Terry Hershey

In This Issue:

• New Rules by Terry Hershey
• Books
• Poems
• Words to live by
• Letters

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New Rules

 

The problems that face us cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.  What we need is a shift in consciousness.
Albert Einstein 

 

It's not easy to become an angel! First, you die. Then you go to heaven, then there's still the flight training to go through. And then you got to agree to wear those angel clothes.
Matthew, age 9

 

As long as we keep running around anxiously trying to affirm ourselves or being affirmed by others, we remain blind to One who has loved us first, dwells in our heart, and has formed our truest self. 
Henri Nouwen

 

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. 
CS Lewis

 

To do two things at once is to do neither. 
Publilius Syrus (Roman Slave – first century BC)

Chinese ideogram for "busy" is "heart" + "death"

"You'd be happy to hear that about 2 weeks ago, someone cancelled a lunch and I found myself with one hour to spare-so, I stopped, got a cup of coffee and actually didn't READ or WRITE or make LISTS or phone calls...I did nothing." My friend writes. "And I don't think I have ever really done nothing that much (sounds like bad English, huh?); it was amazing. I felt so different after it (more relaxed, peaceful). And I finally ‘got' what you say all the time. But this is my big question -- How do you learn to continue to ‘do nothing'?? It's not so easy. I am trying to be intentional about it - but I have not been able to do it everyday since then. Doing nothing might be one of the hardest things we can do. Have you written about that???? Do you schedule an hour a day, like a meeting, to do nothing?
HELP."

Rest and Busyness can be strange bedfellows.

It is no surprise that we resonate with the invitation to peace and relaxation from Sabbath moments.

It is no surprise that we resonate with the challenging (and often onerous) obligation to stay perpetually preoccupied and productive.

Our knee-jerk reaction is also no surprise: "What can we DO?"

You know, at least a book on the Five Easy Steps to Sabbath.

Here's where the conversation about finding balance goes "off the rails": Our Western mentality demands a resolution. Answers. We know that we are stressed under the weight of having too much, doing too much, and feeling pressured by too much information. Our solution? We add something else to our lives.

Friend. . .Are you overloaded? Overextended? Overtaxed? Overwhelmed? Then you need to BUY THIS! (This being the latest "can't miss" technology for balancing my life.) We have ingested the notion that balanced living is about technique or strategy.

(How much more straightforward it would all be, were any spiritual / emotional growth predicament comparable to a stubborn metal-pipe-union. I would simply beat on it with a hammer. And mutter, of course-with language not encouraged by Baptist upbringing. Hammer whacking never fully resolves any of my plumbing dilemmas, but it releases something cathartic in me. My wife rolls her eyes. She is not familiar with the fine art of hammering enlightenment.)

Just a thought. . .It may not be beneficial to do battle with a problem by using the very trappings that created the problem in the first place.

So. New Rule: "The problems that face us cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them. What we need is a shift in consciousness."
Albert Einstein

This goes against the grain, doesn't it?

Is it possible that we change the way we live, not by addition, but by subtraction?

I know. I know. It is not activity, or busyness per se, that is at issue.

When I read the Gospels, Jesus is often busy (occupied, needed, pulled, demanded, pushed). However, Jesus is never. . . . .in. . . . . .a. . . . . . . . . .hurry.

We can learn from the Amish. After the Nickel Mines school shooting-ten Amish children killed in their own schoolhouse-the Amish community began their healing process by forgiving the shooter, and reaching out to the shooter's family (he took his own life, leaving behind his wife and children). The Amish attitude of forgiveness (shared by their entire community) was met with a mixture of awe, amazement and respect. And, in some quarters, skepticism. One op-ed writer wondered if the Amish were using forgiveness to get publicity. (That one made me pause and go Hmmm. Since Amish-publicity-seeker is a bit of an oxymoron, sort of like non-alcoholic-wine, or cheerleading-scholarship. But I digress. . .)

When asked about it, one Amish Grandmother put it this way, "You mean some people actually thought we got together to plan forgiveness?" In other words, their behavior was not a plan, or strategy, or tactic, or ploy, or scheme, or devise. It flowed from who they were, from the inside out.

