Helpless

Today, I read the prescribed reading for the second week of Advent. They are about making ready our hearts to receive the Spirit. “Prepare the way” is the message. A voice crying in the wilderness. It struck me that these lessons and readings are the same each year but I must approach them from a different place. I have to take the lesson in a different way every time. Start where ever I am now.

Today, I feel helpless. Last night something happened to show me just how helpless we all are. First, I saw a friend of mine with a very sick son. Despite all our medical efforts, he is just waiting. His parents are the most loving, his community supportive, generous, yet still; he is waiting for a heart.

Yesterday I sat in the room with a mother and father helping them grieve over their suddenly dead infant son; just  6 weeks old. I held my hand to her back as she beheld her child, lifeless. And they wailed for a long time.

Then last night a boy was brought to us by his father. He was in shock and had several serious chronic problems. As we began our resusitative efforts, the father chose not to have us prolong his life. Ethics were correct here. But I have seen worse cases of shock than this boy and we could have done so much to help him. Instead, I comforted the child and the father and watched as his condition worsened.

And writing of all this in my book of prayer, I look up to see the nativity scene we have on a shelf in our home. And I think of Advent and the Infant. So in preparation, let me admit how helpless I am.

I look deeply into my own helplessness, my un-wholeness, my un-healedness. Without Spirit, I am not an animated being, but an empty vessel. We are as helpless as the Divine was when the Spirit and the Word came in the form of a newborn infant. No where in the world was ready for that child.

I can feel many people around the globe feeling helpless. Against destruction, or prejudice or hatred, violence, pollution, or corruption. There is much we can do but only so much.

And to watch our world. I feel helpless in the face of the racial battles in the blood stream of our nation. Helpless when I see civil war, disease and greed like a catalyst for warfare. Helpless to watch the ice in our world melt, and to watch us change our planet and ransom our grandchildren for convenience and profit.

I feel helpless. Our work places us front and center to a certain amount of human suffering and pain. Sometimes, I can sooth or comfort. Sometimes I can empathize. Sometimes I can heal and remove the cause of suffering but much of the time, I can only bear witness and hold a place and a presence for the suffering to happen.

 

So that is my preparation. To hold and touch my own helplessness. And to cry from my wilderness for the Spirit to come and heal.

 

Stillness and Waiting

A few nights ago, the temperature was down in the single digits. This is Tennessee. And a Tennessee boy like myself might see a temperature that low in his backyard only a few times in life. The hour was late. I was very tired. I had finished a couple house chores. The last of which was to empty the compost bucket. I put my shoes and coat on and stepped onto the frozen grass at the edge of the patio. My backyard is nearly an acre; the compost pit is in the far back corner.

That kind of cold air is colder in the dark. And it is hard to move. It is hard to breathe. The coldness and stiffness of the air seems to slow every motion. It is a struggle with stillness.

I reached the back of the backyard. I upended the bucket of scraps and heard the slop fall in the frozen pit. Sounds like water splashed over stones. Really, it sound like vomit over cold pavement, but anyway. Walking back, I stopped to look at a large hut built in warmer days. I had put some tarps over the top to protect it from the winter weather. On the lower corner of one tarp, I could see in the dark where some water froze dripping. Not just icicles mind you but a strange organic shape of frozen spilling water. On touching the tarp, there were several areas of frozen water on the top. In this cold, there is no place that moisture has not become still. There is no flow, no movement but the dry sharp wind.

Inside the Hut

I have felt this dryness at many levels these passed weeks. A stillness. A lack of inertia.

There is a unmoving waiting stillness in the world. It is hard to name and identify these feelings. The media and politics are more locked into stillness than ever. Indeed, no movement comes from

out elected leaders. They seem mostly motivated to resist movement at all costs.

After the public, random tragedies of the past years, I feel the whole world is waiting to see what will happen next. Where will a new horrible act will be executed and who will it effect.The Superbowl? The Olympics? The grocery store near my home?

As the globe moves slowly closer to a tipping point, the Earth’s children wait on the edge unable to see the consequences. Old choices are converging in our time. The compounded interest of greed, industry and exploitation are meeting in the extremes of our planet. The result is unexpected, unplanned for and unfathomable. Diseases, cancers and illness born from pollution. Resources once thought inexhaustible are disappearing in a generation. From meddling with systems that we do not understand.

We are constantly given changing circumstances. Change is the nature of the living. We live in times now when once predictable models are off course. The weather is unpredictable and every new pattern signals endless paths of possible futures. People are completely unpredictable, capable of horrific acts of violence and incredible levels of compassion. Diseases are acting in ways that far outpace research and planning.

