Shelter in Place

As we end Poetry Month for 2021, I am reminded that poetry not only serves our spirit, but also as a resource during times of crisis.  Over the last year, online searches for poetry have increased dramatically.

Whether it be the wonderful work — captured on Saturday Mornings — of people like Naomi Shihab Nye, Mary Oliver, or Madeleine L’Engle; the poetic beauty of our strange mixture of hope and hopelessness, joy and sorrow, or action and stillness is a kind of palpable power in our collective and personal sense of being.

Like this one, my 'Poem for the week' -- "Shelter in Place":

Long before the pandemic, the trees

knew how to guard one place with

roots and shade. Moss found

how to hug a stone for life.

Every stream works out how

to move in place, staying home

even as it flows generously

outward, sending bounty far.

Now is our time to practice–

singing from balconies, sending

words of comfort by any courier,

hoarding lonesome generosity

to shine in all directions like stars.

-- Kim Stafford

What a fitting reminder and call (two things poetry so often does) to both end and begin a new season of living.

Like Crack

Certainty is like crack.

-- Emily Joy

Once you think you are right, you stop taking in new information. 

-- Nadia Bolz-Weber's mom

Structure

We have to have enough experience with structures in our lives to accept the reality of the mysteries of anti-structure. 

This seems to be true in many domains. Take music, for example; in order to effectively deviate from expected musical patterns, it seems there has be an understanding of the basic elements of musical design…otherwise, all we seem to mostly end up with is discord, cacophony, disharmony.

How does our experience with structure apply in other areas—Politics?  Business?  Marriage?  Family?  Church?  Faith?  Meaning?

Yearning...Will not Produce It

A few years ago, I posted something by Neale Donald Walsch about what it takes to accept that simply desiring something new isn't enough.  

We have to make room for the new, in part, by letting go of the old.

The below strikes me as a helpful description of some ideas or ways to go about doing this:

SBCC - HOW TO LIVE IN A NEW WORLD (WK 2), Jason Miller

Self-Care

Ever noticed...that self-care doesn't seem like it is as short-term reinforcing as it is long-term reinforcing?  In other words, the rewards of self-care are more manifest over time than they are immediate.

It's not to say there are no quick benefits.  But, more often, the sustainable ones seem cumulative in some way.  An example?  Learning to love myself is a process.  I can do it one time; but, a pattern of doing so has some real long-term yields.

The same seems true of physical health—emotional health, relational health, financial health, etc.

Before I Know It

The assumption of spirituality is that God is always doing something before I know it.

-- Eugene Peterson

So, 'Have the courage...':

Randoms...

The more we experience each other, the more we experience ourselves.

What we have to give is really a result of death in our lives—death to the ways we build things exclusively for our own sake—because death to such things is what really allows for the ultimate expansion of ourselves.

Writing helps you realize the ways that you’re holding back.

Doesn’t it seem like there are a lot of things that aren’t exactly what they have been purported to be?

Prior Randoms...

A fable for our times

An observation not unrelated to COVID (as the article linked points out):

 

Guido Calabresi, a federal judge and Yale law professor, invented a little fable that he has been telling law students for more than three decades.

He tells the students to imagine a god coming forth to offer society a wondrous invention that would improve everyday life in almost every way. It would allow people to spend more time with friends and family, see new places and do jobs they otherwise could not do. But it would also come with a high cost. In exchange for bestowing this invention on society, the god would choose 1,000 young men and women and strike them dead.

Calabresi then asks: Would you take the deal? Almost invariably, the students say no. The professor then delivers the fable’s lesson: “What’s the difference between this and the automobile?”

In truth, automobiles kill many more than 1,000 young Americans each year; the total U.S. death toll hovers at about 40,000 annually. We accept this toll, almost unthinkingly, because...continue here.

-- David Leonhardt

AXIOS

‘I’m still a zero’: Vaccine-resistant Republicans warn that their skepticism is worsening

The Little Book of Cheerful Thoughts

'Poem for the week' -- "The Little Book of Cheerful Thoughts":

Small enough to fit 
in your shirt pocket
so you could take it out
in a moment of distress
to ingest a happy 
maxim or just stare
a while at its orange
and yellow cover
(so cheerful in itself
you need go no further),
this little booklet
wouldn’t stop a bullet 
aimed at your heart

and seems a flimsy 
shield against despair,
whatever its contents.
But there it is
by the cash register,
so I pick it up
as I wait in line and
come to a sentence
saying there are few
things that can’t be 
cured by a hot bath
above the name 
Sylvia Plath.

