faith

So I am praying while not knowing how to pray.  I am resting while feeling restless, at peace while tempted, safe while still anxious, surrounded by a cloud of light while still in darkness, in love while still doubting.

                                                                                                     --Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak

a voice

And just when you think all is lost and that there is no possible way to move forward, a door quietly swings open.  It swings open and suddenly after having run down dark hallways desperately trying locked doors, one gently swings open seemingly on its own accord and you find yourself standing in a doorway flooded with quiet light and you hear a voice say...this is the way, walk in it.

God moves.  God lifts the veil, floods in like a river, swings open the door you could never find, much less open, and there you stand in hope and light. 

I can't prove it--but I know it.  It's happened too many times in my life to be random, too often to be coincidence, enough times for me to come to believe that there is Someone who hears me.  Someone who intervenes.

It's not enough to eradicate all doubt because there have also been many, many times when doors did not swing open and only the tightest and darkest of rat holes was provided as the way out...but even then, a way was provided. 

Too many times to be coincidence, too many times for me to not believe and hope, too many times for me to not pray...not enough times to erase all doubt.  Not enough times to make me think I have this under control.  Not enough times to make me think I can do this alone.

When darkness veils His lovely face, 

I rest on His unchanging grace;

In every high and stormy gale, 

My anchor holds within the veil.

sleep...He is awake

I can't even remember right now what all has happened over the past month--but I can tell you that I feel like I've been crawling through a mine field on my belly wondering at what moment I was either going to implode upon myself or explode into a thousand psychological and emotional fragments.  This period of my life is certainly among the top three most prolonged stressful times of my adult life.

This morning as I sat in my reading chair, the house tranquil and silent in the early morning hours, I read...have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones, and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.  God is awake.   (Victor Hugo)

If you can believe those words--and I do--there is a sweeping, swelling, all-encompassing peace that comes.

He is awake...

unexpected

A few years ago Ruben and I attended the morning mass at a local Catholic church.  I think its only the second time I've been to a mass except for a recent Catholic funeral I attended. We were between church homes and looking for places to connect with God and for some reason, Ruben had told me the night before that he wanted to attend a nearby Catholic church, maybe because it was reminiscent of his childhood days in church, I don't know.

I know that over time all of us can and do succumb to apathy and boredom with certain rituals and habits, and I think it is often most evident in our religious practices, and I also come from a church background that doesn't have much of an appreciation for the Catholic church.  But what is old hat to one person and an over-familiar ritual can be the newest and freshest of experiences to another. 

For me, the service with its rituals and ceremonial rites conveyed a sense of reverance and awe that I have missed in the churches I have attended all my life.  It was a service rich in symbols--holy water, a golden crucifix held high and leading the silent parade of the priest and attendants as they entered, the ritual prayers, kneeling in unison, prayers recited together, moments set aside for silence, a message spoken with gentleness and firmness about attending to others with love, and the most reverant of all--the holy eucharist taken together in solemn procession and silence except for the priest's blessing spoken over each of us as the wafer was laid on our lips and as we drank from the chalice. This was holy ground.

And one last unexpected gesture has lingered with me...after an hour and a half of reverant and solemn assembly and ceremony beneath a stained glass window the height of two stories, with the priest in his stately robes and with candles and altar attendants surrounding him, he stood at the doors as we left the service, greeting his parishoners, and when he saw Ruben in front of me, he broke into a broad smile and gave him a warm and affectionate swat on the shoulder as though they were old friends and at the same time reached for my hand and said with a broad and hearty smile, "Good to see you this morning!" and it sounded like he meant it.

I left feeling like I had really gone to church.  Somehow it made the rest of the day more meaningful and satisfying and remembering that unexpected and warm gesture even now fills an empty place inside of me.  

I can think of a few friends and family members who would be surprised and skeptical of any attempt to find God in a Catholic church mass, but there He was in rich and meaningful and delightfully loving expressions.

