JOURNEY

Grieving significant loss can be a long and arduous journey. That is why many people try simply to "get over it." But, it is my belief that grieving loss is an opportunity for self-discovery that ought not be missed. When we lose someone who has been critical to our self-understanding and self-identity, our lives are broken open. It is like an earthquake has severed the ground and suddenly you can see the life that was lived centurys ago in the striations of the earth.  

And grieving is a journey in which we can explore dimensions of life that we may have simply ignored before. The journey of grieving, that is, the journey toward creative new life, is learning to live again in the absence of someone or something significant. Therefore, it does have pain and anger because our sense of self, our sense of what is right, may be threatened. By feeling our pain and anger, we see more clearly what we value. 

The journey is also filled with remembrances.  When we lose something that we value, we often spend time remembering it. Telling stories of the recently deceased is a way of re-membering that person within our heart.  They are no longer here the way they were, so we need to create an internal presence by conversation and story-telling. This includes rehearsing the loss, the pain and the anger, all part of the experience. By remembering well we see more clearly the gifts that life has given to us. 

Loss almost always sends us looking for someone or something to blame. Sometimes we blame ourselves for not doing enough, or sometimes we blame others for doing something to make it happen.  Guilt is related to our effort to make some sense out of life.  When we go on this journey of grieving, we try to reconstruct a meaningful world in which our life makes sense.

But, those who learn to live again in the absence of someone or something significant eventually learn to forgive the past for not being permanent. When life is good, we want it to keep going.  It is painful when it doesn't. That pain can lock us in the past. Forgiving is what frees us from the power of the pain of the past to control our future.  It is what opens us up to the energy to embrace what new life and gifts come to us.

In the moments when the forgiving spirit visits us, we discover that we are imagining and playing with new ways of living. We are exploring new practices that will help us figure out the future we will embrace.  We experiment and discover the adventure of new relationships and opportunities.

The journey of grief is painful and challenging. But, it can be an opportunity for self-growth and an opportunity for discovering new dimensions of the self.

TAKING FOR GRANTED

I got up and made the coffee, did my stretching exercises, mediated, and read the sports page and ate my cereal. My calendar had a  list of appointments. As I showered to get ready for the day, I began to feel sick.  I lost my breakfast. I was chilled. Nothing to do but call and cancel my appointments, put on my PJs and crawl into bed.  

It is amazing how we take things for granted. All day, every day, I take things for granted.  I assume that tomorrow I will be well like I am today.  I make my plans as if tomorrow will afford me the same gifts of health that I had today. I plan as if the ordinary pattern of life I am living will be the same one I will be living tomorrow.  This seems natural.

But, sometimes that "taking for granted" gets interrupted. Sometimes what we assume will be challenged. Sometimes we will glimpse a different life--and that life isn't always as we would like. 

When that happens to me, my "taking for granted" turns into gratitude. When I see the empty space where I used to see what I assumed to be real, I see gifts that I had ignored.  I see the energy and healthy spirit that I usually have.  I see appointments and people whom I appreciate.

Now, I know that it is very difficult to go around all the time not taking things for granted.  We would be on edge wondering what was going to happen next.  Taking things for granted makes it possible to think ahead and plan our lives. But, those times when my assumptions are challenged have been insights into the important gifts of my life.

I soon got better.  I had a virus--and it had to run its normal course. And I admit, when I was feeling crappy, I was not very appreciative of those gifts of dependable ordinariness.  But, when I came out from under the covers a few days later, I appreciated life and people around me much more. 

GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL

I recently felt overwhelmed.  There was just so much going on. Friends and family hurting, anxiety about the stock market, war and refugees filling the TV screen.  I just wanted to get away from it all.

And I am  not alone. Most people I know have those times when they just don’t want to deal with it all.  The world presses in and the soul can’t absorb it. Our daily skills of filtering the variety of experiences that come to us seem to have deserted us. 

But, one thing I have discovered about getting away from it all is that it isn’t as easy as just leaving home and taking a vacation.  I have discovered that “all” accompanies me. While I packed my suit case and intentionally left worry and stress in my sock drawer, they would not be denied. When I unpacked at the beach, there they were, waiting to re-enter my mind.

