It's Not About Me?

In his excellent book, Everything Belongs, Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr, writes, “Your life is not really about you! Surprising, isn’t it?”

I’d say so. Then who/what is it about? What am I doing here, going about my small business of each day, my joys and my sorrows, believing that it all matters very much, when, according to Fr. Rohr, it doesn’t matter at all—at least not in the Big Picture. My separate self is only an illusion created by my mind.

We would prefer that were not so, would we not? Wouldn’t we rather feel a little bit special, separate, different, significant, endowed with individual qualities that characterize us as unique?

I have to wrestle my small mind out of the way to even come close to grasping what he is saying, but I think it is worth the effort because I know in my gut he is speaking truth: complicated and challenging truth, but truth nonetheless. Every now and then, by some grace, I catch a glimpse of what he is suggesting, but it is as fleeting as a star shooting through the dark summer sky.

Rohr argues: “I’m still carrying my grandfather’s genes and my mother’s unlived life and my grandmother’s sorrow and my grandfather’s pain. Their genes are in me. You see that,” he goes on, “in a little sparrow that knows how to build the exact kind of nest that mama sparrow built. If a sparrow carries that much,”—genetic material—“think how much more information we carry.” His point being that we are less in control than we imagine, that our lives are driven and shaped by genetic information.

We have become DNA conscious particularly as it relates to body structure and certain illnesses, but I wonder if we give credence to Rohr’s thought that we carry emotional and intellectual content from our endless progenitors as well. I am aware that I am somehow Quaker to the bone, as my grandmother and her family were. Something very deep in me resonates with Quaker beliefs and worship and, also, with the similar simplicity of Buddhism.

When at forty-five years old, I called my atheistic father to tell him I had enrolled in a theological seminary, there was a bit of silence on the phone and then he said with resignation, “Well, it’s in the genes.”  Certainly more than I was aware of when, to my surprise, in my class in American Theology, I discovered the writings of Solomon Stoddard and Jonathan Edwards, both ancestors of mine. It appeared that my father was right: I was just popping up, surfacing, out of an already theological family stream.

How original, how separate are we? In the famous words of William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

 Rohr tells us our individual lives are “clearly illusions” largely created by our thinking. “My life not about me. I am about life!”  According to Rohr, we are part of a much larger mystery. “Don’t take this private thing so seriously,” he declares. He adds that Western emphasis on individualism and the separate self “makes community almost impossible. It makes compassion almost impossible. We have overdone the notion of the private self.”

It’s not about me? My concerns, aches and pains, triumphs and failures? My small, ego-self quakes at the thought.

Rohr insists that individualism, separation and self-absorption create isolation and that isolation feeds violence and hatred. Rage, anger and disappointment are spawned by the loneliness of secularism, exaggerated selfhood and disconnection from community.

As frequent witnesses to the violent acts of “loners,” it’s almost impossible for us to argue with his point. 

“We have overdone the notion of the private self.” We need to “recognize that we are in a river that is bigger than we are. The foundation and the flow of that river is love. Life is not about me; it is about God”-- the Life Force itself—“and God is about love.”

So, if you will, can you imagine the Life Force endlessly spewing out these gazillion tiny cell-bodies to which we are all genetically connected, splashing upwards to catch the light for a brief moment in time, to then simply disappear as millions more appear? We exist, oh, so temporarily, in a great rush of precious life.

By the way, this does not mean that we shouldn’t pay attention and remain as awake as we can, maximizing our positive genetic inheritance and allowing the negative content to wither and subside. All these tiny cell bodies? We are called to evolve, opening ourselves to the loving Life Force, enabling it to express itself through us for the brief time that we are here.

All The Light We Cannot See? It's Everywhere!

On Thursday last week I gave a report on a book to my once-a month-book group. The book was magnificent. I had already read it, knew I would need to read it again, forgot it was over 500 pages long and that during this second reading I would have to take careful notes throughout. A bit of a crush.

 Nonetheless, if you haven’t read the Pulitzer prize-winning novel, All The Light We cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, head for the beach this summer with that book in your bag. Give yourself a treat.

All The Light . . . takes place in Germany and occupied France during WW 2.The heroine is a young French girl who is blind. Doerr takes us into her blindness like no author I have ever read. There are many wonderfully drawn, complex characters in this book, top among them a brilliant, orphaned, German boy who can build radios.

After my talk, a woman came up to me and asked what I thought about the title: “All the Light We Cannot See?” She queried. “That’s not just about being blind, is it?”

