Something about the boundaries of journeys

I presume that most people would understand journeys to have a beginning and an end. You start somewhere and you end somewhere. You may not reflect on its  goal or meaning or even realize particularly clearly that you are on a journey but that doesn't, I should think, change its nature.

Yesterday an old friend was sharing with me about a number of her closest friends and family. These folks are all in their later 70's and into mid-80's and all are ill in one way or another. Some have become suddenly ill: an unrecognized cancer, a heart problem, a hip that has gone awry and so on and some are lingering on. One friend in particular has just been diagnosed with both lung cancer and a blood clot -  both totally unexpected. This lady is in her mid 80's and is about to undergo treatment which involves chemo and the removal of the toes on one foot (the damage done by the blood clot). Okay, you get the point. These are serious and life-threatening problems.

But my question about the journey - in this case - the journey of a life is; when do you stop trying to stay alive when your body seems to be telling you that it 'wants' to shut down? Have we become so good at keeping ourselves alive even when just about everything in your body is indicating a desire to retire that facing the reality of the end of the journey, accepting it and letting go, becomes increasingly difficult?

Most of us I suspect don't think about death. It seems morbid. It seems to belong to someone else. It seems to interfere with getting on with life. But isn't it real? Isn't it assured?

I think that until the 20th century death was such a common companion that people - perhaps - saw it more realistically than we do. It was much more in your face for them for sure: children died young, mothers died of childbirth, people died of epidemics. I wonder if they were less frightened by it? I wonder if we could learn something from them? I wonder if we would live differently if we came to live at peace with death?

A challenge

This morning someone pointed out that I had said, on the 31st of July I think it was,  that 'God was in all of life; in all the good'. For her that seemed contradictory: if God is in all life, God cannot just be in the good.

I am not sure how to say what I meant.  My understanding about what God is like comes from the way Jesus lived his life. So looking at Jesus, I see someone who is good in the most essential way. But in compassion, he was present to people who were in the midst of evil. He was there for them if they wanted but they were free to reject him. I think of God in the same way.


I have no idea if this would satisfy the person with whom I was speaking but at that point another person raised an issue of perception or belief. This person said that he does not believe in a personal God but rather for him, God is a concept and that fully satisfies him. It is hard for me to relate to that but I see that it is good for him. 

In both these dialogues I thought about how hard it is for us to come together on the really meaningful things in life: religious belief, politics, the raising of children I suppose - anything that is fundamental to us.


I was reminded how, even in the monastery where you would think there would be a profound agreement about God, the church, the vocation and its purpose, there was in fact, as many thoughts about these as there were sisters. There was a whole spectrum of understanding on these issues and sometimes feelings could run high.


All of which brought me around to the very chaotic situation of the American government these last months. I think that between family members for instance, or groups of all sorts, however deep the differences, there is usually a way forward because people need to move forward. There will be a degree of compromise without a loss of principle.


So why is this not possible in the United States?

More thoughts about the view from my window

Today what struck me about the folks standing at the streetcar stop seemed at first glance rather trivial. And maybe even at second thought. But I will explain and you will see where it led me and how, just maybe, it is something to ponder.

The first thing I noticed - and I did a small sampling of maybe 30 random male and female travelers - is that roughly 90% of the women were wearing either black or grey. Some had a bit of white perhaps, or beige but it was pretty much black and grey. And yet, it is summer, it is the time when I would have thought we would wear bright and cheerful colours. Not so, obviously.

The other 10% of the women  wore colour. Really bright colours: limes, corals, reds being most predominant. Now the men also were very conservative (I realise that I am making a value judgement here about the meaning of colours). The men wore, almost without exception, black trousers and white or perhaps blue, shirts. No ties. 

Why do the people I see dress like this? Is it a requirement of their work? If so, why? Is it that they need to look part of the crowd; not be seen to be different? Not stand out? I, of course, have no idea, but my gut tells me it has something to do with both conformity and vulnerability. Vulnerability? More in a minute.

The other thing I have noticed is that both men and women are invariably carrying things although occasionally I will see a man who carries nothing and then can stand with his hands in his pockets. But what are people carrying? They are carrying: bags, knapsacks, purses (both men and women)and also coffee and a phone. This is new to me - I don't recall it being the case when I last lived 'in the world'. So why are people carrying all this and what is in the bags? 

I do not know, needless to say...except it seems to me that one reason we (I do too) carry bags with stuff in them, is so that I/we have everything we may need for the day ahead. So we won't be caught short. So we can be in control. So we won't be vulnerable. 

Is that possible? 

More about the treasure of the ordinary

Every morning I sit at my window overlooking Queen Street. I sit there from just after 7 until 9 and I read and I pray. 

Just outside my window, across the street is a streetcar stop. Each morning there is a steady stream of mostly youngish or middle-agish folks heading, I suppose, to work. They come in all sizes and shapes and colours reflecting this city's amazing tapestry. They come in all manner of clothing from elegant to extremely comfortable. And each day it is pretty much the same people at more or less the same time who stand there and wait with all the others. They read their newspapers, or talk on their phones or just stand there looking down the road to see if the streetcar is in sight.

