Terry Hershey

In This Issue:

• A gentle plea for chaos
• Read, Watch, Share
• Featured Product
• Sabbath Moment
• Poems
• Words to live by

FEATURE ARTICLE
by Terry Hershey

A gentle plea for chaos
 
There are no unsacred moments.

God is spreading grace around in the world like a five-year old spreads peanut butter, thickly, sloppily, eagerly, and if we are in the back shed trying to stay clean, we won't even get a taste.
Donna Shaper

Don’t we all want to make sense? Jewish wisdom sanctions the yearning, even ennobles it, at the same time teaching there is no meaning: only a kind of dance between meaning and ambiguity; understanding and misunderstanding; faith and doubt; essence and no-essence. And the more joyous the dance, the richer and more holy the life.
Irwin Kula

What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe.
Thomas Merton

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they do not toil, they do not spin: And yet I say to you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Jesus

I do not believe that the meaning of life is a puzzle to be solved. Life is. I am. Anything might happen. And I believe I may invest my life with meaning. The uncertainty is a blessing in disguise. If I were absolutely certain about all things, I would spend my life in anxious misery, fearful of losing my way. But since everything and anything are always possible, the miraculous is always nearby and wonders shall never, ever cease. I believe that human freedom may be stated in one term, which serves as a little brick propping open the door of existence: Maybe.
Robert Fulghum

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi

Last month, I spent time on the island of Oahu. Oahu, Hawaii. I was working. Cross my heart.

My morning ritual: Drive the Kamehameha highway. It’s my all-time favorite scenic route to a Starbucks. The Koolau Mountains are distinct, vertical accordion folds mantled in tropical green. Early in the morning, the moon lingers just about the crest, as if resting there, some kind of benediction on the day.

http://www.terragalleria.com

My evening ritual: adjourning to write, at a restaurant with tables looking out onto the southwestern horizon and Pacific Ocean. One night, a man sitting at a table nearby asked what I was writing. I told him, “It’s part of a book.”

“What’s your book about?”

“I don’t know yet,” I told him.

“That might not be easy to sell,” he offered.

I tell myself I know why he is eating alone.

“Okay,” I conceded. “Let’s say it’s about life.”

“That really narrows it down.” He said, probably assuming I had been in the sun too long.

“Fair enough,” I admitted. “But check this out.” I pointed toward the horizon. The sun slid (more like melted) into the Pacific Ocean less than ten minutes before. The western sky is still lit, as if backlit. The heavens are filled with a literal symphony of clouds. I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like this before, not even in a photo. I thought I knew clouds. But I count seven or eight different types in the panorama, yet know the names of only three. In the foreground, there are clouds made of some delicate fabric, like chenille perhaps, or something similar to the dollies on the back of my grandmother’s sofa. Off to northwest, clouds form, bulky billows of ash grey, as if residue from the collapse of great buildings. From my table I see cloud shapes and figures, a pirate ship, a UFO, and a ballerina. Beyond the ash grey cloud to the north, the sky is pewter blue. As we sip our drinks and watch, the formations alter and dance and evolve, an unfolding drama, better than “must see” TV. Behind us we hear the music from an outdoor nightspot.

“That sky is something,” my new friend says, after five minutes.

“Yep,” I tell him. “It is. And that’s what I write about.”

“You write about clouds?”

“No, but about the music they make. That the day–this day–in its unsettling, quixotic, sensory ordinariness, still has the power to astonish us.”

http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/gallery/
http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/

I have a friend in Seattle who loves clouds. She tells me that they are a good metaphor, because clouds let us get lost in something bigger than our selves.

A man stood before the casket of his Father, delivering the eulogy. “My dad was famous for never finishing anything,” he said to those in chapel that day. “My dad had the reputation, the guy who started projects and never finished a single one. When I was young, it embarrassed me, especially when people talked about my dad. But now, I know why he never finished anything. His five kids, including me, used to bug him all the time. Come see this, come do this. And every time, he stopped what he was doing, to spend time with us.”

It all comes back to how we measure life, and how we find meaning.

I just finished two books with dueling premises. The first, A Perfect Mess. It reminded me that neatness doesn’t guarantee sanity, health or effectiveness. The second book, It’s All Too Much, is a guide to organizing your life and your stuff. I’ll give him credit when he says that it’s not just about the stuff, but about the life we value. I just didn’t know what to think when he asked me to make February “shredding mania” month. It’s not that I’m against lists. I made a list once. I just don’t remember where I put it.

Some people have a visceral response to the word chaos. It feels too synonymous with anarchy. Or mess. Or filth. Lord knows a fair number of people could benefit from a tidying guru. Or a least a new Shop-vac. And it wouldn’t hurt if we had a national “Throw Stuff Out Day.” However, the premise that it’s connected to my value has me scratching my head. Suze Orman goes so far as to write, “When you have no filing system for your important documents, when your car looks like a garbage can, when your closets are filled with junk and clutter, I’m sorry, but you cannot possibility be a wealthy woman.” Okay then. . .Far be it from me to argue with someone whose net worth exceeds mine by 1000 percent. Even so. On this one, she’s way off base. Appearance and / or organizational systems do not create wealth. They create money, maybe, (sometimes a lot), but never wealth. It might help if we could divorce those two words. (With Zach I watched the documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, about a man with no money at all, but who lived a rich, passionate and full life as a bohemian St. Francis to a flock of wild birds. http://www.wildparrotsfilm.com/)

For whatever reason, closure is very important to us. We crave answers. We are wired for containment. And solutions. And if we don’t have answers, we enjoy spending whatever time we do have trying to figure stuff out. Or at least Googling the alternatives. I’ll grant you that the gratification from tidying up, is real. Visceral even.