“I think not,” was my response, but then someone else joined us and the conversation immediately shifted.

I’ve been thinking about her question ever since. Asking myself, for example, what is the light that I cannot, that I fail to see? I know the world is filled with light; it comes shining, vibrating, off all living things. You’ve seen photographs of the auric energy fields of trees and flowers and snails, etc., I’m sure. And if you haven’t, I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it—or not—but the light is there. We emanate light, sometimes more than others. I’ll wager that intuitively you know when you are emanating more or less light than usual. Dark moods are not called “dark” for a reason.

Think of the times when we just cannot solve a problem. We wrestle with it in our minds, twisting it back and forth, tearing our hair, and then, suddenly, usually when we are doing something else, flash! We are switched on. At once we know what to do. It just happens. A revelation, an insight. We don’t see it coming but we know it as light, a light that we cannot see, but a light that brings absolute clarity to our problem. 

We often miss the light coming from other people. Caught up in our own dramas, our own stories, we can fail to perceive the loving light of others. Or we take it for granted and don’t slow down long enough to actually feel that light coming from another person toward us. We lose the opportunity to allow that light to nurture us.

I have to have a couple of medical tests. Nothing serious: just bloody annoying. It makes me rocky as all get out when I feel like I can’t take care of myself. Left to my own devices, I obsess about such matters. It’s a habit I’d like to break, but so far, not much luck.

Anyway, the day that my spiritual study group was meeting, my light was pretty dim. I told them about the tests pending-- the first is something I can certainly drive myself to—when one of our group looked straight at me and said, flat out, “I will go with you.”

 Whammo! The beam of her light flooded my solar plexus and my voice in response sounded about six years old. “You will?”

She didn’t ask me. “Would you like me to go with you?” to which I probably would have responded, “Oh, thanks, but that’s not necessary. I can do it.” So accustomed am I . . .

She didn’t ask me; she told me. Weak-kneed with the loving power,  the sheer generosity of that offer—I know she’s a busy woman— I was overwhelmed. Still, I did manage to say, “Thank you! I would love that!”

All the light we cannot see: all the amazing light that is in the Universe in so many ways that we do not fashion. The more we open ourselves to it the more we will receive and, conversely, the more light we can generate. This is awesome. To Christians, it’s the Christ light within us, emanations of the Holy Spirit. Whatever we call it, however we experience it, it is there. That is the light that calls us to consciousness and the same light that we manifest when we become conscious. We may never actually see it.

***

 Meanwhile there is much darkness in Charleston, North Carolina this week: a great darkness in our entire country surrounding racial issues, gun control, and mental health.

Please, God, shine your light upon us. Light our way to understanding how to shine your loving light on ALL people. 
We stand as witnesses to those who, having lost loved ones in the dreadful shooting, have chosen to send the light of forgiveness to the shooter, Dylan Roof. God bless them all.

A " Companion Pony?"

Let me just say up front that I know little about horses and even less about horse racing. Nonetheless I was near tears at the sight of American Pharoah stretching out his long legs in the final yards of the Belmont Stakes last Saturday. I have heard that great racehorses have “heart” and that’s what I felt I was looking at: a horse with heart. Huge heart. The kind of heart that sends you bulleting forward with everything you’ve got in order to fulfill what you were birthed and trained to do . . . and, then, possibly, even a little bit more.

American Pharoah wins the Belmont Stakes and captures the Triple Crown, the twelfth horse ever to do so in racing history. His jockey, Victor Espinoza, is grinning broadly and blowing kisses to the crowd. The spectators in the stands are cheering and waving their arms madly and the bands are playing. Hall of Fame trainer, Bob Baffert, and his family are hugging each other and wiping tears from their cheeks.

The camera cuts to American Pharoah with Espinoza still aboard, and who is that horse cozying up next to Pharoah? It’s not Smokey, Pharoah’s usual “companion pony.” It’s Pharoah’s “lead horse,” the one who led him to the gate and the one who is trained to lead Pharoah off the practice track if something goes amiss during training.

“Horses are not loners by nature, so it is common practice for thoroughbreds to keep a horse known as a ‘companion pony’ for friendship and support,” writes Jill Pellettieri for The Explainer. “Many companion ponies also double as lead ponies who also serve as a safety net—if something happens to the race horse on the track during practice, the pony, which the thoroughbred respects and trusts, can inch in close, offering reassurance while the racehorse is in a vulnerable state.”