I rest my case,
placing the booklet
back by its petite
companions Sweet Nothings
and Simple Wisdom…
but not The Book of Sorrows,
a multivolume set
like the old Britannica
that each of us receives
in installments
of unpredictable
heft and frequency
over a lifetime.

-- Jeffrey Harrison


From the author:

“I wrote this poem before the pandemic and before the murder of George Floyd. There were plenty of horrible things going on in the country, as well as in my personal life, including the suicide of one of my oldest and closest friends. None of these things are in the poem explicitly, but they are certainly behind it.”

Earth Day 2021 - "Together, We Can Restore Our Earth"

The Earth is what we all have in common.

-- Wendell Berry

earthday.org

In times like these, our prayer may need to be expressive and embodied, visceral and vocal. How else can we pray with our immense anger and grief? How else can we pray about ecocide, about the death that humanity is unleashing upon Mother Earth and upon ourselves? How else can we break through our inertia and despair, so that we don’t shut down and go numb? . . . . 

I’ve taken to praying outdoors. I go outside, feel the good earth beneath my feet and the wind on my face, and I sing to the trees—to oak and beech, hemlock and pines. Making up the words and music as I go along, I sing my grief to the trees that are going down, and my grief for so much more—for what we have lost and are losing, and for what we are likely to lose. I sing my outrage about these beautiful old trees being cut to the roots, their bodies chipped to bits and hauled away to sell. I sing my fury about the predicament we’re in as a species. I sing my protest of the political and corporate powers-that-be that drive forward relentlessly with business as usual, razing forests, drilling for more oil and fracked gas, digging for more coal, expanding pipeline construction, and opening up public lands and waters to endless exploitation, as if Earth were their private business and they were conducting a liquidation sale. I sing out my shame to the trees, my repentance and apology for the part I have played in Earth’s destruction and for the part my ancestors played when they stole land and chopped down the original forests of the Native peoples who lived here. I sing my praise for the beauty of trees and my resolve not to let a day go by that I don’t celebrate the precious living world of which we are so blessedly a part. I’m not finished until I sing my determination to renew action for trees and for all of God’s Creation.... 

So our prayer may be noisy and expressive, or it may be very quiet. It may be the kind of prayer that depends on listening in stillness and silence with complete attention: listening to the crickets as they pulse at night, listening to the rain as it falls, listening to our breath as we breathe God in and breathe God out, listening to the inner voice of love that is always sounding in our heart. A discipline of contemplative prayer or meditation can set us free from the frantic churn of thoughts and feelings and enable our spirit to rest and roam in a vaster, wilder space. 

-- Margaret Bullitt-Jonas 

Love and grief go hand in hand. Sometimes it is the deep grief we feel during loss that awakens us to the depth and sincerity of our love. 

-- Richard Rohr

Just Because

Just because I am interested in something, doesn’t mean that someone else is. And, just because I'm not interested in something, doesn't mean that someone else isn't.

Is this really necessary to note?

Perhaps not.  But, I do get the impression that this would be helpful for both parties—myself and someone else—to more fully recognize.  We might think, for example, that we can't understand why someone else wouldn't be interested in something I'm really into.  How could you not be, we might think (or, even say)?  Almost as if it is an affront to me that someone else doesn't enjoy something I do.  It actually is possible.  To the degree that I like something; isn't it possible that someone else doesn't like it (or, at least, as much)?  

Maybe it would help to turn it around.  There are things that I really don't get; don't understand what the appeal of something is.  And, yet, another person might be really into it.  

What kinds of things are we actually discussing here?  How would this apply to things decor?  What about food?  Or, entertainment?  Travel?  Forms of art?  Use of time or money?

What about potentially more sensitive categories like health, personality, sex, or spirituality?

I don't really like it when someone is condescending to me, just because I don't particularly enjoy something they do.  It is likely the same about something I am into (and they're not).

When we acknowledge that people are different, how comfortable are we really with the degree to which that is true?  What about when that differentness feels like it impinges on me—either by lack of acceptance or imposition?

We might be surprised by how embedded just because is in the way we think about things or, perhaps more importantly, others.

