Happy new year. How might it be?

 Announcement to the Shepherds by (Abraham Bloemaert, ca. 1600)

Today isn't Wednesday.  But it's Wednesday I'm wondering about today.

Jan 1, 2020.  Happy new year!

And I wonder what makes a year good?  What are we really wishing one another when we say, "Happy New Year"?

One card we received this Christmas put it this way: "may the best of 2019 be the worst of 2020." 

How great that would be!  I appreciate the sentiment.  And the sympathy it shows among our friends for the hard bits we suffered this past year.

But is that how life goes?  Especially as our bodies age and weaken?  As our spirits remain sensitive to accumulated wounds of the past, and subject to unresolved anxieties about the future?  And our memory has not failed quite enough yet to allow us to live in a blissful awareness only of the blessed present?

Is it realistic to wish for a life of successively only-happier and easier years, when we know that life -- neither ours nor God's, is like that?

But what then?  Is the only other option a depressing Eyore-ish wish like, "Oh well, hope that 2020 won't be too bad for you ... hope you make it through ... if you can."

Is there maybe a middle way between -- or more accurately, a third way beyond optimistic dreaming and pessimistic dreariness? 

Today I received in my email inbox this thought of Howard Thurmann (1899-1981), an African-American author, theologian, educator and civil rights leader.  He says:

"There must be always remaining in every person's life some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and by an inherent prerogative, throwing all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness, something that gathers up into itself all the freshets of experience from drab and commonplace areas of living, and glows in one bright light of penetrating beauty and meaning -- then passes.  

"The commonplace is shot through with new glory; old burdens become lighter; deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old, old hurting.  A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear.  Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the hardness of life, despite all of the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels."

Maybe the third way (usually the gospel way?) has something to do with ready and opened listening?  A particular kind, and direction of listening.  Intentional listening to what is both momentarily and eternally life-and-perception-and-possibility-and-reality-changingly beautiful.

I wonder, for instance, if Thurmann's thought helps me understand why I choose to listen at times to Philip Glass's Songs of Liquid Days, especially the last two songs that I find achingly and overwhelmingly beautiful -- David Byrne's "Open the Kingdom" sung by Douglas Perry, and Laurie Anderson's "Forgetting" played by the Kronos Quartette and sung by Linda Ronstadt backed by The Roches.  I wonder -- as I listen, is life as it is, transformed for me, and am I, as I am, transformed for life?

And in how many varieties of ways, approaching us through how many more of our more-than-five senses, do the angels appear and "sing" to any of us -- sing to you, as and where you are, of the holiness and wholeness of life, just as it is?

And in how many ways, also, am I and are others blind, deaf and insensitive -- dulled by what we make and think of life, to the song the angels want to sing to us?  

In the painting above of the announcement to the shepherds, for instance, how many are actually attending to, or even aware of the angels' song?

Thurmann, when he says "there must be .. in every person's life some place for the singing of angels" is not naive about the matter of angel's songs and life's transformation.  His "must" is more a wake-up call to intentional awareness, than a statement of universal, inevitable experience.

"There must be always remaining in every person's life some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and by an inherent prerogative, throw[s] all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness....  Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the hardness of life, despite all of the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels."

So ...

Happy New Year!  May the angels be with you.  And may they sing to you as and where and when you need their song.





 

My name is Brian, and I am powerless.

I wonder, how do you deal with powerlessness?

On a personal level I have felt powerless during Japhia's two- and three-week-plus hospitalizations for a chronic disorder.  I know you also have felt powerless in a variety of ways in your life -- maybe feel that way right now.  On a larger scale, the terrible experience of powerlessness is also a force in many current political movements.

Being powerless is common to the human situation, and how we deal with it is important.

My first response usually is to try to gain more control.  In other words, more power.  When Japhia's disorder becomes so severe she is hospitalized, I google the illness.  I ask the doctors and nurses as many questions as I can think of.  Piece together the information I find.  Identify likely patterns, causes and consequences so I can give advice, suggest next steps, lay out problems to be overcome and mistakes to be corrected.  And ultimately fix it.  That's definitely the first desire: to fix it.  To be the one in and with power.

