Saturday Night in Palo, Iowa

26 01 2012

So, I am standing in a small bar in small town Iowa, watching the small crowd rock out to a local guy singing the karaoke version of Snoop Dog’s “Gin and Juice”. Standing next to me is a woman I’ll call Beth (because that’s her name) who is pretty much the exact opposite of me in most ways:

Beth                                                  Me_________________________________

Young                                               Not

Tall                                                    Not

Beautiful                                           Not

Married                                             Not

New Parent                                      Not

Pretty sure we are at opposite ends of other spectrums (spectra?) as well, but these examples will suffice to point out our differences. Despite these differences, though, we are in complete agreement on two things: the men in our group (one of whom is her husband) are among the best guys around and neither of us could ever do what the women on the “dance floor” are doing. And what, exactly, are they doing you ask?

Dancing. Dirty, uninhibited, take no prisoners, body-punishing drunken dancing. While screaming out the words to every song at the top of their lungs. Hugging and high-fiving each other. Challenging each other to shout a duet of “Love Shack” or “Baby Got Back” as soon as they can get their hands on the karaoke mic.

And while Beth and I are in agreement we could never behave that way, it isn’t because we are judging the other women harshly. Rather, we are judging ourselves and finding that we lack the ability to set aside self-judgement long enough to cut loose and just enjoy ourselves. Without regard to what the tall and short women standing by the bar watching us are thinking.

The atmosphere in the bar isn’t conducive to deep conversation, so Beth and I stand side-by-side, mostly silent. And I realize that it is fine with me that I will likely never be one of the dancing queens. But I do find myself wondering what I would choose to do if I could just silence my inner critic for a few brief hours. If I could just realize that the bystanders, like Beth and I, are probably actually thinking about themselves. Here are a few:

  • Wear sloppy clothes in public. My friends Molly, Colette, Wendy: all of them can head out wearing sweats or scrubs, unshowered, no make-up and they just look “natural”. I look hideous.
  • Rollerblade. This one has the element of personal injury folded in with the fear of looking stupid in public.
  • Ask questions in public forums. Of course, this would reveal that I am not all-knowing, and I’m not sure the rest of the world can handle that truth…
  • Take an art class. Really? Even as I write this I realize how supremely silly it is – the whole point of taking the class is that you don’t already know how to do it!

Well, those are probably enough examples to illustrate my point here. Like many other women – even women as unlike me as Beth – I have spent a lifetime being socialized to keep my behavior within certain parameters, and I have internalized those boundaries. Above all, don’t look stupid/slovenly/slutty: the adjectives vary but they are all cut from the same cloth. This is one reason so many women aren’t able to cut loose and fully enjoy themselves (without massive quantities of alcohol to loosen their inhibitions). We watch our own behavior and apply such tough judgements to ourselves.

I’ve heard people say that women are each other’s harshest critics. That hasn’t been my experience. In fact, quite the opposite. I have found that women tend to be fairly generous with one another. The problem is one of projection: if I look at the women in the bar and project myself into their midst, I judge myself very cruelly. With self-censoriousness as the starting point, it colors how I view others, too. When I sneer at a stranger (0r her behavior) I am really “hating on” myself.

I wonder how our lives would shift if we could extend the same generosity of spirit towards ourselves that we do toward others who are trying new things, cutting loose in public, arriving for morning coffee unkempt? I’m pretty sure one of the first outcomes is that we would feel less judged by others, simply by being less judgmental towards ourselves. Definitely something worth trying!


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The Quality of Mercy

15 12 2011

Friends, I feel so happy and strong. My life is blessed in ways too numerous to count. I say this, not to brag, but to be clear that this is where I stand: in peace and gratitude.

It is true, though, that life can be hard, full of challenges that we aren’t certain we have the strength or inner resources to weather. Illness, poverty, loneliness (among other things) may show up in our lives in big ways or small, and they also show up in the lives of those all around us. Sometimes we know what challenges another faces, sometimes we are unaware until we visit a friend and find her crying, or a note goes up on the bulletin board at the gym about a member’s family in need of our generosity.

Sometimes, I am closed to the suffering of others. Caught up in the details of my own life, focused on my own hurts or struggles. It happens to most of us. Other times, I am open and feel overwhelmed by concern and a desire to help. Often, it feels like there is so little of substance I can do.

