Morning in South Carolina

Morning in South Carolina, strangely unfamiliar,
Water glistening on leaves, skin slick with sweat.
Heavy smells in the air, dank and claustrophobic,
Old world beauty, canopied,
Verdant, lush, enveloping, closing me in.

Sarah's Folly

How often do we choose to meet our needs and desires through illegitimate means? I'm thinking of the story of Abraham and Sarah in the book of Genesis in the Jewish scriptures (Gen. 16). It is a helpful metaphor, I believe. Sarah and Abraham had been promised a son, but many years, even decades, had passed without a pregnancy. Sarah's desires and legitimate need of having a child to satisfy her longings and avoid disgrace remained unmet. In her frustration and even agony, Sara decided to give her maid to Abraham that she might have a son via a surrogate. In other words, Sarah wanted to help God fulfill his promise by coming up with her own plan. Abraham obliged her scheme, and Ishmael was born. However, God made it clear that He had another plan to be fulfilled through a son birthed by Sarah years later.

Decades ago, God used this story in my life, bringing it to my mind in a very clear way when I was contemplating taking matters into my own hands to fulfill what I believed was a call of God upon my life. It was almost as though an audible voice broke into my psyche reminding me to wait. For me, that waiting was another eight years. There were many times during that long interim that I despaired of ever seeing the fulfillment of that calling, but I could not deny the clear admonition to stay clear of manipulation. I can look back in confidence believing that what happened with regard to that situation was divinely ordained, albeit filled with challenges, and it has remained a lesson for me for my response to other things. I don't know what would have happened if I had not listened to that voice in my head, if I had manufactured a solution on my own, but I do know that what did eventually happen would have been lost. Only God knows what the ultimate consequences would have been had I moved forward on my own. 

I do know some of the pain and loss that occurred as a result of Sarah's management of her situation. As I think about the consequences of Sarah's action in the ancient text, I am acutely aware of the trauma and pain to multitudes of people that it caused. At the micro level, Hagar and Ishmael, not to mention Abraham, suffered intense loss and hardship as a result; at the macro level, alienation between whole people groups developed that continue to this day, all a result of one desperate decision. It's a story worth mulling over when faced with situations of angst, of interminable waiting, of seeming helplessness. The temptation is to forge ahead with whatever would appear to meet the need, provide an answer, or furnish relief. It's also easy to rationalize that kind of response to desperation. It can make so much sense. Unfortunately, when in that type of situation, decisions based on pain response are many times detrimental or even disastrous in the long run, and they pull us out of faithful dependence on the presence and love of God. Many times the consequences are far reaching. I don't doubt that this is a ubiquitous temptation that when indulged causes great suffering and robs us of the joy of seeing God ultimately work beauty in our lives.

Are we willing to wait for "Isaac"? Where are the places in our lives that we are seeking to speed things along, to answer our own prayers, to take matters into our own hands regardless of the consequences? God give us patient endurance to faithfully wait for his promise.

Stripped

http://www.dbonhoeffer.org/who-was-db2.htm

Weeping Heart

    Heart torn                  Two coasts
Gut wrench                   Slow bleed
    Of my                     Weeping heart
Always                        Something to grieve

Emotions unzipped      Thoughts perplexed
      Darlings misunderstand
               Voyage to the desert
Feel abandoned      Discarded by me

  Caught in the middle
                          Ripped in two
Forever my fate       Repercussion of love

Surviving the "not-knowingness of things"

In his new podcast, Another Name For Everything Fr. Richard Rohr attests that "the universal paths of transformation are great love and great suffering. The practice of meditation, contemplation, the prayer of quiet are to maintain and preserve what you momentarily learned or experienced in moments of great love and moments of great suffering." I am aware that the work of the Holy Trinity over the past few years has been leading me to a more robust and deeply meaningful spirituality and life with God and has undoubtedly prepared me to face the devastating losses and terrifying unknowns that define a time of "not-knowingness of things" that we have been living in for the past six months. It has and continues to be a time of great love and great suffering, even if the latter seems more pronounced at times. Indeed, I might view this time as simply an answer to my prayers, since I have for years uttered the breath prayer of "change my heart and renew my mind." What is change and renewal if not transformation, hence, the request for and requirement of suffering and love? I have read about and begun to incorporate several spiritual practices into my life, such as, lectio divina, centering prayer, breath prayer, the prayer of examen, the daily office, seeing a luminous world (Teilhard de Chardin), which have "saved" me from a crumbling world. Even so, I still need help processing thoughts and emotions that are negative, centered in fear and disappointment. It took words from a friend to give me a tangible strategy.

