I see something missing in his fidelity: he seems to me to be faithful to his wife at the expense of being faithful to himself. He loses himself, and even betrays himself, in his constant effort to be a faithful lover of his wife. This occurs, in part, because his wife's fidelity is more to herself than to him-- and being a faithful lover means, to her, being less than active on the "lover" side of things. Faithfulness has turned into a form of indolence and indifference for her.

So doesn't being a "faithful lover" mean, in some sense, activity, and involvement, and interest in the life of another? And doesn't being a "faithful lover" also entail a fidelity that does not result in a betrayal of oneself? In this active attachment of loving, surely "faithfulness" entails a kind of balancing of self and other-- like the sea, shifting, the waves evidence of the dynamic balance being attended to and maintained.

All life seeks to maintain this constant balance-- constancy, "faithfulness," being a dynamic not a static experience. Rocks do, too, as well as bodies of water-- and Nouwen may actually understand this-- but rocks' efforts are lost to the narrowness of the human frames of time and reference. The sea, on the other hand! Ah, there is a dynamic "sameness" we can--sorry, gotta say it!-- see...

I think that maybe if we understood that God's being our "faithful lover" manifests a kind of dual refusal on God's part: a refusal to betray Godself in loving us, and a refusal to be "detached" from us in that loving; I think we might find in that a divine model for human fidelity in relationships. Maybe not "sameness," then-- for, indeed, the sea is constantly changing; it is never the "same." But maybe the dynamic constancy of balance, of losing regard neither for other nor for self, and holding both, somehow, in a relaxed, non-anxious tension. Perhaps that is how God is our "faithful lover." Perhaps that is how we can be "faithful" lovers of each other.

Come with me to the Sea of Love!

Divine Thoughts in Passing

I have been blessed with travel to see family in the last couple of weeks: blessed with the family, and glad for the time with them; and blessed with the sort of time that travel gives one, to read, and reflect on what one has read. It is sort of like having seeds injection-planted into the fallow field of one's thoughts, and then watching whether anything bearing something edible manages to grow amid the weeds.

Here's what I've harvested so far, and am chewing on:

--Ram Dass in his gentle Ram-Dass-ian meditation on aging and dying, Still Here, talks about how important his Maharajji became to him after his stroke. He writes: "My link to Maharajji is very strong. He's the very context of my experience. He's my friend, my constant imaginary playmate. He's an imaginary playmate who's wise, loving, understanding, rascally-- all the things I like in a playmate. What's wonderful is that that kind of playmate is available to each of us, because its inside."

Ram Dass says lots of other things about Maharajji, but this notion of "play" and "playmate" at the center of his spiritual life simply sprouted in me. What if I were to think of God as my "playmate?" What if the living of this life were to be more about "inter-play" with the Divine, than obedience and rule-following-- or even "playing" by the rules? What if God were making up new rules as we went along-- and I could, too? (Just like we did when we were very young children, before we got all growed up, and got victimized when rules were broken, or punished when we were the ones breaking them....) What if my life were, indeed, more this "divine comedy" than the human tragedy I too often take it to be? What if spirituality were more about developing a sense of humor instead of a determination to take everything very seriously? Wouldn't we all be having a lot more genuine fun?

I know, it's an outrageous line of thought. It makes people angry, just as Sam Keen's article in Playboy did back in the late '60's-- the one that was accompanied with a picture of a laughing Jesus. True, no one read the article; in Playboy everyone just looks at the pictures! Still the image of Jesus laughing was a bit too sacrilegious for some-- even more than the nudity! Now that tells us something about where the heads are of the religiously minded!

--Henri Nouwen has also been with my on my travels, and I find myself fertilized by his fecund writing, especially his meditations on the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

(First, a little background: I have always found that parable to be anong Jesus' most profound. I identify with all three of the men, the father and both sons. Having lived the role of the prodigal, in spite of my being the older son in my family of origin, I identify with what it's like to be in a "far off" place ("far out," in my case!), and being afraid about how one will be received at home. But I also am the elder, so I know the lure of being well-behaved and being well-thought of, and wanting to please one's father. And I am a father, whose sons are their own persons; but through them I wrestle with how to love, especially when love can connote approval instead of acceptance, and the whole way a father's own hopes and dreams can come to be lived out in his sons, in spite of them, in spite of him. Although, in the parable, the father is often taken to denote God, I see God as being "in the midst" of this triangle of men and their emotions. God is in how the whole parable plays out, how it is enacted, how it is brought into being. The meaning is about God-- and ourselves... .)

Well, anyway... Back to Nouwen: In one of his startlingly frank reflections, he speaks to his indentification with the elder son. He says he has "harbored a strange curiousity for the disobedient life that I myself didn't dare live...". He's "envious" of the "wayward son." He observes: "There is so much resentment among the 'just' and the 'righteous.' There is so much judgment, condemnation, and prejudice among the 'saints.' There is so much frozen anger among the people who are so concerned about avoiding 'sin.'" Then he asks: "which does more damage, lust or resentment?"