In the unprecedented nature of everyday, I ask constantly ….what does this mean, what could this mean? For the very foundations of possibility seem to shift until the improbable becomes the probable and the unlooked-for becomes reality.

So, we wait. I gazed upon the cold frozen water on my hut, meditating on stillness until the bite of the cold brought me out of it and I hustled back to my warm home. What will break loose once this time of stillness and waiting is over. When the rivers start moving swiftly again, what will be mixed in the run-off?

I remain optimistic but fearful of the thaw. Sometimes the truth is a warm comfortable refuge. And the truth of change is that it will happen and no one knows how or when. For these days, I will warm myself by my fireplace and keep the fire burning hot.

Thanks for reading.

In Service

I sat in the backyard on a sunny midday just before the weather turns cool, beginning a march toward winter. I think on my last statement of protests and contempt in the unfolding of events. Little events are what I am talking about. The goings on in my small personal universe. I was angry about one door closing but very grateful another opened. I was frustrated about a situation but the wheel comes around and a situation becomes something positive that I did not expect.

Then, while watching the songbirds begin to eat on the newly refilled bird feeder, I think on big events. The goings on of the world. Population explosion, melting ice caps, scarcity of food or water, world hunger, climate change, pollution of the Earth and of the Spirit. All the calamities that our people are living in these days. And I feel a bridge in understanding. A bridge of thought realizing that no one knows what is for the best.

As a parent, I often fall to comparison between of Maker and parents of a child. A child does not understand. A child cannot comprehend being denied one thing because something much better may be waiting. A child cannot understand suffering and destruction so that something else may grow and flourish. I can’t understand suffering and destruction either.

I can surrender my misunderstanding and allow truth to take its place. It is not my lot to understand or control. I feel directed to act according to my nature. And to make an  effort to express the parts of my nature that heal and serve and help. I am not to understand, though I may try. I am to express my medicine and leave the plan to the Planner.

Thanks for reading.

Petitions and Protests

a bluff in Tennessee

A priest spoke last week about what God does and doesn’t do. He told a story. A little girl had a doll with a broken leg. She prays over the doll. Prays intensely for God to fix her doll’s leg. Her older brother chides her saying that “God doesn’t do that”. But the girl insists, God will fix her doll.

Well, this week, we lost a car key. It was a big problem in our daily lives. We looked everywhere for the key. We looked a few places the key could never be. We retraced our steps. We tried the intuitive techniques. We prayed and prayed and looked and looked. We called to St Anthony. The parable from mass came to mind in a big way. God doesn’t find car keys.

Last week, I got news that I was passed over for a job that I very much wanted; a job I believe I am well suited for; a job my talents would serve very well. I worked on my interview skills and concentrated on my presentation and prayed for God and Spirit to walk with me through the difficult, stressful, scary process. And I did not succeed. Perhaps, God doesn’t do that either.

These minor frustrations seem major when I am face to face with them. I feel myself crying in the dark wondering: just what does God do?

This is contempt but this very line questioning serves to strengthen my faith.

Now, I know several answers to my own questions. As Job discovered, we cannot know the mind of God. It is not our human place to understand an answer to ‘why?’. The reasons the world works the way it does is not for us to know or understand. I cannot see all ends, nor fathom all possibilities. I know that.

I understand the elements of empowerment. To fully flesh out an empowered prayer involves sacrifice, need, commitment and envisioning, like the law of proportionality. I understand that these elements were more or less absent from such trivial prayers as for a lost car key of for a job promotion or a broken toy.   It feels that some of these smaller life problems are more stubborn to deal with that the larger injustices.

It is hard to see how ones destiny fits into these small dilemmas. These minor twists and turns seem to unimportant or insignificant  to factor into the larger path of someones life. But I try to reconcile the lessons in these occasions. I learned to ask, “What is this teaching me?” or “What can I learn from this?”.

I fall back on my practice of looking deeply. I have integrated this practice for a few years now. I try to sit and breath and calm myself to look deeply into a situation. So like the many questions I have raised, I have no answer, only a practice and an effort toward deeper understanding and self improvement.

I do not know what God does. I cannot see or understand how all this Spirit stuff works. It is enough for me to know that I believe that it works and that I am part of it all. I will not make a list of I believe statements here. For now it is for me to release and breath and take the next step with faith and prayer and love.

thanks for reading

Passing Over and Moving On

This past week I have been helping my in-laws move. Their home has sold and they are wisely downsizing to a smaller home. My wife’s family is letting go of the house where they were a young family. They are doing this with grace and strength. My immediate emotional field is full of themes of  ‘letting go’ and ‘saying goodbye’ and ‘moving on’. With every trip I make to the storage unit, I see the street sign for Davidson road. I think on my friend with that last name who recently passed away after a fight with cancer. This weekend many of my friends gather to remember her.