The gate may be narrow, but the meadow on the other side is expansive and rich and full of life and there is room for many.  Makes me feel like there is room for me too.

the sea is still deeper

In so many ways the world seems to be getting smaller and smaller and with technology and the media and the constant feed of information from around the world, it feels like everything is happening in my own backyard.  The weight of the world starts pressing in on me, suffocating me if I let it. 

Taking in the expanse of the sea lifts that weight.  Did you make the sea? God asks me. Do you keep the gulls in the air?  Do you send the storms and waves to carve out the caves and rocks that, to you, have been here for eons and eons?  All those problems you hear about have been going on for millenia and all the while these ancient bastions of rock and sea have been keeping vigil, unmoved by the problems of the world.  Does the world seem to be falling apart to you?  It has fallen apart before in the eyes of men and women whose only perspective is from their narrow fleeting view from their own lives.  

But I live on, God says.  I live on and it's not over until I say it's over.  Look up!  The sea is still deeper than any man has seen, the sky is still wider than any man can take in at one time, the trees are still older than any one man's lifetime, the rocks will still be here even if the entire world economy fails because I live on and nothing will bring me down.  It's not over until I say it's over.

in the middle of a war

When you're in the middle of a war, you cannot see the ultimate outcome, only the mud beneath your feet and the treacherous minefield that lay before you.  Sometimes when you look back at previous battles, at defining moments of your life when you were fighting for something, you can see that if you had given up at the moments when you were filled with hopelessness, you would have lost the war.  So in retrospect, those defining moments become your great acts of courage, the acts that won the war. But in the moment without the glow and warmth of having triumphed, there is only the mud beneath your feet and the crawling forward on your belly when you have little hope of ever making it through to the other side.

Only when the smoke and gunfire are over do we really know which of our acts turned the tide for victory or for failure.  Only the end will tell us which moments were the defining moments, the moments that changed our lives and the lives around us for good or for ill. 

While the mud sucks at our every step, we wonder...is this a war I will eventually lose?  will I battle but not live to see the victory?  should I give up now and move on?  will I ever see the victory and freedom I'm longing for?  what if the tide turns today and tomorrow I find myself standing with arms outstretched in the light of victory?

Seven years ago I was in a war.  I fought heaven and earth, but no one else really knows.  It was not a visible war.  No one saw me charging with my bayonet or crawling through the brush to ambush the enemy.  No one saw me wiping the blood off the wounded in the middle of the night. I still don't really know how much my fighting determined the outcome, but I know that I fought and that the war was eventually won.

I'm in a different battle these days and I don't know what the final outcome will be. But when faced with the choice now to give up the fight or to keep marching through the sucking mud, I sometimes hear a voice challenging me...what if the next moment wins the war?  what if tomorrow the bloodshed ends?  can you afford to give up now?

tidal wave

I am growing older and can't stop it.  I feel more and more helpless, more and more overwhelmed by life, by the 6:00 news, by noise and clutter and flashing lights and honking horns, by the Internet, by too many choices and decisions, by the clamoring of my own inner needs.  I am only in my fifties.  If I'm feeling this now, what on earth is it going to be like in my sixties? seventies? eighties?  Will I even still be here?  It all gives new meaning to what it means to be "out of control."  I'm realizing that its not just other family members who are beyond my control, or their choices, or co-workers or finances--it's every tiny parcel of every day.  I do not know what is coming today or the next hour or the next minute.  How do you stay open hearted and exposed to the good and the beautiful when you're startling and flinching whenever there is a sudden noise or that unexpected phone call or that physical sensation that you're trying to manage? 

Late in the morning I felt hungry and I was out running errands and decided to get one of my favorite meals.  I stood in line pretending that my whole life was in order, not letting on that I felt weak as a kitten and vulnerable as a naked baby bird.  I bought my meal...have a nice day, the girl behind the counter said.  I needed quiet, so I drove to the river and sat in the car and watched as people here and there fed the geese and pigeons. 

