I’m getting a lot of mileage this fall from a confession of ignorance. A friend said she felt it illustrated true wisdom. Other friends also have given it a proper, respectful space to be listened to. It has made a big difference for me in raising my kids.
The confession is: I don’t know anything about how to help a boy become a man.
It has made me stop trying to pretend I know, or thinking I have any understanding of the best decisions of guidance and discipline for my son. It has allowed me to give up the burden of it and consider that everything he needs, to be who he is, is already in him. It is the nature of his being, as he is created, that provides him now with what he always has been, and develops it day by day. The qualities of manhood, which are so attractive to me even though I fathom them faintly, are already part of who he is. The strength of character, compassion, integrity, and ability to do are not my job to construct in him. Phew! They are part of who he already is as the reflection of God.
As I’ve relaxed in this, I’ve seen, day by day, that it is true about my son. It makes me happy to know him. It makes him happier to be around me. I’m no longer worrying about whether he’ll develop the qualities I think he’ll need. Even if I knew what they were, I wouldn’t be able to make them appear. But I can trust with the same trust I have towards the goodness of the universe that his Creator does know everything he needs (for he is, after all, his Creator’s idea) and gives it to him.
In the last few days I’ve reflected that this is also true for my daughter. Though I may have felt more comfortable about guiding someone into womanhood than manhood, I really don’t know anything about this either. Even what it is to be a woman is something I may be only just now discovering. It is lovely to feel that I and she can both be led, each from within, in the development of our own womanhood.
Jesus said, “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?” – implying that none of us could. Depending on interpretation, that could mean: since you can see that you can’t, by setting up a self-help program for yourself or by worrying, make yourself a foot taller, don’t try to set up such a program, or worry, about any part of yourself. God is taking care of all aspects of you. And it can mean, since you can’t, either through worrying or a self-help program, do anything to improve your self-esteem, give up the effort and rejoice in the royal place that you are granted in being the child of God.
I’m learning that this applies to parenting, too. I can’t add a cubit to their stature, I can’t make them be a woman and a man. But I can relax and enjoy the expression of Life that Life, Love, gives to us in our relations with each other day by day.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
“Mortal existence is a dream . . .”
Wednesday was rainy. I was walking down the hill on Yesler, from up above Broadway where I had parked. I was carrying about ten Bibles in a plastic bag, and a similar number of Science and Healths in my backpack, along with my books – going to the jail to deliver literature and visit people. I had already gotten pretty wet picking up the books – unlocking the padlock at the gate, walking up to the Reading Room, walking back, closing the gate, replacing the padlock, stepping gingerly through the half-inch deep sheet of water pitted by raindrops. And I had driven in low visibility on a freeway thick with cars, my windshield wipers thrashing. The rain now was a little lighter but still getting me wet.
The walk down Yesler is always a bit breathtaking. There is the sweeping vista down and across the Sound, and to the left across the valley. To the right is the roar of freeway cars being channeled down various parallel and diverging rampings of concrete. Then you come down, across the homeless encampments, into the land of the skyscrapers.
So I was walking along, hunched and squinting, when I suddenly got an arresting thought. I imagined that this was all a dream, and I had awakened. I still found the dream interesting, so I was describing it to myself, trying to remember everything. I told myself, we had these things called cars that could move us along special channels that we had made for them. And we had these things called bodies that we moved around in, too. We considered the bodies more attached to us than the cars, but we moved them with similar instrumentation – with both we would listen to their feedback and supply them with what they were said to need.
A funny thing happened to me at that moment. The rain, which had been an annoyance, suddenly became an interesting detail of my dream. I felt the drops on my face as cool and soft, refreshing; something to notice. I wanted to remember everything – I felt a love for it. I also started to think about what I knew now that I was awake – that good is here, now. I could feel that goodness, that feels-like-flying lightness inside.
After I was done at the jail, walking now up the very steep hills but with a lighter load, I again put myself into mind of noticing what was in the dream. I thought, in the dream, we all had different things we were supposed to be doing. Some of them were considered more desirable than others. There were people that we really loved, and things we really cared about. But we didn’t necessarily notice that love is present all the time.
As I maneuvered my car onto the freeway, I felt a surge of satisfaction at having accomplished all my tasks successfully. And I thought, in the dream, we thought we could have goodness based on certain conditions. We set up the conditions, or felt that others had, and then we tried to meet them. If we succeeded, we got to feel goodness. Otherwise, we didn’t.
There are two places in Science and Health where Mrs. Eddy says, “Mortal existence is a dream”. I’ve accepted that on an intellectual and analogical level, but hadn’t come so close before to feeling what it might mean. The question, so if it’s a dream, what difference does that make? is an important one. I could say, it’s just a dream so it doesn’t matter what happens. But that feels like a cop out, and also something my heart would never quite believe. I could say, it’s just a dream, so if we get good at lucid dreaming, we can make whatever we want happen. But that misses the point – it is an attempt to live in the dream instead of wake up. I could say it’s like the premise in The Matrix – that while this may be a dream, it may be preferable to stay asleep than to give up everything I know as true.
