Not a choice but a blend

I loved the Merton piece I posted yesterday, but I did find myself wondering why it needed to appear at this particular time, in the middle of a series that was evolving around the premises in Alan Jones'  Soul Making.

Fortunately this morning I see a bit of a connection.  I am reading Jones' chapter on the importance of tears, and in the middle of it there's this curious paragraph that caught my eye:

"Christian believers have tended to be nervous about and suspicious of the waking-up process because it is thought that Christianity has nothing to do with enlightenment, but only with salvation.  The distinction is an unfortunate one.  Enlightenment, without some truly saving aspect to it, is little more than an intellectual exercise.  Salvation without the inner transforming power of self-knowledge is little short of magic."

Ah.  So war IS germane to the subject at hand; in this case, the war between Eastern and Western religions -- or, to bring it home to a more personal level, the war within me between Episcopalian and Buddhist. If I understand the tension there to be a misunderstanding, a sense that there must be either enlightenment or salvation, then how reassuring it becomes to understand that, just as I have sensed, we need both.

I've been cycling between the two for years -- going deep into Christianity only to be repelled by the lack of intellectual understanding, then drifting into Buddhism only to find myself longing for the salvation of a more personal God.  Perhaps I'm not alone in this -- certainly I have a number of friends who are involved in the same sort of whirlpool -- but isn't it possible that the massive exodus of young people from the church (and here I find myself thinking of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, and Holden Caulfield's distaste for "phonies") is related to the same sort of either/or stance the church tends to take?  Who wouldn't be appalled by an organization which insists on making all sorts of rules for others while never taking the time to explore, admit to and reform to its own flawed being?  Isn't that at least a factor in our corporate distaste for the mess at Penn State?

To be relevant to today's much wiser generations (they have learned SOMEthing from their parents, after all), it seems to me that Christianity might want to spend more time on the waking-up process, on the kingdom of God that is right here and right now.  Jesus, after all, was clearly a supremely enlightened being.  Perhaps if we spent more time exploring what he was trying to teach us about that and less time worrying about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or who's allowed to step up to the altar or put on a collar, our young people -- who are searching for the same things we longed for in a significantly more confusing world than the one we grew up in -- might find the church more a place of hope and connection and less a place of rules and exclusion.

You can lead a horse to water, as the saying goes -- and many of us parents have done just that with our children -- but no matter how thirsty the horse is, it's only likely to drink if the water is truly fresh.

Thomas Merton on War

"Violence rests on the assumption that the enemy and I are entirely different: the enemy is evil and I am good. The enemy must be destroyed but I must be saved.

But love sees things differently. It sees that even the enemy suffers from the same sorrows and limitations that I do. That we both have the same hopes, the same needs, the same aspiration for peaceful and harmonious human life. And that death is the same for both of us. 

Then love may perhaps show me that my brother is not really my enemy and that war is both his enemy and mine. War is our enemy. Then peace becomes possible."

— Thomas Merton in No Man Is an Island quoted in Thomas Merton: Essential Writings selected by Christine M. Bochen (Courtesy of Spirituality and Practice)

So.  What battles are you fighting today?
Who is your enemy today?
Can you find it in your heart to love instead?

The joy of completion

Here, as promised, are the pictures of my goose project, which I finally completed yesterday. It's been quite an adventure creating this, with lots of changes and adaptations along the way; the final challenge was the discovery that, once mounted, the wings tended to flare downward (see the first image below). Fortunately a solution came to me in the shower, and yesterday afternoon found me out shopping for beads and buttons to complete the project.


I have to say I spent more time and energy on this goose than I have on almost any other invention I've undertaken, so it's nice, at the end, to be pleased with the finished project.  It seems clear its sale is unlikely to bring anything like what I put into it -- materials will probably be covered (if it sells) but the time... well, the reward for the time won't be in money, will it!  The reward for the time is the fun of imagining, creating, and the final fruition.

