The gift of showing up
As I write this, I’m relishing revisiting an article I had clipped, with a photo of the man giving this testimonial: “It made me feel like a human being again.”
Wow. Is he referring to a church? To a mandatory therapy group? To a motivational seminar? To a New York Times bestselling book?
No. He is a former inmate in San Francisco Prison. Now he is working with the San Francisco Garden Project. He is talking about feeling human again because of his work in a garden.
The Garden Project is a program started for the San Francisco County Jail by Catherine Sneed. In an eight-acre garden, prisoners grow vegetables, and the organic produce is delivered to the project that supplies food to seniors, homeless people, and AIDS victims. Above all, the organic, chemical-free garden is a living metaphor for the healthy lives the jail-gardeners are trying to create.
Go figure. We go to great lengths (not to mention pay good money) to find balance; to name solutions for our emotional conundrums. To find our way where we embrace life, wholehearted and fully alive. And all this man did, was put his hands in the soil, plant a seed, and watch it grow.
Here’s the deal: this isn’t an assignment, nor an obligation. This story is an invitation about where we hang our hat for well-being, in our broken and often overwhelming world.
As Ashley Judd noted when talking about her mother, “You can pretend to care, but you can’t pretend to show up.”
Yes. Planting a seed, he showed up. And that made all the difference.
I often return to the captivating and haunting little memoir entitled The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, former editor of the French fashion magazine, Elle. At the age of 43, Jean-Dominique suffered a rare kind of stroke to the brain stem. He woke after twenty days in a coma. Only his left eye functioned. But his mind was unimpaired, frozen in a body, which had, but one meager way to communicate. It’s the story about what it is like to be locked up, a prisoner in your own skin. I cannot imagine the terror, the claustrophobia. It is one thing to feel misunderstood. It is quite another to have utterly no recourse. To feel completely at the mercy of your body, medical and personal opinion, the good will of friends and acquaintances, and above all else, silence. In this case, the indictment of silence.
It was in that world that Bauby learned to probe inlets of sanity, or as he called them, the “only windows to my cell.” To fall prey to daydreams of walking and talking. To find the “hours drag on but the months flash by.” And then this: “Far from such din, when blessed silence returns, I can listen to the butterflies that flitter inside my head. To hear them, one must be calm and pay close attention, for their wingbeats are barely audible. Loud breathing is enough to drown them out. This is astonishing: my hearing does not improve, yet I hear them better and better. I must have butterfly hearing.”
I love this story, because it does my heart good.
Because this is a story about resiliency. And ultimately, about love. Love of life, and love of the self I bring to this life.
Showing up is about honoring what is alive and well at our core, regardless of the peripheral circumstances. Yes, even in the darkness. And yes, showing up, we embrace the sacrament of the present.
This all sounds good on paper, but it is not an easy sell, especially when we live in a world where we are fueled by the promise of that imaginary day when all will be easier, or at least where things feel somehow, “normal” or resolved.
There is a part of our psyche that is like a four-year old five minutes out of the driveway on any family trip, “Are we there yet? Are we done now?”
But resilience is what happens when we give up control—planting a seed, or butterfly hearing—and are willing to embrace the ambiguity. And in that ambiguity, to hear—and to take delight in and are replenished by—the wingbeats of those butterflies. To be here now.
Let us remember that regardless of our circumstances, life pulls us inexorably toward love and beauty, even though it may be wrapped in aching pain and or delicious hope. To engage this pull, this fuel that feeds life, is the sacred necessity of resilience. Which means that resilience allows us to live with intention. To show up. Now. We do not put off until tomorrow what can be embraced, enjoyed, felt, or experienced today. And yes, this includes our sadness, our disappointment and our grief.
Where does one get resilience?
Or butterfly hearing?
Is this a gene only given to the lucky?
Here’s the deal: We are not outrunning life. Or outrunning the bad parts of life. Resilience involves inviting all of life in… the longing, hunger, vulnerability, wildness, energy, uncertainty, appetite, hope, humor, beauty, and irony.
Only when we embrace do we see.
Only when we embrace do we hear… with butterfly hearing.
Today, I thank God for butterfly hearing, and for the grace that allows me to risk loving this day.
To be unafraid of a life that can be messy.
To make a space for something less than perfect in myself and in those around me.
To offer kindness or compassion in a glance. In a word. In a touch. In a gesture.