After that I usually get angry.  I get angry (or 'just frustrated,' as I like to say) at Japhia for being sick, and make her feel like she's done something wrong.  Get mad at pedestrians and other drivers on my way to and from the hospital, for things they do wrong.  Vent my jealousy (or 'righteous indignation,' as I tell myself) at other people who seem to have it all together, and seem to be successful, privileged, fortunate.  Truth is, I get angry.  Because I feel a need to blame someone for the unfairness.

I also start to consume more than usual.  In our society and culture being able to buy, to eat, to use, to own, to consume stuff in any way makes us feel good, important and ... yes, powerful.  So every time I come in or go out of the hospital I buy a coffee and maybe a sourcream plain or a glazed cinnamon roll at the Tim's in the lobby (have you noticed my weight gain?), just because I can and because it makes me feel less powerless.  During one of Japhia's two-week hospitalizations I bought a new stereo and used an afternoon when I said I was going home "to rest", to set it up.  The next day I tried to resurrect and install an old turntable to make the system "complete."  Many nights when I come home from an evening at the hospital, I eat and drink excessively, and binge-watch Netflix ("The Good Place") or listen to music for longer than I admit ("Radio Paradise").  And oh, how telling, those particular choices!

I cherish distractions.  Like work can be at times like this.  Or Jets' hockey.  Or Blue Bombers' football.

And I live for moments of rest.  Like driving through the dark streets of the city on my way home from St. Joe's.  Especially that long, slow, eternally curving stretch of Cootes Drive just past the University and into Dundas.  Troubles and concerns fall off and away into the ditch and into the darkness of Cootes Paradise as I gracefully steer my secure and speedy way home.  A kind of momentary secular sabbath at 90 or 100 km/hr.

And I pray.  Finally.  

Not for miraculous supernatural healing.  God forgive me if I'm wrong, but that kind of prayer feels to me like a return to response number one -- the desire to be in control and have the power to fix it (but this time, with God as my all-powerful helper to do my will) so we don't have to deal with things like bodily disorder, life-change and that whole whack of other things that comes with being human, imperfect, mortal and vulnerable. 

I find myself drawn instead to the kind of prayer that Twelve-Step programs of spiritual recovery talk about -- the very simple and radically open-ended prayer for knowledge of God's will and the willingness to do it, the courage to live into it.  I've no doubt healing of some kind is involved; but the healing of what? And how?

Which makes me wonder, when I think about all the ways we encounter powerlessness in life ...

... if maybe the question is not simply how we deal with powerlessness, as though it's something to be handled, attacked, tamed, wished away and resolved...

... but also how we live with powerlessness as something that's an inescapable, necessary, inevitable, God-blessed part of who we are, of what life is about, and of what drives us with a hard grace towards faith and trust in the journey we are on, as a journey with and into God towards our truest self.

If gratitude is the heart-beat of honest spirituality, do you know spiritual CPR?

I do not doubt gratitude is at the heart of human well-being.  Personal well-being.  And the well-being of the Earth. 

Fear, anger, greed, grief, regret, guilt, anxiety, despair and a host of other negative emotions are all possible, and often reasonable and understandable responses to the events and circumstances of any given day.  All of these feelings, though, when we give them power and let them control our heart and mind, and our relationships and actions, are antithetical to happiness -- both our own happiness and the happiness of others.  

Gratitude, though, if we choose it as our spiritual home, our default mode, and our conscious base to which we always return, is key to our emotional and spiritual well-being, and our ability to live in ways that serve the well-being of others and of the Earth.

I wonder, though, how real gratitude is nurtured and maintained.  The kind of gratitude that is not just a response to good fortune and blessing ("Gee, thanks!  You shouldn't have.  But I'm so glad you did!  I'm really so blessed!), but is a choice to see and to celebrate the constant blessing in and of life itself, no matter what.

We all have heard or read stories of people who live with that kind of gratitude -- the cancer patient who lives with deep and joy-filled thanks for each day, a person who hits bottom and gives honest thanks for the landing, someone living in third-world poverty who at the drop of a hat shares and gives away all they have just for the joy of it.  

I assume that's kind of what gratitude looks like.

I also know it's not always the story of me.  Not what I see every day when I look in the mirror.  More often than is good for me, what I see there are some of those other things.  Yeah, I mean fear, anxiety, insecurity, lack of trust, anger ... do you really need me to name more?