If it ain't in you, it can't come out of your horn. 
Charlie Parker

It's our Western mindset, inflamed again. We continue to think of spiritual and emotional growth in terms of a payoff, or a cause and effect. If we do this (we reason), we will gain thus and such. Consider Donald Trump's straightforward advertisement, "If you're not a millionaire in 2008, you didn't attend my seminar." In other words, we cannot see ourselves choosing for the sake of the thing (or event or activity or occasion or moment) itself. We need a payoff. The seminar has a benefit only by creating millionaires. We see the same thinking in the rhetorical question we all hear (and ask) after any vacation, "Did you have fun?" It is not enough, apparently, just to go on vacation. While we are there, we need to produce fun.

This is not surprising in a world where we are pressed to be preoccupied with self-improvement. Our thinking goes this way.

One - we resonate with the need to "sit still." To learn Sabbath. To find moments of renewal.

Two - but, while we're at it, we want to learn to do it correctly.

Three - and perhaps, even excel at it.

Four - who knows, some day there might be an Oscar for best Sabbath performance.

Back to my friend's email. To my friend I say this: Cut yourself some slack. It is enough to keep the Sabbath (or, a mini-Sabbath for that matter). Let it be enough. Give yourself permission. . .to sit with, resonate in, find solace from, your time with coffee. Don't evaluate it, wondering whether it is correct or when the next opportunity will occur.

This is another way of saying, let yourself spend the time. Meaning that this is a sensual moment. Because the sacrament of the sacred present always grounds us. Being present means that we are not thinking about the future payoff. So. What do you notice? What do you see? Hear? Smell? Taste?

In other words: I'm not practicing Sabbath moments (or practicing the sacred present) in order to make me a more well-rounded or spiritual or balanced person. Nor will it make me a better Christian.

I'm with the old guy sitting in his rocking chair on his front porch, smoking his pipe. A couple of young people walked by and asked, "So, old man, what are you doing?"
The old man continued to rock. After a good long pause, he answered, "How soon do you need to know?"

  Okay, yes. I will admit that in the strictest sense, there is a payoff.
I can tell you that when I practice a mini-Sabbath, I do relax. My heartbeat slows. I am less at the mercy of the "many things" that crowd my mind and compete for my attention. In the words of a gardener, "When I get bogged down with life, I go into the garden, anchor myself to the earth, and let things wash over me. Gardening is wonderful therapy away from the pressures of life."

However (and this is an important however), let us be careful what we use for the measurement. When I was a kid, I participated (from age 10 to age 17) in preaching contests. (Really. I'm not preaching now, this part is true.) And yes, I won them all. I was presented trophies (some enviable and saintly, some merely looking like bowling trophies). Even as youngsters, my friends and I would laugh, wondering when they were going to introduce prayer contests. (Or even better, I wonder now, a Sabbath contest.)

Which, in the end, all misses the point. . .don't you think?

Consider this from Thomas Merton, "I am the utter poverty of God. I am His emptiness, littleness, nothingness, lostness. When this is understood, my life in God's freedom, the self-emptying of God in me is the fullness of grace."

In other words, I can live and choose and commit from acceptance and not for acceptance. I'm not doing any of this (Sabbath, prayer, rest, reflection, renewal) to impress anyone.

People frequently ask about Seattle weather. Mostly I fib. I say that it doesn't rain all that much. This past month, however, the weather has been mercurial. And our sky dark, and baleful. Today I have not yet finished everything on my (productivity) list. Regardless of my earlier observations, this breakdown adds a weight, some lament or need to apologize. Such cumbersome judgment requires drastic measures. I decide to leave my desk (and my list), and take a walk in my garden. All of the perennials have died back, waiting for spring. What remain are the garden bones, those plants evergreen through the winter months. In the front beds I take great pleasure in the Nandina (Heavenly Bamboo) shrubs, with their pie-cherry-red, butter-yellow and lime-green leaves. They are encircled by, and highlighted by, black mondo grass. The backdrop is a combination of bronze flax, six-feet tall with striking sword-like blades, and the comforting emerald green of an Incense Cedar. Our bluestone pathway glistens from the rain. The scene does my heart good, and is soothing in its simple elegance.

When I returned to my desk, I read this from Henri Nouwen, "Too often I looked at being relevant, popular, and powerful as ingredients of an effective ministry. Jesus sends us out to be shepherds and Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hand and be led to places where we would rather not go. He asks us to move from a concern for relevance. . .to a life of prayer, from worries about popularity. . .to communal and mutual ministry. . .What is new is that we have moved from the many things, to the kingdom of God. "

To which I say, Amen.

My Lord told me a joke.
And seeing Him laugh has done more for me
than any scripture I will
ever read.
Meister Eckart (1260-1328)