Our conversation began with disclosure of some of my recent thoughts, including thoughts about a recent dream. I know that I dream at night, but it is rare when I remember a dream. The only dream that I can remember lately is one in which I am searching in futility for my clothes, clearly a mirroring of the disconnected, inchoate, unstructured life we are living during this season of limbo. The anxiety of not being able to find my clothes, a metaphor for the anxiety of looming financial ruin, absence of purpose or permanent place, vacuous space stretched out in front of us, hovers in the corners of my mind. Similarly, in my day dreams, I see mastiffs of anxiety chasing me and biting at my heels. Sheer force of will keeps me grabbing for my collected spiritual practices in hopes that they will keep me grounded and keep my head above the waters of depression that fear and uncertainty can produce. I hear myself shouting for those dogs to get back as my arm waves them away. This can be exhausting and evidently counterproductive, as my friend, Karen Mahler, who is highly trained and experienced in pastoral care and spiritual direction, explained. This type of response actually empowers the negative thoughts, so I asked her for a better practice, a healthier way of dealing with the relentless fears that understandably accompany times of trouble and confusion.

What Karen gave me is a way to use my imagination in a positive way, rather than the negative conjuring of the hounds biting my heels. It requires mindfulness and the discernment of thoughts as a spiritual practice that has the power to free the soul from negativity and despair. The practice includes the following steps:

• Mindfully acknowledge the negative thought (e. g. a fear or an angry/ungrateful/selfish thought, etc.) and confess it aloud.
• Picture the negative thought as a leaf and release it into a flowing stream, watching it drop to the water and be carried away.
• Watch the leaf until it flows around a bend in the stream, out of sight.
• Consciously receive God's love and replace the thought with thanksgiving for something specific. (Consider Jesus' parable about the house swept clean but left unoccupied, Mt. 12:43-45.)
• Ask God to continue to change my heart and renew my mind.
• Slowly breathe in and out, mindful of the loving gaze of the Divine Presence.

And so, I am practicing. This way of thinking and responding to damaging thoughts works in conjunction with other spiritual practices, like the prayer of examen which invites the Holy One to comb through my day sifting out times when I turned from the Loving Face. As the Spirit reveals thoughts or actions that are inconsistent with a life of love and a sound mind, I have the opportunity to "clean house" being careful to replace each harmful thought with thanksgiving and love. 

Thanks to the following:

Another Name For Everything, "Episode 3, From the Beginning," Fr. Richard Rohr (a conversation about his new book by the same title)

See also, The Naked Now, Richard Rohr.

Image from--https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Urban_stream_in_park.jpg

Title inspired by--https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/28220/a-patient-lent?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dotMagis+%28dotMagis+-+Ignatian+Spirituality%29

Karen Mahler, Birmingham, AL

closed doors and an empty bowl

It's been a week-- a week since we said a gut-wrenching goodbye to our dear little Maggie. The uncertainty of our upcoming transition to uprootedness, her anxiety, increasing feebleness, and especially her struggle to breathe because of a collapsing trachea demanded a humane response. We could not add to her suffering. Our vet assured us that it was the last gift we could give her, a peaceful death surrounded by those who loved her. It was awful and it was beautiful.

The memory of accompanying her to the end is seared in our minds. I can still feel her body grow heavy in my arms as she experienced the effects of the first injection to relax her. I can feel the tickle of the tears coursing down my nose, tears Carl had to wipe because my arms held our girl. I hear the sobs of Jenny Kate and my own voice as I chokingly speak love and assurance to that precious dog soul. I see her loss of control of her tongue and the slight twitching of her head until her body grew quiet, and I placed her gently on the table. I see the grief on Carl's face.