So I wonder, if gratitude is the heart of real human being, of honest spirituality, and of sustained well-being for myself and others around me, what kind of CPR can I perform to kick-start my heart?  

What do you do, if you ever feel a need to live a little more gratefully?  What are some of your ways to revive your heart-beat of deep gratitude?

A (Home) Sense of Sabbath

Earlier this spring I had occasion to visit a nearby Home Sense store twice in a weekend.  On Saturday to make a purchase, and then on Sunday to return it.

We were looking for a shade to match a lamp we bought shadeless years ago at a discount emporium.  We pulled it down from the attic and wanted to use it, so we were scouring stores to find a shade that would "work."  It wasn't easy.  Especially because the only way really to know was to buy one (or more typically a few), bring them home to try them out, and then return them for refund as we continued to find out how incompatible a lamp we had bought.

Saturday when I bought two shades at Home Sense, I was surprised how empty were both the parking lot and the store.  Two or three cars in the lot, counting mine, and three clerks on staff to handle the three customers, counting me, who were meandering around the store.  I wondered how they could stay in business.

Until I returned Sunday on my way home from worship to return the shades.

The parking lot was full.  As was the store.  I couldn't count the number of people in the store.  Not exactly an "innumerable multitude" but a lot of people.  People strolling the aisles, surveying what was on display and available for purchase to meet any imaginable household need or whim.  Some with shopping carts already brimming with treasures found.  Others with hand baskets similarly laden.  Others still just looking.  And you could tell that for many, just looking would be enough.

It was reassuring for all, I think, just to be able to see the bounty that was available.  The needs that could be met.  The things that could be purchased at reasonable cost to make their house a home, and their home a haven.  Or a heaven.

The tip-off for me about what was going on here came as I stood in line in the cordoned-off check-out area, waiting to return my purchase and be given my refund.  It was a long line.  Even though all cash counters were staffed, it was also slow because of the number of things people were buying, the nature of some of the transactions, and the amount of easy conversation being exchanged between cashiers and customers.  And ... in spite of all this, in the face of all this, no one seemed impatient at all!

All seemed content and happy.  All seemed at ease and at rest.  Just grateful to be in a place like this, and be able to rest in the reassurance of abundance available from somewhere beyond themselves, but for themselves when needed or wanted.

In other words, it was an experience of sabbath rest.  And something in the hearts and spirits and bodies of those people in Home Sense that day knew it, even if they may not have known or accepted that language for it.  

No wonder they came here on a Sunday.  Perhaps human beings long for sabbath rest, even when we resist or feel we have moved beyond "religion" and "church" and boring, pointless things like "worship."  Perhaps even after we leave behind our more traditional sabbath practice of weekly worship, we still need something like it.  Something to reassure us that life is still good, that we are taken care of, that abundance is true, that what we most need is given for us, and that we can take home and take to heart what we need.  Even if it is just a new set of towels and linens, or that delightful ornament, or a new magic blender.  Or that one perfect lamp shade.

I just wonder, though.  

Lately I have also been spending a little more time than usual at the bedsides of people living with cancer and in the living rooms of people whose life partner has died.  And I wonder what Home Sense might have to offer to them?

Vacationing (or praying?) at the Metro

A month or so ago as Japhia and I began our vacation (now over for a few days already), I felt anxious about it.  We had one week planned at a cottage which we knew would be thoroughly restful and vacation-ish.  But I worried about the rest of the time, the three weeks in total we would have at home.

My anxieties were heightened by an article I read about that same time about how to make stay-cations into real va-cations.  It talked about things like finding a theme, planning outings you normally don't take time for, not letting the time just slip by, having an intentional and refreshing rhythm to the days rather than random-ness, and so on.

It sounded like a bit of work, but the kind of preparatory work that would pay off in vacation benefits and keep me from returning to work wondering where the vacation went and why don't I feel like I've even been away.  Not unlike the kind of prep work we accept as necessary to a good, refreshing and sustaining prayer life.  Because vacation time and prayer time have at least this much in common -- that both are a sustained step away from normal, active life that are meant to help us return to normal life refreshed, renewed and deepened in our appreciation of the world and our life within it.