To create sanctuary spaces where healing and hope are offered; where hatred is turned away.
To believe in goodness after harm.
And to know that planting seeds of love will always spill to the world around me.
We’re having one of the coolest Augusts we’ve had in this neck of the woods, so can’t relate to many parts of the country right now, where air conditioning is mandatory.
Gratefully, the blackberries are ripening here, less than a week away from picking quarts on my walk, ready for homemade cobbler.
Quote for our week…
It seems to me that I have a greater peace and am closer to God when I am not ‘trying to be a contemplative,’ or trying to be anything special, but simply orienting my life fully and completely towards what seems to be required of a man like me at a time like this. Thomas Merton
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Today’s Photo Credit: “Hi Terry, I decided to take some bubble photos, after Hurricane Debby passed through North Carolina. It’s so humid and perfect for these luminescent ones. They are uplifting, as are your Sabbath Moments. Blessings,” June Witherspoon… Thank you June… And thank you to all, I love your photos… please keep sending them… send to terryhershey.com
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Letters that do my heart good…
–Dear Terry, Self Compassion Grounds Us, indeed it does. And thank you for the reminder. Your message spoke directly to my heart. Yesterday I needed to rest physically…”Let my soul catch up with my body” as you have said before. And yet, I was feeling guilty… what was I getting done by napping mid day. “Held in the arms of God’s Love”…wow, tears come to my eyes when I read that. Thank you. And it sounds like you will greatly miss your dear Spiritual Guide Father Francis Benedict. I am thankful for him. Because what he brought to you, you then shared with all of us. Rest in Peace Father Francis. The ripple effect is alive and well. I cannot tell you how thankful I am for you, Sabbath Moment and especially your weekly audio. You continue to be my church. Most sincerely, Kim
–Dear Terry, A friend shared your Monday message and I’ve done likewise. Reading it helps me start my week. Keep the smile in your writing. To care and share touches many. Blessings. Marion
–Dearest Terry, thank you for this week’s SM… ‘teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah – Even if they don’t change the plot of your story, they do change your character.’ Thank you for giving me a better understanding of how my choices allow grace to work in me, and allow me to become the woman I was created to be! Yours in Christ, Barbara
–Thanks for this daily dose – I read this night – and it became my devotion. I also – give thanks for God’s many invitations, may I hear and embrace the world space surrounding me, Sandy
–In the heat of Texas an important skill to develop is the fine art of “moseying”. I mosey. You mosey. He/she/it moseys. If you create your own breeze, you are going way too fast. Ron
–Dear Terry, In these days of caregiving, turmoil in our country and world; something in your daily send is nurturing because it seems authentic, wise and loving in tone. I thank you immensely. Wishing you the best always. Karen
POEMS AND PRAYERS
Silence is really vital to the human heart.
You see the human heart can’t live with
Constant sound or noise.
It needs silence in order to heal itself.
The only two things that are ultimately required for spiritual
homecoming are stillness and silence
If in your day you can build little windows of silence
and little windows of stillness
You will never lose touch with your deepest voice.
You will never lose touch with your most secret belonging.
Even though you walk and talk in the world
You will never leave the inner, tender home of your soul.
Charles William Golding (1931-2004)
Prayer for Presence
Let us be present to the now.
It’s all we have and it’s where God will always speak to us.
The now holds everything, rejects nothing and, therefore, can receive God too.
Help us, God, to be present to the place we most fear, because it always feels empty, it always feels boring, it always feels like it’s not enough.
Help us find some space within that we don’t try to fill with ideas or opinions. Help us find space so you, loving God, can show yourself in that place where we are hungry and empty. Keep us out of the way, so there is always room enough for you.
Good God, we believe that you are here and your presence gives us hope. We thank you for each day of our lives.
We thank you for so many further chances to understand, to forgive again, to trust again, and to love. We thank you that we live now, that our problems are soul-sized.
We ask that you teach us and lead us, that you put the thoughts into our mind that you want us to think, the feelings in our hearts that you want us to feel.
Reconstruct us. Put us together because we don’t know how to do it ourselves.
We trust that you are hearing this prayer, and that you care for the answer more than we do. We pray therefore not alone, but with the whole body of Christ in Jesus’s name.
Amen.
Richard Rohr (The Wisdom Pattern)