I wish I could see her dancing at her wedding again. In the seventeen years I knew Becky, that was when I remember her happiest and most in love. My wife and I sat and watched her dance on that warm summer evening in Nashville. She lit the ballroom in her wedding gown, making the chandelier look dim and faded in comparison.

I remember Becky wrapped in her golden curls and smiling a big satisfied grin. Her smile that I remember was a content one. A grin that wants for nothing and needs nothing.

I  remember her voice and the chills she could send through me with the notes she hit. And her laugh. A laugh that made you feel like you are special, made you feel good.  A laugh that made you want to make her laugh again.

These past few years have seen a couple of  passings in my world. My mother a year and a half ago, my best friend’s father just a year ago, and Becky a few weeks ago. In all three of these people, their bodies could no longer contain them. Disease and illness had overcome their ability to resist.

There are many words and thoughts of comfort and condolences that surround us when someone we love is no longer among the living.

The lessons of Thich Nhat Hanh are comforting. He teaches looking deeply. He teaches that though the ones we love no longer inhabit a human body, they remain among us . Look deeply at your hads and see you mother and father, their mother and father and all your ancestors. They walk the Earth in your skin. Their blood is yours, their cells are yours.

And for our friends, those we love, looking deeply into our hearts, we can see the places they touched. We can feel the channels that flow differently because our lives collided with such wonderful, brilliant souls. Like Becky’s, though she and I were not close for several years, she touched my life. And my heart is changed because I knew her. And that flows out of me into the world in ways that I cannot track.

But when we consider the loss, my heart settles back to the ground. And I see that Becky and Rick and Kitt are not here. They are not living. I am grateful their bodies are not living. The thoughts and feeling that give us comfort are concerns for the living. The dead no longer suffer such sadness.

As for Becky, I wish I could see her dancing in her wedding dress again, and hear her laugh and sing.

The Anatomy of the Sink Hole

I pay attention to world events in a different way now. A few weeks ago, my wife took a trip to Germany. She was gone for almost two weeks. My attention and anxiety was constantly drawn to her. The smallest piece of news that could effect her drew my rapt attention. I am not a worrier but I had a raised baseline of concern for her and world events. Each night my prayer was for her safety and for her return to our home.

I found that stories that might not have raised much attention, now send me to the laptop or to the cable news in research of deeper coverage. I became more aware of concerning stories once I had a concerning interest, namely the safety of my beloved. Stories of danger in Europe have always been there. But danger on a global level has increased and now that my most precious is abroad I notice them more.

I listen to the daily news. I am aware that the news does not always report the full story. Media is not the source for all  information. The media is there to inform but also to get your attention and to entertain. Truth and value are too often victims of greed.

I try to listen to news with my heart. I listen for the story under the story. Look for what the source is not saying. In this way I look deeply into the story of the sink holes.

All around the world, sink holes are opening. Some are not unexpected in areas prone to them. But , many are completely unexpected. And there are so many. My heart tells me there are more because the Earth is suffering. Small things are beginning to collapse. Small collapses. Also, because we as humans are draining the Earth of oil and water and fracking the Earth at an alarming rate. We are drilling where we should not. We are blasting apart the very foundations of our Earth. We are draining and polluting our aquifers. We are learning that the parts of the Earth we believe are indestructible are in fact fragile.

My mind also tells me that there are more sink holes noticed because we humans now cover more of the globe than ever before. We are noticing the holes as the open because we were in more places. That is likely true.

Are there more sink holes or are we just noticing? The answer: We notice the rising number of sink holes because we cover more ground and because sink holes have increased in occurrence.

There are more Earthquakes and storms than anyone can remember, more weather anomalies than anyone can explain. Is this all because climate change, or better science or a global breakdown of systems once thought to be indestructible. The answer in my own heart is all yes. All of the above.

We collectively see disturbing news all around us. The number of deeply alarming events increases every day. And we are noticing these events more.

We pay more attention because we all have loved ones in harms way. No one seems safe. Sink holes can occur any where. And sink holes here are only a metaphor for awful, violent, horrific events that I will not to give energy to here.

No where is out of bounds, no one is immune. We find that things once thought safe are dangerous. Places once thought solid are really porous. Forces of nature are behaving unnaturally.

