An affirmation: on returning home after being away

Isn't it such a gift to go away and leave one's everyday life behind for just a little while? And then isn't it also a gift to return to it, hopefully refreshed and with perspective regained and energy renewed? 

This is how I am feeling after a flying (but very precious) visit to my dear parents in England. I love the fresh eyes this gives me for my home, my everyday tasks, and especially my beloved two. It reminds me again (again, again) of the preeminence of love, and the smallness and pettiness of the concerns I can get caught up in. And so I long to recommit myself to this life, these dear people, the tasks and days I have been given, with all that I am and have; and particularly to commit myself to love above all - to love in all its patience, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, trust, and delight. The sort of love that my small self, caught up in it-self, cannot manage, but that my True Self - centred and sourced from deep within and far beyond - can receive and live as gift. 

So this morning I re-member a simple meditation and affirmation that I wrote last summer on returning from six weeks in Europe, and I offer it to you too, as a way to re-call and rededicate yourself to the life YOU have been given. Because "This is my life!" Try saying this out loud, with a shifting emphasis on each word in turn, and feel what this means for you and what it releases inside you.

          THIS is my life.
          Right here, right now.
          It is not elsewhere
          and it is no different than it is.

          This IS my life.
          I cannot imagine myself out of or beyond it.
          Neither can any shortcomings,
          disappointments or misgivings
          alter or remove what IS.

          This is MY life.
          No-one else can live it.
          And only I have the power to choose 
          what it is
          or what it can be.

          This is my LIFE.
          It is not a game or a show
          or a dress rehearsal.
          It is LIFE itself, given to me,
          and more than the sum of its parts.

          THIS. IS. MY. LIFE.

          (Tuesday 28th June 2011)

Saying the words I hate to say

We are sitting opposite each other in the diner waiting for our breakfast to arrive, her pale little face elflike below the new khaki beret. The mad rush to get here in time, her infuriating slowness and indecision, my sickening nagging and unnecessary criticism – these fall away like water below a dammed up stream. Above the dam created by this break in our routine, by a time painfully carved out, the water settles and stills. It’s as if I’ve been caught in a torrent of frustration and needless stress, and I’ve wounded with my thrashing limbs and thrashing words. Why do I do this?

The table between us, the sitting and waiting, is distance and time enough to stop my thrashing and look around me and come into my right mind, right heart, again. I look across at her and see the precious, fragile thing she is and I take her elfin face in my hands and look her in the eyes, hoping my shamed and loving gaze reaches deep into her soul, and I say the words that still come hard, get stuck in my throat:

“I’m sorry.”

I tell her it’s not her at all (her eyes show me she needed to hear this); that’s it me and I hate it and I’m sorry; that she is the dearest, most lovely thing to me (eyes open, soften and brighten as love and delight begin to heal what should never have been), and that I hate the words that come out of my mouth – so small and mean – even as I hear myself saying them; that I know these small, mean words are flowing more often, more freely, these recent days (she nods shyly in assent) and I don’t know why or how to stop but I see it and will try, and I’m sorry, again.

“I’m sorry.”

Oh how I hate these words as well: Hate that I have to say them; hate what has come before them and made them necessary. I hate them because they are so small, too, and never seem enough. They can’t roll back the waters of time as I wish they could; they can’t affect a miracle of absolute healing and oblivion; they can’t guarantee that this same devastating flood will not ravage our world again next week, even tomorrow. I hate them because they wound my ego and lay me bare to the reality of my power and my misuse of it, of my desires and their constant disappointment, and of my apparent helplessness at times to be anywhere close to the human, woman, wife, friend, daughter, mother (oh yes, especially mother) that I long to be.

If I hated these words less, maybe I would hate my hard, critical, harsh, unkind, careless, uncontrolled, hurtful words more? Enough to hold them in and hold them back? Enough to stop the torrent and step back from the edge of that crashing, hurtling, shattering precipice?

But though I hate the sorry words, still I love them and need them, as much as a drowning man needs the rock that agonizingly stops his freeflow freefall down the raging river. Though they are hard words, yet they soften – the hard places in me and the hurt places in her. Their very hardness is solid ground for me if I will cling to them, and a foothold for the long climb back up if I can stand on them and move beyond.

