The wonder of failure

You may be getting tired of my quoting from books but when you read things that really speak to your heart or cause you to pause and say: 'Wow' it is lovely to be able to share that. Anyway, here is another (again from the Tutu book):

What might our lives feel like if we didn't march through them with a scorecard, keeping tally of our failures and successes? How would it be to stop pretending omniscience? Can you imagine being able to trust that the outcome of your efforts will be right, whatever the outcome? Even when it looks as though every effort is marked with failure?

My first reaction to this was to question its rightness. Yes, sometimes we can see that things that have been failures for us may have, in the end, led to something even better. Maybe a job we didn't get led to an even better, more interesting one. Maybe a breakup with a friend or partner led to a better self-understanding even through all the pain. But also, are there times when failure only stopped there? where failure led to failure?

I think the Tutu's are saying though that even when we ourselves cannot experience the failure as anything but failure, the longer term may show it to be much more positive. Though we may not have thought of it this way, for Christians, the most outstanding and life-giving failure was Jesus and his ministry. At least from his point of view, when, at the end everyone he counted on deserted him; when those he had chosen specially really didn't understand him, that seemed to be failure by anyone's standard.  Even today, his message is often so misused and misinterpreted or not lived, it sometimes seems that there is still no success. But the truth and love and power of his message did get through to many people – maybe not fast enough or powerfully enough for our liking but all the same, it will prevail I think. I think it will prevail because it is, basically, the same message as all the major religions. Therefore it seems  to be part of a universal drive from God to be fully human as Jesus was.

Maybe too, our culture right now doesn't help us. I would guess that every one of us experiences  failure and weakness but finds it hard in the current atmosphere to accept because we feel overcome and pressured by a world that basically has a very unhelpful idea of success.

Though obviously we do not/should not accept dishonesty, cruelty, lying in politicians or business  people or ourselves, still, when it does happen it is worth remembering I think, that every one of us is quite capable of these follies and perhaps much worse. When someone who seems really good and noble (maybe think the 2007/8 version of Barack Obama) we are shocked when we discover they are not the noble saint we thought. When that happens we often then cast the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, and reject everything they do and stand for. That does seem destructive both for our society and for ourselves.

I don't want to ramble on here but I guess if I had a hope for the year to come - or the years to come - it would be twofold: 1) that we could love ourselves and others as we are - lovely, weak, human and 2) that we could en-courage one another to behave well, to be courageous, to be compassionate, to be good and when we fall, as we will, that we will hold fast to one another in love.  

 Also: don't forget -  http://charterforcompassion.org/  It is such a great project.

Meandering

I think today I feel like a little meandering. I am still reading the Tutu's book and am now into another of Mary Oliver's books of poetry and of course, am always reading Thich Nhat Hanh. So here we go.

Mary Oliver has a poem from the early 1990's called: 'When Death Comes'. I want to quote a few lines though I know that a poem is a whole and that perhaps it is unfair to take bits. Still, the poem begins:

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me and snaps the purse shut; .....

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering,
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

The final lines of this poem are, it seems to me, the cruncher and the part that makes me want to live each moment:

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

                           ----------------------------------------------

Then, from the Tutu's book. There is a chapter called 'Where is God when we fail?'. In that chapter they talk about how hard it is for us to deal with failure in our lives; how we seek to be in control, to be self-made so that we can keep failure at bay. But of course, we do fail and then we are full of shame and find whatever faith we may have to be not always helpful because we are ashamed. Here is a little bit about what they say: 

The gift of failure may be a deep encounter with God...It may be only when we have reached the end of our rope that we finally realize that the only secure handhold is God. When we recognize that we can no longer rely on our own resources, we open a space for God to work. When the myth of being self-made explodes in our face, we can fully awaken to the abiding presence of God. At times like these, failure is a blessing.

I would guess that not many of us experience failure as a blessing but I have to say that in my own life, the experience of reaching the bottom of the pit; the bottom of abysmal failure has been a gift of the most life-blessing power.

                        ---------------------------------------------- 

And now, from Thich Nhat Hanh. I think this certainly relates to piece from the Tutu book but it is also of course, its own wisdom.

