Not Yet
Spirituality is the ability to live with
ambiguity. Ray Anderson
I don't really know where I'm going. The
road is unfolding in wonderful, challenging,
and unexpected ways. Rabbi Alan
Lurie
And love is not the easy thing. . .The only
baggage you can bring. . .Is all that you
can't leave behind. You're packing a
suitcase for a place none of us has been. A
place that has to be believed to be seen.
U2, Walk On
"Seriously," he continues. "I'm on the first day of a week of retreat and solitude. At the moment I'm sitting on a beach. It's unbelievably beautiful. And I'm only 3 feet from pelicans. Real pelicans. They are incredible. Just standing there. And yet, in the middle of all the beauty, all I want to do is check my email, surf the net or call someone. How long does it take to get over this?"
"A week," I tell him.
"A week?" his disappointment is undisguised and unmitigated.
'A week' is apparently the wrong answer.
"Okay," I concede, "For you, maybe a couple days."
And I imagine the pelicans talking. "Nice day," says one.
"Yep," says another, "but what's up with the stressed-out-middle-aged guy?"
The THIS my friend speaks of, Pascal alluded to several hundred years ago. It's not new. Pascal wrote, "By means of a diversion we can avoid our own company 24 hours a day."
And it's not just diversion. It's a kind of itch. A relentless hankering, and pursuit of something always elusive.
As if life is always just beyond where we are NOW.
Alfred E Neuman nailed it when he said, "Most of us don't know what we want in life, but we're sure we haven't got it."
Jackson Browne talked about this "pursuit." He wrote in an early song about "the first time I went on my own, when the roads were as many as the places I had dreamed of, and my friends and I were one." Yet in a later song called "Running on Empty," he concludes, "I look around for the friends that I used to turn to, to pull me through; looking into their eyes, I see them running, too."
I recognize that even knowing about the running and the distractions. . .even so, I live with an expectation that life should be a certain way.
I'm all for living the present moment.
Just not this one.
So we've got ourselves into quite a little pickle.
We assume life requires arrival.
Like four-year old children on any family trip, "Are we there yet?"
Therefore, disruptions and uncertainty derail us.
We worry. What if, what we are looking for is not here?
And inside I rage against. . .
--my fragile nature and inelegant humanity,
--my inability to savor the ordinary moments,
--my feeling "at the mercy of" my circumstances,
--my not achieving wholeness.
So here's the deal: we need to change the conversation.
Sometime this week, in the middle of a meeting or discussion say, "Everybody stop. This is it. Right now. This is the moment we've all been waiting for. Amazing eh?"
People will look at you funny (or assume you are Canadian), and measure you for a white jacket.
But that's not a problem. When you are a little 'round the bend, you know you look good in white, even after Labor Day.
In the 1984 film Tender Mercies, Robert Duvall plays Mac Sledge, a down-on-his-luck country songwriter who battles the bottle. He fights back with the help of a Rosa Lee, young widow who offers him room and board at her roadside Texas motel in exchange for handyman help. Grace and Mercy find a toehold in Mac's life, and eventually both Mac and the widow's young boy, Sonny, make the decision to be baptized. Driving home after the baptism, Sonny says to Mac: "Well, we done it Mac, we was baptized."
Peering into the truck's rearview mirror, Sonny studies himself for a moment. "Everybody said I'd feel like a changed person. Do you feel like a changed person?"
"Not yet," replies Mac.
"You don't look any different, Mac. Do you think I look any different?"
"Not yet," answers Mac.
The truck is filled with their laughter. Something has happened, something wonderful, something life-changing, even though they're not sure what or how.
Not yet.
But that's okay.
Life is not about where we arrive, it is about the direction we are going.
The question to us: Can we live with that tension?
Can we live in the not yet, and still embrace the moment?
Can we give up our need to arrive, and savor the journey (including the uncertainty) without knowing the yet to come?
I am out on my patio tonight. I have an early flight tomorrow. But I want sit here awhile, because I love late-summer-dusk-light. And I see that my garden is not where I expected it to be. I had big plans this summer. But life interfered.
My plans don't seem to matter to the Austin Roses, their second bloom extravagant and sumptuous, the canes bent, mingling with the hips of Rosa Rugosa, a work of art beyond my wildest dreams.
Life is what happens when we are making other plans. John Lennon
It has been the interruptions to my everyday life that have most revealed to me the divine mystery of which I am a part. All of these interruptions presented themselves as opportunities; invited me to look in a new way at my identity before God. Each interruption took something away from me; each interruption offered something new. Henri Nouwen
The first rule is simply this:
Live this life and do whatever is done, in a spirit of thanksgiving.
Abandon attempts to achieve security, they are futile,
Give up the search for wealth, it is demeaning,
Quit the search for salvation it is selfish,
And come to comfortable rest in the certainty
That those who participate in this life
With an attitude of thanksgiving will receive its full promise.
John McQuiston, Always we begin again: The Benedictine Way of living
Whatever happens to me in life,
I must believe that somewhere,
In the mess or madness of it all
There is a sacred potential-
A possibility for wondrous redemption
In the embracing of all that is.
Edwina Gateley, A Mystical Heart
God,
To live content with small means,
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion,
to be worthy, not respectable,
and wealthy, not rich,
to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly,
to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart,
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely,
await occasions, hurry never,
in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common, this is to be my symphony.
Amen.
William Ellery Channing (1780-1842)
Wings Of A Snow White Dove ~ Song sung by Ferlin Husky, featured on Tender Mercies
youtube.wingsofadove
Professional photographer Jim Crotty presents "Simple Gifts," set to the classic Shaker traditional performed by Yo-Yo Ma and Alison Krauss, representing spring nature and landscape photographs tak... youtube.simplegifts
FAVORITES from last week:
New pictures of Terry's garden.
(There will be new pictures to come. Look for updates in future Sabbath Moments.)
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Bruce Springsteen sings This Little Light of Mine with The Sessions Band, Live in Dublin (this will make you stand and clap and sing along, even in your office)
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James Horner and Sweet Honey in the Rock with inspirational photographs--"this little light of mine"
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