A few years ago, I participated in a book discussion group at work, sponsored by our Campus Ministry department. I can’t remember the name of the book, but the theme was mercy. The author(s) used a working definition of mercy that went something like this: “to enter fully into the chaos of another’s life”. I clearly remember saying, in the ensuing discussion, that I didn’t know whether I wanted to do that – entering fully into someone else’s chaos sounds not the least appealing, especially if you have your own chaos.

And yet.

We are all so good at allowing ourselves to intellectually grasp what another person might be going through. We donate canned goods, drop money in the red bucket, participate on boards and go to fundraisers. These are all good things to do, but we can so often do them without actually engaging with someone in pain. Entering into someone else’s chaos demands the engagement of our hearts, not just our minds. That is so much more difficult, and it can really be scary.

A while ago, I participated in a one-day service project to deliver Meals On Wheels. My experience was different from that of the others who participated that day – it just so happened that my route included some particularly grim experiences. I haven’t been able to go back, though I was happy to donate the proceeds of my hunger challenge that year to that program. So maybe that was too much chaos, way too fast.

But when the people that I know and interact with daily are suffering, entering into their chaos means, first, walking beside them so they know I am there. I’m pretty sure I can do that.

What I don’t want to do is stand in this place of peace and gratitude, happiness and strength, and just watch the suffering flow by. Nor do I want to blunder in and try to fix everything. Neither of these approaches serve in the long run. My old friend (and by friend, I mean author I deeply admire), Parker Palmer, espouses a form of community which holds each person sacred. This is how I hope to express the quality of mercy in my life, and I think it’s a fitting end to this reflection. He says:

“The key to this form of community involves holding a paradox – the paradox of having relationships in which we protect each other’s aloneness. We must come together in ways that respect the solitude of the soul, that avoid the unconscious violence we do when we try to save each other, that evoke our capacity to hold another life without dishonoring its mystery, never trying to coerce the other into meeting our own needs.”
 

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A Solo Hike

14 08 2011

The beginning of the Cedar Crest Trail.

In my entire adult life, until today, I have never managed to go for a long hike in the woods by myself. I have started to, a few times, but always turned around in fear before I managed to go very far. No, I am not afraid of the woods. I admit I am easily startled by even small wild animals, but that isn’t why I have feared such hikes. Some of you know I can be a bit clumsy, and this might be a good reason to avoid heading into the woods solo, however, even the fear of injury hasn’t been the thing that stopped me.

I don’t walk alone in the woods because I am afraid of men. More specifically, I have been afraid of finding myself alone and isolated with a passing stranger who might seize this moment of vulnerability and take advantage of it. Or a couple of passing strangers.

I have had many arguments, with myself and others, about whether this is a realistic fear. I have debated the relative merits of curtailing activities in order to feel more secure (thereby holding myself back from fully experiencing things that might enrich my life) OR of taking a more courageous stance and going full steam ahead in spite of fear. In spite of what I have learned to think about as a woman in this world – that I might be easy prey for someone stronger than me.

I have been working to fear less in my life. And today just seemed like a good day to set forth on my own. I felt trepidation. When I experienced a bout of vertigo upon stepping too close the edge of a rocky cliff, I worried that I might be incompetent to hike alone on a ridge-top trail! Twice (in the same spot, headed out and back in) I encountered a beaver who was as startled to see me as I was to see him.  The only other people I encountered in the woods today were men, also out enjoying nature alone (well, one guy had a baby snuggled to his chest). I tried to cross paths with them confidently and with trust in my heart.

It was beautiful, cool and crisp in the green woods. So quiet I could hear trees creaking in the wind. So still at moments that the shy blue dragonflies hovered all around me, nearly alighting on my toes a couple of times.

Holding still, you can't see his gossamer wings!

A few hours after returning from my hike, I sat chatting in a friend’s living room. She asked if I had told anyone where I was going, when I would be back. She scolded me for not doing so, and shook her head at my impulsive trek. I could only agree with her.

And yet. There was a moment on my solo walk, breathing deeply in the loveliness and solitude, when I felt such happiness that I literally broke into a run. Me. Running. Not in fear, but in joy.

Resting on a trail-side bench.