Apparently Pharoah’s “lead horse” and “companion horse” are two different horses. He has a support team.

The race over, Pharoah’s head is turned into the neck of his “lead horse.” He appears to be sort of snuggling, but the truth is that a strap is connecting the two horses, and when pulled, it turns Pharoah’s head slightly into the neck of the other horse. Pharoah looks totally comfortable as he steadies down, pressed into the neck of his “lead horse.”

Still, I am disappointed that it isn’t Pharoah’s barn and training horse friend, Smokey--officially known as This Whiz Shines--- out there with Pharoah. They are essentially inseparable. Smokey is Pharoah’s “companion pony.”

When Pharaoh is taken to the racetrack for a workout Smokey, purchased by Baffert for his quiet and gentle nature, is alongside. When Pharoah travels in a van or on the Boeing 727, named Air Horse One, Smokey travels with him. As I read it, Smokey is Pharoah’s mainstay.

 I would have liked it if, at the end of the Belmont Stakes race, Smokey--the "companion pony"-- had been beside Pharoah immediately to settle him down. But he wasn’t. I don’t know if Donna Barton-Brothers of NBC was riding Smokey for the quick victory interview with Espinoza as she did after the Derby and the Preakness. I didn’t see her.

No matter. Smokey will be there at the racing barn when a sweaty, exhausted American Pharoah, draped in white flowers, comes off the track and heads for a bath.

Why am I going on about this?

 Because like American Pharoah, I think we all need a combination of “companion pony” and “lead horse” in our lives.

If we merge these two concepts in our minds, I think you 'll agree that after we’ve caught the bit in our teeth and extended our body/mind/ spirits to their absolute limit in some soul-driven endeavor, we, too, want someone-- non-competitive—upon whom we can rely to settle us down. Walk with us. Soothe us and bring us slowly and gently back into the day-to-day world. Someone who is willing to get into the fray and fetch us out if what we have set our hearts upon goes pear–shaped.

At the same time we need to be able to function as a “companion /lead pony” for others, or at least one other. We know what we need and want. Can we offer that relaxed comfort and assurance to another when he or she has, with heart pounding, risked digging out a new stream in his or her life’s river, thereby extending its usual boundaries?

Your “companion/lead pony” may be a spouse, or a best friend or you may, touched with a bit of yearning, simply hold such a person in your imagination. But I know that you know exactly what I mean.

Graduation: More Than Just The Students Saying Goodbye

 In spite of the bucketing rain outside, inside, the Unquowa School gym looked festive, all dressed up for the eighth grade graduation. Enormous containers of gorgeous flowers were featured on either side of the white- sheeted, make-do platform, a substitute for the real stage, which will be built this summer. Some parents were early, establishing good seats, and others were just milling and chatting. A joyful buzz filled the huge space.

Folding chairs of light wood formed neat rows on either side of a central aisle. On the backs of the chairs in two rows in the front were signs that read: Board Of Governors. That’s me, I thought, with a shudder of pleasure and awe, as I stood in the far back corner of the gym, just looking and watching.

The weather, being 57 degrees, I was not, after all, wearing the new flower-splashed cotton dress I wrote about in Buying The Dress. Instead I was clothed in a warmer dress and jacket, On my jacket lapel I had pinned my grandmother’s gold bar pin with the row of tiny seed pearls, which she had given me when I was fourteen. My grandmother was a founder of this school; I had worn it to honor her.

I stood there, remembering. My older sister and I and my brother all graduated from this school. It was just yesterday, wasn’t it? Gazing at the Unquowa School banners—green and white-- attached high along the walls of the gym, instinctively I reached for my cellphone. A picture of all of this, I thought, to send to my brother, whom I would call the minute I got home. I would share with him every detail of what happened here this afternoon. He would love it.

And suddenly tears flooded my eyes because my brother, that adorable eighth grader in the 1950 graduating class picture that hangs on an upstairs wall of this school, is dead. He has been dead since December 22. How could I, even for that one flashing moment have forgotten? And how could he not be alive for me to share this event with him? Shattered, I fumbled around in my pocketbook for a Kleenex and hoped no one would notice the new board member weeping-- even before the band played Pomp and Circumstance.

And that is what grief can do to you, isn’t it? So bloody weird! You think that the original tsunami of your grief has subsided, and maybe it really has. Mine seemed to me to have been reduced from an impenetrable, sodden, weighty, dark fog, to a lighter, rather filmy mist through which I could sometimes hear him laughing, or feel his presence beside me as I recognized the foolishness of life—his strong suit—or when I wrote a sentence I knew he would like. But this? To be so caught up by this moment, in this school, in childhood memory that I actually experienced that momentary forgetfulness of his death? What a shock!

