Living into Impotence

I suspect this title will not excite people about reading this post and for men may even seem a bit ominous.  But I ask you to read on.

I am middle aged.  I have lived long enough to see that not everything we try for do we get.  I have lived long enough to also learn that you can warn people about dangers and snares that you know about personally, but they have to learn from their own experience.  I have lived long enough to learn that all set backs are not permanent, but neither are all victories.  I have experienced many loses in my life, starting very young, and I have learned that there are loses that cannot be recouped, out run or redone - they simply must be accepted.   Accepted not as a defeat, but as sand inside an oyster, and some as compost for the plants that are coming.

In the book: The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Difference and When to Let Go. by Eileen Flanagan she takes the serenity prayer and talks about how we come to terms with it.   She notes among other things that most of us are naturally pulled in one direction or the other with it.  I certainly recognized for myself that I am pulled to take courage and try to change things..even things like national policy.  But one of Eileen's points was that we do have to discern when we need to go the other direction which in my case means when to find serenity by accepting things as they are.  I don't recall if this is in her book but to believe that we can change anything is in fact a form of idolatry.  It is to believe that we have God like powers.

In a society racked with injustice, and in this country at this moment in history, this would seem an almost impossible task how to be at peace with the world as it is.  As a person who is actively working to stop climate change and who is surrounded by other climate change activists who often feel quite frantic about, as joked yesterday: "Repent the world is coming to an end" type feelings.  I have learned even with climate change to hold it in spirit.   I hold it with a spirit of curiosity, knowing that I do not know how things will turn out.  I have learned with great difficulty to practice non-attachment around the outcome.  Sometimes I cannot tell if it is simply a slick form or bargaining or denial.   But it seems like there is some peace from saying both in the face of hopeful signs and in the sign of terrible signs  "I don't know what will happen."

I was so pleased when Wen Stephenson's book: What we are Fighting for now is Each Other, came out.  I have not read the book yet.  I just love the title.   It summed up for me that I cannot be fighting for the outcome but I can always act for Love - the love of Life, the love of the planet and all those on it.  I can notice the spiritual practice of non-attachment to outcomes that Buddhism preaches.  The Truth is I don't know what will happen; none of us do.  As I write this the Lacy Dalton song is singing: "listen to the wind,  The only thing you can trust is change."  This also summarizes the form of detachment I am talking about.

As a therapist for 23 years now I have had ringside seats at many disasters.   Some that my clients were fighting as hard as they could.  Others that even as I gently tried to question or discourage they went towards like moth to the flame.   But there is nothing like being a therapist to teach you that you are not in charge of other people's lives, you are simply a witness.  Hopefully a loving and constructive or supportive witness, but a witness none the less.  This then becomes its own spiritual practice of learning to keep handing it back to God even as you pray for others.   and yes to keep breathing into your own impotence, to meet the limits of what you can do, or what you should do, to surrender again and still keep your heart open, feel the pain, release the pain, and then do it again.

Joanna Macy likes to ask the question: What have you allowed to break your heart?  To break your heart open?  This spiritual practice of living into impotence is not for the feint of heart, but it is a powerful spiritual practice.   It is is not the same, at all, as giving up or becoming hopeless or helpless. Because inside of this practice is really the turning towards the strength of God, and the wisdom of eternity.  Recently I have heard both Native people and a famous civil rights leader say: "We have been here before and we will be here again, we know who we are and we are not giving up".   There own familiarity with suffering gives them strength, endurance and resilience.  Impotence is about being without power but it is also about how you live into that.  Do you live into it as a loss, a humiliation, a defeat, or do you live into it with humility, serenity and hope?  Do you live into it alone, isolated on your own terms or do you live into it with Grace and Presence?

The Ocean of Non-attachment

I am at the ocean. Yes, in January.   I recommend it.  Divorced from laying in the sun or running in the waves there is an even clearer sense of the eternal majesty of the waves and their reminders of the eternal majesty of the Divine.

For me there are spiritual practices associated with the ocean.   One is the practice of non-attachment.   Buddhist monks have a practice of spending days painstakingly making beautiful Mandala designs out of different colored sands.   Then after their careful work is completed they ceremonially destroy the work.  This is a ritual expression of non-attachment and the impermanence of all things.

Long ago when my daughter was small we would come to this same place and we would enjoy making a sandcastle and then we would watch the tide come in and destroy it.   Later with her stepfather and her step brother we would build an even bigger one with an extensive moat system and we would race to complete it before the incoming tide would come for it.   We would play at defending it, and then finally stand back and watch its ultimate destruction.   A reminder that nothing man made is actually permanent or stands against the sands of time.  After my divorce, I came and built a sand castle just to watch it wash away, just to acknowledge the years of work I had put into the marriage and then to release it.  There is a funny kind of peace I cannot properly explain about knowing that in the end it all, everything we do, returns to the ocean.