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A RAGBRAI Story – Part 2

4 08 2011

(When we left the story at the end of Part I, the Mustangs were living it up at the beer tent in Homestead, Amanas: sweat-drenched but smiling, and just a little cocky about being “almost done” with the day’s ride)

And so the Mustangs mounted up and began what can arguably be called the most important part of the experience. Tricia and I decided to ride together, and this was the pivotal decision of the day for me. The ride from Homestead to Oxford, a 5.8 mile stretch, was a little hilly, but do-able. Tricia and I commented on the beautiful scenery. It must not have been too difficult a ride if we were still noticing something other than our burning quads and gasping lungs.

As we pulled into Oxford, the party was in full swing. It certainly appeared that many riders were already celebrating the completion of a successful ride. I was flagging, but surrounded by that happy, upbeat atmosphere, I felt reasonably confident I would finish. I not only wanted to finish the 75 miles, I also wanted to be able to say I rode every foot of it. I understood that there is no shame in walking up difficult hills, and that many riders do so. But I wanted to stay on my bike.

Within minutes of leaving Oxford for the last (17.7 mile) leg of the ride, I was questioning my determination. The ride from that point forward was one long, steep hill after another. After another. After another. As we approached the crest of another hill, I could hear the riders in front of me cursing, as they caught sight of yet another hill in front of them. Groaning and cursing. But I also heard a paraplegic rider pedaling with his arms, saying to another cyclist, “We’re gonna do it!”. An older gentleman, passing me by and saying, “That’s it, take your time!”. I heard Tricia, waiting for me at the top of the hill saying, “You’re doing great!”

Hill after bloody hill. I thought I was in hell. A rider passed me, carrying a passenger who was playing the guitar. An ADULT passenger, whose only contribution to the effort was music!  A guy in a cape rode by, as did a bride and groom whose helmets were embellished to look like a top hat and veil. Ok, maybe not hell exactly. More like rural Iowa on an acid trip.

Hill. After. Bloody. Hill. Partners and team members were practically pulling each other up the hills with their words of encouragement. One young girl apologized, “I’m sorry, I have no legs.” But her teammates wouldn’t hear of her stopping, and I saw her three hills later, still riding.  Solo riders were cared for, as well, though. One woman, stopped at the side of the road tinkering with her bike was asked multiple times, “Do you have what you need?”  Strangers looked on us with compassion, including a lovely family with hoses who sat at the crest of a particularly difficult hill. I begged them to spray me with the cool water. At several consecutive driveways, families were shouting, “You’re almost there! Only six miles to go!” I’ll never be able to thank any of them for helping me get through.

Riding up those hills, mostly I was just thinking, “Keep pedaling. Keep pedaling. Keep pedaling.” But it was impossible not to marvel at the people around me who were pushing through. Every shape, size, fitness level. Every age. Bike riding is adaptable to all kinds of ability levels, and people with more to overcome than weight and an inactive past were continuing on. Riders whose whole purpose was other-centered (raising money for HIV-AIDS, for a cure for Diabetes or Breast Cancer) were pushing themselves up and down those hills, too. It reminded me that the zeitgeist of RAGBRAI is part rolling folk festival and part pilgrimage. And in this reminder was the realization that I was participating in the kind of experience that, most of my life, I would only have watched from the sidelines. This wave of committed, possibly crazy, humanity helped to carry me forward when I began thinking I couldn’t keep going.

And then, unbelievably, we crested and in front of us was Melrose Avenue! I couldn’t believe it – Iowa City, about to turn the corner into Coralville, our destination. There was jubilance all around us. Waiting for the State Patrol to give us the right of way, another rider’s radio was blaring Vanilla Ice – and Tricia and I broke into spontaneous dancing astride our bikes. Someone in the crowd yelled, “You go girls!”. The State Patrol officer danced with us.

We turned into a lovely downhill run, the road lined with welcome signs from the colleges and universities with officially registered teams. And then, in the midst of celebration, the final test. One more long-ass hill. I almost cried. Other riders were giving up, dismounting in larger numbers than at any other point on the ride. If Tricia hadn’t been there, I might have been one of them. It took every last reserve to ride that hill. And it was slow going. But Tricia and I rode it together, and when I pulled ahead as we coasted down the other side, I waited for her to catch up. She called, “You don’t have to wait”, but I told her, “The hell I don’t! There’s no way I’m crossing the finish line without you.” How could I, when her encouragement and friendship had just pulled me through the last 17 miles?