My experience on Wednesday pointed to a different answer. I had the feeling of being awake to the truth that good is here now, and that nothing else is absolutely true. The particulars of the dream give me many opportunities to love, and the love is real, something I’m actually doing in my waking state. I start to see that elements of the dream are only real to the extent that they are opportunities for me to love. The phenomenon of cars and highways is dream, but the desire to move freely and to harness power is real. I have the opportunity to love the dance of harmony, and the swift movement, and the ingenuity of invention. The phenomenon of bodies is dream, but locus and volition, presence and interaction with the environment, feeling and caring, are real. I have the opportunity to love the long strides and wide vistas of high hills, and tender touch, and being with people.
There are so many issues in the dream that cry for healing. The ground beneath the highways cries to breathe; the air cries to be clean; people cry to know their worth and purpose. All the currents of human systems, many swept along by blind grabbing for a misunderstood need, cry to be set right so they don’t keep on impoverishing people and wreaking environmental havoc. What delivers healing to the dream is doses of awakeness, moments of vision which guide actions toward the natural good that all creation desires.
The walk down Yesler is always a bit breathtaking. There is the sweeping vista down and across the Sound, and to the left across the valley. To the right is the roar of freeway cars being channeled down various parallel and diverging rampings of concrete. Then you come down, across the homeless encampments, into the land of the skyscrapers.
So I was walking along, hunched and squinting, when I suddenly got an arresting thought. I imagined that this was all a dream, and I had awakened. I still found the dream interesting, so I was describing it to myself, trying to remember everything. I told myself, we had these things called cars that could move us along special channels that we had made for them. And we had these things called bodies that we moved around in, too. We considered the bodies more attached to us than the cars, but we moved them with similar instrumentation – with both we would listen to their feedback and supply them with what they were said to need.
A funny thing happened to me at that moment. The rain, which had been an annoyance, suddenly became an interesting detail of my dream. I felt the drops on my face as cool and soft, refreshing; something to notice. I wanted to remember everything – I felt a love for it. I also started to think about what I knew now that I was awake – that good is here, now. I could feel that goodness, that feels-like-flying lightness inside.
After I was done at the jail, walking now up the very steep hills but with a lighter load, I again put myself into mind of noticing what was in the dream. I thought, in the dream, we all had different things we were supposed to be doing. Some of them were considered more desirable than others. There were people that we really loved, and things we really cared about. But we didn’t necessarily notice that love is present all the time.
As I maneuvered my car onto the freeway, I felt a surge of satisfaction at having accomplished all my tasks successfully. And I thought, in the dream, we thought we could have goodness based on certain conditions. We set up the conditions, or felt that others had, and then we tried to meet them. If we succeeded, we got to feel goodness. Otherwise, we didn’t.
There are two places in Science and Health where Mrs. Eddy says, “Mortal existence is a dream”. I’ve accepted that on an intellectual and analogical level, but hadn’t come so close before to feeling what it might mean. The question, so if it’s a dream, what difference does that make? is an important one. I could say, it’s just a dream so it doesn’t matter what happens. But that feels like a cop out, and also something my heart would never quite believe. I could say, it’s just a dream, so if we get good at lucid dreaming, we can make whatever we want happen. But that misses the point – it is an attempt to live in the dream instead of wake up. I could say it’s like the premise in The Matrix – that while this may be a dream, it may be preferable to stay asleep than to give up everything I know as true.
My experience on Wednesday pointed to a different answer. I had the feeling of being awake to the truth that good is here now, and that nothing else is absolutely true. The particulars of the dream give me many opportunities to love, and the love is real, something I’m actually doing in my waking state. I start to see that elements of the dream are only real to the extent that they are opportunities for me to love. The phenomenon of cars and highways is dream, but the desire to move freely and to harness power is real. I have the opportunity to love the dance of harmony, and the swift movement, and the ingenuity of invention. The phenomenon of bodies is dream, but locus and volition, presence and interaction with the environment, feeling and caring, are real. I have the opportunity to love the long strides and wide vistas of high hills, and tender touch, and being with people.
There are so many issues in the dream that cry for healing. The ground beneath the highways cries to breathe; the air cries to be clean; people cry to know their worth and purpose. All the currents of human systems, many swept along by blind grabbing for a misunderstood need, cry to be set right so they don’t keep on impoverishing people and wreaking environmental havoc. What delivers healing to the dream is doses of awakeness, moments of vision which guide actions toward the natural good that all creation desires.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
My World is Mine to Save
The problem with comparing my life to other people’s runs deeper than its being a bad idea, something that’s not good for me. It’s not one of those things to know I shouldn’t do but still do “because I’m only human”. The problem lies in its being an artifact of a false paradigm – an error which exposes a misunderstanding of the whole way the world is put together.