Moving beyond means accepting the forgiveness that I see mercifully, graciously leap up in her riverblue eyes from who knows what deep, clear inner spring. It means accepting the truth that I am, today, not mountain-climber, rockface-scaler, summit-reacher; but simply one who ackowledges the need to start again, again, at the foot of the towering cliff, thankful to be on dry ground and be given the chance to try again.

It is a humbling, praiseless task, this trying again; but a timeless one too. Even those who have dedicated their lives in monk’s cell to the pursuit of God and holiness and right-relatedness (I remember this with growing courage) embraced this task as worthy life’s work and spiritual discipline. I would expect more from them (from me) but this is the age-old truth and tale:

A curious outsider asked the burning question, hoping for spiritual enlightenment: “What do you do in your cell all day, Father?” The old man replied: “We fall down and then we get up again.”

So I get up again.

And I open the story book we had forgotten and had had to go back home to get, wasting ‘precious minutes’ and provoking one of my frustrated tirades and her hot tears now dried. She moves around the table to sit next to me and be able to read along and see the pictures, and we are together again – warm limbs and happy imaginations, healing hearts and hungry tummies.

We find the place where we left the story last time, and we begin again.

“Always we begin again.”

(attributed to St Benedict of Nursia)

Finding the keys that unlock mercy

So what does it PRACTICALLY look like for me to “take the plunge and dive deep into the bottomless, audacious, un-earnable, freely given, life-transforming mercy of God” that I wrote about yesterday? I asked you all if you had any secrets to 'diving deeper' to share, and then decided I really should try to notice and catalogue my own! So here are some of the rusty keys, personal to me, that have unlocked mercy for me in these last precious 24 hours:

Key One: Noticing that part of me would be quite content to write nice words about mercy and feed off them rather than actually doing the hard work of putting them into practice: to feed off the pleasure of ideas and pictures and poetry, the acknowledgment of others, the appearance of maturity and wisdom and insight that such words suggest. But this is baby food and I am hungry for more.

Key Two: Noticing both the moments of grace that I had enjoyed yesterday – especially when I suddenly had eyes to SEE the incredible beauty and aliveness and gift of my daughter, and gained a heart to wonder at this, at her – and also the moments of unmercy I have shown as I snapped at her, demanded too much, criticized; or as I responded with irritation or simply indifference to others. Noticing both of these helps me see that there IS “a river that makes glad the city of God”, there IS a flow and ‘wondrous loop’ that I can choose to remain in, or choose to step outside of.

Key Three: Asking for forgiveness quickly yesterday when I noticed that I had spoken a harsh word, and marvelling at the way this softens me, softens her, softens the atmosphere we live and breathe. So often hurt pride and resentment and shame stop me from doing this, but when I resist this I resist mercy - the mercy I need so desperately.

Key Four: Letting my heart break that so many of the moments of grace pass me by as I choose unmercy instead, and allowing myself to (uncharacteristically) weep by my sweet girl’s sleeping body last night, begging God to help me love her more truly, deeply, consistently, mercifully. And this is a prayer I know he hears and runs towards me to answer, for he is its author and perfecter.

Key Five: Taking time this morning to ACTUALLY write down the gifts of God to me over the last days, not just read about other people’s gratefulness or tell myself I am on a gratitude journey because I’ve thought about it and written about it and listed a few of my ‘one thousand gifts’ a few days ago. And – what do you know?! – heartfelt gratitude and joy welled up fresh inside me just from this simple act. When I stop to NOTICE the gifts, I find out I am full to overflowing, cup running over, rather than the empty I often feel.

Key Six: Choosing to act out of the fullness God promises me – and Jesus seems to assume is mine when he makes all his unreasonable demands! – by not allowing the ‘emptiness’ of others around me to empty me, but instead to choose to see fullness and live fullness regardless of what others are experiencing; then to reach out to give to them from within this fullness.

Key Seven: Doing the little things I could, as I took joy to create a chicken pot pie for our supper, to ‘go the extra mile’ and create a table of meeting that was beautiful and love-filled for us to eat at as a family, with grandparents added to our small three for this week. Good food, good drink, pretty napkins, candles, nature’s treasures scattered around... these simple things felt like sacraments to me as I prepared them and laid them out, and I knew mercy was soaking my heart and grace was soaking the atmosphere.