The finish line was designed to look like the arched entrances to Kinnick Stadium, home of the Iowa Hawkeyes, with the road painted like a football field. Layne and Kristen, the most awesome and patient road crew ever, were waiting and watching. When they caught sight of us, they jumped up and yelled and cheered, Layne filming us coming in.

I’d like to say that I was overcome with joy, but the truth is, I was exhausted, overwhelmed, dehydrated, hungry and I hadn’t peed in nine hours. I was incapable of joy in that moment. We stopped, and waited for Layne to join us with directions for where we were meeting up with the team. When she arrived, she pointed up the hill in front of us and said, “Go up there to the second stop sign and turn right.” I looked in that direction, and to my shame, burst into tears of frustration. I said, “I cannot ride up another f-ing hill. In fact, I can’t get back on my bike.” Layne hugged me and said, “Its ok. We’ll walk together, and I’ll push your bike.”

I owe a debt of gratitude to a huge community who made my RAGBRAI experience a day I will never forget: The people of Iowa who opened their homes, hometowns, and hearts to the massive river of riders. The cyclists, themselves, who were compassionate comrades on the quest to achieve personal goals. My fellow Mustang riders (especially my girls: Sarah, Colette, Wendy, and Tricia) without whom I would surely have failed – whose love and support held me up throughout the long day. Layne (and her parents for the loan of their truck) and Kristen, the road crew who loved us enough to spend a day waiting, cheering, manoevering through traffic and congestion. They didn’t have the payoff of endorphin highs or self-congratulations at the end – just thankless jobs and a long, sweaty day. The Lange Family, who hosted a reception/party for all the Mustang riders in Coralville, welcoming stinky sweaty strangers into their lovely home.

Each person in a long list vital to the success of the whole. Vital to my success.

The community story is not a story I was expecting, because until I was there, it wouldn’t have seemed possible. There is a lot of hype and mythology surrounding RAGBRAI. Turns out, a lot of it is true. But the magic of it, in my opinion, comes down to love.

I know, some of you just groaned, reading that! Here she goes again, you’re thinking, reading too much into every little experience. I’ll accept that criticism. But I will also say that I am no Pollyanna – ask Tricia, who saw me at my absolute snarliest at the end, after successfully completing the day. Ask Layne, who saw me tensely coiled at 5:20 a.m. when I was worried about the derailers on our bikes being  smashed as we loaded the truck. No Pollyanna visible in those moments, I assure you.

However, throughout the ride, there were moments when I was able to be outside my own fear and self-doubt enough to really see the events and people around me. Those moments were emotional – and more true than the fears. At one point in the day, a rider towing a boom box passed Tricia and I, blasting Martina McBride’s “Love’s The Only House”, one of my all-time favorites. That day, I swear, love was a big enough house to shelter all 10,000 bicyclists.


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Breaking: Apart or Open?

31 03 2011

Have you ever looked at the first card in the tarot deck, The Fool? In many decks, The Fool is setting forth on a journey. He has packed lightly, a small bundle slung over his shoulder. He looks ahead, not down at the path which, to onlookers, appears to be a precarious one. A dog nips at his heels (or in some drawings, his bum) but he appears unconcerned. In fact, he sets forth with a face full of joy and hope, blithely unaware of the dangers that await wherever he is headed. The Fool appears foolish, indeed.

What an apt image for us as we set out into our lives – especially as we set off into the uncharted lands of relationship. We rarely see what is before us, even when there are markers in place (I once dated someone who told me on our first date that his favorite song was “Love the One You’re With”. Perhaps I should have read that marker.) But often, there are no easy-to-read road signs. I don’t know about you, but I am cautious by nature, and it is rare for me to put my feet to a path I can’t see the end of. So, I have ventured out into the territory of love relationships timidly, afraid of the unknown future ahead and of the possibility of experiencing emotional pain.

Which brings me to the topic of this post: broken hearts. Despite my caution, my heart has indeed been broken a time or two. No one, I think, really experiences life without heartbreak. In the throes of real emotional pain, I have wondered, “What am I supposed to do with this? With this broken thing that was my heart, with these feelings that have nowhere to go now that they have no one to be invested in?”