There is a part of the daily prayer (given by Mrs. Eddy in the Manual of the Mother Church) that says, “Let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love be established in me.” When I think of the “me” in the prayer, I sometimes think “the kingdom of me,” to remind myself that everything I perceive is part of myself, and the establishment of the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love in me means that it’s all I can ever see, in my whole world.
This is not a megalomanic statement. It just acknowledges that all I can ever know of others is my perception of them. My prayer for others is my looking to God – my source, our common source, to see something of their true identity. Seeing them, then, as perfect, is not some wonderful thing I do for them. It’s just cleaning up my own act about something that is already true.
It comes down to this. I have access to my world through my perceptions. What I perceive is, in a very real way, my world. I can’t assume that it is the same as anyone else’s. I don’t have access to anyone else’s world, except for this: through communion with God, I have access to the truth. The truth as God knows it doesn’t include any relative opinions about people. It doesn’t include an assessment of strengths and weaknesses, achievements and follies. It only includes the deep and perfect being, rooted in the infinite, sustained by Love itself. The only opinion I can have that comes anywhere near the truth is this perception of reality. Any other opinion is only my construct – the story I tell myself, based on my projections.
When I interact with you, it is an intersection of our worlds. I know that I am interacting with you, but what I think you are, and what I think you do, may be very different from what you think you are and do. You may say something that I feel compels me to react in a certain way –say for example, with indignation. But since what I see as you is just my construct, I’m not actually compelled to react in any way at all. I can notice that my impulse to react is based on my perception, but that my perception isn’t the actual fact. I can stop and check in with Truth before I react.
If I act on assumptions I have about you, based on what kind of person I think you are, I probably will offend you, as the assumptions expose the difference between my and your perceptions of you. My best chance at having an authentic interaction is by acknowledging that I can’t rightly know anything about you except by seeing what God knows.
Comparing my relative achievements with others is just comparing my view of myself with what I’ve projected about others. I can only do it in my world. I may assume that I have some kind of an objective standpoint from which I can judge, but I don’t. The others I would compare myself with are just my own constructs, and are probably unrecognizable by the people who share their names.
The powerful part of this realization is that my world is mine to save. It’s up to me to make sure that I view my world correctly, that I take careful and diligent time to make a fair estimation of what everything is, based on what God knows about it. Then I can expect to see my perceptions come more and more in line with the perfect reality. I may have wondered when “they” would get around to seeing things in a more intelligent way. But now the answer is clear: it’s up to me. Of course, this can be said by everyone else as well, though of course, I can’t say it for anyone but me.
There is a part of the daily prayer (given by Mrs. Eddy in the Manual of the Mother Church) that says, “Let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love be established in me.” When I think of the “me” in the prayer, I sometimes think “the kingdom of me,” to remind myself that everything I perceive is part of myself, and the establishment of the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love in me means that it’s all I can ever see, in my whole world.
This is not a megalomanic statement. It just acknowledges that all I can ever know of others is my perception of them. My prayer for others is my looking to God – my source, our common source, to see something of their true identity. Seeing them, then, as perfect, is not some wonderful thing I do for them. It’s just cleaning up my own act about something that is already true.
It comes down to this. I have access to my world through my perceptions. What I perceive is, in a very real way, my world. I can’t assume that it is the same as anyone else’s. I don’t have access to anyone else’s world, except for this: through communion with God, I have access to the truth. The truth as God knows it doesn’t include any relative opinions about people. It doesn’t include an assessment of strengths and weaknesses, achievements and follies. It only includes the deep and perfect being, rooted in the infinite, sustained by Love itself. The only opinion I can have that comes anywhere near the truth is this perception of reality. Any other opinion is only my construct – the story I tell myself, based on my projections.
When I interact with you, it is an intersection of our worlds. I know that I am interacting with you, but what I think you are, and what I think you do, may be very different from what you think you are and do. You may say something that I feel compels me to react in a certain way –say for example, with indignation. But since what I see as you is just my construct, I’m not actually compelled to react in any way at all. I can notice that my impulse to react is based on my perception, but that my perception isn’t the actual fact. I can stop and check in with Truth before I react.
If I act on assumptions I have about you, based on what kind of person I think you are, I probably will offend you, as the assumptions expose the difference between my and your perceptions of you. My best chance at having an authentic interaction is by acknowledging that I can’t rightly know anything about you except by seeing what God knows.
Comparing my relative achievements with others is just comparing my view of myself with what I’ve projected about others. I can only do it in my world. I may assume that I have some kind of an objective standpoint from which I can judge, but I don’t. The others I would compare myself with are just my own constructs, and are probably unrecognizable by the people who share their names.
The powerful part of this realization is that my world is mine to save. It’s up to me to make sure that I view my world correctly, that I take careful and diligent time to make a fair estimation of what everything is, based on what God knows about it. Then I can expect to see my perceptions come more and more in line with the perfect reality. I may have wondered when “they” would get around to seeing things in a more intelligent way. But now the answer is clear: it’s up to me. Of course, this can be said by everyone else as well, though of course, I can’t say it for anyone but me.
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