I know this about grief. I’ve helped others through it but never have experienced personally the delusional assumption of a life continuing when it has ceased. Widows, I know, have caught themselves over and over again saying, “I must remember to tell . . .” and then, stunned, recalled that their husbands are no longer here to share anything with. That stabbing reality can catapult a grieving person into emptiness as vast as the Grand Canyon and it can take a while to climb out.

The graduation was wonderful: so much promising young life: girls in white dresses, wobbling on wedged high heels. Boys of basketball-player height standing with friends: other boys half their size. All of the eighth grade beaming with happiness: parents and grandparents applauding. Such exalted energy!

And I, in the front row, was lifted up by their freshness, their joy, the optimistic hope of their future, at the same time that my heart was weighted down by grief and sadness.

To my utter amazement, I was comfortable containing both.

Resilience: Do We Have It? How Do We Get It?

In the June 1, 2015 issue of Time Magazine, Mandy Oaklander has written an excellent article called Bounce Back: Scientists Now Know Why Some People Rebound So Well From Setbacks. They also have discovered ways in which the rest of us can become more resilient. I recommend the article because who among us has not had to pick herself up off life’s floor—probably more than once—and carry on? Probably we have noticed over time that some people do that with more apparent ease than we seem to and we have wondered, how does she do that?

Spiritual and metaphysical teachers might describe the Bounce Back ability as being willing to “die:” that is, to surrender to what is past and over. We are willing to be reborn into something new without trying to control what that something is. Instead, in faith, we allow it to evolve.

Or, as a friend of mine used to say, “when you find yourself hanging on to the edge of a cliff with your bare fingers, just let go.” Another way of looking at it might be: if you feel like you have been paddling upstream against the wind with half an oar, throw the oar overboard and allow the stream to take you wherever it will. Trusting. Trusting God, the Universe, the force of life itself.

Recently in a conversation with a friend, I was asked how I managed to leave Ohio in 1979, just leave everything—all my stuff, my house, twenty-three years of life there---and abandon it in order to stay in Bridgehampton, NY?  (For the story, please see blog: A Pivotal Person Can Change Your Life.) My response was, “I was dying in Ohio.”

Sometimes that happens. We “die” to a way of life, and miraculously—everything that happened to me after I left Ohio seemed miraculous---when we are willing to drop that oar, a powerful, benign force takes over. And then we can allow the stream of life itself to carry us into a new form of existence.

According to the studies cited in Time Magazine, we would then be considered resilient: someone who can bounce back. I have to say, I do not think of this re-creation process as “bouncing” exactly. That is not the word I would use. If you have fallen flat on your face or even to your knees, my experience and from what I have learned as a counselor, is that rebirth is not without its pangs: more like crawling back than bouncing.

Word choice notwithstanding, I hope you will check out this article; it is wise and informative. It is also worth noting that Oaklander  refers to scientific studies, which demonstrate that regular meditation practice increases resilience.

This is Time Magazine’s list of “Expert Tips for Resilience:”

1.   Develop a core set of beliefs that nothing can shake.

2.   Try to find meaning in whatever stressful or traumatic thing that happened. (Allow time for this!)

3.   Try to maintain a positive outlook.

4.   Take cues from someone who is especially resilient.

5.   Don’t run from things that scare you: face them.

6.   Be quick to reach out for support when things go haywire.

7.   Learn new things as often as you can.

8.   Find an exercise regimen that you will stick to.

9.   Don’t beat yourself up or dwell on the past.

10.Recognize what makes you uniquely strong—and own it.

The core belief “tip” stimulated some discussion in my meditation group. What are our “core beliefs,” we wondered? Some we are conscious of, but many of them that drive our choices and dominate our ideas about the world and ourselves, are unconscious. It might be a good idea, we thought, to make a list of our core beliefs, thus bringing them into the light.

If we want to learn more about our own capacity for resilience, making such a list would be a really good start.

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 Gotta do this: Anyone interested in some sports talk and playful banter between three brothers ( my grandsons) checkout a once a week podcast: www.intheloopica.com or tune into @intheloopica on Twitter.
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Welcome to Life Opening Up: Kazakhstan, Austria and Greece. Those readers from Ukraine: So glad to see so many of you back on board. I am praying that that means something is settling down in your country. I wish you could comment!