This is a time to pay attention. To stay awake and stay aware. Not only in the media but in every place we go. Pay attention to the outside world and pay attention to what your heart is telling you. Check with your guts and stay vigilant.

My wife is home. She is safe and we are grateful. But I find I am not relaxed now that she returns. I still listen to the stories of the world with concern. I try to look deeply at events. And I am trying to look deeply at my own feelings and reactions to the world. I try not to fear. I try not to worry. I put effort instead toward loving and compassion and understanding. That is my prayer tonight.

A Narrow Path

I was baptized on my birthday. For many months now I felt in my heart that this was something I wanted to do. I have read and meditated and researched. While I feel that the act if baptism is an outward sign of what had all ready inwardly taken place; the preparation has deepened my understanding of my reality.

The morning of my 33rd birthday, I walked the woods of Camp Marymount, a place I have long called home. I walked around the lake and through the hills. I drank from the spring and walked up to a former sweat lodge site. I continued wandering the forest till I came to the Outdoor Chapel where I was married many years ago. A creek runs along the forest floor and I followed it. I found a deep pool and sat down for a time. Later I found a fallen maple tree lying across the stream. I sat on the tree and prayed and breathed. After some time I wrote in my prayer journal.

I am prepared to walk this Narrow Path: Giving all my Love, all my life away for the love of my people and my family and Earth and Creator, for my reality and to the Spirit. A narrow path, of compassion and forgiveness, of faith, of generosity of commitment. To hold the moment, to live and remain in the moment. Don’t fall to fret or fear for the future, nor lose  power by dwelling in the past.

The Narrow Path: To look ever deeper for more full understanding of reality. The way of emptiness and clarity. To surrender to Spirit and pour out myself for others.

The Way of Christ, the Way of Zen, of Suzuki, of Hanh, of Stalking Wolf and Brown. A claim of my spiritual lineage.

The Narrow path is the way of compassion, of awareness, of openness, of love and always inclusive.

As it is written:  for wide is the path and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many will find it. But narrow is  the path and difficult is the way which leads to life, and  few will find it.

Early that afternoon, my Father and wife and child came out to meet me. It was a cold windy cloudy day. We walked down to the woods together. I carried the Bible that belonged to my mother. I carried a hollow bone of a deer leg and the underside bones of a turtle that I had found on my walk early in the day. Towels also we carried. It was cold.

Reaching the bank of the stream, we said a prayer, I read a Psalm. My wife said some wonderful words and my father read a few passages out of the new testament. I stripped to shorts and my father and I got in the water. I knelt, then sat, then Dad laid me back submerging me in the frigid stream. Cold but exhilarating. I will not share the words to describe how I felt afterwords. That afternoon will be with me always.

Dead Spaces

He did not see the show, he saw his phone. This photo is from the internet. I did not take his picture. That would be pretty funny if I had.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to see an old friend’s band play a show. There was a young man a few paces in front of me holding his phone in the filming pose. You know, phone eye level but off to one side. His eye shifting from the large screen to the stage and back every few seconds. My attention was drawn to the screen. I want to see the show with my eyes not through a phone screen between my eyes and the stage. “Put your phone down” I hollered at a low volume. A few voices behind me echoed the call. And he did.

While he watched his phone, he was not at the show. His attention was not around him. His energy was not with the people preforming. He did not see the band, he was looking at his phone!

While consumed with the smart phone, you are not involved in the world around you. Oblivious to your surrounding is a dangerous way to move though the world. Dangerous in many ways, not only to your body, to your spiritual, emotional awareness. Text while walking a city block. How many people passed you? How many men? How many women? Who made eye contact with you?

Look at your phone while riding up a few floors on an elevator. How many stops were made before yours? How many people got into the elevator? How many got off? What were they wearing? Where were they going?

Are these important questions? They are important if you are alive.

We stare at our smart phones as dumb mammals wrapped in  pockets of no attention, the absences of awareness surrounding people.

I train to see dead space. From the earliest lesson at survival school, there is talk of dead space. Dead space the the mostly physical (often emotional/spiritual) area that is devoid of attention and absent of concern. The vacuum of awareness. The places that go unlooked at, unnoticed, and unseen. Everyone has them. Even when we try to eliminate dead spaces, they remain.

Walk into a room and notice where your attention does not go. Especially in your home, your car, your normal routes and routines, dead spaces are the areas you nearly never look at, the corners that are rarely noticed. Dead spaces are more frequent in your normal ruts.