I took a bite of my food and watched a man and a woman and three young girls set their picnic out on the picnic table.  The girls threw bread crumbs to the birds.  I chewed my food but felt a tidal wave of grief welling up and out of my soul.  Stay with it, I told myself.  Look at it.  Feel it. I stopped chewing and stared at my food and let it come, swelling up and up like water filling a cavern, rising and suddenly spilling over the top until the tears were dripping down and I had to gasp to breathe. 

It was my daughter and all that's been lost, it was my oldest's suffering I had recently witnessed,  it was about my brother being gone--we are not five anymore, we are four--no more chances with him.  He's gone. It was about the stress and relentless strain of the last three years. It was about aging and about loneliness--these moments that are lived out of the deep wells of our lives are always lived out alone.  They can't be shared.  The depth and breadth and the waves and currents are too much to get out in words. 

I listened to the music playing on my car stereo.  I listened to one song over and over.  I pressed the replay button--three times, five times, ten times, and let the grief spill out.  I listened and watched the three girls feed the geese and then the gulls--the gulls riding and sailing the wind, spiraling up, riding silently down, now this way, now that, a mass of gray and white living leaves riding the wind.  I let what was sealed up inside come to the surface and gasp. 

Having time alone and having the quiet and giving myself space and privacy to let the waters well up and spill out was what I needed. When the waters rise, the leaves and debris float on the surface and finally are washed out when the waters spill over the top.  It leaves the basin cleaner.  A clean basin is easier to manage--less debris. 

It doesn't change any of the circumstances that cause me grief but it does allow me to accept them and make room for them without trying to control them.  It allows for the co-existence of pain and peace.  It takes that festering wound, sealed over with taut, red and swollen skin that's too tender to touch and brings it into the healing air, let's it begin to heal.

more sure than ever before

"Life is complex...But if I tell you that when I lost my way, I found it again by following the moss growing on the north side of trees, I will almost certainly have to warn you that in the redwood forests there are many trees covered with moss on all sides...I hope you will abandon the urge to simplify everything...[and] appreciate the fact that life is complex."

                                                             --M. Scott Peck, M.D., Further Along the Road Less Traveled

During the final years of my first marriage, which ultimately died and ended in divorce, one of the most difficult things I had to face in myself was the fact that I had for so long made excuses, rationalized, provided (weak) explanations, covered up, and in many other ways pretended...until I couldn't hold the facade together anymore.  It was a shock to me when, unable to hold the mask up any longer, I began to tell the truth, and then discovered how many people had seen the truth long before I did.

The fact that I could not or would not face the truth and, therefore, could not or would not see the truth, shook me to the core and still affects me today.  It shook my confidence in my ability to see things as they really are.  Life has become much more complex to me since my divorce and since I've gotten older.  I am less sure of more things...more sure of a few things.

There have been too many times in my life now when I have made judgements about others only to discover how terribly misguided my judgements were.  There have been too many times in my life now when I was positive I was seeing clearly, only to discover I wasn't seeing clearly at all.  There have been too many times now in my life when I've lost hope, only to see the impossible happen right before my eyes.  I've been dogmatic about beliefs that now 20...30...40 years later, I've given up altogether.

Now in my fifties, dealing with new challenges...aging, relationships that I thought would last forever, now gone...I am less sure about many, many things...and yet, more sure about a few things than ever before.

off ramp

Every workday morning, I take the same highway to downtown, and I exit the highway on the same off ramp on my way to work.  Every workday morning.

On Wednesday morning of this week, I sat on that off ramp and while waiting for the light to change and looking out my driver's side car window, I saw--really saw--for the first time, the grandest of oak trees.  How could I have missed it so many times before?  But there it was in its silent grandeur, it's reaching branches and its trunk miles around in circumference, standing silently as it had for maybe 80 years, certainly longer than the highway had been there.  And the world rushes by every morning in all its pressing busyness...so busy, such important business to take care of, so much pressing in on every side...and the oak stands and lets it all go rushing by...doing what it has been doing for years...growing, reaching, living, sending roots down deep, silently and slowly sucking up life into leaves and branches and leaflets, silently and slowly...very slowly...so not in a hurry...becoming what it was meant to be.  