It was then that I realized that getting away from it all is getting out of my own mind and heart.  For you see, what I deal with is not all that stuff around me, but the “all” that presses in and threatens to suffocate my spirit is my response to all the stuff around me. And the reason I can't get away from it all is because of my love. It is my love for my family and friends that keeps me connected even when I am not there. It is my love for humanity that makes me wrestle with international issues of war and pain.

So, the issue is not my family and friends, the world and its suffering, the security and insecurity of money and life.  The issue is how I carry these in my heart. Do I cling to them and tangle with them in such a way that they posses me?  Or, is there a way to love and care for each other that allows us to hold each other lightly?

At times, I trust my ability to worry and fret and believe that the more I do that, the less problems there will be and the more likely peace will come.  But, that only exhausts me.  When I get overwhelmed, I have to trust in the power of some spirit outside myself to hold those I worry about. Some say that they have to turn it over to  God. I am not sure who holds my concern and worry, but I want to believe that it is a beneficent power who is stronger than I.

MISTAKES

I make mistakes.  I made one several years ago that I regret. I invested some money in a company. It was an upstart company with a really good idea.  I invested time trying to make the company work. I offered creative ideas for the product. I tried to network to help find potential partners.

But, the good idea died.  Not for lack of wisdom but for lack of execution. 

When I think about that experience, I know that I didn’t intend to make a mistake. I considered all the issues I could think of and decided that this was a good use of my resources of time and money. I wanted to make a good decision and I believed that I had.

The problem was, it didn’t turn out well. Factors beyond my control had more influence than I thought they would. The decision to publish a product just as the digital world was emerging to forever change the world of information sharing turned out to not be a good decision.

Most people I know don’t make mistakes intentionally.  Most people I know try to take into account the multiple factors that are at play in any situation and then decide to do what they think is best. Most of the time the decisions are not clear cut. Many times the choices aren’t between good and bad, but between better and worse or between good and good.

So, as I reflect on my mistake on my investment, I discover grace inside myself for myself. I would like to undo some things and re-do some things.  I cannot.  But, I know that I tried to not make the mistake that the decision turned out to be.

And if I can find grace for myself, maybe I can have grace for others who made mistakes. At least I can consider that they didn’t intentionally decide to do something that didn’t work out as well as they had hoped.

ONE SQUARE INCH

I was hiking down the road--naked winter trees on one side, green pine on the other. The wind whispered through the pine needles. It stopped blowing and silence descended. My mind began to wonder about book someone gave me several years ago. "One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World" is one man's journey to discover places in the United States where there is no sounds that are not made by nature. Gordon Hempton, a sound recording specialist who lives near Olympic National Park travels from Washington State to Washington DC measuring the amount of noise created by human machines.  He believed that if he could find just one square inch of silence, it could grow to permeate a larger area the way noise spreads to swallow silence.

Fascinated as I was by the book, today I was thinking about how to find a square inch of silence in my own mind. Sometimes the noise gets out of hand. The voices of friends and family, of culture and media, of magazines and blogs swirls around in my head, sometimes chasing each other in circles. I just want to slow it down, to notice something that might sedate the sometimes cacophonous noise.

Today I found a couple of places where I discovered the demands of the voices was lost in silent wonder. The first was sitting early in the morning doing centering prayer. During the past 20 years I have taken time each day to quiet the noise by placing a stillness  in the midst of my mind. It is a discipline because the wordy world has a way of turning up the volume. But, patiently I keep creating a "nothing" space and resting a moment at a time in the square inch of silence.  I do this with the hope that that inch will grow and come to visit me in the mind's noise throughout the day so that from time to time, it's quiet enough to hear my soul sing.

And the other place it happened was as I walked through the park, I kept coming upon clusters of deer. I would round a bend and there seven deer were grazing.  I stopped to stare, transfixed in awe as they stared back. Then I would start walking again, the noise in my mind beginning again and suddenly off in a clearing were four deer staring at me.  My mind quieted in the sheer delight of the surprising life around me.  I saw thirty deer on that hike.

Most of the time my mind chases ideas and thoughts.  But I continue to seek one square inch of silence hoping that it will help modulate the volume and I can also hear my quiet thoughts.