I was worried, though, because we didn't have a stay-cation theme (and I didn't think Japhia was too interested in finding one).  Nor apart from the week at the cottage did I expect we would take any uncommon outings.  I worried that letting time flow by languidly like the Lazy River that meanders through every water park on the continent, would waste the vacation.  And as the vacation unfolded I wasn't sure that the rhythm we were finding -- of waking whenever, then easing our way through each day with light meals, reading (one book in particular we got entirely wrapped up in is The Last Resort by Toronto-based author Marissa Stapley), and napping would be as refreshing and renewing as I thought I needed.

Silly me.

It was wonderful. 

And one of the more wonderful parts of the whole month away?

It was the week or more at home when every day we would make a little trip together to the Dundas Metro to pick up a few things we wanted for a meal that day, or as treats for grand-kids who were coming over, and how every day we were there -- 5 or 6 days in a row, we would go through Val's cash line.  Not my sister Val, but someone as warm and personable.  

We have been served by Val for years at our Metro. But it wasn't until we ran into her in the Emergency Room at St. Joe's one night a couple of years ago -- she there with her married son and us there with Japhia's gastroparesis, that we really connected.  Since then, even though there are four or five cashiers we really like and look forward to chatting with when we're at the Metro, we now feel a special connection with Val as she seems to with us.

So it was nice when on our vacation, the first day we went to the Metro for a few little things, Val was the cashier whose line was the shortest, and we got to talk vacation stuff with her as she checked through our purchases.  The next day she was there again, and again with the shortest line.  The third day, there again but with one of the longer lines.  No worries, though.  We were on vacation so we took a spot at the end of her line and waited the extra time just to have a few-minutes chat with our friend as we settled up with the store.  And so it went for the whole week, until Val began her own vacation and we knew she would be away from work for a while.

And it's thus that a real stay-cation happened.  That we found a theme -- chatting daily and connecting with Val.  That we did something we normally don't -- went to buy groceries together, in little bits, one day at a time.  That instead of just enduring the time in the check-out line as wasted or dead, we made it a gift.  That we saw our ordinary world with new eyes, and felt a little heart-beat of delight as part of each day that week.

Great vacation.  Refreshing, renewing and deepening.  

We didn't plan it, or give it a lot of thought. 

It was just a matter of being open to, and aware of what and who was there.  And letting ourselves be both grateful for it, and intentional about it.

Kind of like prayer.

Namaste for the way

Vacation is almost over.  I could get used to this.  And as usual I figure it shouldn't be that hard to maintain -- or at least to make room for, this experience of rest, peace and openness to the present moment even when I'm back at work.

I wonder how (maybe even, if) others do it?  Maintain some practice of restful sabbath in their routine, workaday life?

Unlike last year, this year we made it to the cottage.  Thank you, John and Judy for your continuing generosity.  It was a thoroughly peace-ful week.  Japhia calls the place God-kissed, and that means a lot coming from her. 

For me, a great gift of the week was the opportunity to visit the Tisarana Buddhist monastery featured in a recent issue of Broadview (the new incarnation of what used to be The Observer) as one of ten "spiritual road trips" worth taking in Canada this summer.  When I saw it and noticed the monastery was just a little over an hour from Varty Lake -- just a few kilometres south of Perth, and that they welcomed day visitors, I knew I would get there.

Online I learned that Saturdays at 1:30 they host a Public Meditation, described as an hour-and-a-half to two hours that begins with chanting, then 45 minutes of meditation, followed by a talk and a time for Q/A.  So Saturday morning I looked at the maps, wrote down directions to help navigate the backroads I would have to take, checked one last time that Japhia didn't want to go and was okay with me leaving her at the cottage for the better part of the day, thanked her for the lunch she made for me to eat on the way, and I set out.

Twice along the way I lost the route.  The first time I just flat out missed the sign for the road I needed to take.  The second time the roads themselves had been changed from whenever the directions were posted, so a turn I needed to make wasn't where and how I was told it would be.  So twice I drove for a ways in a wrong direction, turned around when I realized it, and asked for help (can you believe it?) from strangers to find the way again.

The first time even after asking I almost decided to go in exactly the opposite direction I was advised.  Even though I was in unfamiliar territory I thought I knew better because -- oh, it pains me to admit this level of Western white bias! -- the man advising me was a Korean convenience store owner who spoke broken English.  The second time -- yeah, you guessed it! -- the advice came from a young, tanned, blond, White man who I listened to readily.  Both knew the territory better than me.  Thankfully I asked for help and, regardless of bias and prejudice, accepted it from both.

