Pockets Full of Herring

October 26, 2009

God is not attained by a process of addition to anything in the soul, but by a process of subtraction. Meister Eckhart

Wherever you go, go with all your heart. Confucius

The Norwegian royalty invited Albert Schweitzer to a banquet in his honor, after he had won the Nobel Prize for Peace. A plate of herring was placed before him--a food he could not stomach. He did not want to appear impolite by refusing it, so when the Queen turned away for a moment, he quickly put the herring in the pocket of his jacket. "You certainly ate the herring fast," commented the queen with a funny smile. "Would you like some more?"

I supposed his answered depended upon how many more pockets he had. Schweitzer had not wished to offend, but his solution--filling his pockets with herring--only exacerbated the problem.

I laugh when I read the story. But I get it. Carrying the weight from addition: choices that I have made out of fear about my image and what "they" think.

There are two types of addition. One has to do with stuff and busyness. This is all too familiar. Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in Christian Century, "Some of us have made an idol of exhaustion. The only time we know we have done enough is when we are running on empty, and when the ones we love most are the ones we see least. When we lie down to sleep at night, we offer our full appointment calendars to God in lieu of prayer."

The other kind of addition, which Schweitzer experienced, is more insidious. It is carrying the persona (whatever we need to do or say) to let everyone around us know that all is well, whether it is or not.

And the next thing I know, I say yes, when I mean no.
And I project an image of strength, when deep down inside something is shaking.
And I ask what I am supposed to feel, afraid to see my own neediness.
And in the end, I schlep herring, as a way of avoiding conflict or contradictions.
This is all the more unnerving given the fact that I assumed I learned this lesson long ago, only to find that there are always more pockets to fill.

Of what are we afraid? Lord only knows. I suppose it has something to do the crazy notion that life is to be managed and controlled. For one reason or another, we sense our life going "off the rails." And we kick into our "functional" mode. It tells us life should operate like an efficient machine (if only we had the right information, skill, faith. . .or answer to the queen's question).

I wrestled with this quandary this week, hanging out with a friend in Texas (where I was doing a couple of church seminars), and we laughed at our lunacy, drank some fine wine, ate a pan full of homemade "Lord-have-mercy-this-is-sinful-good-chocolate-brownie," and howled at the moon. (Did you see the moon this week? Just a crescent, hanging in a crystal clear ink-black sky, like a languid comma, waiting for the right word.) These dances under the moonlight are all well and good until we give ourselves that reality check. You know, the quiz requiring justification for who we are pretending not to be, and the energy it requires to maintain that image.

But what if the present moment is to be entered into, and embraced, before it is treated as a problem to be solved?

What if life is not a test, but a conduit for healing and grace and reconciliation and community?

What if, instead of maintaining an image (you know, bravely ignoring or pushing past the discomfort and guilt), we find in the depths of these maddening and contradictory experiences the heart of mercy and compassion that fuels our life?

I don't know if you put any herring in your pocket this week. But I had a couple of experiences that gave me pause. And extreme emotions call for extreme measures. So Saturday night it was blackberry cobbler at the Loco Coyote restaurant outside of Glen Rose, Texas. (Here in Texas they say that some food is so good, "it'll make you slap your mama." I don't understand Texan, but I guess that's a compliment.)

You drive forever to get to the Loco Coyote, a long ways past the sign that says "this is already the middle of nowhere," and you forget trying to balance the mental books for the week. And you listen to country music, and chew the fat with your friends, and eat catfish and onion rings, and then savor every drop of the cobbler-mountain from heaven, with no need to fill your pockets with posturing or regret, and drive back to the city content, while the dusk clouds settle and layer near the horizon line in shades of amethyst and lavender.

Poems / Prayers

I stood there taking in the sheen on the crow's beaks,
the heaving of the horse,
the sire and fall of my father's voice,
the breeze driving clouds and tousling my hair,
and the aroma of freshly turned soil as of something right our of the oven.
These sensations went deep into me,
along with the shapes and textures of skin, shell,
scales, feathers, leaves, bark and fur.
They were the first alphabet I learned, before letters of words.
I still don't have words to say what attracted me to the life of woods and fields,
except to call it the holy shimmer at the heart of things.
Scott Russell Sanders

Our gracious and loving God,
we thank you that you have been touching our lives: illuminating us; opening us at deep levels of our being; stretching us at points of our narrowness; confronting us where we are distorted; challenging us to become the word you speak us forth to be; but in every way working in all for your good purposes in our lives.
Amen.
Robert Mulholland Jr.

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