When I visit my parents each summer, my sister and I take a daily morning bike ride. We have a twenty mile loop that includes beach side, meadows, and woods, with some edges of towns at the corners. When it has rained the night before, there are puddles on the road and the trail - sometimes covering the whole road surface. My sister generally plows right through them, lifting her feet high off the peddles. I tend to go around them if I can, and if I can’t, I go through gingerly, hoping to avoid the wet, sandy track of splashed water up my back.
My sister rides all year round. Once, she told me, she had ridden right after a heavy rain, and pretty much the whole trail was a big puddle. The sky had cleared, and the puddles were vividly reflective. She said she had almost a feeling of vertigo, seeing the reflection of the trees and sky deep below her. She said, maybe we’ll get a ride like that while you’re here.
A few days later, we had a ride that had some puddles. I approached them in my usual way. Another feature of our rides is conversation - we call ourselves the biking philosophers, solving the world’s problems each morning at six, except on Fridays, when we take out the trash first. So the conversation was going along on that day - I was trying to explain some metaphysical point to her, and getting the feeling that I shouldn’t have tried. My words were just creating a sense of separation, and I didn’t feel I had any way of expressing it that could pull it together. Then we came to a puddle.
It was a bright puddle, full of sunshine and yellow-green from sun-drenched trees, with blue and white from the sky. It was on Jennifer’s side of the trail, and she rode right through it with great delight. She exclaimed at how the vivid picture was splashed into an abstraction of colors as her tires plowed through.
I was ready to just let that be the end of my efforts to explain my point. But Jennifer urged me to continue, so I said,
When you just rode through that puddle, it was this marvelous connection with another world - with the depth of the sky beneath you and the play of the colors. And when you went through it you felt a thrill, because of the sensation and your connection to it. That was an experience of being alive. Now I went through a puddle a little while back, and I didn’t see the reflection at all, because I was thinking of the sand that would go up my back, and trying not to get my feet too wet. Whereas, for you, the puddle was a great experience. But you couldn’t really prescribe your experience in terms of riding through mud puddles - “for your well-being, ride through at least five mud puddles a day.” It somehow wouldn’t get a handle on what you were trying to recommend. But you did have an alive experience riding through the mud puddle. It just can’t be prescribed in material terms. That’s what I mean by saying life is entirely spiritual. You can’t get a handle on what’s important, substantial, valuable, by pursuing material experience. Because it can’t capture the quality that makes you love it.
That made sense to Jennifer. The actual presence of the alive moment worked in a way that none of my philosophical words could do. The splash of Spirit came and united us in understanding - bright yellows and greens and blues exploded into clarity - the abstract colors forming a concrete connection.
Friday, November 28, 2008
My neighbor as myself
I had a dream early Monday morning in which I felt deep emotions - strong love for the characters in the dream, a sense of the importance of the things in their lives going in the right way for them.
On the bus Monday, a woman didn’t want to move her backpack off the chair next to her to give me a seat. She asked me to ask another person, who was also taking up two seats, to move. While I was hesitating, the young woman across the aisle offered me her seat. I hesitated there, too, unwilling to have her stand in my stead, but she indicated a vacant seat farther back which I hadn’t seen, and moved to it.
Sitting in the seat she left, I felt a little discomfited by the exchange - happy enough to have a seat but uncomfortable that someone else had moved for me; wondering if the young man in the seat next to me was her partner and I was causing them to be separated, wondering about the woman with the backpack. I had noticed the helmet on her pack when I still thought she was going to move it, as I expected, for me to sit down, so I surmised she had her bike on the bus. I then noticed that there was also a fold-up bike inside the bus, taking the space of three seats that fold up for a wheel chair to be accommodated. I wondered if it was hers (it turned out to be). I had been more comfortable asking her to move her backpack than asking the other person - a rather flamboyant person of dubious sex who was deeply involved with something with a large antenna - to stop lounging diagonally over two seats.
Then I had a thought: what if all the people I see on the bus are characters in my own dream? Because the emotions from my morning dream were still lingering, this was not a dismissive thought. It had two accompanying parts - one, an opening of my ability to feel love for them; and two, a sense that they were all part of me, all with messages to teach me, all opportunities, tests, as it were, of my ability to love. I considered that perhaps the woman with the backpack was feeling strong in a newfound ability to stand up for herself, to take enough space for herself. I didn’t really think specifically about anyone else on the bus, but as I got off the bus, I found myself thinking of her as someone who had just taught me a great lesson.
I’ve been trying this out, when I think of it, in the days since. My husband will say something to me, and I’ll think, here is a character in my dream. He is mine to love. He is here as an opportunity for me to test my love. And then I’ll respond. My responses then tend to be kinder, because I’m not thinking he should be a certain way. And there’s no place, in thinking of other people, for things like envy, because everything I see is part of my world, and no one else’s.
I’m not saying that I’m the only one that exists. I’m just saying that I’m the only one that exists in my dream. Every other individual is also a perfect reflection of God. But I don’t have the ability to see them that way from within my dream. How I see them in my dream is up to me. And the more I consider my interactions with them as opportunities to love, the more closely, in my dream, I’ll see them as they really are.
Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” I’ve been considering, in the last few years, that this can imply that my neighbor is myself. This odd fiction of thinking of everyone I see as a character in my dream, a part of me, can be a working exercise of loving my neighbor as myself. I didn’t think this up and then work on having it happen. It started to happen, and so I started to think about it.
On the bus Monday, a woman didn’t want to move her backpack off the chair next to her to give me a seat. She asked me to ask another person, who was also taking up two seats, to move. While I was hesitating, the young woman across the aisle offered me her seat. I hesitated there, too, unwilling to have her stand in my stead, but she indicated a vacant seat farther back which I hadn’t seen, and moved to it.