There is another beach ritual that goes hand in hand with this.  It is the throwing of the rocks in the ocean.   Some year when I was full of angst and troubles I stood watching the crashing waves and the majesty of God.  I began to pick up rocks and name them for the troubles of my year, and then to “give them to God” by throwing them into the ocean.  I would do this till I could think of nothing more to throw in.  I would leave feeling lighter - emptied.  I value the practice so much I often recommend it to clients  to release  grief or anger.

I remember one year I picked a particularly big rock to throw in to represent a whole ordeal I had gone through for more than a year.  I happened to throw it right as a gigantic wave came and even though I backed up to not get water in my shoes the wave brought that rock back and deposited at my feet!  I said:  “I understand God, I am not as done with that one as I wish.  I have not fully let it go.”   And sure enough during the next year, at moments I could feel that thing washing up at my feet again.    I’m happy that this year I am having a year where there is nothing I feel I need to throw in the ocean.  I think I have been learning to throw them into the eternal ocean all year long.

Where is God in Darkness?

I have written in other spaces about my concern that the incoming Trump administration represents the rise of fascism in the US.   This raises interesting spiritual questions about how we respond to destructive things happening around us, where is God in dark times and what does this mean about evil?

Has God abandoned us, or is punishing us by allowing this to happen?
If one holds to the view that God created us with free will then that means that those who are not listening to God are always free to stray from what God might intend for us and to do great destruction or evil.  That evil affects other people.  The price of freedom is a God who is omni-present, but not all powerful.

Where is God in this situation?
God is always present as a source of guidance, comfort, and strength.   It is even more important in crisis to turn to God.  God cannot however stop the suffering caused by others' application of their free will.  Buddhism does have much to say about how we manage suffering.

What does God require of us?
The Bible answers this question of what God requires of us saying:
"To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."  Micah 6:8
I think those spiritual theologies that say we are co-creators of the world we live in and the lives we walk in, also suggest that we are to embrace the highest truth we know and live it.   I think in a time where hatred rises up and causes the scapegoating and targeting of some people that means saying no to that.  I think in a time where violence rises up it means acting with non-violence.  I think in a time where the earth is pillaged, polluted and destroyed it means aligning our life style with an honoring and protecting of the earth (as currently modeled by Native people at Standing Rock).  In a time where there is an increasing assault on free speech, on free press, and on civil liberties it means standing up for those and protecting supporting those others who also speak out.   In a time where vote suppression and gerrymandering threaten our very democracy it means standing up to fight for democracy.   And all of these things mean turning to God for the courage to act for justice.  In short, in a universe where people can do destructive or evil things, we are called upon to speak truth, take action and to hold up the Light of Love.   To remain silent or passive is to passively allow the evil.

Is there no Light in this Darkness?
Neale Donald Walsh has written quite a bit about how it is only the dark that allows us to know the Light.   That the Light longs to be known by us.   Perhaps another way of saying this is that we sometime must struggle in order to learn; contrast is one of the ways by which we learn.  If one believe in reincarnation then we have come to earth in incarnations intended to maximize our learning, and the encounter with darkness or evil is not a detour or a mistake, it is an opportunity for learning, and opportunity to bring forth light.  We are not called to do this alone, it is what community, especially spiritual community is for.

Why is this happening when I don't want it to?
While we may co-create our own personal reality, it is also the case that as a collective humanity, or a society we also create certain shared realities through our shared consciousness. There are lessons we are trying to learn as a collective.  It is worth asking: How could it serve the learning of the American people to grapple with the person of Donald Trump and the type of leadership he is bringing?  It is easy to point fingers of blame at figures in history like Hitler or Trump who are the apparent center of so much darkness, but that really gets all the rest of us off the hook.   We must look at the fear that is always the fertile ground for fascism.   We must examine where we have stood in relationship to fear? We must do the spiritual work of looking at the anger, the pull for easy answers, for power, the arrogance, etc that live within us and are mirrored by Trump, rather than simply demonize him.

