Terry Hershey

A woman with a very serious case of hives went to a specialist for relief. She had suffered for some time, living in continual pain because the hives covered much of her body. She needed healing, and hoped that the doctor could prescribe a cure. But his diagnosis surprised her. "There is no medicine I can give you," he told her. "You see, your skin is crying because you cannot."

Whether it is conflict or misunderstanding or sadness or grief or worry or self-pity, you cannot bury pain without mortgaging something else to keep it hidden. In the end, we live life "shunting back and forth between our pain and our defenses." (Merle Shain)

From this tug of war, our hives can be a metaphor for any number of things that afflict us. But in the end, we see them as the blemish - our fault line, our shame.

So no matter how you slice it, we feel broken or flawed and susceptible to any advice that serves as spiritual duct tape to our fractured spirit. (After the end of one of my relationships, I had unctuous church members approach me saying, "God gave us this Bible verse to take care of your pain." Which left me feeling not only in pain, but inadequate in my faith, and completely derailed from what I assumed was my best self. And curious as to why God never gave them a Bible verse for their own superciliousness.)

So. There are parts of ourselves that we do not like, or do not understand, or avoid, or bury. There's nothing new about that. Expect that we fuel the fire with an assumption that our priority is to fix the problem. Or at the very least, to look good trying.

Sometimes we hide.
Sometimes we pretend.
Sometimes we get busy being helpful to others.
And sometimes we go to a specialist for advice.
I have nothing against specialists. (I've spent a fair amount of money on a few.) It's just that when we believe the solution is disease-removal, we tinker and trade one infomercial or Bible verse for another, believing that there is beauty only after the fix.

It sounds like the Islamic parable about the man who loses his camel, but spends all of his time looking for the rope.

Here's the deal: Like that young woman, our assumptions about spirituality and health and perfection need to be shattered. Literally. Shattered.

This is not easy. There is a price to be paid for such honesty. And we have to decide how conscious we want to be, and how much truth we can take. Because the doctor's wisdom is a significant paradigm shift: To be well is not just to get rid of disease, but to waken or resurrect a person who has become soul-dead.

There is a memorable scene in the movie JAWS, when the local sheriff is chumming for the great white shark, and it appears--raising out of the water--out of nowhere. The shark is larger and more terrifying than the crew had imagined, and they are dumbstruck. The sheriff says carefully, "We're going to need a bigger boat."

I get it. But in end I want a bigger boat to eliminate the impediments, or irritation.
But what if the bigger boat is about the deeper knowledge St. Francis speaks of: The permission to see God in all things. What if there is beauty deep inside the hives?

I'll be the first to admit that this is not easy to swallow. After all, I was weaned on a God who didn't take to kindly to imperfection.
I relate to Wade Rouse's admission, "It was my time to look God in the eye. I had already spent much of life trying to avoid direct eye contact with God--like I did country dogs that people kept chained to a post all winter--worried that He would see into my soul, see my darkest secrets, know that I was thinking, and want to rip me apart."
'Tis true. The God of my youth is a tough audience, especially when perfection is the goal.

A disciple of Rabbi Menachem-Mendel complained: "I come from Rizhin. There, everything is simple, everything is clear. I prayed and I knew I was praying; I studied and I knew I was studying. Here in Kotzk everything is mixed up, confused; I suffer from it. Please help me so I can pray and study as before. Please help me to stop suffering."
Menachem-Mendel replied: "And who ever told you that God is interested in your studies and your prayers? And what if he preferred your tears and your suffering?"

In contradiction to a world that honors beauty as perfection (see the DOVE YouTube link in inspirations below), we miss the gift of the here and now.
What if spirituality is about here and now, with all of the passions, and the imperfections?
What would it mean to embrace the self - THIS SELF - as imperfect, and ambiguous, and exquisitely human?

What about the hives? No doubt we want them to go away. But here's the paradox.
You cannot change anything until you can love it.
You cannot love anything until you know it.
And you cannot know anything until you are willing to embrace it.

Saturday night Main Street in our island village is closed, filled with milling, costumed islanders, ranging from newborn to some folks who voted for Truman. I saw nuns and devils, and Princess Leia and Snow White, and the walking-dead and a monk moseying arm in arm with a witch. I saw the Easter Bunny (who must have a defective holiday app on his iPhone), and a fair amount of folk dressed as concerned middle-aged parents. My son dressed as a gladiator, and his mother as a Vestal virgin. (It's a long story.)

Maybe people wore the costume to pretend, or maybe to let a part of themselves out. It doesn't matter. We celebrated the moment, on this lucky and rare October night with no rain. And the moon, one day short of being full, smiled down from a clear midnight-blue sky.


"This is one of our fears of quiet; if we stop and listen, we will hear this emptiness. . .But this emptiness has nothing at all to do with our value or our worth. All life has emptiness at its core; it is the quiet hollow reed through which the wind of God blows and makes the music that is our life. Without that emptiness, we are clogged and unable to give birth to music, love, and kindness." Wayne Muller

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Poems / Prayers

The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people.
But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind.
It needs people who live well in their place.
It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane.
And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.
David Orr


God of autumn, the trees are saying good-bye to their green, letting go of what has been. We, too, have our moments of surrender, with all their insecurity and risk. Help us to let go when we need to do so.

God of fallen leaves, lying in coloured patterns on the ground, our lives have their own patterns. As we see the patterns of the ground, our lives have their own patterns. As we see the patterns of our own growth, may we learn from them.

God of misty days and harvest moon nights, there is always the dimension of mystery and wonder in our lives. We always need to recognize your power-filled presence. May we gain strength from this.
Amen.

News and Notes

52 Best Sabbath Moments from the past six years

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BE INSPIRED THIS WEEK

Terry's NEW BLOG. . .do less, live more.
blog.terryhershey.com

From model to billboard in under 60 seconds in this impressive new spot from Dove, to rethink how we see BEAUTY.
youtube.DOVE

Performed by Ma Li (馬麗) and Zhai Xiaowei (翟孝偉). One dancer missing an arm, the other missing a leg, yet creating mesmerizing art.
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Matisyahu sings "One Day"-"sometimes I lay under the moon and thank God I'm breathing then I pray don't take me soon cause I'm here for a reason"
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FAVORITES from last week:
Pictures from Terry's garden.
TerrysGarden

Terry's Power of Pause on Beliefnet.com
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We believe that the easiest way to change people's behavior for the better is by making it fun to do. We call it The fun theory. Do you have an idea that uses fun to change behavior? (This is wonderful.)
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Find Terry in a city near you:
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November 6 - 8, 2009
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Spend a weekend in the desert for RENEWAL
Franciscan Renewal Center
BOOK NOW. ONLY A FEW SPACES LEFT.
Scottsdale, AZ
Becoming More by Doing Less
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It's time to think about Religious Education Congress, Anaheim, CA 2010 -- March 19-21, 2010
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www.recongress.org/2010/speakers
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