Sitting in the seat she left, I felt a little discomfited by the exchange - happy enough to have a seat but uncomfortable that someone else had moved for me; wondering if the young man in the seat next to me was her partner and I was causing them to be separated, wondering about the woman with the backpack. I had noticed the helmet on her pack when I still thought she was going to move it, as I expected, for me to sit down, so I surmised she had her bike on the bus. I then noticed that there was also a fold-up bike inside the bus, taking the space of three seats that fold up for a wheel chair to be accommodated. I wondered if it was hers (it turned out to be). I had been more comfortable asking her to move her backpack than asking the other person - a rather flamboyant person of dubious sex who was deeply involved with something with a large antenna - to stop lounging diagonally over two seats.
Then I had a thought: what if all the people I see on the bus are characters in my own dream? Because the emotions from my morning dream were still lingering, this was not a dismissive thought. It had two accompanying parts - one, an opening of my ability to feel love for them; and two, a sense that they were all part of me, all with messages to teach me, all opportunities, tests, as it were, of my ability to love. I considered that perhaps the woman with the backpack was feeling strong in a newfound ability to stand up for herself, to take enough space for herself. I didn’t really think specifically about anyone else on the bus, but as I got off the bus, I found myself thinking of her as someone who had just taught me a great lesson.
I’ve been trying this out, when I think of it, in the days since. My husband will say something to me, and I’ll think, here is a character in my dream. He is mine to love. He is here as an opportunity for me to test my love. And then I’ll respond. My responses then tend to be kinder, because I’m not thinking he should be a certain way. And there’s no place, in thinking of other people, for things like envy, because everything I see is part of my world, and no one else’s.
I’m not saying that I’m the only one that exists. I’m just saying that I’m the only one that exists in my dream. Every other individual is also a perfect reflection of God. But I don’t have the ability to see them that way from within my dream. How I see them in my dream is up to me. And the more I consider my interactions with them as opportunities to love, the more closely, in my dream, I’ll see them as they really are.
Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” I’ve been considering, in the last few years, that this can imply that my neighbor is myself. This odd fiction of thinking of everyone I see as a character in my dream, a part of me, can be a working exercise of loving my neighbor as myself. I didn’t think this up and then work on having it happen. It started to happen, and so I started to think about it.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Correcting Thought
Some years back when my kids were small, I took great comfort in a group of friends whose kids were around the same ages. We would hang out in each other’s kitchens and family rooms, talking while our children played, picking up conversation threads dropped in the frequent interruptions. At one point one of them commented on a gesture I had - a kind of a short movement of my head from center a little to the right, mouth closed. She said it signified I wasn’t buying into something that had been said. I hadn’t been aware of the gesture, but my other friends recognized it, and also agreed about what they felt it meant.
As I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised to find I had such a gesture. After all, what was I going to say when discussion turned to things medical, or theories about behavior that I didn’t think were true? I had my own sense of what was true, and I had to hold to it. After all, a Christian Scientist is supposed to correct thought, right?
Lately I’ve come to think about this differently. A fundamental question is, how is thought corrected? If thought is theory, all that would be needed would be the construction of a system of explanation and support that is believable - that is, internally consistent. Correcting a theory would just be pointing out false premises or conclusions - examining evidence, considering possible interpretations, looking at things in new ways. This is the kind of thing I have long loved to do - I still find it interesting, exciting. But thought is more than theory. If thought comprises the total of our substance, then it includes everything that we are - what we call body, what we call spirit, what we call heart and soul. We’re told in Christian Science that correcting thought brings healing. But I’ve never found holding to a theory, however beautiful, to do anything to heal my body, or my heart.
So correcting thought must be something much deeper than developing a theoretical construct, a way to think about something that has a consistent story, putting my chosen protagonists in the right place. Any story, any way to choose to think about a set of people or circumstances, is just a story. It can do no more for me, in terms of healing, than (as Mrs. Eddy says) moonbeams can melt a river of ice. To correct thought in a way that would bring healing requires going beneath the story. Mrs. Eddy says, “Divine Love corrects and governs man.”
So the only way I can correct my own thought is by opening myself to divine Love - allowing my self to be lifted by the flood tides (as Mrs. Eddy says, “The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in Truth through flood tides of Love"). In a rising flood tide of Love, there is too much power for me to cling to the little rocks of my theories of right and wrong - too much moving force of goodness for me to account for how everyone’s behavior should be arranged. My egocentric sense of order is washed out, turned and tumbled, and made impossible to reference. I am compelled to allow myself to be floated up and held in the new order of Love.
As for correcting other people’s thoughts, there’s no correctness in telling people how I think they’re wrong and what I think they should do to think or do better. Thinking such thoughts at them without saying anything is even more ludicrous. The only way that I might correct thought is if there is some way I can reach to the underlying knot of fear and doubt about their worth, and somehow loosen it.
If I can correct a thought in myself or someone else, it won’t be to change a theoretical construct or a story. It won’t be to say that a certain thing is wrong and some other thing would be right. I will be successful if I have enough love to dissolve the thought that says we’re in this state of separation from the divine Mind, that makes us feel cut off, lonely, in need of improving ourselves. The only thing that can correct that thought is something deeper than the internal judge that tells me what’s wrong with myself or others. That deeper thing is the truth about our perfect being, the truth about how much we are loved.
As I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised to find I had such a gesture. After all, what was I going to say when discussion turned to things medical, or theories about behavior that I didn’t think were true? I had my own sense of what was true, and I had to hold to it. After all, a Christian Scientist is supposed to correct thought, right?