Everyone is rational

Everyone is rational.

But if that’s true, then why don’t we all agree on the right next step?

It could be because everyone has a different experience, different data and different goals.

Or, it could be that you are the only one who’s rational.

And it could be that we all like to tell ourselves we’re doing the right thing, but ultimately, all we can do is make choices based on how we see the world.

The way we see things drives our choices, and, of course, our choices change the way we see things.

-- Seth Godin, Everyone is rational

It strikes me that this observation transcends the Derek Chauvin / George Floyd situation, but it certainly includes it.

Own Ourselves

I’m wondering...why is it that we only really own ourselves a little bit at a time?

Everything That Matters To Jesus

Everything that matters to Jesus, seems not to matter to us.  Everything that matters to us, as a culture, seems not to have been important to him.

-- Miroslav Volf

Randoms...

I could write a book about how to walk with someone who is experiencing personal darkness, but most of the pages would be empty. 

We all need emotional space, to be healthy.

One of the basic powers of words, is their lasting effect.

What happens when you hear people talk about sentences that you’ve said multiple times in the privacy of your head?

Prior Randoms...

Visual: Salve

 Visual - "Salve":

Coffee, sunlight, a special place, and memories—a wonderful combination as salve to the spirit.

No One Is An Expert

No one is an expert in someone else's experience.

-- David Dark

So, beware those who claim to be (including yourself).  

The appeal of expertise is strong (we love experts, almost as much as being viewed as one); but, why does it too often seem disproportional to things like genuine curiosity, compassion, presence (more on these here)?

Drivenness

Another lingering reflection, from a recent Randoms...:

What are we observing when we experience drivenness—in ourselves or in others?


What is going on with drivenness? 

Is it a need, a desire, a demand, an expression, a habit?

How about drivenness for truth, especially when drivenness for it isn't punctuated with things like grace (what, after all, is the source of all the energy tied up in our quest for truth—our need to be right)?

But, drivenness isn't confined to things like absolute truth.  

It includes things like my truth, your truck, our truth.  In other words, the truth that particularly drives us, as individuals.  People often seem highly motivated to find or pursue something, whether they fully know why or not.  They are observably driven by it.

So, how then, would we describe what drivenness is?

It obviously seems to include some kind of innate energy that directly or indirectly compels us—something that seems to come from our very being or our experiences, that makes us who we are, that motivates us in a way that is, at times, beyond even conscious choice.

It often looks like a need—to have, to know, to be.

Selfish Is Easy

Selfish is easy. It's sharing that takes courage.

-- Simon Sinek

Courage relates more to what of ourselves we share, than simply our stuff.

How I Want To Be

I've noticed...that how I want to be is largely determined by what is important to those around me.  In other words, if it is important to them, I want it to be important to me.

I can tend to absorb or merge with others, sometimes too much.

I'm not super comfortable with this (in fact, I even wince at it, as I write this), as it can lead to a certain kind of lostness in terms of who I am (independent from those around me) or how I actually feel.  

Understanding that this is, among other things to be sure, a function of personality theory (like Enneagram) is helpful for me to be more aware of how this kind of thing works in my life.  It helps me recognize my tendencies and creates opportunity for me to address how I want to be.

Leave Christianity

People don't leave Christianity because they stop believing in the teachings of Jesus. People leave Christianity because they believe in the teachings of Jesus so much, they can't stomach being part of an institution that claims to be about that and clearly isn't.

-- Nadia Bolz-Weber

Why don’t you describe what you mean by Christian, and then I’ll tell you if you’re describing me?

-- David Dark

"If you preach a subtle hatred / the Bible as your alibi / God damn you right here in Ohio."

-- Over the Rhine, from "All Over Ohio" on Meet Me at the Edge of the World

Randoms...

There is something redemptive about the planting of flowers.

Responding well to the unanticipated often involves skill.

Experiences of things is a context for experiences of each other.

Is honesty like love, in that it always costs you something?

Prior Randoms...

COVID Vaccine - "Wait & See" & Church Attendance

AXIOS

Christianity Today

More on the evolving nature of the church from the CT link above....