A tourist looks around and tries to see everything. Walk into a room or a scenic view for the first time with interest and concern, and dead spaces are few because the attention given to reality is so great.

But look at a person using their phone. Texting, surfing, streaming, sharing, whatever. There is a visible tube of awareness pouring out of their faces and pouring into the small rectangle in their hands. To me, the phone appears to be actually sucking the attention out of the face.

Don’t trade your eyes for the camera lens on the phones. Don’t sacrifice your hearing to the ear plugs and signals of a new message.

People die because they do not pay attention. They walk out into traffic. They drive off bridges. Likewise, animals fall victim to hunters because they did not pay attention.

It is becoming a familiar paradox. The more we are connected via text, email, internet and media, the less we connect to the person sharing a room, or a meal, or a train. We can move though the world and share tons of thoughts with thousands of people without using our voice, only our thumbs.

I am terrified of this reality.

I recently watched an old episode of West Wing. One of the character’s cell phones rang during a meeting. He appeared embarrassed. He excused himself and answered the call a little put off the person had called him at all. That was ten years ago. What a change. This day, his phone would silently alert that he has a text and he would respond while still sitting in a meeting. To my sensibility that is very rude.

I believe our species to be in crisis. Everything is a crisis these days. Climate crisis, financial crisis, political gridlock crisis, people all over the world in crisis. Our awareness is also in crisis. What is the tipping point of our ability to give attention to our real world? How far will this go?

The Veil Thins

This Advent season has been fast. I look for time each day to slow down, notice the air passing through my nostrils and the feel the moment.

Christmas is a season of teaching for these moments. In my heart I hold the moment to moment stillness of a Christmas night. The cold air makes each breath visible. Stillness also means quiet, as if the world speak in a whisper, the way we might whisper in a church, in the presence of the sacred.

And this is sacred. Christmas is a joining of Heaven and Earth. A joining of Creation and Created, of ether and earth. A time when The Star comes burning toward Earth. Comes close enough to glimpse behind the veil of creation.

In the cold, still, long darkness, anything is possible. Even evil can break through if a path is made. Christmas is no stranger to the slaughter of the innocent. A spark may ignite a into fire. Ice may break into flood. Great joy may be broken into deepest sorrow. Whispers seems as loud as thunder. The divine feels present. Like a secret being poorly kept. A Presence just behind the curtain.

And a joining is taking place. A celebration of light come to the darkness. A joining as in a marriage. The occas

ion of becoming both gift and given. And we celebrate the giving of what? Of our selves, of our love, of our attention and concern for each other. We become the gift, freely given and lovingly received. We are there for each other.

These long nights when we recognized and rejoice in the divine light we carry and share with one another. This is the good news and the Coming that brings us so much happiness. We long in excitement not for the material possessions but for the presence of Spirit.

My goal this Christmas, my intention in this night I spend awake: To deflect the cultural greed and selfishness that circulates among us and to shine back love and giving. Making my self the gift to the world. I aim to bring my most divine, my most infant, most innocent self to the world.

Waiting in the Dark

It is dark early in the evening. I walk off the elevator. The hospital is sterile, brightly lit, quiet but only muted. There is a emotion vibrating beneath the hard tiles.  The floors above are full of held breath, choked back tears, silent waiting moments.

I cross the courtyard which is vacant in the evening. The crossed brick patterned reflects the fluorescent sheen. The night shift staff is settled in their chairs and the day shift are all ready in traffic. I have been waiting for a close friend and teacher to live or die. I have been waiting to learn that a child will soon join us. I have been waiting for my shift in the Emergencyt o be over so I can go home and hold my wife.

These three or four blocks between the hospital towers, two red paper dolls and the expansive deserted parking lot with my truck waiting by a honey colored street light, these blocks are my time out of waiting. I walk step after step in the frost of late autumn and the dark that holds before the advent. I try not to rush. But my pace cannot fall too slow either. For there is too much potential change to linger on this walk.

Instead I walk in a regular pace, breathing deeply. Try to control all the worry and doubt and fear of not knowing what is around the next corner. The pain and concern of the unknown is the worst just before the turn is taken.

As a boy I feared the head lights of the oncoming cars because I could not see past them. And the fear and doubt builds and builds and reaches a crescendo to the instant before the car passes.

These times of waiting are unending. That car never passes. The corner is never taken. And the greatest fear though never realized is never out of range to possibility. But I walk the same steady unhurried, tense pace. I keep awake in the darkness. Eyes open to the coming change. I had vowed to stay awake but this is exhausting.

I look up and wait. I pray and hope and Wait. The advent is approaching.