Lately I’ve come to think about this differently. A fundamental question is, how is thought corrected? If thought is theory, all that would be needed would be the construction of a system of explanation and support that is believable - that is, internally consistent. Correcting a theory would just be pointing out false premises or conclusions - examining evidence, considering possible interpretations, looking at things in new ways. This is the kind of thing I have long loved to do - I still find it interesting, exciting. But thought is more than theory. If thought comprises the total of our substance, then it includes everything that we are - what we call body, what we call spirit, what we call heart and soul. We’re told in Christian Science that correcting thought brings healing. But I’ve never found holding to a theory, however beautiful, to do anything to heal my body, or my heart.
So correcting thought must be something much deeper than developing a theoretical construct, a way to think about something that has a consistent story, putting my chosen protagonists in the right place. Any story, any way to choose to think about a set of people or circumstances, is just a story. It can do no more for me, in terms of healing, than (as Mrs. Eddy says) moonbeams can melt a river of ice. To correct thought in a way that would bring healing requires going beneath the story. Mrs. Eddy says, “Divine Love corrects and governs man.”
So the only way I can correct my own thought is by opening myself to divine Love - allowing my self to be lifted by the flood tides (as Mrs. Eddy says, “The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in Truth through flood tides of Love"). In a rising flood tide of Love, there is too much power for me to cling to the little rocks of my theories of right and wrong - too much moving force of goodness for me to account for how everyone’s behavior should be arranged. My egocentric sense of order is washed out, turned and tumbled, and made impossible to reference. I am compelled to allow myself to be floated up and held in the new order of Love.
As for correcting other people’s thoughts, there’s no correctness in telling people how I think they’re wrong and what I think they should do to think or do better. Thinking such thoughts at them without saying anything is even more ludicrous. The only way that I might correct thought is if there is some way I can reach to the underlying knot of fear and doubt about their worth, and somehow loosen it.
If I can correct a thought in myself or someone else, it won’t be to change a theoretical construct or a story. It won’t be to say that a certain thing is wrong and some other thing would be right. I will be successful if I have enough love to dissolve the thought that says we’re in this state of separation from the divine Mind, that makes us feel cut off, lonely, in need of improving ourselves. The only thing that can correct that thought is something deeper than the internal judge that tells me what’s wrong with myself or others. That deeper thing is the truth about our perfect being, the truth about how much we are loved.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
The hand of Love
In the middle of the night
the mother comes and strokes the child’s hair
running her fingers through
gently smoothing the strands
In the middle of the night
the currents of dreams softly realign thought
disentangling the questions
deftly smoothing the strands
Soft as water
strong as currents
lifting the mermaid hair up from the rocks
smoothing it and holding it in disentangled ripples
The hand of Love lifts all tangled things
smoothes them
sets them right and holds them in shimmering order.
I’ve had this image for a while of the hand of Love - how it solves all conflicts without having to engage in them, how it sidesteps the question of who or what is wrong, and lets each of us know that what we always wanted to believe, is true. We are loved, we are held in our perfect purpose, none of the things we feared can hurt us. We were not wrong, but we were not right either - not in the way that puts us on one side or another of a conflict. There is nothing we need to prove. Love is unfolding our being, and holds us with the same certainty that the current holds the mermaid hair.
I’ve felt this hand of Love lifting and settling my thoughts, taking away my sense of conflict with others - any feeling of needing to confront a problem, to be wrong or right or to view others that way. I feel it lifting our country, our world, rendering irrelevant the perennial considerations of blame, giving us a new sense about how all needs can be met together, instead of some being chosen over others. When Love guides me, I know what to say in my family, so I don’t create tangles, but allow Love to smooth us all and hold us up together.
the mother comes and strokes the child’s hair
running her fingers through
gently smoothing the strands
In the middle of the night
the currents of dreams softly realign thought
disentangling the questions
deftly smoothing the strands
Soft as water
strong as currents
lifting the mermaid hair up from the rocks
smoothing it and holding it in disentangled ripples
The hand of Love lifts all tangled things
smoothes them
sets them right and holds them in shimmering order.
I’ve had this image for a while of the hand of Love - how it solves all conflicts without having to engage in them, how it sidesteps the question of who or what is wrong, and lets each of us know that what we always wanted to believe, is true. We are loved, we are held in our perfect purpose, none of the things we feared can hurt us. We were not wrong, but we were not right either - not in the way that puts us on one side or another of a conflict. There is nothing we need to prove. Love is unfolding our being, and holds us with the same certainty that the current holds the mermaid hair.
I’ve felt this hand of Love lifting and settling my thoughts, taking away my sense of conflict with others - any feeling of needing to confront a problem, to be wrong or right or to view others that way. I feel it lifting our country, our world, rendering irrelevant the perennial considerations of blame, giving us a new sense about how all needs can be met together, instead of some being chosen over others. When Love guides me, I know what to say in my family, so I don’t create tangles, but allow Love to smooth us all and hold us up together.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Sea Change
I meant to look up what the phrase meant, before I packed up my computer. But I was out of time, so I came anyway, with this feeling of sea change washing over me, surprising me continually, like waves lapping at the shore of my thought.
So surprising to feel so different. So strange to consider that perhaps I can’t describe the difference in words that are any different from ones I’ve used before. Sea change to me means that the whole sand scape of my world has been wiped casually clean, as by a wave. It means the closing of the water over the surface quickly becomes smooth, as if there were never an exposed sandbar. The waves calmly say, I didn’t see anything - yet everything has changed.
Sea change - a new weather that comes in over the sea and brings a new atmosphere, a new set of smells, a new texture in the air.
