SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE: LEAVING HOME

I put the trash out last night. Rather a ritual each Sunday evening. It seems like I just did it yesterday, but somewhere while I wasn't looking, the week passed by. There are moments like this when it dawns on me that life has been lived and I didn't even notice it. We journey through each day, each week, each month, living life as normal as we can make it.

But, sometimes something happens to cause us to wake up and notice our journey. It is often when we lose something or when we feel what is normal for us is threatened. Our senses stand on tip-toe and we are alert to the healing gifts of grace or the painful gifts of fear. We notice each moment. It becomes a vivid tattoo on our memories. This is when we know our daily journey has turned into a spiritual pilgrimages. 

Pilgrimages begin when our longings are intensified. We long for something that we don't have. We long for something more. And that longing gets formed into a decision.  We decide that we are going to act, to do something that leads to exploring our longing. Pilgrimages then become a reality when we leave home (or when home leaves us). Home is where the time slides by on the familiar patterns of familiarity. When we leave home, we are uncertain what is around the next corner, so our senses are heightened.  We notice. We pay attention to our life.

Some pilgrimages are chosen. They begin when we decide to make a change. Some are foisted upon us by circumstances in our life that we can't control. They begin beside a fresh grave.  Either way, they are spans of time in our journey of life when our eyes are opened to reality, when our heart feels more deeply, our souls expand in songs of lament or ecstasy, and our bodies are alive to the touch of earth. Don't let these moments go by without discovering greater insights into  yourself and your relationship to the mystery of life itself. Soon enough the familiar will seduce you back into familiar days that seem to go by way too fast.

CONVERGENCE

Converging experiences provoke unsolicited thoughts. Deborah and I watched the space movie "Gravity" the other night.  In the midst of exploding space ships and storms of space garbage, Sandra Bullock traveled perilously through space trying to survive. The eerie silence of the sound track provoked thoughts of vast emptiness.

This past weeks scientists reported discoveries through telescopes at the South Pole that they now believe can prove what happened less than a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. They described the rapid inflation of the creation instantly after the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago.

Here I am reeling from the impossible task trying to comprehend this expansive space and the eternal sense of time and I went to a church this morning and sang hymns and heard a sermon about God. And I sat there aware of how incredibly inadequate the human mind is and even less competent is human language when it comes to speaking about the vast mystery of reality. I once read somewhere that words are terrible miners and even more terrible astronauts when it comes to trying to describe the unspeakable mystery of creation (and I would add, the creator).

And yet, we have  no choice. It is a part of the human character to be conscious of ourselves in relation to the fullness of creation. And it is our blessing and curse to need to understand in some small way our relationship to all that is around us. To be human is to be a meaning maker.  We have a compulsion to make sense of life. That is what drives science and religion. As inadequate as we are with words, we have to keep trying.

So, I sat in church today and gave thanks for those who have the courage to try to help us understand. I felt grateful for those who dared to guide us in getting just a glimpse of possible understanding. To form a word and cast it into the vast silence of time and space is such a foolish and courageous act that I was in appreciative awe. 

Funny how convergence of experience messes with the mind.

SOMETIME

I think we are “sometimes” people.  At least I am.  Sometimes I say the right thing, sometimes not. Sometimes I do the right thing, sometimes not.  Sometimes I am generous and kind and sometimes not. Sometimes I get the right answer and sometimes not.

This is why I believe that one of the primary resources for living well is grace.  Grace is the capacity to accept the sometime nature of human existence. It is the way I am able to live with myself when it turns out that I make mistakes. 

It is also the way others are able to live with me. Others who know me well know that I am a “sometime” person. Without grace, most of us would live alone.   We would not be able to overcome the disappointment we feel when we or others are sometimes not what we need them to be. Grace is the gift we offer to ourselves and to others to heal the fracture caused by our being “sometime” people.

So, if we are struggling with ourselves when we have violated our better selves, or if we are trying to figure out how to relate to others who have been sometimes wrong, let’s find a cup of mercy to share with the hope that we might survive our conflicted nature and build a more human and humane community.

FACE

Each time I leave the house, I put on my face. When I meet someone, I put on my meeting face. When I lead a workshop, I put on my "workshop leader" face. When I pick up my grandchild, I put on my grandparent face. When I meet a stranger, I put on my "do I want to get to know you?" face.  

Our face is what we want others to see in us. Integrity is having all our face reflect something of our essential character. When someone represents themselves one way in one setting and another way in another setting, they are called "two-faced". We get embarrassed when more of us is revealed than we want our face to reveal. When that happens, we become "red-faced".

Face is important. It has to do with our reputation or our dignity. That's why "loss of face" is a very significant loss. When we have known ourselves to be a certain kind of person and something happens to make others see us differently than we have been seen, we feel naked. We feel exposed. We lose standing among our peers. Loss of face can be one of the hardest losses we suffer.

Many conficts in our lives are the result of our fear of losing face. Many arguments are intensified when one or both parties are trying to save face. Some conflicts become heated and aggressive when we feel our reputation, our value, our worth is being threatened.

In the midst of such "face-losing" situations, it is important to help people save face. It is important to figure out how to build up the other. Our self-worth is central to our stability and sense of security. When that is threatened, we will be defensive. When we are more secure and our value is not undermined, we are able to engage issues with more reason and grace.

SMALL WORLD

I was reminded recently how small one's world can become.  She has been ill and in the hospital for weeks. The world has shrunk to being about her and her body. The attention is on the disease and the doctors and nurses focus on her and the bacteria that will not respond to the treatment.

When I have visited, I want to know all that is going on. (When we get anxious we seek more and more data,  hoping that if we can just understand what is happening we might be able to do something about it). I am tempted to keep the attention on her and her disease, her care, her pain, her energy, her prognosis.

But, then she asked me "How are YOU ALL doing."  The emphasis was on "YOU ALL".  And I was reminded of what I have always known: When we are sick our world can shrink and smother us. We need to know what else is going on.  There is so much of our time when the pain and fear of our own suffering can't be avoided that we long for something that takes us outside of ourselves.

So, when you are with people who are suffering disease or caught in the slog of sadness over loss, share with them their suffering. Be open to walking with them in their pain.  But, also bring your own life into them and give them a taste of the rest of the world.  Help open them up to the reality of life as they have known it so that they can feed off the hope for a life that is large enough that they don’t suffocate.