The Buddha advises us not to try to run away from our fear, but to bring up our fear and have a deep look into it. Most of us try to cover up our fear. Most of us are afraid of looking directly at our fear....the Buddha proposed that you bring the seed of fear up, and recognize that it is there and embrace it with your mindfulness.

Many of us have probably experienced how much more power unexamined fear has than that which we do face. The fear for instance,  that if we tell someone our deepest concern they will turn away from us only to discover that they embrace us and accept us and know us, sometimes, better than we know ourselves. 

I just found all these bits kind of wise and wanted to share them with you.

(Mary Oliver: New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992: Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu: Made for Goodness and why this makes all the difference, Harper Collins, New York, 2011: Your True Home, The Everyday wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh, compiled and edited by Melvin McLeod, Shambhala Press, Boston, 2011)  

 Also: don't forget -  http://charterforcompassion.org/  It is such a great project.

Choices and God

I have remarked before, and I am sure you have too, about the coincidences (?) of themes that suddenly appear. You hear, for instance, a certain word or about a certain subject and suddenly it seems to appear again and again. I imagine that is because we have been alerted and now we see, but all the same it seems worth attending to the alert. Maybe something is being brought to our attention.

Today it was about choice. I started a new book of Mary Oliver's poetry called: Evidence. At the beginning before the poetry begins there is a quote from Soren Kierkegaard which says: We create ourselves by our choices. For whatever reason that kind of stopped me dead for a moment. We create ourselves by our choices. Is it true? 

In the same reading session, still reading the book by Desmond and Mpho Tutu I found that I was beginning a chapter called, Free to Choose. Is that a coincidence? It hit me because I always used to find myself qualifying statements about the power of choice in our lives by asking 'how much freedom do we really have? Are we not to quite a strong extent limited by upbringing? by personality? by life circumstances? But I think what the Tutu's are saying about this is really really vital.
  
Choice is a freedom each person has. God invests each of us with the freedom to choose. ...We have the freedom to choose right. But that would be meaningless if there were not also the possibility that we could choose wrong.

The chapter then goes on to look at the parable of the Prodigal Son in which the younger son takes his father's money, the inheritance he would have received upon his father's death, and squanders it. When he spends it all he decides to return home not sure, of course, how he will be received, but his father seeing him a long way off, runs to greet him, embraces him, and celebrates his return. There is of course, much more to the story but part of the point the Tutus want to make is about the father's response.

The breadth of God's forgiveness, the depths of God's love, and the grace to wait - true wisdom for parenting - are all displayed in this simple story.
The powerful powerlessness of parenting is akin to the self-imposed impotence of God in the face of our choices. Like the father in the parable who just sits there day after day helpless - in a way - God is not willing to do anything to infringe upon our freedom...In the parable we see the father's longing. We can imagine him stepping out of his house each day to sit where he can watch the long road...then finally, one day, waaaay over theeereee in the distance he sees a figure approach...he runs...to meet his child.

But there is another and just as important aspect of this whole business of the freedom of choice and that is that we are not just left to our own devices to muddle through our choices on our own. The shepherd of Luke's Gospel parable lets us see that God honors our choices yet seeks us out.

It is the seeking out, the accompanying, the embracing that keep us from being crushed by our destructive choices. Kierkegaard says that all our choices make us who we are and God is saying, they don't have to destroy you, my love will create a thing of beauty in your heart and of your life. You can choose to let me.

The New Year in graciousness

Already we are four days into the new year and I am only now getting back to the blog. As with many folks over this holiday I spent a fair number of days flat out with a cold and no energy to write. But now...

I received several lovely and inspiring books at Christmas. It always seems a gift to hear and absorb the wisdom of good people. I would like to share from one of them: Made for Goodness by Desmond and Mpho Tutu and from a book of poetry I have had but not read for a while by Mary Oliver, called Thirst.

First, from Mary Oliver's book of poetry. You will perhaps be familiar with this poem - it is called When I am Among the Trees. The first two verses struck me as being perfect to begin the new year with for those of us who may find ourselves still rushing through life:

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
    but walk slowly, and bow often.

