ANY TIME IS A GOOD TIME

A few days ago I took a couple of my grandsons hiking with me. We stared at the lake, kicked though the leaves, searched for Eagles, made walking sticks, watched the clouds play tag in the blue autumn sky, climbed through exposed tree roots. We talked, were silent for long periods, scrambled down dry creek beds and up steep hills. Time flew, time stood still.

As I shared this journey with the boys, I thought about the statistic that I recently heard—teenagers in America spend an average of 9 hours of screen time a day, excluding the time they spend on computers in school. Tweens (ages 8-12) spend 6 hours consuming media.

Now, I am not critical of screen time. I am in awe of the world that is revealed through our digital access.  But, when I am out hiking, I wonder what our children are missing by not being outside in the simi-wild nature of parks and woods. What happens when children and adults don’t expose themselves to the wind and rain, the sun and the stars? What are we missing when we lose touch with our senses and stare at the sterile world of the screens?

I am convinced that our souls are fed through our skin. After all, our skin is the largest organ of the body. It is that through which we feel the slick water, the wild wind, the hot sun and the tickling breeze. To wander in the woods, to smell the autumn leaves, to hear the rustle of the crisp branches in the wind, to sense the taste the wild blackberry, to see the seasonal shift in the changing colors is to know oneself alive and blessed with creation’s grace.

As I hiked with my grandsons, I wondered when this kind of soul work should begin. I hoped it would begin for them and all my grandchildren at a very early age. And then I remembered that I didn’t really get it till I was in my mid 40s. So, I realize that any time is a good time to begin nurturing our souls through the grace of our senses.

AN UNWRITTEN LIFE

They were con-artists. "The Brothers Bloom" started their lives as peripatetic foster children. At the ages of 13 and 10, Stephen and Bloom pulled their first con. The older (Stephen) of the two wrote a scenario and wrote roles for himself and his little brother. It was then that little brother Bloom started living a scripted life.

But, twenty-five years later, Bloom decided he wanted out of the con business. He wanted to live "an unwritten life"--not just the life his brother wrote for him. He wanted to live life as it comes, to respond to life as it happened, not plot out each episode according to some idea about what they could get out of it.

I think this is a perpetual conflict in life. What do I do that is fulfilling someone else's dreams? What do I do that satisfy my own desires? How much of who I am is what others have written and how much of my life do I write as I go?

This journey of discovery often begins around age two as children assert their "no" to a parental "yes". It is intensified in early adolescence as piercings and body art flaunt a "unique" self over against parental expectations.

This internal struggle between other's stories and our own story waxes and wanes through life as changes threaten our social identity or our soulful restlessness shakes our internal clarity of ourselves. The changes outside and inside call the self to this soul work of how much of my life is "I" and how much of my life is "we". The spiritual life is the sorting out who we are who we are in relationship to the values that shape our community.

We are all seeking balance between the pre-written lives of someone else's plot and living our own "unwritten life."

LIGHT INSIDE

He was afraid of the dark. He cried and so his parents put a night light in his room.  With the warm glow of a few watts, he was comforted and went to sleep. From early childhood, we believe that if there is light coming into us,we will be OK. We somehow think that our sense of well-being comes from outside ourselves.

But Barbara Brown Taylor, in a recent article in the Christian Century, tells of a man who helped her see a deeper truth. In his book, And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran, a blind French resistance fighter during WWII, wrote about going blind as a child. Only 10 days after he went blind, he made a discovery that influenced the rest of his life. "I had completely lost the sight of my eyes; I could not see the light of the world anymore. Yet the light was still there. . . . The source of light is not in the outer world. We believe that is is only because of a common delusion. The light dwells where life also dwells: within ourselves." (The Christian Century, April 2, 2014)

"The light dwells where life also dwells: within ourselves." I sometimes lament how much time I have spent in my life expecting light to come from the outside of myself. How much time I have wasted waiting for someone else to affirm my worth? How many insights I have missed because I looked for others to give me answers to  my life's issues? How much energy have I spent seeking clarity from the lights that flash unrelentingly from culture's values?

Light dwells where life exists. And life exists within each of us. Life, in its glory and pain, in its delight and hurt, in it tenderness and roughness, plays itself out within our hearts and souls. If we take time to pay attention to that life, to the heartbeat of our soul, the light that illumines us will not go out when it get's dark around us.