As someone who has struggled with his own lust(s), and with his own resentment(s), I came to have new words to describe the younger and the older son in me. And while I have felt my measure of both guilt and shame for my lusts, I wonder if I've sufficiently appreciated how my resentments have inhibited my coming into the abundant life God has intended for me. My lusts and my resentments have both betrayed me-- or rather, have been ways I have betrayed my self. But while a plethora of Others have arisen to remind me that I should indeed feel both ashamed and guilty for the ways my lust has betrayed me, almost none have extended the mercy, forgiveness, understanding and acceptance that might have kept me from resenting their being judgmental! Thus I find myself on this pendulum, from lust to resentment and back again. Unpleasant. Not good.

I suppose that this "swing" could be halted on the lust side-- but Nouwen does not suggest how. He does, however, make a connection that would halt the swing on the resentment side. He says: "There is always the choice between resentment and gratitude," and it is of one or the other, because "resentment and gratitude cannot coexist." Ah... So the resentments of those whose "frozen anger" leads to the denial of their own sinfulness, which thus results in their judgments of me-- they might free themselves for gratitude, and more gentleness and mercy toward me and others, if they would just make that choice. And I, in turn, can choose not to harbor resentment of them, if I choose to be grateful, if I find in myself a grateful heart for all of my life experience-- including others' reactions, and resentments.

How do I do this? How do I find my own way to freedom from resentment, toward gratitude and grace?

--Well, maybe the answer has something to do with finding the father of the parable in me. Maybe that father is more like Ram Dass' Maharajji than like the Father God of most Christian preaching. Because, what does the father of the parable want most to do when the prodigal son returns? He wants to play! He wants to party! He wants to step into that relational space beyond resentment; he wants to choose gratitude.

I think we are always surprised by that father-- and often disbelieving. Or else, we say to ourselves: That's OK for God-- but it wouldn't work in "real" life! But Jesus does not say that the parable is an allegory, and that the father in it stands in for God. He is really saying that we experience God in our lives whenever this dynamic occurs-- whenever play triumphs over judgment; whenever grace and gratitude triumph over resentment.

Whether this happens in the "real" world, among persons, is another matter. But the thing is, these triumphs can be experienced within me, in my own reality, within my own self-- just by my choosing to let my father play with my prodigal, and enjoin my elder to get with the program!

Just like Ram Dass' Maharajji, the father of the parable is "inside" me-- along with that elder son, and the prodigal one. There's a Life of manifest gratitude, grace-- and playfulness-- waiting for me, if I just choose to live it.

Enemy or Guest

I am finding myself in a certain time in my life, when I have the time to reflect upon my relationship with myself. Usually I have thought first of my relationship with others. But now, perhaps led by the Springsteen song, "Your Own Worst Enemy Has Come to Town"-- meaning, of course, oneself-- I am feeling a sense of burden and dread: Have I indeed been my own worst enemy?

One of my favorite spiritual writers, Henri Nouwen, contrasts "enemies" with: "guests!" Of all things! Not "friends," but "guests." He writes in Reaching Out that "our vocation" is "to convert the hostis into a hospes, the enemy into a guest...." Coming as I have from a "hospice" background, I think it would do well for that movement to talk of those under its care not as "patients," but as "guests." They certainly aren't "enemies!"

But I also took in this meaning personally. What if my "vocation," my spiritual "work" with myself was to "convert" my way of looking at myself from that of being my own worst enemy to being my own best guest? Nouwen is writing about the virtue of "hospitality"-- again, which I usually think of in reference to relationships with others. But what if I were to be more "hospitable" to myself? What if I were not always at war with myself, but instead took it upon myself to be welcoming of myself: my moods and moodiness; my foibles and my failures? How much differently would I live in my own skin if I worked more to make myself at home there? As opposed, for instance, to struggling with myself, or blaming myself, or even berating myself? How much more at ease I'd be in my everyday life, if I would aim to be my own best guest than to blame myself for being my own worst enemy!

Everyone might agree that hospitality begins in the home. But maybe, even before that, hospitality begins in ourselves. I am working at welcoming myself-- even into my own world!

For Better or Worse

Seems life endlessly begins-- and ends, sings Counting Crows. In the art imitating life/life imitating art cycle, the comic strip "For Better or For Worse" ended yesterday.

I am a fan-- which, given the article in the paper announcing that the end was near, may be something of a mixed bag. FBOFW evidently had as many dislikers as likers. Something to do with its emotional content. What I liked about it was that it spoke to "real" life issues. A beloved pet died, and was mourned. Kids grew up, and went to college, or not. Parents and grandparents died, and siblings faced each other in the process. People got sick--and didn't die, but lingered in twilight states. You know: real life.