And there's a lesson in that, isn't there?  As I grow older, I realize -- if I look at my parents' passing -- there's not all that much time left to make whatever mark on life I need or want or am destined to make.  As Alan Jones says in Soul Making, death is becoming a companion, a friend. 

But "to live our life from the point of view of our death is not necessarily a capitulation to despair, to withdrawal, to passivity.  Rather, it can become the basis for our being and doing in the world... enabling us to live every single moment with new appreciation and delight.  When I say to myself, "This moment may be my last," I am able to see the world with new eyes."

... "If we sit still and really listen to it," he continues, speaking of what life in yesterday's cell has to teach us, "the fact of our own death will come to us with clarity and freshness.  Attention to the voice will force us to experience our fragility, futility, and creatureliness.  We will be confronted with the emptiness, terror, and formlessness that lies deep in the heart... [but] to the believer, this vast inner emptiness is nothing less than the dwelling place of God."

In my experience, that vast inner emptiness is exactly the place from which projects like this one, adventures which challenge the brain, busy the body, and fill the heart with pleasure, arise.  And for that, I have to say, I am and will always be eternally grateful.

Lessons in the Cell

Given the way things often come in threes, it makes perfect sense that today's reading in  Alan Jones' book, Soul Making, would tie together the previous two days' work.  He's quoting that really famous saying from the Desert Fathers: "Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything."

So this, I take to mean, is the cell: that unique set of hereditary and family-of-origin challenges I described as a cage two days ago; the difficulties with which each of us struggles; all the behaviors and patterns that appear to keep us from realizing the goals we set for ourselves, from seeing our own worth, from understanding ourselves, and from grasping our life's calling.

And yet everything we need to learn and know can be learned from sitting in silence within that cell; from watching the moods and thoughts flow through like clouds and storms upon a clear blue sky; from listening to the hopes and fears, the whining and the negativity, the bitterness and the worry, the bursts of pure joy and the schadenfreude.  The cell becomes a sonnet, a structure within which everything is possible.

And yet -- if there's anything I've learned these last two weeks (aside from what Alan Jones is teaching me) it is that (as he is quick to point out) we also need our time outside the cell, our interactions with the world beyond our own private rooms, to stir up the thinking, to expose the patterns, and to trigger the responses that have so much to teach us. 

For Jones that means balancing alone time with church, for all that liturgy and community have to offer in the way of education.  For those of us who find it hard to sit in church, readings and social interactions must suffice to fill that function.  And I have to say, that does work pretty well.

But I do find I miss communion.  I understand that for many it's just a ritual.  But for me it's an important one, a very physical reminder that we are loved, connected, and forgiven for all the ways we fail to measure up to the standards we set for ourselves. 

Hmm.  I have to say: I hadn't realized that's where this post would take me.  But maybe that's the significance of the juice box in the corner of the window in this image.  The image is part of a series I did several years ago, entitled Containment.  Perhaps it's time to examine those images again, to see what else they have to teach me...

A sonnet, not a cage

For several weeks now I've been working on a project for an upcoming show at the Bainbridge Arts and Crafts Gallery.  Well, two projects, actually, but today I want to talk specifically about one of them.

As I've mentioned here before, we adopted a gosling when we were living on Shaw Island, named him Kiwi, and raised him to adulthood.  It was a seminal experience for all of us, and I've thought for years of turning the story into a book.

I'm still thinking about that, but in the meantime I'm turning it into an art project, creating and painting a wooden goose and creating wings which tell the story.  (Yes, it's complicated, but I promise I'll post a picture here when it's done).

So the story is very much on my mind -- which gave a little extra impact to the piece I read this morning in Alan Jones' book, Soul Making:

"Konrad Lorenz pointed out that if you walk in front of a little chick at a certain time in the chick's life, it will follow you.  There is a particular time when it gets "set."  Psychoanalysts claim that we too get "set" at a certain time in our lives...roughly three and a half to six years...and it is the most formative, significant, molding experience of human life, and is the source of all subsequent adult behaviors."