I was reading articles in the Penn Alumni magazine - featuring people who went to my school, who are now doing impressive things -a man who has used his savvy to start up multi-million dollar enterprises, a woman who has carved out a career as a novelist and promoter of her books. I found myself delighting in the logic of their approaches, and when I was done, I noticed that something had shifted in my thought. When I was in college, I shunned business - the word, the people studying it. Though it was slightly under the surface of consciousness, I think the two components of my thought were belief that business is associated with selling out, with selling one’s soul and one’s friends; and fear that I could never understand it or be successful at it. Mostly the notion of business made me want to sleep.
Now I realized that my thought, over all these years, had closed out as undesirable a vast field in which people might interact with each other with intelligence and effectiveness, might bring ideas to fruition, might stretch their capabilities, express their identities, give to the world. It seemed unsurprising to me then, that I hadn’t gone forward with any of my ideas for accomplishing good in the world. Not that I hadn’t tried a few times, not that I hadn’t wondered why I didn’t seem to have what I needed to actually pull it off. I had had, buried beneath the surface, something that worked against myself with every effort I made.
Now it feels like that’s gone. It doesn’t mean, as my husband may wish it did, that I will forthwith go out and start a money-making business venture. But it seems it’s important for my business of being in the practice.
I started thinking about this in September - studied business plans and wrote one for myself - translating all of the concepts, as I understood them, to spiritual terms. I wrote a plan for increasing the market share Truth had in my thought and in my view of the world. I guess what has happened here is a palpable gain in market share for Truth. Suddenly I can see God’s hand in all the field of business, and have a basis for affirming that God can guide business to be universally beneficial, principled, sound. It feels like a better basis of prayer to see God guiding business than to imagine business as an evil thing that should go away. Also I felt my thought opening up towards all the people who have embraced the pursuit of business - and because that is such a lot of people, it feels like an opening towards people in general.
There is another part to this as well. It is that I don’t succeed in life by defining it - people, pursuits, ways of thinking, etc - as being comprised of some good and some bad, with my task being to choose out what’s good, at least for me. Instead, I succeed in life by knowing that all is good, that God is in control of everything, and that by standing up for this truth, I bring it into my experience.
I got home and looked up sea change. It turns out, I had the feeling of it right, though the reference, from Shakespeare, is to bones changing to corals over time, under the sea. But it still has that transformational feeling - everything is here but everything is different. I asked for this, and I am happy to see it come, time and again, as many times as needed, till I come home to myself.
So surprising to feel so different. So strange to consider that perhaps I can’t describe the difference in words that are any different from ones I’ve used before. Sea change to me means that the whole sand scape of my world has been wiped casually clean, as by a wave. It means the closing of the water over the surface quickly becomes smooth, as if there were never an exposed sandbar. The waves calmly say, I didn’t see anything - yet everything has changed.
Sea change - a new weather that comes in over the sea and brings a new atmosphere, a new set of smells, a new texture in the air.
I was reading articles in the Penn Alumni magazine - featuring people who went to my school, who are now doing impressive things -a man who has used his savvy to start up multi-million dollar enterprises, a woman who has carved out a career as a novelist and promoter of her books. I found myself delighting in the logic of their approaches, and when I was done, I noticed that something had shifted in my thought. When I was in college, I shunned business - the word, the people studying it. Though it was slightly under the surface of consciousness, I think the two components of my thought were belief that business is associated with selling out, with selling one’s soul and one’s friends; and fear that I could never understand it or be successful at it. Mostly the notion of business made me want to sleep.
Now I realized that my thought, over all these years, had closed out as undesirable a vast field in which people might interact with each other with intelligence and effectiveness, might bring ideas to fruition, might stretch their capabilities, express their identities, give to the world. It seemed unsurprising to me then, that I hadn’t gone forward with any of my ideas for accomplishing good in the world. Not that I hadn’t tried a few times, not that I hadn’t wondered why I didn’t seem to have what I needed to actually pull it off. I had had, buried beneath the surface, something that worked against myself with every effort I made.
Now it feels like that’s gone. It doesn’t mean, as my husband may wish it did, that I will forthwith go out and start a money-making business venture. But it seems it’s important for my business of being in the practice.
I started thinking about this in September - studied business plans and wrote one for myself - translating all of the concepts, as I understood them, to spiritual terms. I wrote a plan for increasing the market share Truth had in my thought and in my view of the world. I guess what has happened here is a palpable gain in market share for Truth. Suddenly I can see God’s hand in all the field of business, and have a basis for affirming that God can guide business to be universally beneficial, principled, sound. It feels like a better basis of prayer to see God guiding business than to imagine business as an evil thing that should go away. Also I felt my thought opening up towards all the people who have embraced the pursuit of business - and because that is such a lot of people, it feels like an opening towards people in general.
There is another part to this as well. It is that I don’t succeed in life by defining it - people, pursuits, ways of thinking, etc - as being comprised of some good and some bad, with my task being to choose out what’s good, at least for me. Instead, I succeed in life by knowing that all is good, that God is in control of everything, and that by standing up for this truth, I bring it into my experience.
I got home and looked up sea change. It turns out, I had the feeling of it right, though the reference, from Shakespeare, is to bones changing to corals over time, under the sea. But it still has that transformational feeling - everything is here but everything is different. I asked for this, and I am happy to see it come, time and again, as many times as needed, till I come home to myself.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Hearing the Word
Yesterday at the jail, Bill (not his real name) and I continued our conversation about the Scriptures. I said, you have to just interpret the Scripture for yourself - you can’t try to apply it to what anyone else should do at any given moment. And you can listen to what other people say it means to them, but you have to go by what it means to you. And you have to be really honest with yourself about it. You can’t do it for show - to seem better to others or even to yourself.