However.

Here’s the odd part. Without knowing it, we appreciate and find fulfillment from the fruits of uncertainty (borrowing from the insights of Rabbi Irwin Kula, Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life).

Insight, serendipity, wonder, love, surprise, joy, delight and discovery all come from places where we are not sure, where we did not know, where we did not have answers.

And yet. We never ask to go there. We don’t go to our therapist or friend or pastor or rabbi seeking ways to be less certain, or asking them to join us to raise a glass in celebration about our ambiguity.

There is the story of the troubled and distressed congregation. They sent for a famous Rabbi. They were certain the Rabbi would help them see the light. That he would provide wisdom, clarity and solutions to the problems that plagued them.

The Rabbi arrived. The people gathered. No seat was empty. They were eager to hear what the Rabbi had to say.

He stood, for some time, silent. And then. He began to dance. Slowly, deliberately. . .and sang and danced and danced. Soon members of the congregation joined him. And after some time, the entire congregation danced around the sanctuary. They danced for two hours.

The Rabbi asked them to sit. And said to them, “I hope I have furnished the answers to all the questions you were asking.”

Which brings us back to the sacrament of the blessed present.
I know this for certain:
We forfeit this moment while looking for answers.
We forfeit presence while looking for perfection.
We forfeit peace when requiring closure.

Or as Paul Tournier said, “We can spend our entire lives indefinitely preparing to live.”

There is this story from Scottish minister George MacLeod. “I was busy. I was writing letters. I was self-important. My little daughter was going to school that morning for the first time. She came into my room, in her first school uniform. I said, ‘Your tie is not quite straight.’ Then I looked at her eyes. She wasn’t crying. She was unutterably disappointed. She hadn’t come for tie inspection. She had come to show she was going to school for the first time. A terrific day, and I had let her down. What is that bit in the Gospel? Whosoever shall offend against one of these little ones. . .better for a millstone to be tied around his neck and that he be cast into the sea. I ran downstairs. I said all the right things. I crossed the road with her. I went to school with her. I had missed the moment, missed the point. I will always see these eyes. Sometimes when I am very busy. Sometimes when I am writing letters. I am forgiven, but I won’t forget.”

And I think about all the ways I am not present. And I think about the resolutions I have made, in order to will myself to be present. Here we go again. As if this can be fixed, or contained. As if all I needed were the correct answers. These are the moments I know, without a doubt, I need to back to my restaurant table, and watch the clouds. Or, in the words of Jesus, chill out, and consider the lilies of the field.

Because whatever my life is about, it is not a race or a contest or a beauty pageant.

Two weeks ago, I spent an afternoon in Sebastopol, California. There is a central park in this idyllic northern California town. The old health food store is now a WholeFoods, but little else has changed since I visited seven years before. There are a few people playing hacky sack, others talking or reading or napping doing their best to keep the park benches moored. Dreadlocks, the old-hippie factor, is the hairstyle de jour. I feel, well. . .a whole lot older. I am reading the North Bay Bohemian Newspaper, Best of the North Bay issue. There is the expected: best restaurants, best telephone poles for public service, best place to watch the sunset, best acupuncturist. But this one caught my eye: Best place for mindless chatter. Now we’re talking.

Now, I can add another: Best place to watch the clouds.

(Some people take exception to my talk about the art of doing nothing. They don’t like the idea of “wasting time.” Okay. Well, here’s the difference between wasting time and just being bored. Wasting time really is intentional. You are, literally, spending time. On clouds, or lilies, or naps, or silence, or prayer, or coffee with friends, or caring for a flock of birds, or watching your cats fight it out for the best spot on the couch. Which means that you are not mortgaging your time or your life on any old distraction merely out of boredom.)

After church last Sunday, a woman said to me (after I preached about this topic). “Thank you. I’ve been wanting to have a conversation with a family member for many years. But I’ve been waiting until I had the right words. I wanted it to be perfect. Now I’m going to talk with them. Your sermon gave me permission.”

Indeed. The sacrament of the blessed present. This present. This not-yet-perfect present. This not-yet-resolved present. This still-full-of-ambiguity-and-wondrous-possibility present.

I had something else I wanted to say, but I’ve forgotten already. I’ll tell you this though; You should see the clouds earlier tonight. They were layered and looked like Holy Week vestments. They were suffused with a deep tint of violet. That’s very unusual for here. But then, the last two days have been unusual. We can smell spring now. A mixture of earth, leaves and hope. I pulled my truck over to the side of the road. Watching the clouds was more important than wherever else I had to do.