SLOW DOWN

Sometimes it seems that with every change life gets faster and faster.  When something new comes along, we have to work to catch up with it.  I got a new journal and now there is more for me to read.  I heard of a new website from my grandson which opens up the whole world in new ways.  More to do.  To do it I have to do everything faster.

But, as the coming new year invites me to evaluate my life, I wonder if there might be more wisdom in slowing down than in speeding up.  Milan Kundera in his book Immorality writes about the difference between highways and roads. Highways are for getting from one point to another.  Roads are for walking and exploring what is along the way.  He says that our lives have become highways. When that happened "[t]ime became a mere obstacle to life, an obstacle that had to be overcome by ever greater speed."

As I begin this new year, I want to live time, not race through it.  I want to be where I am and not where I think I am going.  I think when I slow down and wander the back-roads of the soul, I will discover that life is what I experience now, not something that I am waiting to happen.

RESOLUTIONS

As we prepare for a new calendar year, many of us engage in an annual exercise of making resolutions. We resolve to do better as a parent, as an employer, as a person. We make lists of what we want to do to improve our self-image.

But, if you are like me, this often ends as an exercise in futility.  When I have made resolutions in the past, I usually am very good for a few days.  Then after a week, I begin modifying them because they do not seem achievable.  A couple of more weeks go by and I find that I am not even thinking about them.  Eventually they fade into the duties of daily existence.

I think one of the problems is that most of our resolutions to change fail to take into account what is being lost when we do a new thing.  If we resolve to spend more time helping others, it is important for us to also resolve to give up some of the things that keep us from doing that.  For example, if I resolve to give my time to feeding the homeless, I may have to give up some TV time (a Sunday afternoon NFL game?  Yikes!).  If I am not willing to lose something, odds are that I will not be able to fulfill my good intentions for the future.

To love a new life, one must lose some of the old life so that there is room for the new.  One must grieve the loss of that old life so it doesn't maintain control of our time in the future.  Resolutions function to help us know our desires as well as our addictions to certain present behavior.

As you make your resolutions for 2014, make a list of what you are going to give up in order to achieve them. Then grieve that loss and there will be room for the new.

CHAOS

What a mess!!  I sit here in the middle of chaos.  We are having new carpet installed in our house. Every room is filled with the stuff of our life--all in the wrong place.  Professional carpet layers are crawling around on the floor making sure that all is done right. An industrial sized radio is blaring country music.  What happened to my home?

So much of our feeling of well-being is related to the space we inhabit. Most of us work to create space where we feel safe and comfortable.  The stuff we have is there to help us be what we want to be or remind us of what we have been.  We arrange it and organize it so we can move with some comfort and ease. We organize our stuff in our house so it feels like home.

When that gets disrupted, we become anxious and sometimes hard to get along with.  We don't like feeling so unsettled. It is hard not knowing where our coffee pot is.

Fortunately, this will end.  The workers will leave this afternoon and we will begin to put our life back together. Some of the stuff will go back where it was.  Other stuff will find a new home. Some will leave via the church thrift shop.  In a few days, we will be back to some semblance of order.

Other disruptions and the ensuing chaos doesn't end as quickly.  When we lose people who help our life feel ordered and safe, we get angry and feel scared.  We are not just uncomfortable for a few days, but we may be disoriented for months or even years.  The empty chair at the holiday table is not just painful, but it is frightening.  We project that empty space into all the holidays in the future. It just doesn't feel good anymore.

Patience is an easy word to say and a terribly hard word to live. Yet, it takes a lot of it to endure the pain of the emptiness and find the energy to discover a new order in chaos we feel in the upheaval. It helps to find someone to share the space and the disorder with. Find someone to sit with and cry.  Find someone to listen to you as you talk your way forward. Speaking about your pain and fear helps you order your emotions so that you can imagine a new order in your life.

DISAPPOINTMENT

I read this quote recently on Facebook: "What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it is supposed to be."  I agree.  One way not to be disappointed is to not have any image of the way things are supposed to be.

But, I wonder how much we miss if we give up our imagination about what we would like life to be. Desire is vital to life. It is what makes the difference between existing and living. Desire is the driving force for activity.  The desire for the well-being of our family drives us to get to work and earn money. The desire for a better world drives us to work for laws that make a more just world.  The desire to live well in our family motivates us to be graceful and forgiving.  Desire is what gives shape and form to our daily decisions.

So, if we are to be alive, and if we are to desire life to be a certain way, what do we do when it doesn't turn out the way it's "supposed to be"?  How do we live with being disappointed when people don't do what we think they should do?  

One way to look at disappointment is as a loss.  When things don't work out as we want, we lose something. We lose confidence in our ability to make things happen the way we want.  (Maybe that is something like the loss of the illusion that we are God.) We may lose our belief that everyone else sees the world the way we do. We lose the illusion that others desire life just as we do.

And with any loss, we have to grieve it.  Grieving loss is at it's core an act of forgiveness.  One person has said that forgiving is forgrieving.  Our inability to forgive the world for disappointing us will destine us to live in the prison of past pain.  Forgiving others for disappointing us frees us to live a new way, maybe with the grace to accept that which we can't change.  It makes it possible to move forward in a world that isn't the way we think the "world is supposed to be."

What do you have to grieve during this holiday season?  Will you forgive those who disappoint you and open to the surprises of a world that is new and filled with different possibilities?

VITALITY

Holidays are times when vitality can be deeply experienced.  But for that to happen, we have to watch that frozen moments don't steal the energy.

Holidays are such opportunities because vitality is intensified when three ways of experiencing life merge.

Memory is central to living.  Memories are experiences we hang on to and use to make meaning in life.  What we remember and how we weave together those remembrances help us know where we came from and who we are.  Memories are fluid and constantly flow along, collecting new experiences to reshape our self-understanding.  Holidays are filled with memories.

But, sometimes memories get frozen.  Sometimes we cling so desperately to the faded summer that memories can become a prison.  We get locked into the past that we created in our minds and can't be open to the present that is our life now.

Presence is also a powerful force in a vital life.  Holidays are filled with presence.  They are filled with food and music, with parties and people. Holiday experiences are focused occasions when we embrace the physical things around us,  We are sometimes overwhelmed.  All these come together to create experiences that help us know where we are and who we are.

But, sometimes we can be so immersed in the present that we lose track of yesterday's gifts.  We lose touch with the rich soil of the past that make the present possible.  Prayer is a pause that invites us to keep in touch with the long-view--to not be so absorbed by the moment that we lose its meaning for our lives. 

Vitality in life is also enhanced when anticipation is present.  Each moment leans forward.  The future and how we imagine it gives energy to our lives.  Holidays are times when we prepare and anticipate, dreaming of what is possible and working to make our dreams come true.

But, sometimes we are so driven by our need to fill that future with our vision that we miss the gifts that come as a surprise.  We don't see gifts of grace because we are frozen by our image of what grace ought to be.  We are so busy making the future look like what we think it should that we don't allow ourselves to experience the presence of love in the moment.  We are so consumed by activity to fill the future that the soil of our past can't hold us and give us a place of rest and peace.

Memory, presence and anticipation--all important parts of being alive.  Allow them to flow together during the holiday time.  Rest in good memories, embrace present moments, anticipate gifts of tomorrow.  Let them all flow together to enrich your holiday.