And isn't that the way?  

And isn't the way more important in the end than the destination itself?  The choosing of it, the losing of it, and the continual re-finding of it in ways we don't expect, with the help of strangers, over and over again?  And, just as important, knowing peace and gratitude in, in spite of, and because of each present moment of the journey, no matter how we might feel about it?

Which is exactly, of course, something that Buddhist awareness, mindful meditation, and the life of faith are all about.  

As I was reminded of, in the Public Meditation at the monastery which, by the way, I reached with time enough to spare.

Neighbourhood break-ins lead to locked doors. Opened doors lead to ...

The back door is open right now.

The cool gathering damp of the June evening creeps into the kitchen.

From a chair at the table just to the right of the door I look out onto the back deck.  

Two chairs and a small glass table nestle into a corner of the railing that surrounds the upper level of the deck.  

A row of Rose-of-Sharons rises like a wall behind the chairs and the railing, and already is threatening to make a twisted mockery of the chain link fence that separates ours from our neighbours' yard.  A separation now more conceded and softened by the spreading Rose of Sharon wall, than enforced by the symmetric geometric wire of the fence.

And beyond that greening growth between growing friends, at increasing distance stand the taller and rising maples and pines and other trees anonymous to me growing up and covering the escarpment face.

Birds sing their evening songs.  Last chirrups and lilting chants in advance of night that soon shall come with its silences. 

Crickets offer their own sweet endless chorus.  Dogs bark.  Some near; others far off in the slowly darkening distance.  

Such a soothing calming backdrop to my sitting here and writing.  Sitting here and savouring.

Or is all this not backdrop at all?  Is maybe Earth and its seasons and its creatures and its unending daily and nightly play of light and shade and sound and song and silence rising and falling without end really maybe the main show?  The headline act?  Centre stage?  The real thing for which all else is secondary and meant to be only complementary?  And complimentary?

And am I, sitting at a table beside and inside an opened door, a mere passing observer?  A witness quickly passing and surpassed?  Simply grateful for this moment to see and hear and know the glory that is.  That always has been.  That always will be.

Even apart from me.  Continuing even after I close the door.

And (oh, is this the grace?) always willing to welcome me back into awareness the next time and the next time and the next time after that, too, that I open it.

Lookin' for that backward walk

(Ok, it's already Thursday where I am; is it still Wednesday anywhere?)

If only we could live all our life with the clarity that comes at the end.

Last week in the two-part finale to The Big Bang Theory as Sheldon finally reached the end of his quest -- a Nobel Prize in Physics, he also came to an epiphany about what was the real strength and meaning of his life.  Not the singular achievement of greatness and everyone's recognition of his unique superiority; but rather the unwarranted acceptance and tolerance of his friends, and the deep unbreakable bond of love and mutual care that had quietly, persistently grown among them, him included.  Rather than feeling entitled, he knew he was indebted.  Instead of feeling rightfully congratulated, he felt deeply grateful.

A clarity of life worth living into.

A few days before that finale, I heard of the death by suicide, almost exactly a year ago, of Scott Hutchison, founding member, lead singer and primary song-writer of the indie Scottish band Frightened Rabbit.  I liked the band from the first time I heard their music -- archetypically moody, Scottish-depressive, self-deprecating.  I felt especially connected with them after Aaron and I saw them at The Horseshoe Tavern in TO maybe ten years ago when they were touring their disc, "The Midnight Organ Fight."

I was not surprised to hear Scott struggled with depression and a sense of inner bleakness.  The news of his death shocked and deeply saddened me, but didn't surprise me.  What most caught me, though, was the two texts or tweets he sent his bandmates and other friends on his way from the pub the night of his death:  "Be so good to everyone you love.  It’s not a given.  I’m so annoyed that it’s not.  I didn’t live by that standard and it kills me.  Please, hug your loved ones" and "I’m away now. Thanks."

A clarity of life worth living into.

If only we could live backward from what we know at the end.  

Or, I wonder, do we really already kind of know what we will know then, and sometimes just don't (or can't) find the courage (or whatever it is) we need to be able to live into it?

Scott, RIP.