This all was woven in to specific discussion of passages of Scripture, such as Paul’s injunctions in I Corinthians regarding whether to marry or not and how to make judgement in the case of disputes between people (these were what he was bringing up). I also brought in parts like Jesus’ instruction not to judge, and his definition of Christians as people who love each other - people who see others while standing in the place of love towards them.
Eventually he was ready to have me read him two sections of the Bible Lesson, which I did, with him interjecting, with enthusiasm, things that he knew about some of the passages. And we talked more about what things meant - but he tended to think the stuff in Science and Health just made sense as it stood. At a certain point he said, I really like to study the Scripture myself, but sometimes it really helps to hear someone else’s perspective on it. And he said, “you’re good!” I didn’t take this personally, as I hadn’t really cherished the things I was saying as my own view, nor was looking for a way to convince him of anything, but was just sharing the inspiration of the Word as it came to me.
The whole experience is teaching me how it is that the Word speaks to each of us - and that we all need to be encouraged to look for ourselves and see what it means to us right now. It may mean something different at a different time. It may mean something completely different to someone else. It is never God’s plan to put me in the position of someone enlightened to pass the knowledge of God through my filter of wisdom so some lesser person is able to receive from me what they couldn’t directly receive from God. God’s plan for me is much simpler than that, much more flexible, much more beautiful. God allows me to see His wonderful creation - all His amazing children - and to be, as my role, one of them. That is enough.
This all was woven in to specific discussion of passages of Scripture, such as Paul’s injunctions in I Corinthians regarding whether to marry or not and how to make judgement in the case of disputes between people (these were what he was bringing up). I also brought in parts like Jesus’ instruction not to judge, and his definition of Christians as people who love each other - people who see others while standing in the place of love towards them.
Eventually he was ready to have me read him two sections of the Bible Lesson, which I did, with him interjecting, with enthusiasm, things that he knew about some of the passages. And we talked more about what things meant - but he tended to think the stuff in Science and Health just made sense as it stood. At a certain point he said, I really like to study the Scripture myself, but sometimes it really helps to hear someone else’s perspective on it. And he said, “you’re good!” I didn’t take this personally, as I hadn’t really cherished the things I was saying as my own view, nor was looking for a way to convince him of anything, but was just sharing the inspiration of the Word as it came to me.
The whole experience is teaching me how it is that the Word speaks to each of us - and that we all need to be encouraged to look for ourselves and see what it means to us right now. It may mean something different at a different time. It may mean something completely different to someone else. It is never God’s plan to put me in the position of someone enlightened to pass the knowledge of God through my filter of wisdom so some lesser person is able to receive from me what they couldn’t directly receive from God. God’s plan for me is much simpler than that, much more flexible, much more beautiful. God allows me to see His wonderful creation - all His amazing children - and to be, as my role, one of them. That is enough.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Musings
I said to my sister, “you know how in most of the testimonies of healing in the Christian Science periodicals, people say, ‘I had had many healings before in Christian Science, so I had every expectation that I would be healed this time’ - well, I want to get to the place where I say, I had very little hope of healing, in that I have had long years in the wilderness where it seemed my prayers for healing had no success. But for some reason the experiences of God that I had made me hold on for that much time, until I came to the understanding of what life really is, and experienced this healing.”
Writing this, I recall that my life has mostly not been without the experience of God. Through God I have had enduring comfort, a life compass, and a life characterized by true happiness and quite a bit of light. I have relationships that are continuing to grow more beautiful and dear. I shouldn’t let this be obscured by the fact that I have had several bouts with illness that didn’t seem to respond to my or to anyone else’s prayers, as have other members of my family. And I am grateful for the sense that these trials are simply pointing me, constantly, to an understanding of life that is the great prize, that obliterates any sense of having been in the wilderness for a long and weary time.
I had two contrasting feelings when I went to church Sunday. As the service started, I had a sort of a sad feeling - there weren’t that many people in the church, and they were, for the most part, the same people who had been there each year I’ve come visiting here, only some were missing, having died, and others had grown older. And I thought, what are they getting from this? What makes them come here year after year? And what makes so many other people not stay?
The answer to the second question seemed clear. People would not stay because, in the experience of their lives, the promises they had heard given in church had not been delivered to them. The services and the people who went to them had not been characterized by an overwhelming love that put to rest their anxieties and guided them in courageous standing for truth. Instead, people felt that the church held up an impossible standard and then judged all those, within and without, who failed to meet it. We would still hear of great healings and life transformations through Christian Science, but they were somewhere in the distance - read about in the periodicals, remembered from 40 years ago, belonging to some other place, people, or time.
At the same time, as the service began and we sang Mrs. Eddy’s hymn Christ my Refuge, and I sang it with my eyes closed, letting the words be a prayer, I felt the compelling power of the Word. It continued that way through the whole service - all the words spoke to me, and I started seeing unfold, as a visual image in my mind, the underlying sense of the whole thing. I felt if I could only sit awhile with this image, all the questions that had been unresolved would find their answers, and I would have something I could use to guide me through the moments of my life. I felt that everything I heard was true.
So I know why I stay, and I guess I can assume that the other people stay for the same reason.
Later that day, I went for a long walk on the beach with a friend from church. She told me of struggles she had with the care of her mother in the last days of her life - how the people at the care place for Christian Scientists had recommended that she not come back because they weren’t well equipped with the things someone would need in order to manage after the fracture of a hip. So my friend had ended up putting her mother in a hospital, which turned out to be a nightmare of treatments that produced by-products worse than the original ailment.