That "set" phenomenon is called imprinting, and I know firsthand the power of it because Kiwi imprinted on me: he had a special cry just for me, and if I was out of sight and he happened to be hungry or just lonely, he would cry that special cry until I came and picked him up.  He followed me everywhere, went with us on walks with our dog to the beach, and rides in boats and in cars (what a mess THAT made!) and when we left him with friends and went on vacation he greeted me upon my return with a peck on the lips and a snuggle (by then he was quite full grown; I can still remember the feel of warm goose in my arms).

But then Jones goes on to say, "the consensus is that at some point the pattern of our behavior is set.  Is there any good news in this?  Believers bet their lives that there is.  It means that we are not in control.  We are not master in our own house... I have no real freedom.  I cannot change my fate... But suffice it to say here that while we may well be "fixed" into certain patterns, within those patterns there is an almost infinite variety of possibility.  The structure of a sonnet is fixed.  Its form is inflexible, but within its tight boundaries unimaginable variety is possible."  And this, he describes, is the miracle of grace.

Having wrestled yesterday with my apparently fixed/predetermined tendency to perfectionism, and knowing I can trace the power behind that desperate need to please back to specific incidents in that exact period of my childhood, I find it reassuring to think of that patterning as a sonnet, a musical structure within which I have unimaginable freedom, rather than as the cage I was seeing yesterday.  And as I look at this sweet photo of my husband tenderly cradling Kiwi in his arms, I can think of those boundaries against which I struggle as loving arms rather than a cage; as a way God cares for us, keeping us (to paraphrase the compassionate words from yesterday's post) "safe from inner and outer dangers, well in body and mind, at ease and happy."

Meditating on this this morning, my mind kept straying to the ways my own children were imprinted during that time period, some really heinous experiences at a school they were attending at the time which I (struggling with my own authority issues) felt powerless -- or was too terrified -- to address.  But I have to trust that there is grace in that as well; that for them, as for me, these experiences can provide a structure within which infinite possibilities for learning and grace may be found.

Which gives me hope.

PS: Just received a blog post from my vicar, who is spending his summer on the road.  He addresses the same issue from another wonderful perspective; you can find his thoughts here.

Life in the cage

Reading Soul Making this morning, I was delighted to find Alan Jones quoting one of my favorite passages from one of my alltime favorite books, JD Salinger's Franny and Zooey:  First Zooey speaks:

"I was furious.  The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them... But Seymour said to shine them for the Fat Lady.  I didn't know what the hell he was talking about... but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I went on the air again..."

 And then Franny recounts something Seymour said to her later:

"... and I'll tell you a terrible secret -- Are you listening to me?  There isn't anyone out there who isn't ...the Fat Lady... Don't you know that goddam secret yet?  And don't you know -- listen to me now -- don't you know who the Fat Lady really is? ... Ah, buddy.  Ah, buddy.  It's Christ Himself.  Christ Himself, buddy."

So: a little background here.  As I mentioned earlier, I submitted a play to a contest, thought it was superior, and then, reading one of the winners, I could see my play was lacking a critical dimension.  I think of myself as an excellent writer, and yet, these last few days, I've been reading Ivan Doig's Ride with me, Mariah Montana, and I'm realizing my writing is downright pedestrian next to his -- again, lacking a critical dimension.

As I sat in meditation this morning after reading the Franny and Zooey passage, I found myself looking back over the last few days, and I began to see a pattern of inner behavior.   I'd participated in several play readings, and I kept noticing my mind reacting critically to others' performances (as well as my own). Some inner voice was saying, don't they realize ... (fill in the blank with whatever imperfect behavior is being observed) is unacceptable?  It echoed something I'd noticed earlier; that a lot of what was springing to mind was negative.