And, as this meal began, I asked Amelie to choose and read a grace from the little book that I began to compile many moons ago for our family meals, and that has largely gathered dust. She asked me if I would PLEASE, finally, handwrite the sung grace “Johnny Appleseed” in there next to her yellowing illustration, instead of waiting to print it out as I have been meaning to do for over three years! So I sat down and did it; it took me one minute. And the page that had been blank and years-long waiting – waiting for perfection, for the perfect moment – was swiftly filled with simple words of childlike gratitude that are bathed in the mercy that God rains on 'the just and the unjust alike':

"The Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple seed, the Lord is good to me. Johnny Appleseed... Amen!"

And so – with all these simple, rusty, but powerful keys – I present my own blank page to God, finally deigning to handwrite my simple, childlike gratitude and bathe in God’s mercy-rain right here and now (I am the just and the unjust) rather than waiting for another day, the perfect day, the perfect way, the perfect words. I am counting the ways he loves. The Lord is good to me.

Amen.

No need for you to read on unless you want to read the next of those 'one thousand gifts' I am cataloguing! :-)

Joy Dare: 3 gifts worn:

7 - A piece of handmade jewelery on a new acquaintance that speaks of skill and gift

8 - A beautiful, brightly coloured shirt on a sad friend

9- My snuggly red robe!

3 gifts hard to give thanks for:

10 - The gospel singing from downstairs in the retreat centre when I longed for silence

11 - So busy with so many wonderful people that I didn't manage to get outside all weekend!

12 - The people who made and served our meals - my judgment about what I perceived as their fussiness could have buried gratitude for their presence and service

3 gifts found:

13 - 'Treasures' in the SSU pantry that I didn't need to go and buy

14 - A game for Amelie to play with Granny and Grandpa

15 - Organic fair-trade coffee on a 50% off special to refuel the students of Park Hall! ;-)

A gift bent, a gift broken, a gift beautiful:

16 - Bent me, asking for forgiveness from Amelie; a bent gift is the joy of making it right and receiving mercy

17 - Amelie's purple beret minus bobble and growing a fraying hole gave her Granny the chance to darn and show her love

18 - Every time I actually stop long enough to SEE her, my daughter is Beauty itself for me - her wild, dark hair, her new sunlight-yellow top, her peach-soft skin, her lit-up eyes

3 gifts in the kitchen

19 - A hug with Amelie that lasted until she was OK again

20 - Ian and Jacqui faithfully doing the dishes so that the sink and countertop are always clear

21 - Evening light catching me by surprise as I cooked supper, and reminding me to pour love and grace into my preparations

All joy and no fun?

Last week a friend sent me a fascinating article from the New York magazine about why parents hate parenting. It was entitled ‘All Joy and No Fun’, and took as its starting point a range of academic research that shows that, although “most people assume that having children will make them happier”, in fact “parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so”. The article also discussed the fact that child care and parenting come pretty low down on surveys in which people rank how pleasurable they find different tasks. A similar result also shows up regularly in relationship research, with children “invariably reducing marital satisfaction” (not a surprise really, when you think about the strains parenting puts on a relationship!). There follows some really interesting discussion about why this might be – the challenge that parenting has always been, plus recent changes in society that have changed roles, tasks and expectations – and a couple of passages about the reality of being a parent made me chuckle in recognition.

One such statement, that “While children deepen your emotional life, they shrink your outer world to the size of a teacup, at least for a while”, reminds me of the moment when we finally got eleven week old Amélie to sleep in her cot at a decent hour in the evening, got excited that we’d at last be able to go out for a relaxing twilight stroll together as we had loved to do, but then realized that at least one of us was actually stuck in the house! It was one of those moments when the penny drops and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry – I think maybe I did a bit of both. The other part of the article that made me laugh out loud was the story of a famous psychologist who, when he finally got around to having children, told a colleague that: “They’re a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit.” This expresses so succinctly and colourfully the feeling I often get when an otherwise pleasant meal, road trip or walk in the woods is subtly or dramatically ruined (for want of a better word!) by the presence and needs of my darling daughter. Don’t get me wrong, I want her to be there; it’s just that sometimes I would like her to be there in a quasi-adult form, without the demands, meltdowns and whines, or even the very reasonable need for my attention and care. And there is no denying that when, as we did last night, Jeremy and I get a rare evening alone to jaunt off to St Andrews-by-the-Sea, sit on The Gables restaurant terrace by the water, eat without responsibility for the nourishment of a child, and talk without interruption, it is a far more purely pleasurable experience, and our ‘marital satisfaction’ probably experiences a sudden surge!