It seemed that, within the community of Christian Scientists, there should be a full hammock of practical care - an embrace that didn’t forsake people when they were in the most difficult challenges of their lives. And more important than an institutional network of care would be a strong community of love - not an exclusive, reclusive group, but something whose warmth would embrace everyone and radiate the practical comfort of relying on Christian Science for life care. Indeed, the institutional structure has been established with the provision of Christian Science nurses. But, like church, that structure’s success is in proportion to how much it is infused with the breath of love -love being its substance and filling out its shape.
I used to think (not long ago) that my voice might provide a needed wake up call for the church - a way of looking at things that would help people get beyond rigid structures to the essential essence. Now I think that there is only one thing for me to do - one thing I can do, and which perhaps many others are doing - and that is to be that love. Breathe it into my days and my church connections. Not say anything about what people would need to do to revitalize the cause, not bemoan or even hold a thought of what may be lost or missing. The thought that came to me was, “I’m not going to let Christian Science die.” But it wasn’t because I was going to launch some kind of a crusade - just that I would be true to myself and my love. I got a calm feeling then, that there is some kind of a niche for me here, that my particular efforts are needed - not because others are doing it wrong, but because everyone, including me, has a perfect part to play.
Writing this, I recall that my life has mostly not been without the experience of God. Through God I have had enduring comfort, a life compass, and a life characterized by true happiness and quite a bit of light. I have relationships that are continuing to grow more beautiful and dear. I shouldn’t let this be obscured by the fact that I have had several bouts with illness that didn’t seem to respond to my or to anyone else’s prayers, as have other members of my family. And I am grateful for the sense that these trials are simply pointing me, constantly, to an understanding of life that is the great prize, that obliterates any sense of having been in the wilderness for a long and weary time.
I had two contrasting feelings when I went to church Sunday. As the service started, I had a sort of a sad feeling - there weren’t that many people in the church, and they were, for the most part, the same people who had been there each year I’ve come visiting here, only some were missing, having died, and others had grown older. And I thought, what are they getting from this? What makes them come here year after year? And what makes so many other people not stay?
The answer to the second question seemed clear. People would not stay because, in the experience of their lives, the promises they had heard given in church had not been delivered to them. The services and the people who went to them had not been characterized by an overwhelming love that put to rest their anxieties and guided them in courageous standing for truth. Instead, people felt that the church held up an impossible standard and then judged all those, within and without, who failed to meet it. We would still hear of great healings and life transformations through Christian Science, but they were somewhere in the distance - read about in the periodicals, remembered from 40 years ago, belonging to some other place, people, or time.
At the same time, as the service began and we sang Mrs. Eddy’s hymn Christ my Refuge, and I sang it with my eyes closed, letting the words be a prayer, I felt the compelling power of the Word. It continued that way through the whole service - all the words spoke to me, and I started seeing unfold, as a visual image in my mind, the underlying sense of the whole thing. I felt if I could only sit awhile with this image, all the questions that had been unresolved would find their answers, and I would have something I could use to guide me through the moments of my life. I felt that everything I heard was true.
So I know why I stay, and I guess I can assume that the other people stay for the same reason.
Later that day, I went for a long walk on the beach with a friend from church. She told me of struggles she had with the care of her mother in the last days of her life - how the people at the care place for Christian Scientists had recommended that she not come back because they weren’t well equipped with the things someone would need in order to manage after the fracture of a hip. So my friend had ended up putting her mother in a hospital, which turned out to be a nightmare of treatments that produced by-products worse than the original ailment.
It seemed that, within the community of Christian Scientists, there should be a full hammock of practical care - an embrace that didn’t forsake people when they were in the most difficult challenges of their lives. And more important than an institutional network of care would be a strong community of love - not an exclusive, reclusive group, but something whose warmth would embrace everyone and radiate the practical comfort of relying on Christian Science for life care. Indeed, the institutional structure has been established with the provision of Christian Science nurses. But, like church, that structure’s success is in proportion to how much it is infused with the breath of love -love being its substance and filling out its shape.
I used to think (not long ago) that my voice might provide a needed wake up call for the church - a way of looking at things that would help people get beyond rigid structures to the essential essence. Now I think that there is only one thing for me to do - one thing I can do, and which perhaps many others are doing - and that is to be that love. Breathe it into my days and my church connections. Not say anything about what people would need to do to revitalize the cause, not bemoan or even hold a thought of what may be lost or missing. The thought that came to me was, “I’m not going to let Christian Science die.” But it wasn’t because I was going to launch some kind of a crusade - just that I would be true to myself and my love. I got a calm feeling then, that there is some kind of a niche for me here, that my particular efforts are needed - not because others are doing it wrong, but because everyone, including me, has a perfect part to play.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The meaning of “the”
“Don’t mess with your Mom,” said my husband to our son. “She knows all about words.” My son said, “Oh yeah? Then what does ‘the’ mean?”
I said, “It means God.” And I went on to point out the word “Theos”, and the Spanish and Arabic for “the” - “el” and “al” respectively, and how they are like the Arabic “Allah” and the Hebrew “El”, which is also found in words like ”element”. Not that I had learned this anywhere - it had just come to mind and it seemed true enough to repeat.
I’ve been visiting Carlos (not his real name) in jail. Carlos has brown skin, two fore and aft creases on each side of his bald head, a Cuban accent, and a ready smile which, though showing true light, also illumines a sense of having lived in a faithless world long enough not to be taken in by much. We had been reading the Bible Lesson, and he had asked me about a passage in Science and Health that referred to “Elohim.” So I had started talking to him about “El” - God in Hebrew, “the” in Spanish; and “Al” and Allah, “The” and “God”, respectively, in Arabic. He showed me how, if you put your hands together in a certain way, the lines on it spell “Allah” in Arabic.