In one such moment recently, I read the following paragraph, and it gave me some much-needed perspective:

“But there are at least two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken. One is to imagine the heart broken into shards and scattered about — a feeling most of us know, and a fate we would like to avoid. The other is to imagine the heart broken open into new capacity — a process that is not without pain but one that many of us would welcome.” (Parker Palmer, from A Hidden Wholeness)

When I read this, it immediately reminded me that I have, in fact, experienced my heart being “broken open into new capacity”. One such experience was a trip I took to Ireland a few years ago. I had never travelled overseas, and had dreamed of visiting Ireland – then got the opportunity to travel with a group from the university. I fell in love with Ireland, and with the person I became on that trip — a person who lived as fully as possible in every minute, who didn’t leave a drop or a crumb behind. It was amazing. When we boarded the plane to return to the States, I put my jacket over my head and cried for two hours.  But the experience of leaving that perfect moment broke my heart open. A love of travel and an image of myself as fully alive were the new capacities born of that experience.

When our hearts break due to relationships not working, not going where we want them to, ending, it is difficult to accept. To then, on top of learning to live with the brokenness, expect or hope for something new and good to be born of it almost defies us. It feels beyond our reach, and yet…perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps we’re meant to learn that looking like a fool isn’t the end of the world. Perhaps we’re meant to discover that hearts are resilient muscles — and like all muscles, they get stronger the more you use them. And perhaps the capacity that will be born is the ability to love without reservation, because you begin to understand that the journey itself (rather than its end) is what makes it worthwhile to do so.

And so you, The Fool, journey on. You feel your feelings, especially the ones that hurt. You look for the good, for the things you may have learned or discovered in yourself. You flex your heart muscle and find that it still works. And eventually, as a Missy Higgins song puts it, “you’ll wake to find, you’re a little unbroken.”


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Measuring vs Pouring

24 03 2011

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

–T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

“It is the law that is measured out. It is the law that always asks the questions, “How far do I have to go? How much is enough?” But love never asks these questions because love is never measured out. Love is always poured out.”

–Bill Mills, Naked and Unashamed


It is a little strange to begin an entry with two quotes, especially two which come from such completely different sources. The first, from one of my favorite poems (especially to read aloud), strikes me as being all about living life by holding back, by choosing to believe that pouring oneself out into the world unreservedly would be presumptuous. Poor Prufrock feels the insecurities of being ordinary in a world which values the extraordinary – and who among us has not felt that? And feeling that, he holds back. We hold back.

The second quote, above, comes from a source I haven’t read. Instead, this quotation was included in a blog post by Randy Greenwald, and it has stayed with me for days. Love is always poured out. Which is to say, if it isn’t being poured out, if it is being held back, measured, and dribbled out, it isn’t love.

Usually, I would want to blather on and on about what all this means. Today, I simply want to say that in learning to love my life, I have been learning to pour myself out – to allow love to flow unimpeded by insecurities and fear. I haven’t learned to do this perfectly yet. But I have learned that putting myself out there in a careful trickle only results in regret. So I am going to let love (of life, of others, of my flawed self) cascade, flood, gush forth and inundate my world. I hope you’ll join me — and let it pour, baby, let it pour!


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Fearing Less

24 02 2011

This morning, my friend Tricia and I made good on a challenge we gave ourselves: we spoke to a group of people not as the “experts” our job titles make us, but as Jen and Tricia, two people trying to fear less in our lives. It was a little daunting, but it also felt like a step I was ready to take after sharing so openly on this blog.

I shared with them a story that I haven’t shared with you all, yet. And I think it is about time to do so.

A few years ago, I went on a retreat at Prairiewoods, a Franciscan Spirituality Center here in Cedar Rapids. What attracted me to the particular retreat was that it was led by an Iowa writer named Mary Swander and based on the themes of her book The Desert Pilgrim (read a review, here). The book is set primarily in New Mexico, and the retreat was intended to look at Christian mysticism and healing. In reading the book, I discovered some interesting ways in which my life and Mary’s intersected, and that we shared a love of some of the same mystical places, such as the Santuario De Chimayo.