And yet some other part of me was delighted to discover that in fact each actor had some terrifically original interpretations to bring to their roles ... in short, you can do things wrong and still get it right in some very important ways.

The child in me, desperate to please a critical parent, is always dividing the world into this is okay, that is not; he is okay, she is not; she is someone to seek out, he is someone to avoid; ignore that one, impress this one... etc, etc, etc.  It's all about some relentless inner drive to perfection, to keep getting closer to perfect; the frantic need to be right, and to get it right or risk parental displeasure and punishment.

I get that this is not just hammered into me but hereditary -- I know exactly where it comes from.  But by constantly busying my mind with evaluations -- this is good, this is bad, this is black, that is white -- I create a sort of cage for myself.  I only see these black and white bars, and miss the glorious, connected flow of creation and creativity that lies beyond the bars.

Anne Lamott describes the problem beautifully in her book, Bird by Bird:

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.  It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life...  I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die.  The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.  Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force."

Which brings me to my final thought.  What I concluded in the course of my meditation is that the alternative to perfectionism might be compassion.  The alternative to this constant dividing of the world into black and white, okay and not okay; the alternative to living behind the dividing bars that separate us from full participation in creation -- is compassion, is doing it for the Fat Lady, is seeing past the bars to that which is loved by God; is seeing that all creation is love-worthy.

As Jack Kornfield suggests in the concluding chapter of The Wise Heart, I need to learn to see the arising and passing of all things with equanimity and balance, to be open and balanced and peaceful -- and I need, whenever those judging thoughts arise, to notice them -- they are, in their own way, a gift -- but also to allow them to float away; to look instead upon the people I'm inclined to judge (including myself) and imagine calling forth the blessings they deserve and represent; to project, not, "you are good (or bad)", but

"May you be filled with loving-kindness.
May you be safe from inner and outer dangers.
May you be well in body and mind.
May you be at ease and happy."

Perhaps if I understand that this is not only the right thing to do given my belief system but also what could free my incipient creativity from its cage it might give me the motivation I need to view myself and the world with more compassion...

Yup.  That's right.  The Fat Lady is me.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

It was lovely to spend some time last week back on Orcas Island.  Unlike many places where I used to live, the island changes little.  Yes, the stores change hands -- the old ones fail, and new optimists come in with all their merchandise, and hopes, and dreams.  But for the most part the scenery remains unchanged -- and ever beautiful.

The faces haven't changed that much either, over the years -- not even my own, though surely there are signs of wear and tear.  But a new haircut is far more startling than a little gray, or a wrinkle or two, or the slow sag of flesh with time.

I was thinking of this yesterday because I happened to be in the room when my husband turned the TV to NCIS, a show I never watch, and there stood an actor who'd been an idealized dreamboat in my youth: David McCallum, who'd played Illya Kuryakin, the handsome blonde secret agent in Mission Impossible.  I could see him as an older man, of course, but I could also see the handsome youth who stole my heart all those years ago; that sharp jawline still shines clear despite the aging jowls.  (Those of us who have weak jaws and chins SO admire the jawlines with which our heroes have been blessed!)

And then I look in the mirror and am shocked by the new shortness of my hair -- and how it exposes that same weak jaw and chin I so deplore.  I reassure myself, of course, because I know it will all grow out; it's an easy adjustment that also fades with time.

But as I watch, in my own neighborhood, the little cabins disappearing, each to be replaced by mega-mansions, whose inhabitants will rarely be in residence...those changes, unlike my hair, are irrevocable: our little neighborhood will never be the same.

Little wonder, then, that I draw so much pleasure from the unchanged rural vistas of Orcas Island -- and yet, as I wander the backroads, I can feel a sense that this is no longer home.  There's a sadness in my heart as it seeks that sense of connection and finds the threads that wove me into this community are slowly unraveling.  Each time I visit I feel a little more like a tourist, a little less like a child returning home...