But the article also goes on to ask why, if parents aren’t happy, we as a race keep choosing to have kids, we generally love them dearly, and most parents do not regret having children (except on really bad days!). Then, in discussing a particular video clip of a stressful and rather typical exchange between a teenage boy and his mother over ‘screen time’ – a video referred to as brilliant birth control! – the article points out that neither a video, nor the content of one conversation or argument, can show the very deep love that is in the heart of this mother for her child, nor the hopes and values she has for the child that cause her to enter into a conflict zone she would probably much rather stay out of. And this is what it comes down to for me, and why I have never regretted becoming a parent, though there are days when my resentment levels are higher than normal, or when I think it’s a task I cannot manage: I’m ultimately not in this for easy, instant pleasure or personal satisfaction. Sometimes those things call out to me so loudly that I can hardly hear anything else, but the voice that calls me back is, I hope, love. That’s what I want to grow in, and into, who I want to become. That’s what I’m hoping is slowly drawing me out of my self-centredeness. So I’m happy that the article chooses to finish with some research that sensibly, instead of asking only about the pleasurableness of tasks, asked people to rank how rewarding different parts of their life are; unsurprisingly, parenting came high on the rewarding scale, though much further down on the pleasurable scale. This makes total sense to me, and also demonstrates the arbitrary and slippery nature of words. What do they really mean, all these words? Pleasurable or rewarding, fun or joy, satisfaction or love, happiness or contentment… Yes, my life is more challenging and less ‘unruffled’ than it used to be, but of COURSE there is happiness, pleasure and fun in living with a little person bursting with life and love! When I picked Amélie up from her sleepover this morning, a fresh explosion of unnamable loveliness and lightness entered the car along with her precious, pint-sized body. So perhaps what is really at stake here is how we as individuals and as a culture define the important concepts embodied in the words we bandy around as desirable goals and experiences. And perhaps parenting is one of the significant life experiences or ‘encounters’ that could help (or force) us to redefine our concepts, words, goals, values – even ourselves – for our own and everyone’s good. A longer quote from the article:

“Martin Seligman, the positive-psychology pioneer who is, famously, not a natural optimist, has always taken the view that happiness is best defined in the ancient Greek sense: leading a productive, purposeful life. And the way we take stock of that life, in the end, isn’t by how much fun we had, but what we did with it. (Seligman has seven children.)”

There’s something to this idea, but I’m not utterly convinced (seven kids must kill a few brain cells, don't you think?!). What about this for an idea though? If all you’re looking for is ‘fun’, life will inevitably blindside you and you’ll end up with very little of the experience you so desperately seek; but if you’re willing to aim for the sort of ‘joy’ that takes some hard work and sacrifice, fun will jump out at you from behind a tree while you’re minding your own business, and want to come along for the ride. That’s my experience, anyway. And one I’m hoping will – lack of sleep notwithstanding – repeat itself when I camp out with Amélie in the garden tonight!

Go to the ant...

Have you ever noticed that just as the trials and tribulations of one season are behind us, fresh ones belonging to the new season suddenly appear?! Here in Canada this means that, just as winter’s harshness is being forgotten, the pleasant summer air becomes filled with the buzz of stinging insects, and the lush new growth of grass with biting red ants! In our garden anyway…

Well, those blasted ants reminded me today of something that happened to me when I had known my now-husband Jeremy for a few months and we were co-leading a team of young people on a two-month trip to South Africa and Namibia. Next to a vlei, in the heady balm of a summer evening in the Cape, we had finally confessed to each other that we were interested in more than just friendship. But the next morning, instead of feeling excited, I found myself overcome with fear about the future, about the potential for 'making a mistake', and about the pain and struggle I knew marriage would inevitably bring. (The romance of this story just took a nosedive, didn’t it?!) As I sat outside thinking and praying about this, my eye was caught by two tiny ants on the African earth, trying to move something many times their size. I watched them for what seemed like hours as they persevered in their task together, pushing and tugging to get their prize over obstacles and out of the dips into which they often fell. A number of times the wind would blow one of the ants away, but the remaining ant would struggle on alone, still committed to the task, until – when I had begun to think the second ant would never return – it would suddenly reappear and carry on exactly where it left off. At other times, the pair got truly stuck in some crevice far too deep for them, but incredibly they never gave up. A few times they were joined by a third ant, who would help them just until they were unstuck, and then go on its way.

