ROSETTA

We have just watched history in the making. The Rosetta spacecraft  has just successfully landed a robot (Philae) on a comet 3.1 billion miles from my house. This spacecraft, launched by the European Space Agency 10 years ago, has travelled at 23,000 miles per hour and the landing is the first human object to be landed on a comet. The comet (P67) is 2.5 miles wide.

As we watched the control center for the ESA stare at their computers, waiting for news of the landing, we too were transfixed. It is incredible that humans have landed a robot on a small piece of rock some 3 billion miles away.

But, I am also fascinated at the vision, the tenacity, the cooperation and the patience this project has taken. The project was started 25 years ago. The spaceship was launched 10 years ago. During the10 year journey, the ship was put to sleep for 2.5 years to save it’s energy, only to be reawakened in January to continue it’s communication with the earth. During it’s absence from radio contact with the earth, it travelled some 2.5 billion miles.

And the project was accomplished by the cooperation of 20 different countries in Europe and support from the US, Canadian and Australian Space Agencies.

I was delighted to watch some good news. So much of what we see makes us worry about human nature. But this experience lifted my hopeful spirit. When humans care, when humans cooperate, when humans see possibilities and thousands of people cooperate to make something good happen, it is amazing what we can do. 

I know that it is naive to assume that such cooperation will happen in all areas of human concern, but this is a testimony to what humans can do if we put our minds to it.

JUDGING

One of my jobs these days is “Transitional Coaching”. Life “in-between” endings and beginnings can be filled with confusion, chaos, fear and self-doubt. I accompany people in these spaces.

After a recent coaching session via Skype with a person in another state, I took a hike. As I walked, I thought about our conversation. But, what kept coming to me was not the words but the visual. I could only see his face and shirt collar. The back ground was blinds and a blank wall. 

I realized how much is lost in just seeing his face. There is no visual context to place the person in. I could not read body language. I realized that the limits of the visual represents the limits of my awareness of the person’s life. Through the stories he tells me I get glimpses, but only glimpses. There is so much of his life and history that are informing what he is saying to me that I will never know.

This is why I think Jesus advised his disciples to “Judge not that you be not judged.” When we make judgments about others, we often do so without very much information about how they got to where they are.  Even if we get some information, there is much that we cannot see in the screen we are using to see them.

And this is not simply a problem for our relationship with others. It is also true for ourselves. We sometimes judge ourselves with only a glimpse into what is really shaping our actions. What we do is shaped by a life-time of experience, much of it not conscious to us at the time we act. So, being critical of ourselves may not be either helpful or fair.

So, I have found that being quick to judge might take a back seat to asking questions so that we or the other person might access more of their life that it might inform their decision. When that happens, they make their own judgments and maybe make better decisions.

OLD BOOKS

I have spent several years giving away books. When I retired as a professor, I had so little room for books at home I gave away 75% of my books. As I have lived in the smaller space of my home office, I have, on several occasions given away more books. This has not been easy.

It is painful because books are more than paper and print. Words are like friends who impact and sometimes change our lives. They are the ideas of people who have taken hours and days, months and years organizing thought about life and death. They are stories of the heart and insights of the soul. They are filled with words that, woven like threads of grace, become woven into the story and soul of the reader.

So, when I give away books, I give away my visible connection with the souls who have poured themselves out self-giving sacrifice for me. They gave the time and the spirit that life had given them and used their life to inform, entertain, inspire and enrich my life. Having them on shelves around my office reminds me of the gifts that others give freely to each other.

And, being wrapped in the wall paper of books also reminds me that I am not alone in my struggle to live well. To be human is to live life. To live life is to try to make sense of what happens in life. To be religious humans is to be interested in what life means. My books were attempts to comprehend the incomprehensible, to name the mystery, to appreciate the complexity, to clarify the confusing. 

So, I am reducing number of books around me. And as I do, I sit in awe of the incredible human capacity to live, to seek, to share and to joy in the love of that life.

SHADOWS

Shadows lengthen. Night comes earlier and morning later. We sat in the sun this afternoon, soaking up the last of the warmth. Temperatures begin to drop tonight and stay south of 50 for at least the next 10 days.

We rolled up the garden hoses, de-leaved the gutters, emptied the potted plants on the deck. The winter hiking clothes are neatly stashed in the trunk of my car so, come what may, I will be out in the healing creation.

Outside is getting tucked in as we prepare for the darker, colder season of the year. The question is now before us, “How do we prepare our insides for this time?”

Along with wood brought from the woodpile to the staging area closer to the door, it is time to start making plans for warming our home with healing connections. It is time to make plans for friends to come and eat and drink with us. It is time to plan a couple of parties for family land friends. It is time to clean out the closet again and give more unworn clothes for those who have no warm clothes and too many of them who have no warm shelter.

And it is time to slow and settle into the darker days and let them speak to us. New seeds can germinate in space where there isn’t too much light. Hints of hope can sprout in the mystery of broken suffering. Insights can flicker into candle light, maybe even brighter light to clarify future’s path.

Winter is waiting. May it be a blessing.

HIJACKED

I hate it when something I love gets hijacked and taken hostage for political reasons.

I love language and in this (and every) political season, it seems language loses it’s complex and interesting meaning and gets simplified for political gain. I want to rescue a phrase that I think has been hijacked. The phrase is “traditional family values.”

Now I come from a family that might be categorized as traditional (although I always thought everyone else’s families were more normal).  Mother, father and five children. We lived in a small town and played little league and the piano. We went to church, sometimes 2 or 3 times on Sunday and again on Wednesday.

And these are the traditional family values I learned: kindness; love; sharing; generosity; forgiveness; welcoming strangers; keeping promises; conserving resources; recycling clothes, paper and anything else that could be used till it unraveled; telling the truth; doing justice; showing mercy; being humble; making commitments; loving in sickness and health; caring for orphans and widows; equal opportunity; open mindedness.

And I know people who are in families that some in the political world would not call traditional (although statistics show that there are more of these kinds of families now than the kind I grew up in). These are families with a single parent; with two fathers; with two mothers; no parents; children raised in extended families with aunts and uncles; grandparents raising grandchildren; one biological parent and one step-parent; adopted parents and children, etc. And the values I learned are being taught in these families. These social groupings are the laboratories where we learn how to live with others and how to create complex and caring societies.

So, I want the phrase back. In my family, the values I learned create a compassionate and merciful society for all. They help form a generous place of grace and equality.  I want these values in the society for my children and grandchildren—and for your children and grandchildren (whoever you are and however you structure your family.)