I find myself deeply touched by those last two lines. Can I learn to walk more slowly through the world and then, filled with wonder and gratitude, bow often. I sense that if we could do that, our world would be pretty close to perfect because there is such respect and thanksgiving.

And then from Desmond and Mpho Tutu's book which is about the beautiful generosity and graciousness of God's love. This too is a poem and they have introduced it by saying: But first turn with us into the stillness and listen to God speak with the voice of the heart:

Don't struggle and strive so, my child
There is no race to complete, no point to prove, no obstacle course to
  conquer for you to win my love.
I have already given it to you.   

Of course, you really want to read the whole of both these poems and indeed, both of these books. But what I read just filled me with a wonderful sense that the beginning of a new year can be immensely hopeful and immensely graceful no matter the state of the world around us.

(Thirst by Mary Oliver, Beacon Press, Boston, 2006;  Made for Goodness and why this makes all the difference by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu, HarperCollins, 2010)      

Advent and life

I have not been very good these last few weeks about writing this blog. Partly it is because I don't want to write just for the sake of writing. I want rather, to try to say something in which we all might find at least a little bit of nourishment of one kind or another.

But now we are well into Advent which is one of my favourite times of the 'religious' year. Advent talks about someone coming who will make a difference in our lives. Someone who is love and who cherishes each of us with all our gifts and meannesses and worries and burdens. 

I have just been re-reading (for the umpteenth time) Sr Wendy Beckett's beautiful book 'Sr Wendy on Prayer' (Continuum, 2006)and found a couple of passages I wanted to share. I think they are difficult because they leave us a bit vulnerable but I think she means to challenge us to a spiritual adulthood . She is talking about 'does prayer work?': 

Almost invariably when one talks about prayer, people think it is about asking God for something...It may seem to us we are asking God to give us something - good weather, good health, good exam results - and that of course, is our explicit intention. Since God is not a puppet-master who will stretch out and change the weather, adjust the cells of our body or jiggle with the examiners markings, and, at a deeper level we know this; the essential nature of our plea is not that God will change the real world, but will strengthen us to bear the impact of it.

She goes on to say: Life is unpredictable. Tragedy and comedy come down upon us without warning...We would like God to change these stresses. This will not happen. What will happen is God's support in making everything in our lives a means of deepening our capacity to be human. Not God the puppet-master ... but a God who has resolutely refused to people the world with puppets. God has paid us the compliment of creating us as free and intelligent,, able to choose and reject and look clearly at the truth.

I find myself reacting to this strongly because I want a God who can save me from myself in an almost physical way. And yet, I am coming to recognize that it is because of my ability to choose, my ability to let suffering transform me, my ability to try to let other people be themselves that I have the chance to grow up and be as fully human as I can be. 

I think of the images we use at Christmas. There is is the image of a small, vulnerable baby - there is a chance here that this special child might never grow up, might be hurt or killed before the time of his mission. That is an amazing thing to me. Then even at Christmas there are shadowings of the suffering and darkness of human hubris to come so it is not all light and joy but a very human journey that is beginning. In this man's life we are shown how to live fully in our vulnerability and gifts.

Finally, one of my other teachers has this to say about our human journey: 

We would all like to have the time to sit and appreciate the stillness that comes from doing nothing. But if we were given the time, would we be able to be still and quiet? That is the problem with many of us. We complain that we don't have the time to rest, to enjoy being here. But we are used to always doing something. We have no capacity to rest and do nothing...We are workaholics. ...That is why learning how to be right where we are without doing anything is a very important practice, as well as a very challenging one. (Thich Nhat Hanh:Keeping the Peace)

Wouldn't it be a wonderful way to celebrate this season of gift and joy if we could just be present to each moment with our families, our friends, our life's journey and not let any moment go by without living it as fully as we possibly can?

Recurring themes in life

You know, it is interesting how often some theme or some word keeps appearing in your life after you first notice it. In this case I am thinking of 'vulnerability' 'weakness'.