The next time I saw Carlos, he had just spent eight days “in the hole” - solitary confinement - because he had gotten into a fight with another inmate. He felt that the other guy had started the fight, but things in jail often go that way. After we did some reading in the Bible and Science and Health, he said, in a weary sort of a way, “well, maybe I’ll be saved.” He said that although he had been trying to pray, he didn’t have any confidence that it was doing any good.
So I told him about “the”. I told him “the” is the existential article, which means it is the sign that something is. And God is the only thing that is, and the only evidence of existence. I said, you can tell that God exists because you exist. And God is good, and you can tell that because inside, you desire goodness, and you know you are good. So you don’t have to wonder if God is here - you can tell God is here. I said, that knowledge inside that you are good gives you the map of how to be good. It is also a basis for your prayer for justice - since you can tell God is here, you can also be confident that God is in charge of everything, so nothing unjust gets to stand - it has to be wiped out by the understanding of Truth.
When I left the jail, out to the cool wind and the overcast day in downtown Seattle, the aliveness of the air caught me with a desperate poignancy. I thought, it’s not right for people to put other people in jail. It’s not right to deprive them of this air, and this ability to move down the hill and around the courthouse under the sycamore trees, with people and pigeons moving around, and seagulls in the distance. I know there is a need for some basis of rule by law, but I think many of the laws that put people in prison, and many of the allocations that provide for prisons, were made for political purposes. Let’s get tough on crime. Let’s make our streets safe. Things people can’t disagree with, but I think the laws that get passed and the facilities provided don’t actually fulfill the purpose for which they were ostensibly established, nor do they meet the needs of the people in there.
The following week I was back at the jail, waiting (in one of the many inevitable waits) for my next visitee to come out. I remembered the way the air felt the last time I left, and I suddenly had the sense that what I had felt was essential goodness, in other words, the presence of God. In that instant it became clear to me that no structure, however imposing, could keep God out. And in that instant, I felt the same enlivening, joy catching uplift that I associate with being outside when the air is fresh. I thought, no unjust systems get to stay. God is the establisher of all being. God’s present good is here and is the only thing that determines what is. No structures can stay if they’re not built according to the pattern of Truth, because Truth establishes everything.
Even if it looks as if many things are broken - people’s lives and the laws that try to regulate them, social and economic systems and the people trying to live in them - the truth that God is what is, as present and everpresent as “the”, can course through all experience and show goodness to be the necessary law for everything.
I said, “It means God.” And I went on to point out the word “Theos”, and the Spanish and Arabic for “the” - “el” and “al” respectively, and how they are like the Arabic “Allah” and the Hebrew “El”, which is also found in words like ”element”. Not that I had learned this anywhere - it had just come to mind and it seemed true enough to repeat.
I’ve been visiting Carlos (not his real name) in jail. Carlos has brown skin, two fore and aft creases on each side of his bald head, a Cuban accent, and a ready smile which, though showing true light, also illumines a sense of having lived in a faithless world long enough not to be taken in by much. We had been reading the Bible Lesson, and he had asked me about a passage in Science and Health that referred to “Elohim.” So I had started talking to him about “El” - God in Hebrew, “the” in Spanish; and “Al” and Allah, “The” and “God”, respectively, in Arabic. He showed me how, if you put your hands together in a certain way, the lines on it spell “Allah” in Arabic.
The next time I saw Carlos, he had just spent eight days “in the hole” - solitary confinement - because he had gotten into a fight with another inmate. He felt that the other guy had started the fight, but things in jail often go that way. After we did some reading in the Bible and Science and Health, he said, in a weary sort of a way, “well, maybe I’ll be saved.” He said that although he had been trying to pray, he didn’t have any confidence that it was doing any good.
So I told him about “the”. I told him “the” is the existential article, which means it is the sign that something is. And God is the only thing that is, and the only evidence of existence. I said, you can tell that God exists because you exist. And God is good, and you can tell that because inside, you desire goodness, and you know you are good. So you don’t have to wonder if God is here - you can tell God is here. I said, that knowledge inside that you are good gives you the map of how to be good. It is also a basis for your prayer for justice - since you can tell God is here, you can also be confident that God is in charge of everything, so nothing unjust gets to stand - it has to be wiped out by the understanding of Truth.
When I left the jail, out to the cool wind and the overcast day in downtown Seattle, the aliveness of the air caught me with a desperate poignancy. I thought, it’s not right for people to put other people in jail. It’s not right to deprive them of this air, and this ability to move down the hill and around the courthouse under the sycamore trees, with people and pigeons moving around, and seagulls in the distance. I know there is a need for some basis of rule by law, but I think many of the laws that put people in prison, and many of the allocations that provide for prisons, were made for political purposes. Let’s get tough on crime. Let’s make our streets safe. Things people can’t disagree with, but I think the laws that get passed and the facilities provided don’t actually fulfill the purpose for which they were ostensibly established, nor do they meet the needs of the people in there.
The following week I was back at the jail, waiting (in one of the many inevitable waits) for my next visitee to come out. I remembered the way the air felt the last time I left, and I suddenly had the sense that what I had felt was essential goodness, in other words, the presence of God. In that instant it became clear to me that no structure, however imposing, could keep God out. And in that instant, I felt the same enlivening, joy catching uplift that I associate with being outside when the air is fresh. I thought, no unjust systems get to stay. God is the establisher of all being. God’s present good is here and is the only thing that determines what is. No structures can stay if they’re not built according to the pattern of Truth, because Truth establishes everything.