As I watched, this ‘ant’s tale’ became a parable, a lesson, and a promise for me. I received it as a promise that, yes, there would be struggle and hard work, but that this did not mean the task would ever need to be abandoned. I saw it almost as a preview of what Jeremy and I would experience if we chose to spend our lives together: that sometimes it would feel as if one of us was abandoned and struggling on alone; that at others the task would seem impossible; but that we would in fact never be deserted or alone, and so the task was achievable. And I took it, too, both as a promise that the help we needed would always be there at just the right time, and also as a lesson to look for, expect, and ask for that help – from God and from others. Of course, to give a balanced perspective on marriage – and to better reflect what has been my experience – it would have been nice if those ants had frolicked blithely in a grassy meadow for a while; or casually tossed the object they were carrying back and forth to each other like a beach ball; or put it down and used it as a table to chat and eat around with their beloved, tiny ant-children! But ants only do those things when they’re not being watched, so I suppose this was exactly the experience I needed at the time to give me the courage to take the plunge into the unknown. It also became for me a picture that has helped me to re-envision myself, Jeremy, marriage, and the role of others in our lives, in a way that has been extremely valuable over the years. The famous proverb tells us sluggards (there’s that darned sloth again!) to go to the ant and consider her ways – her diligence and foresight, perseverance and discipline – and be wise. Because in every significant relationship or endeavour there are seasons of hard work, and then seasons to enjoy the fruit of our labour; there are winter seasons and there are summer ones. Though, even in the summer seasons, you just can’t avoid those flaming ants!

Confessions of a Plant-killer: Part Three (Getting Personal)

If I assert that I am born neither with green fingers nor a black thumb, why might it be that I have chosen to be someone who does not keep plants alive? This is indeed a very troubling question, as I truly don’t wish to be a killer of anything or anyone, and have in fact made many an effort not to be one! I don’t pretend to have the definitive answer to this question – just ponderings that make some sense to me – but I notice something as I rinse the broccoli sprouts morning and evening, and ‘harvest’ some of them to the fridge today; as I take the time every rainless evening, whatever my other pressing plans and commitments, to water the tomato plants thanks to two extra lengths of hose that I finally got around to purchasing last week; and as I keep an eye on the sourdough starter, choosing when to feed it and when to bake with it. What I cannot help but notice is that these actions, which I have found so difficult to maintain in the past, are incredibly small, simple gestures. They take hardly any time, are remarkably uninvolved, and require no labour-intensive procedures. But, for all their simplicity, they demand to be done regularly and with straightforward precision. Perhaps, then, to tend living things, and keep them alive, is to choose a discipline of love supported by routines of care.

This week I came across an interesting discussion of the traditional ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ and the way in which Jesus’ ‘Beatitudes’ confront each of these (it seems that this discussion originally appeared in Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft). The idea that caught my eye was that Sloth (which I have known since working with the Enneagram to be my habitual trap or ‘sin of choice’!) can be defined as a ‘refusal to exert the will towards the good’. Ouch! That’s me in more area than one! For so many years I have excused my serial plant-killing with the avowal that “I didn’t mean to!”, and it’s true that I didn’t try to murder the poor things! But I think I am finally ready to see that my choice not to water or feed or tend still reflects some level of refusal to exert my will towards good and towards life. In other words, it’s not just what I do that matters and that defines me, it is also what I don’t do. Or, expressed in the positive, the little things I do really are significant – for my plants, but also for my relationships and for myself. It is not enough to ‘not kill’ (…or abandon or disparage) these things and these people; love demands that I cast off my tendency towards ease and consequent neglect, and instead exert my will towards the good, by intentionally choosing habitual actions that nurture and bring life.

As I write this, I have one more new thought. This past year I have been coming to know and experience that the Great Love that fuels the universe is not passively benevolent but rather actively loving. There is no sloth in God. Perhaps, then, as I am changed by this Great Love, I will more closely resemble it myself. And hopefully that will mean, among other things, no more dead plants…