A weekend ago I was in Tennessee at a retreat for people who are caregivers. It was meant to be about 'The Spirituality of Caregiving'  so that it was not about how to care for someone but more about how to care for the caregiver. One of the themes that arose there was that caregivers feel they need to be strong and they often go on and on without a break or without admitting that they need a break. But here, in the atmosphere of a group who understood, there was the opportunity for people to say 'I am tired', 'I myself feel vulnerable', 'I sometimes think thoughts about the one I care for that I can hardly bear'.

Later, during the same weekend we attended a meeting that was focused on the message of Henri Nouwen's life and books and how it might speak to people now, in this 21st century. The strongest theme that arose was the awareness that Henri was speaking out of his own weakness, his own very great need and vulnerability. But because he helps us to see that it is okay to be weak, that it is okay to be a mess we can be encouraged. Because what he also makes wonderfully clear is that we are so beloved of God even when we fall apart or act badly that we can stop trying to be what we are not: strong. We all agreed however, that in this world where strength and success and never failing are built into the way of our society this is not a message that people want to hear.

Then, when I returned home and was reading more from the book I mentioned in my last blog - the one by Joan Chittister, I found the theme again. Here's what she had to say: 

Vulnerability is clearly part of the spiritual process, clearly part of the human endeavor. To know ourselves to be exposed to forces outside ourselves, beyond our control, teaches us the power of both darkness and light, gives us gifts from the depths of the unknown, introduces us to the mystery of life...We are put in a position where we have no choice but to go out of ourselves to others in order to draw from them what we ourselves would otherwise be left without. Vulnerability gives us the gift of our own limitations and from the darkness of despair we learn to trust in the gifts of those who are seeking our own giftedness in return.

And then, to all that, add something from Thich Nhat Hanh which sort of topped everything off: 

We have to wake up to the fact that everything is connected to everything else. Our safety and well-being cannot be individual matters any more. If others are unsafe, there is no way we can be safe.

So, I feel like there is a strong message in all of this that says both that we are all weak and vulnerable and in need of one another and also, that that is just fine! 

    

The gift of silence

I am often finding things in the books I read that I want to share. Usually these are 'aha!' things and they hit something deep in me that seem worth pondering. So, the book this time is called: Heart of Flesh by Joan Chittister (Erdmans Publishing Co. and Novalis, 1998). I very much like her writing and this book, though not new, says a lot of things about women and the Catholic church especially. But the aha thing is a bit different. 

Sr Joan says: Talk without thought is useless. What we may need most is interior quiet in a culture of boom boxes, agitation, and perpetual motion. We need space to think in culture bombarded by sound, most of it vacuous, much of it extraneous, a great deal of it self-centered. We have a culture forever geared to mending the way we talk when it may be silence that is lacking. Then she goes on to say something that I feel is so worth thinking about:

Silence is not an empty thing. Silence is full of what we need to learn about ourselves.

Silence is not an empty thing. I can recall when I first entered the monastery. I came from a life not only very busy and full of talk, but one full of my own woundedness. Stepping from that world into a day full of silence was without question, an immense shock to the system. Of course, there were still times when we spoke, but in comparison they were few. What I very quickly found was that there were things going on in my head and my heart that I found hard to bear, even frightening. I was perhaps for the first time, facing things in myself that I had avoided for my whole life. It was so hard. And, paradoxically, it was so healing.

The odd thing too that I soon discovered, was that for all the raw hurt and hard stuff within me, the silence was quite gentle and amazingly loving. How can silence be gentle and loving - I would say because in the silence there is God leading and healing. But whatever is happening it was a gift.

It is so often said that for many people it is necessary to hit the bottom before you can rise to the surface. I know that is true from my own experience and it happened in the silence. Of course, that kind of huge immersion is not what most people need or desire. But daily times of silence where there is just you and your innermost self can be as healing as most people need. But the more we plug in the music or turn on the TV or gather is large noisy groups at the pub, the harder it is to find your own inner centre of beauty and peace. 

Here is something else that Sr Joan says in her book: Communication theorists tell us, in fact, that over 80 percent of every message is communicated non-verbally. What I believe in my heart will show in my body.

Wow. That could really be helpful in leading us to become both more self-aware and also, more attuned in the silence of listening, to what others are really saying to us.