How do we respond to this spirituality?
Responding to an already negative situation with more anger, violence or fear only magnifies the negative energy.  Going numb or in denial also does not serve the Light.  Joanna Macy tells the story of the Tibetan Shambala prophecy.   The Tibetan's believe that there comes a time of great darkness and chaos when the world as we know it is completely threatened.   At that time many souls come to earth for one purpose: to fight for our world as Shambala warriors.   They are not intended to fight with normal weapons of violence, but rather with spiritual weapons of wisdom and compassion.   Wisdom brings great clarity and vision, but clarity alone does not bring the passion for action.   Compassion brings great love which can move people to action, but action alone is not productive without clarity or focus.   So they must use wisdom and compassion together to fight for our world.  I believe that this is a time when we all must become Shambala warriors.

Is their an opportunity is this experience?
When lived spiritually all experience contain an opportunity.  Chaos, danger, conflict, destruction.... all of these things carry in them the seeds of change and the possibilities for transformation.   If Hillary Clinton had been elected, most good liberals would have continued to focus little on the situation, even as our planet is threatened by the crisis of climate change, even as racism was literally killing Black people in the streets daily.  When evil becomes as blatant and undeniable as it now is, there is a moral imperative put before us all.  The addition of the Trump administration to the Climate crisis demands we quite literally transform the current power structure or we will die.  So it is time for each of us to reach down to the foundations of our spiritual traditions and see what God calls us to do.

Love Speech

This is the eve of our US election.  It has been a painful election season with constant attacks by both candidates upon the other.  The vitriol has been so bad most people are tuning out and have stopped watching (eg. sharp drop off in ratings by the third debate.) Voters report being weary of this election.  I have noticed recently how we have without every signing up for it been bathed in "hate speech".  This is disturbing in that studies of the rise of fascism say people are more willing to accept absolute power and charisma if they are first afraid.  When afraid we are more willing to blame others, to scapegoat and to yes: hate.

Recently, I heard someone say that just as we need Love, that Love needs us - that it is the only way through us that Love can manifest in the world.   This idea got me to start thinking of the idea of "Love Speech".   “What does Love Speech sound like?”   There were two kinds I thought of.   One is the kind of thing Quakers talk about when they talk about "speaking to that of God in another person" which means to call out the Highest in them.   But the other way I think of that is sort of what Martin Luther King, Jr use to do which was to talk about Love, to remind us of it in the midst of our struggles.  Another age old religious concept is that of prophetic speech.

I invite you each to think about how you might be a vessel of Love Speech?  Especially in the next few days when anger, disappointment, fear and alienation might be in high gear in this country.

The Spirit of Love that Connects us all

About 8 years ago a friend of mine very suddenly died.  She had had a cough for weeks, she thought the remnants of a cold she could not shake.  Finally one night in frustration she went to the emergency room to get an antibiotic.  Instead she left with a referral to hospice.  They had x-rayed her lungs and seen a mass too huge to be operable.  It took her a week to tell everyone.  It took me two weeks to recover from the shock.  We made a date for me to come see her a week later.  But on that date her husband called to say that she was in so much pain she had been given a heavy dose of moraine and was out of it.  We rescheduled, but the same thing happened on the next date.  Then they stopped taking calls.  She died 6 weeks after she went to the hospital for the x-ray and I never got to say goodbye.

I was sad and shaken that she was gone so fast.  I also learned.  I learned that it is a myth this idea that there is some permanence to the people we know.  Anyone of us could die in a car crash or have a heart attack today and be gone.  The idea that we will know someone is dying, and that we will be able to rush to their side, is not true.  I could have just taken that as a bitter fact, but instead I chose to make sacred that fact. I started a new Birthday tradition.   I consider as I write my birthday cards to people what I would want that person to know if they, or I, did not make it to their next birthday.  I consider whether there are any unfinished messages, but most especially what the appreciations and unexpressed love and gratitude are.  Wayne Dyer is famous for saying "Don't die with your music in you."  I would change that to be:  "Let not death separate us, without our Love being fully expressed."  People tell me these birthday cards are unlike any others they get - very special and precious.  I knew a woman who held a living memorial for herself a year before her death (she was very slowly dying) because she said she did not know what good it would do for all the nice things to be said about her after she died!  This is funny, but how true.  Why do we wait until after people are dead to say those precious things?

Today is 9/11.  A date I generally try to ignore because I do not like the focus on terrorism and the justification of the US's numerous wars abroad.  But what touched me then and ever since is the kindness that people showed total strangers and loved ones a like on that day.  Today on NPR there was an interview with the CEO of one of the companies that occupied the upper floors of tower 1 of the twin towers.   This man lost 642 employees on that day and only lived himself because he was taking his son to his first day of Kindergarten.  In the interview the reporter is asking him about the loss of all of his employees, and he tells her that he also lost his younger brother who was only 36, He says that his brother called his sister and she said "OH thank God, you are not there. You are safe" and he said "No, I am here.  I am going to die.  I have called to say goodbye to you and that I love you."