The retreat was an interesting experience, and I was very much enjoying being at Prairiewoods. On Saturday morning, the Center had offered retreatants the opportunity to schedule massages prior to our evening prayer service. I was given the last massage time slot, which would mean entering the evening retreat activities a few minutes late. During the massage, I was physically uncomfortable, had difficulty breathing, and became concerned (as did the massage therapist) about how I was feeling – especially since prior to getting on the massage table I had been fine.  The therapist was highly intuitive, and laid her hands on my back, saying, “I want you to know that, whatever issues you are dealing with, there are many people in this world and the next who love you. They want you to know they are with you, and care for you.” I felt significantly better after that, and as the massage ended, I felt ready to join the rest of the group. The massage therapist asked if I would be alright, and I replied that I was fine.

After dressing, I stepped outside into the frigid but clear February night, on my way to the building where my group was meeting. Suddenly, I was struck with what can only be described as an interior lightning bolt and I fell to my knees on the sidewalk – overcome with the certainty that I was going to die. And I don’t mean the existential concept that we all will someday die. I mean, the actual very real certainty that I was going to die that night. I was terrified. I only managed to get up from the ground because I didn’t want to die outside, alone. Once inside the retreat building, I realized that I was both crying and hyperventilating and that these facts might be too disruptive for the quiet prayer service in progress. I detoured to the ladies room.

Once locked in a stall in the restroom, I couldn’t shake the certainty of my own death. I imagined myself falling to the floor, and once again found strength to act by simply not wishing my last moments to be alone on a restroom floor. With a great deal of effort, I brought my breathing under control and dried my eyes. I joined the prayer service, luckily conducted by candlelight, and the calm and prayerful atmosphere helped to settle my nerves a bit. Still, my heart was racing and I could feel my fear as a palpable thing.

At the end of the prayer service, while the lights were still out, another retreatant said, “Mary, I sometimes get these messages while in prayer. Usually they are for someone else, and I don’t necessarily know what they mean, but I believe I’m meant to share them. I received two messages during this prayer service, may I share them?”  Mary threw the question to the group. We looked around, realizing that we were strangers to one another – and none of us had known this man who spoke prior to that morning when the retreat began. I suppose it was mainly curiosity that led the group to give its consent. He said he had a message for another woman in the group, and stated what that was. Then, he turned to me and said, “Jenifer, God says: I have a new path for you. Be ready.”

Given my internal state of panic and fear, I took this message as confirmation that I was, indeed, going to die that night. When we finished the formal activities, the group went its separate ways. I went to my room in the adjoining building, locked the door, turned on every light and took a seat on the bed. I sat up all night, waiting for Death. As I write this, with the perspective of time and distance, and after a great deal of thought and soul-searching, I realize this sounds somewhat dramatic and a little silly. But I am, as earnestly as possible, attempting to convey my experience of that literal ”dark night of the soul”.

When morning arrived and there was light outside my room (as well as the electric ones inside it), I had come to a realization. I had a choice to make. I could either change my life, or I could die without ever becoming the person I wanted to be. Which did I fear more? Truth be told, I feared them both. But weighing more than 350 pounds, I knew there was a very real chance of the second coming true. I didn’t know whether I could change my life, but I knew I didn’t want the only “new path” available to be one in the afterlife.

Looking back, I can see that this event was the first in a long string of moments which have allowed me to rebuild my life. I am slow and stubborn, so God has (unfortunately) had to send more than one painful and/or frightening message my way. But I realized, preparing for our presentation this morning, that the one I received on that retreat was absolutely true: God had a new path for me. Each day, one step of that path is revealed. My job is to take that step or learn the painful lessons that come from allowing fear to choose otherwise. Slowly the shape of the path is revealed, and slowly I am preparing myself to be ready for what comes next.


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Triple Word Tuesday

22 02 2011

Connect the Dots…

(THEY CONNECT BACKWARDS!)

(I know it is triple word Tuesday, but I just have to say a few more words: commencement speeches are wasted on people who are graduating. This speech is worth the time to really listen, and is not boring or too much of a lecture!)


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Living the Questions

17 02 2011

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

–Ranier Maria Rile

Letters to a Young Poet

 

Be patient toward all that is unsolved within your heart. Yeah, right.

Because patience is something we are all busy cultivating, in this culture of instant gratification. Because patience is something we humans are so good at right from the start – ever been around a young child who wants something? Yes, patience is a virtue we only possess if we actively seek and practice it, because we are not (most of us) born patient.