Also on the street are the people who are just passing by: the older folk who are, like me, presumably no longer working. I suspect that some of them are on their way to Starbucks for their morning coffee and maybe for a chat with someone like them. There are also, in the winter especially, the children with their mums or dads and often, the family dog on their way to school (the children not the dog!). It really is a stream of humanity doing much the same thing each day and yet...

What strikes me a lot is that each of these people, though part of a stream if you will, or a crowd, is nevertheless, entirely unique, entirely unlike anyone else. Ordinary people doing ordinary things yet each is unique and, in my opinion, precious. And no doubt 50 years ago their grandparents or parents did exactly the same thing and 50 years from now, their children or grandchildren will be there, still waiting for the streetcar.

As I sit there, I pray for them and for the people at all the other streetcar stops and bus stops in this and every other city for generation after generation. And I wonder, because time is leading us all in the same direction from birth, through to death with all the streetcar stops in between, does each one ever reflect on the meaning of it all? Do you?

Meaning and the ordinary.

I guess where all this has led me, is to ponder whether one can 'believe in' the power of the ordinary if it isn't possible to perceive that life and, therefore the ordinary, has meaning.

It is hard for me to put myself in the shoes of someone for whom the journey of life has no particular meaning so I can only guess. But how do people manage if each day is just another day and life has no particular purpose except to live from one day to the next. Why, under those circumstances, is it worth being good or moral or law-abiding or being faithful to anything? And yet, I see all around me, people who live good lives at great personal cost and who sometimes suffer great hardship or pain and who are full of courage and don't despair, or  don't stop being good. My only thought is that for such people (and I think that by far the majority of people try to do that) life does have meaning but it is just not articulated in terms that are religious. It is here, perhaps, that many people would speak about the spiritual, but not the religious, meaning of their lives.

I am rambling here but I know that for myself, I see the meaning of my life in terms of my faith in a loving God. My faith leads me to see that it is God in all of life, in all the good. But I find it hard to know how to overcome the hostility and/or the often justified, skepticism of the 21st century and speak in religious terms. Again, at least for me, I want to share the Beauty I have seen that I would not have seen without a community of faith to show me and I don't know how to do that.

I see that maybe that is part of the struggle of the journey. How do we share with one another that which is most important to us without arguing or persuading or shouting or insulting or any of the feelings we tend to get into because we think in terms like: I am right and 'they' are wrong. Something to ponder further I reckon.

 

More About the Ordinary.

I think that what I discovered in the monastery about the essence of what we call the  'ordinary' is that I see in everyday life for each and every one of us, a power which makes a difference to our world: for good or for ill.

I find myself kind of appalled by the whole issue of 'celebrity' because it seems to me to be a way of avoiding the ordinary and therefore, ending up being unhappy with our own lives. I feel most sadness for the many young men and women who feel as if they have no identity worth anything unless they can look or dress like a celebrity. It seems such an awful rejection of ones own beauty of being.

But maybe we aren't good at valuing one another? and letting others know how beautiful they are? (in the deepest sense, I mean).

When you look at most celebrities in reality, they tend to be people whose lives are valued because of how they look or how they make their living and not much because they are good or honorable people. I guess it is the superficiality of it all that troubles me.

So, why do I think the ordinary is better? In large part it is because that is where most of us live most of the time and therefore, that is where we are going to find ourselves; our identity and the meaning of our lives. It is in fact, in my opinion, the most profound place that any of us can be if only we keep our eyes on what and who meet each day. That for me, is a real road to transformation. I'm working on it!

A question: do you ever think about what gives your life meaning?

The Journey and the ordinary

When I first entered the monastery we were given classes on many topics, most especially: theology, the history of monasticism, spirituality, and scripture. I hadn't thought much about what made this life 'work'. I knew it was what I wanted, I knew that for me prayer mattered and I believed I could grow and thrive in our communal search to serve God. 

One of the first things that was talked about was the very ordinariness of the life. It was described in terms of  the day-after-day sense and indeed reality, of apparent sameness. It was a highly structured life repeated day after day; very ordered and yet... I found I was never bored, the days were never long and empty. The day-long silence at first very difficult became healing.  I can only describe each day as an odd sort of adventure in which each of us was  seeking to serve our God in one particular way out of the  thousands of possibilities in our world.

One of the most important parts of this 'ordinary' routine life was, to my mind, the 24/7 daily living together with a group of women many of whom I might not have chosen to live with. I have never in my life experienced such a real and committed effort on the part of a group of people to live in loving care for one another. Because of the continual daily close proximity there was no escape from the normal (or otherwise) human differences and conflicts that happen to everyone: no TV to turn to, no pub to drown in, no shopping spree to distract with. So, however fraught some relationships might have been, however contrary the personalities, however different, even, the ideas each had of her faith and her vocation, each really tried to be-friend and love the other. When there was failure to do so, efforts were almost always made to find a way to reconciliation. It might take days, weeks to find a way through, it might take a third party to help but everyone tried. It seemed to me that no one just let another fall by the wayside.  To the best of my knowledge, there were no real enemies. You might not be best friends but you were sisters in a community seeking to be a tiny spark of loving light in an often dark world. This, it seemed to me, is what makes the ordinary everywhere, 'work': the daily lighting of a tiny spark of love in whatever it is we do.  More about this another day.