Well, almost. I mean, if anything, there wasn't enough failure. No one didn't succeed. No one was unemployed. No one used drugs or alcohol, or found themselves addicted in any way. No one compromised themselves for what seemed like good reasons at the time... or otherwise found themselves in ethically ambiguous positions. So FBOFW wasn't really all that real! Just maybe as real as the "comics" can get.

People got divorced, for instance, but then they were married to the "wrong" people in the first place, so the wheel of life turned and even those tragedies were "corrected" comically. Thus it is on the last strip, one of the main characters, Elizabeth (aka, "Lizardbreath!" I like that!), marries her high school sweetheart, Anthony, who is divorced from a caricature of a woman who has left him with their daughter to raise. (The daughter, despite being abandoned by her mother is not very bratty... See? No one really has emotional issues in the comics.) So a "wrong" is righted. And Elizabeth and Anthony immediately after exchanging vows leave the wedding/reception to visit her grandfather in the hospital, where he's been laid low by circulatory compromises (stroke, now heart), but is being dutifully looked after by his second wife, Iris, who has become a hero to his family for her devotion. Whew!

OK, but Iris' testimony closes the strip. She says: "It isn't easy, but we made a commitment... This is part of loving someone-- with all your heart-- and with all you have to give. It's a promise that should last a lifetime. It defines you as a person and describes your soul. It's a promise to be there, one for the other, no matter what happens, no matter who falls... For better or for worse, my dears... for better or for worse."

As someone who has left relationships, and been left as well, I found myself unusually touched by these words. I have known for some time that it is precisely this sort of exchange of commitments that I have been looking for in my life. The lack of this defines my emotional life at the moment. I'd made this sort of commitment earlier in my life--and then decided I couldn't keep it-- but then didn't realize its significance: its uniqueness, its specialness, its difficulty. Frankly, I wonder how many who make this commitment do take it seriously.

Recently, I had occasion to be back in touch with some old friends. Both of them reported that, since we'd last been in contact, their spouses had been diagnosed with cancers and were now "cancer survivors"-- which meant physically compromised and emotionally challenged. I've often thought of cancer as a "family" disease-- by which I mean that, when it rears its ugly head and makes its presence known, it affects more than just the one in whom it is found. Like a lot of adversities in life, one never knows, really, how one will respond until one is "in" it. My friends and their spouses have responded in the "for better or for worse" fashion-- allowing their mutuality to be shaped by these events, but not allowing their mutuality to be destroyed by them.

It is indeed difficult to "hang in there" when someone you love is facing adversity. There is a kind of horror to it, an OMG, I didn't know this was going to happen! And there is a kind of "surrender" that is required, in order willingly to let the adverse events in another's life effect one's own. A lot of the time, instead of surrender, there is only resignation. But resignation carries with it despair, and despair breeds resentment, and pretty soon one who has resigned oneself to the situation actually emotionally abandons-in-place the one who is in need of something more, something other.

This place of surrender is difficult for most people to reach. We are much more accustomed to resignation, I think, and thus fall prey to other forms of resistance. Not too long ago, even in "media" time, John Edwards showed us all another side of himself, when his affair with a campaign aide became all too public. I didn't pay any attention to his media "outing," so I don't know how he and his family handled themselves, but I felt for them all. We had made such heroes of John and Elizabeth, and had so elevated their marriage, that it was almost sadly predictable that John's humanity would disappoint us in equal proportion. They had lost a child tragically; then came Elizabeth's cancer; now John's infidelity. Their life experiences are so far from mine, I cannot imagine what "for better or for worse" means to them. Yet, you know, I hope at the end of the day, they are able to be content with the commitment they have made to each other-- as Iris said, "no matter who falls...". I thought when John persisted in his Presidential ambitions that he was trying to overcome his resignation to his life circumstances, instead of surrendering to his commitment to Elizabeth and her life-threatening cancer. But then, maybe his undoing himself publicly was one way to re-do himself privately. Maybe he has moved now, from resignation to surrender. I hope so. And I hope Elizabeth has, too.

There is another side of "for better or for worse" that we don't often think about, and that is: how "for better" can be just as challenging for relationships as "for worse!" But that may be the stuff of another blog.

This one ends in this way: There is more to Life than one can find in the "funny papers," but it is nice when one finds enough of Life there, framed in a comic way, to allow us to laugh, when we may feel like crying. I will miss the lift that laughing to FBOFW gave me. This is for me not the end of the world that the cessation of Calvin and Hobbes was, but it is a loss nonetheless. Where else am I to turn for Canadian wisdom about what Life is really all about, anyway?

Blessings to you all-- for better or for worse!

Unnatural Order

I work to get my plants just so;
I snip and trim and tend.
For if I let them simply grow,
watering now and then,
they would go all over the place!
Who knows what would happen?
In this labor I find solace,
a peace approaching Zen.
Yet it meddles in their nature,
to make them twist and bend
into the shapes that I prefer,
not what they were given.
I fear for what has got wrung out
and lost in the bargain.
Then a humming bird comes, and shouts,
the holiness regained.