Lacking patience, how does one live within the questions long enough for the inner self to discern, then make known, the answers? It is not easy. Have you ever had an itch that would not go away, despite extreme bodily contortions to reach and scratch it? Living with the internal itchiness of unresolved questions can be truly uncomfortable. I’ve been given the advice to trust my gut, which is fine if your gut is a trustworthy ally. Mine tends to be a trickster, responding from fear but pretending otherwise. (And then prompting me to eat because food will make me feel better.)

Rilke’s suggestion that, gradually, without realizing it, we might live into the answers someday isn’t particularly comforting. I mean, how are we supposed to move forward without answers?  Steve Jobs, in his 2005 commencement address at Stanford, uses the image of connecting the dots. That each decision, each step we take, is a dot. He goes on to say that the dots cannot ever be connected moving forward, they can only be connected looking backward, in retrospect. We have to keep choosing and trust that the dots will connect.

My tricksy gut tells me he’s right. Cultivate the patience to wait for the answers to make themselves known, while trusting that the choices I make in the meantime will connect in a coherent way someday. Remaining where I am because I am afraid to move forward without all the answers, may seem safe. But the truth is, I’m just stuck. To get unstuck, I need to cultivate my inner Wile E. Coyote (from the Roadrunner cartoons). I need to be willing to keep moving forward right off the edge of the canyon into the unknown. Now, Wile E. always looks down, and in doing so loses his faith that he can make it to the other side, causing him to plummet to the canyon floor. That’s where the trust part comes in: take a step and keep going, trusting that I’ll get to the next dot. Because I will. Even when Wile E. Coyote falls, he gets back up and tries again in the next episode.

 


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Politics of Spirit

13 01 2011

Saturday night I was at a party at The Chrome Horse Saloon.  I arrived looking forward to spending the evening with friends, then did something a little out of character for me. I introduced myself to a stranger who seemed interesting.  What followed was a lengthy conversation which ranged through some pretty cerebral territory: political ideologies, epistemology, scientific inquiry, and changing the world.  Granted, this wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I was both fascinated and energized by the discussion.

In fact, I was energized enough that the following morning I found the excerpt, below, from Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, which was tickling at the back of my brain during part of our discussion at The Chrome Horse.

“We capitalists have a long and crippling history of believing in the power of external realities much more deeply than we believe in the power of the inner life. How many times have you heard or said, “Those are inspiring notions, but the hard reality is…”?  How many times have you worked in systems based on the belief that the only changes that matter are the ones you can measure or count?  How many times have you watched people kill off creativity by treating traditional policies and practices as absolute constraints on what we can do?

…But the great insight of our spiritual traditions is that we — especially those of us who enjoy political freedom and relative affluence — are not victims of that society: we are its co-creators. We live in and through a complex interaction of spirit and matter, of the powers inside of us and the stuff “out there” in the world. External reality does not impinge upon us as an ultimate constraint:  if we who are privileged find ourselves confined, it is only because we have conspired in our own imprisonment…

If our institutions are rigid, it is because our hearts fear change; if they set us in mindless competition with each other, it is because we value victory over all else; if they are heedless of human well-being, it is because something in us is heartless as well…

Consciousness precedes being: consciousness, yours and mine, can form, deform, or reform our world.  Our complicity in world making is a source of awesome and sometimes painful responsibility — and a source of profound hope for change.”

“We the privileged have conspired in our own imprisonment.” Pretty powerful stuff.  I know this is true for me, on the level of my daily choices and interactions, especially when I choose out of fear.  But I have also experienced change/transformation at the personal level, and this has been a spiritual process brought to fruition by action.  If, as the women’s movement attested, the personal is political, what we can do in our own sphere can also be achieved on a larger scale.

Therefore, I can’t help but imagine the possibilities open to us at the societal level if we were to bring the transformative power of spirit and consciousness to our political and economic constructs!  What world might we co-create then?  In a week in which we are witnessing the politics of divisiveness and hate at the national level (the shootings in Tucson, the Westboro Baptist Church) and locally (the movement to impeach the remaining members of the Iowa State Supreme Court ) it seems important to remember that we can step outside our comfort zones to create something new in the world.

What that new world might look like would make for a another great conversation at The Chrome Horse Saloon.



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