Let the world rush by in its perceived self-importance and rush, let it all rush by in such pretentious self-absorption...the oak is not distracted or misguided or caught off guard...it just does, everyday, what it was meant to do--grow--slowly--steadily--silently--into its grandeur.

appearances

I have always known a few people who, at least on the surface, appear to have taken charge of their lives.  They seem to know what they can control and what they cannot.  They do not indulge in self-doubt.  They do not procrastinate.  They appear to have perfect marriages and problem-free children.  They are helpful people, always ready to give me advice about how to get my own life in order.  They would be wonderful company if they didn't make me feel like such a failure.  But the real trouble is, I don't believe them.  

The perfectly functioning people are always people I do not know very well. 

                                  

                                                                                                           --The Awakened Heart, Gerald May

observations of a child

We have clearly lost something when we are no longer free just to be, when we must always be active, doing some things and refraining from doing others.  Something is missing when we have to force our pauses, carve out our spaces, and then feel we have to justify them.  As a result, recreation often means engaging in more pleasurable work, not freedom from having to work at all.

                                                                                                    --Gerald May, The Awakened Heart

Of all the people I know, my grandchildren are the most free to just be.  And when they are with me, they give me opportunity to be the same.  In fact, they have a way of slowing life down--way down--and, unless I miss it by insisting that they hurry up and be efficient, they create space for me to just be as well.  

It has been said that for us to truly experience heaven on earth, we must become like little children. I've wondered what it is about children that we must become like, and since I became a grandparent, I've come to believe that one of the qualities is the ability to be really present in the present moment.  Something we find as adults that we have lost. 

It is the simple things that make me happiest now.  You have dreams as a young person, you long for this or that experience, and then as you get older you find that one of the greatest pleasures in life is sitting on the back patio with a child and letting the present moment with all its fullness unfold--in conversation, in the sights and sounds, and in listening to the thoughts and observations of a child.

I wish you well

With Christmas past and the intensity of the holiday season over, I went into recovery mode and, other than going to work each day, I gave myself time to coast for a little while and to retreat. In the evenings I worked on the puzzle that Danny gave me for Christmas and I took my time putting away the decorations and cleaning up the house. It felt like the necessary antidote and prescription for the toll that the preceding weeks had taken.

After spending one of those very quiet days in the house all day, I did venture out one evening after dark to make a specific purchase being careful to avoid the busiest stores filled with all those people eager to return their Christmas gifts for something better or at least something that fit. My plan was to enter the store, make my purchase, and escape back to the safety of home as quickly as possible, but as I stood in line for the cashier, someone I had been close to more than ten years before appeared and joined the cue. It was good to see him and we caught up briefly. How was your Christmas? Did you get to see your family? Yes, I'm trying to recover now too.

We had run into each other a number of times before over the last ten years but we hadn't really had much conversation beyond the courtesies and as we walked out of the store and prepared to say polite goodbyes, I wondered if I should continue the conversation. Maybe he was in a hurry to get home? I tried to read the cues and then a question was asked that opened the door to more than a polite goodbye, see you in another decade or two.

It turned out that we stood underneath the parking lot lights and talked for a long time and it seemed impossible that a decade had really gone by. It was one of those conversations that goes beyond words and catching up on the news of each others lives and ends up being something that comforts and reassures and brings the satisfaction that we're almost always longing for in our interactions with other human beings. Things have happened over these past years, do you understand? Do I dare tell you what I really think and feel?

Somehow, despite the years between, I knew again that we were friends. I'm not even sure what indications were actually given that safety and understanding were being offered, but my heart knew. When I arrived home and recounted the experience to Ruben, the safety and understanding spread to him as well and it led to more conversation that brought about even more comfort and reassurance and I told him how I want to be able to offer that to people, to be able to encounter them even after the years have gone by and things have changed and they have changed and just allow them to be who they have become, to say what they have experienced, to feel differently than they did before, and to communicate that It's ok, I accept you as you are and as you have become. It's ok that life has changed what you think and feel. It's good to talk to you and to hear how you are and I wish you well. May you truly have a happy new year.