A collapsing vein extended the second step in the process, which was agonizing, but a dominant memory is the voice of Dr. Croy speaking comforting words as she pushed the syringe and the lethal liquid did its job, "You'll be chasing squirrels, "she whispered, "and we'll follow you, but not for awhile." And then she was gone, her body still. The stethoscope confirmed what we knew.

Her suffering was over, but not ours. We continue to look for her, to miss the familiar interactions of fourteen years, to remember her licking our faces, the frolicking and dancing of her youth, her howling at the piano, the uncontrolled excitement when meeting another dog, her obsession with people food, the comfort and undying love she gave us from the very beginning even to the end when she had little energy or tolerance for daily activity.

It's been a week, and I just saw something I wrote weeks ago but never published. Closed doors and empty bowls--

She doesn't like closed doors or an empty bowl.

Maggie has become a little odd in her old age. She seems intent on making sure she has food to eat, ravenously devouring any people food she can manage to acquire and insisting that her bowl has dog food in it even if she doesn't want to eat it. We're all getting soft in our indulgence of her cravings.

Another idiosyncrasy she has developed is an anxiety about closed doors. She wants to ensure that she has access to all the "safe places" in the house. She has conditioned us to leave every door open, at least the ones that she knows go somewhere, because of her incessant scratching if she finds one closed. She even scratches on the exterior door in the kitchen --sometimes to alert us to her empty bowl that sits beside it and sometimes to assure herself that she could get out if she needed to.

How much am I like this at some level? I am really seeking the comfort of open doors and full bowls. I'm finding it a daily battle to fight the anxiety that accompanies a situation that seems to have no solution, no relief. It is a difficult thing to look at closed doors and think that there is no safe place or no way out. I desperately want to "scratch" at the doors and find it a thing of discipline to sit in patient trust. And even though I am blessed with all manner of daily bread, I still long for empty bowls to be filled.

Today I saw the connection between me and Maggie. Maggie always had a joyful spirit,  a bounce in her step--laughing through the days with eagerness to please. In her youth, she would bound to our side, finding joy in every moment, filled with love, excited about life,  confident in being loved. She thought that everyone loved her and was an exuberant,  faithful, white ball of fluff that leapt into our hearts, therapy for battle-worn souls so many years ago. However, she struggles now, fighting anxiety that sometimes overwhelms her, sleeping most of the time, and waking us up too early in the morning, but she is still giving to me in this sacramental picture. She reminds me that though she may not realize it, her anxiety is not rooted in reality. In reality, she is loved, protected, and provided for. She has all that she needs.  Even the thunder can not harm her,  regardless of how loud it cracks. There is no reason to seek the shelter behind a closed door. Her food source is abundant, new every morning.

And so it is with me, regardless of how scary or uncomfortable it feels.

The little container

Moving again. Another painful purging of possessions and loss of structure and direction--but that's for another post. 

I was cleaning out the long closet in Carl's office dubbed, "The Gallery," because of all the wall hangings opposite the wall of bookshelves. A few storage containers had found their home for the past four years on the floor of this room. Who knows why they landed here instead of the high shelf in the garage. Most of these containers were large, but one small plastic container kept the large ones company. I had dragged this little container around the East Coast for more than three decades, carrying Stephanie's clothes everywhere I sojourned. What would I do now? I was in a "throw away" mood. In previous moves I had not questioned this box, hadn't opened it since I had laid those clothes to rest 35 years ago. However, the circumstances of this move demanded practicality, and I was on the lookout for anything I could release. So I opened the box...I held one little outfit in my hand and emotion rushed like a torrent. How could the feelings still be so strong? Maybe it was the trough of loss we had been in for two months, but I could almost feel that tiny body in my hands. Too much.

I replaced that little outfit in the little container and closed the lid. I taped it and labeled it, Stephanie's clothes. I don't know when I will give up that little plastic container, but it won't be this move.