I started to cry at that point in the story, as I have for 15 years whenever I hear the numerous stories of people calling from the burning towers or from the plane that they know is about to be crashed into a building.  They call their loved ones to say goodbye, as do children from schools where students with automatic weapons roam the halls killing people.  I have been told that soldiers as they lay dying in battlefields call out to their mothers and wives.  It is fundamental to human nature that as we face death we turn to the connect of love we have to other humans.  It is as the former Prime Minster of Canada said on this death bed:  "Love is the only thing which matters."  For me this truth is a profoundly spiritual one as well that Love is at the core of Life.

Facing Pain: The Spiritual journey

I have previously reviewed the Untethered Soul by MichaelSinger.  Singer throughout the book invites us to notice the ways we avoid our own pain.  In one chapter he talks about what if you had a thorn in your body that you orchestrated all of your efforts to not have touch anything so you would not feel the pain.   In another chapter he talks about the way dogs can be put on a collar that when they reach an invisible boundary will shock them (mildly) so that they don’t try to go there any more.  He says that this is how we live…not going towards activities that cause us discomfort.  He continues, that all of our efforts to control the events in our lives is again an attempt to avoid certain feelings.

As a therapist I know that when people have PTSD that they will avoid activities, places, and emotions that remind them of their trauma.  But the thing is, as Singer points out, we are all this way.   We don’t want to do things that embarrass us or might make us look bad, or just simply bring up emotions that we find uncomfortable.  I think with pride of my daughter who has never developed much a bicycle habit and deliberately is choosing to take the challenge of trying to do much more riding with her boyfriend who is a very active cyclist.   Most people finding themselves not skilled at something, in the company of someone more experienced than they will shrink back.   She also must face painful memories of how her father acted as she learned to ride, and other traumas.  But she is determined.  As has frequently been the case in her life she is an inspiration to me because I know I have avoided physical activities that I did not feel that I was good at.

Singer says: “Spirituality begins when you decide that you’ll never stop trying.  Spirituality is the commitment to go beyond, no matter what it takes.”  He describes being mindfully aware when you encounter your discomfort, recognizing it as your “edge”…your self imposed limit to your own cage.  And then he says you deliberately go beyond so you are not controlled by fear or your own suffering.  I have previously written about Tara Brach’s teaching around facing our fears.   What a crazy notion right? Going right towards our fears, not being controlled by our fears.

I see now that I have been avoiding something…perhaps for years, maybe for a life time.  In the past month I have paid a price both monetarily and in hassle because I did not want to face this something.  But eventually my own grasping efforts to avoid it ran out and there I was.   And you know what is funny?  It was not bad, in fact it brought me into deep connection with my own soul.   I also look back at the memories and feelings I thought it would bring flooding up, and they are there but I realize “hmm they are sort of photos of a not very good day.”  They simply don’t have the power they did when I was experiencing them originally.

What are you afraid of?  What might you have to feel if you went towards that which you are afraid of?  And what might happen on the other side of that fear?

Discernment...or how not to kill yourself working for social justice.

Many religions have a tradition around discernment - some do discernment of gifts, for others it is discernment of leadings (of the spirit) or callings.   This is a discernment of what God wants us to do in a given situation or with our life.  Generally, the distinction is made between an intellectual decision making process or a "worldy" one.   Both are seen as coming out of individual will or secular values.

When people come out of traditions that do not put forth a discernment process it can be confusing to know how to do spiritual discernment.   Some traditions suggest that people turn to clergy or gurus for this sort of discernment.   All traditions that I am aware of suggest that people test their leadings with their faith community to make sure that they are not simply engaging in delusion, fantasy or personal ego.

I write here about the discernment process of Quakers (or Friends) as it a process easily duplicated by anyone.   Quakers form a "clearness committee" of those considered wise or experienced in the spirit when trying to make important decisions like whether to marry, to join the church, to make a significant career decision, or if lead to some sort of "witness" or leading on behalf of social justice.  The group enters into prayerful silence out of which the person with a leading or calling speaks about the leading as they understand it.  The group considers this prayerfully and asks questions.   The questions are not leading questions or oratorical questions, but are simply intended to help the person look more deeply.   They also share reflections or "light" as it is available to them. It is NOT an advice giving forum.   The group acts to confirm or deny (I am aware of at least two incidents where the clearness committee did not find the person "clear".) that what the person is feeling seems true and rightly lead to the clearness committee as well.