When Love

'Poem for the week' -- "When Love":

 when love floods a person

            it cuts

a canyon

that deepens year after year

            carrying silt

away leaving

the essential person

            revealed

letting everyone see

the layers of yellow

            sandstone, red basalt

grey granite

when love washes over a person

                        it washes

the person away

-- Alicia Ostriker

From the Author:

“I have been fascinated for a long time with the parallels between geology and the human personality. Like the earth, we have layers deposited by our experiences. Sometimes we explode like a volcano, and sometimes our experiences can be washed away by strong emotion, leaving something more basic behind. Often I have wanted to feel my ego being washed away by love.”

Old Dimensions

 A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Q&A: Questions

Q&A:

Q: What is the key to the answers we seek?

A:  Questions

Someone To Guide You

If you do not have someone to guide you, to hold onto you during the times of not knowing, you will normally stay at your present level of growth.

-- Richard Rohr

Humility

Ever noticed...that humility is most often something that has to be learned?

Easter: Universal Pattern

Resurrection and renewal are, in fact, the universal and observable pattern of everything.

-- Richard Rohr

Compassion is the aim of all spiritual growth.

-- Meister Eckhart

The Wisdom of the Passion

Because of my spiritual tradition, the piece below is particularly striking to me. 

Accordingly, I can't help but re-read the following phrase: 

Jesus is not particularly interested in increasing either your guilt or your devotion....

Are you kidding me (my tradition would say)?  What IS Jesus interested in then?

The passion is really the mystery of all mysteries, the heart of the Christian faith experience. By the word “passion” here we mean the events which end Jesus’s earthly life: his betrayal, trial, execution on a cross, and death. . . .

The spectacle of an innocent and good man destroyed by the powers of this world is an archetypal human experience. It elicits our deepest feelings of remorse and empathy (and if we’re honest, our own deepest shadows as well). . . . It’s been used to stir anger and scapegoating. It’s been used to fuel anti-Semitism, to induce personal guilt—“Christ died for your sins”—and to arouse devotion in a sentimental and even fanatical way.

From a wisdom point of view, what can we say about the passion? . . .  The key lies in . . .  reading Jesus’s life as a sacrament: a sacred mystery whose real purpose is not to arouse empathy but to create empowerment. In other words, Jesus is not particularly interested in increasing either your guilt or your devotion, but rather, in deepening your personal capacity to make the passage into unitive life. If you’re willing to work with that wager, the passion begins to make sense in a whole new way. . . .

The path [Jesus] did walk is precisely the one that would most fully unleash the transformative power of his teaching. It both modeled and consecrated the eye of the needle that each one of us must personally pass through in order to accomplish the “one thing necessary” here, according to his teaching: to die to self. I am not talking about literal crucifixion, of course, but I am talking about the literal laying down of our “life,” at least as we usually recognize it. Our only truly essential human task here, Jesus teaches, is to grow beyond the survival instincts of the animal brain and egoic operating system into the kenotic joy and generosity of full human personhood. . . .

What is the meaning of the passion? First of all, God wasn’t angry. Again: God wasn’t angry! Particularly in fundamentalist theology, you’ll often hear it said that God got so fed up with the sins and transgressions of Israel that he demanded a human sacrifice in atonement. But of course, this interpretation would turn God into a monster. How can Jesus, who is love, radiate and reflect a God who is primarily a monster? And how can Christians theoretically progressing on a path of love consent to live under such a reign of terror? No, we need to bury once and for all those fear-and-punishment scenarios that got programmed into so many of us during our childhood. There is no monster out there; only love waiting to set us free.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

Life comes from Death

For this Holy Friday: 
  

It is a great mystery of divine love, that not even in Christ was exception made of the death of the body; and although He was the Lord of nature, He refused not the law of the flesh which He had taken upon Him. It is necessary for me to die; for Him it was not necessary.

-- Saint Ambrose


Maybe there is something fundamental about accepting the 'nature' of things.  Is this nature of things, the nature of love?

But, why death?

Life comes from death.  Repeat.  

Life Comes from death.  Repeat.  

Life comes From death.  

Life comes from Death.

Is this something God knows, that we don't...until it happens to us?

Perhaps this why the statement, "Death, now, has no sting" is true...because it is not, in fact, the end we so are so afraid of.

All because of divine love?  

What If...life comes from love, through death.

Is this part of what Jesus reflected thru his own words on this infamous weekend a couple of centuries ago?

Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the flow of history.

-- Hannah Arendt

Love Expands, Possession Contracts

Love expands the spirit, possession contracts it.

-- Beverly Lanzetta