Thomas Kelly, a famous Quaker theologians writing in the 40's, wrote a whole chapter on discernment in his book A Testament of Devotion.  Parker Palmer a modern day Quaker theolgian wrote a short book entitled: Let your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.  More recently Quaker Nancy Bieber wrote a whole book on discernment:  Decision Making and Spiritual Discernment: the Sacred Art of Finding your Way.

Here are Kelly's much quoted words about how God particularizes a concern is us:

"I dare note urge you to your Cross.  But God, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs.  By inner persuasions God draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizes His burdens in us....
     In my deepest heart I know that some of us have to face our comfortable, self-oriented lives all over again.  The times are too tragic, God's sorrow is too great, man's night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience.  It maybe or it may not mean change in geography, in profession, in wealth, in earthly security."   (Amazingly he was writing this during WWII because it is a timely now as it was then.)   He goes on to say:
     " Little groups of such utterly dedicated souls, knowing one another in Divine Fellowship, must take an irrevocable vow to live in this world yet not of this world, kindle again the embers of faith in the midst of a secular world.  Our churches were meant to be such groups, but now too many of them are dulled and cooled and flooded by the secular."

I first read these words when I was in my early 20's and I think reading it saved me. Like many people of faith that have strong social justice traditions I absolutely could have died on too many crosses! If I had tried to act on every issue or cause that I could see was unjust or important I would have run around in a frenzy or burned myself out in short order.  Or I would have simply given up like so many people do, deciding that I am only one person to small and insignificant to change the world and thus decided to sit at home or take up tennis and leave the worlds problems to "leaders"...(whoever those people are!  ;-)  Instead I experienced the incredible relief of realizing I had only to listen for what God had tenderized my heart to and given me the gifts to respond to.  I took great comfort in the phrase: "God draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks."  I understood this to  mean I could pay attention to just one issue (or the closely related/ intersectional ones.)  And as the world has become more complicated and more at risk it has been even more of a blessing to focus on just what is given to me.

It was such a relief to have this "permission" to not do everything!  It has meant over the years that I could simply be grateful for the work of my comrades (some known some not) who work on other issues that I care about but am not called to.  I celebrate their victories fought for all of us, and I know that they rely on me as well to do my part on the issues I work on and they do not.  Singer song writer Libby Roderick expressed this very beautifully in the song Cradle of Dawn.   "Sunset in my country, Sunrise in mine...forces facing us are terrible in deed...in the morning I will plant another seed and while you sleep it will take light. ... I feel you there in the dark...I will hold the light up while you
sleep."

Nancy Bieber in her book first identifies ways the world asks us to think about decisions and then offers faith based ways to test discernment.
The worlds way:
Is this safe? Will this build security for me and mine?
It is it likely to be sucessful?  How are we defining success?
Does it lead to independence?
Will I gain in status or prestige?
Will it bring happiness?
Alternatively she says faith based discernment questions would be:
Is this decision sacred? Is it holy?
Is this "mine" to do?
Will this decision do the least harm?
Is this decision congruent with others we have made wisely?
Is this Love's way?

For many the path to discernment will not be as "upbeat" or clear as this sounds.  In Parker Palmer's book he repeats an often repeated Quaker wisdom that some times we find direction from the doors that close behind us.  He also talks about the role of depression in discernment...as well as patient waiting and the importance of knowing ourselves deeply.

Kelly identifies 4 steps to being faithful to leading:
1) The first step of obedience is the flaming vision of the wonder of such a life, a vision which comes occasionally to us all...this vision of an absolutely holy life is, I am convinced, the invading, urging, inviting, persuading work of the Eternal One.
2) Once having the vision, the second step to holy obedience is this: Begin where you are.  Obey now....Walk on the streets and chat with your friends.  but every moment behind the scenes be in prayer, offering yourselves in continuous obedience.
3.) If you slip and stumble and forget God for a hour, and assert your old proud self, and rely upon your own clever wisdom, don't spend too much time in anguished regrets and self-accusations but begin again, just where you are.
4) The fourth consideration: "Don't grit your teeth and clench your fists and say, "I will!  I will!"  Relax.  Take hands off.  Submit yourself to God.   Learn to live in the passive voice- a hard saying for Americans - and let life be willed through you.  For "I will" spells not obedience.

Many decades ago I sat with a Catholic priest who was helping me with discernment.  He listened carefully to the outpouring of details about what I had been doing and what I was confused by and he asked me two simple questions:

1:  Does it give you joy?
2.  Is it life giving?
These two questions have steered me right over and over again for many, many years  I would add one more question:
3)   As best you know if the prompting from God or from some other source?

One last piece of advice from Richard Bach in his "handbook for Messiahs"
"And try not to take yourself too seriously."