Even if it looks as if many things are broken - people’s lives and the laws that try to regulate them, social and economic systems and the people trying to live in them - the truth that God is what is, as present and everpresent as “the”, can course through all experience and show goodness to be the necessary law for everything.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Heart to heart
I was talking to my daughter during her bedtime cuddle the other night. She was trying to figure out a way to more quickly decompress after school so she could get all her work done. I said, you know, I’ve been realizing lately that there’s a flaw in the way I’ve been raising you. I’ve had the tendency to always ask, what do you need in order to be able to do it - prompting you to look for conditions to be met so that all will be well. What I need to do is be aware that you are the creation of God - you have everything you need, and you don’t need any conditions to be met. Your capability, resourcefulness, readiness, and motivation are intact - they’re given to you by virtue of your being God’s child.
She said, yes, and the flaw is bigger than that. You know, you really haven’t raised us as Christian Scientists. I said, I know. I didn’t get it.
She said, I noticed it because we met some other kids who have been being raised as Christian Scientists, and I’ve read about some other ones. I asked who, and she told me. I said, I know. I didn’t get it. And my parents - they tried to raise us in a Christian Science home, and I don’t think they got it either. I’m only starting to get it now.
She said, you have a ways to go, too, because when you talk about it, I sometimes find it annoying. I said, that’s OK, because I’m not the one that’s in charge of raising you anyway. Your Father Mother is God, and God knows how to tell you everything you need to know. And it’s not too late, either, because God has always been your Father Mother and is always telling you what to do.
Later, after sharing this with my husband, I said, I want to be a Christian Scientist in this family.
What this means to me is to put aside all the tendencies to think that there’s something not quite right - that there are things to worry about, things to try to correct. Instead, I must notice when I’m being presented with a lie, and refuse to believe it. But this doesn’t really get at the heart of the matter.
What’s necessary is for me to be in a state of noticing how lovely all of God’s creation is - how wonderful it is that Love is the fundamental creative force, the operating Principle, in everything there is, and that Love chooses loveliness as our state of being. Love delights in setting up perfect experiences, perfect relationships, perfect paths of learning and growth. I shouldn’t be surprised to see that perfection working out, and I shouldn’t accept it as true when it doesn’t seem to be. I don’t have to figure out what would be perfect and then try to attain it. I just have to hold out for the truth that Love sets it up perfect, and refuse to settle for anything less.
There’s more. The one thing that I need to do is to prove the existence of radical Love by loving - by shining that light forth. Short of that, explanations about what is are just stories. People can arrange their lives around stories, but stories can’t heal them. I sometimes get glimpses of what radical love is. I think as these glimpses become longer and more frequent, they will communicate their own logic. Their power and reliability will totally displace any fear or belief that a flawed existence is our lot.
That’s how I’ll be a Christian Scientist in this family. Step by step, in each moment, listening and following in awe and humility.
She said, yes, and the flaw is bigger than that. You know, you really haven’t raised us as Christian Scientists. I said, I know. I didn’t get it.
She said, I noticed it because we met some other kids who have been being raised as Christian Scientists, and I’ve read about some other ones. I asked who, and she told me. I said, I know. I didn’t get it. And my parents - they tried to raise us in a Christian Science home, and I don’t think they got it either. I’m only starting to get it now.
She said, you have a ways to go, too, because when you talk about it, I sometimes find it annoying. I said, that’s OK, because I’m not the one that’s in charge of raising you anyway. Your Father Mother is God, and God knows how to tell you everything you need to know. And it’s not too late, either, because God has always been your Father Mother and is always telling you what to do.
Later, after sharing this with my husband, I said, I want to be a Christian Scientist in this family.
What this means to me is to put aside all the tendencies to think that there’s something not quite right - that there are things to worry about, things to try to correct. Instead, I must notice when I’m being presented with a lie, and refuse to believe it. But this doesn’t really get at the heart of the matter.
What’s necessary is for me to be in a state of noticing how lovely all of God’s creation is - how wonderful it is that Love is the fundamental creative force, the operating Principle, in everything there is, and that Love chooses loveliness as our state of being. Love delights in setting up perfect experiences, perfect relationships, perfect paths of learning and growth. I shouldn’t be surprised to see that perfection working out, and I shouldn’t accept it as true when it doesn’t seem to be. I don’t have to figure out what would be perfect and then try to attain it. I just have to hold out for the truth that Love sets it up perfect, and refuse to settle for anything less.
There’s more. The one thing that I need to do is to prove the existence of radical Love by loving - by shining that light forth. Short of that, explanations about what is are just stories. People can arrange their lives around stories, but stories can’t heal them. I sometimes get glimpses of what radical love is. I think as these glimpses become longer and more frequent, they will communicate their own logic. Their power and reliability will totally displace any fear or belief that a flawed existence is our lot.
That’s how I’ll be a Christian Scientist in this family. Step by step, in each moment, listening and following in awe and humility.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Answering by Fire
There’s a story in the Bible where the prophet Elijah goes head to head with the prophets of Baal. He challenges them to make an offering to their gods, while he makes an offering to God. He says, the one who answers by fire, let him be God.
So the prophets of Baal do their offering first, and though they pray all day, they get no answer. Then Elijah prays to God and, even though he’s had the people pour twelve barrels full of water all over the offering and the wood, fire comes down and consumes the whole thing. So all the people fall on their faces and say, “The Lord, he is the God, the Lord, he is the God.”
In the past I’ve been somewhat incredulous about this story, even to the point of wondering if Elijah could have tricked the people somehow (like maybe it was mineral spirits instead of water they poured on the fire). But when I was reading the story last week I realized - this was then, and still is, a very accurate measure of the presence of God, and it’s a test that I do all the time. I look for the god that answers by fire. I look for what it is in my life that ignites me and makes me feel alive.
God is everywhere, so it’s not surprising that there are so many ways to get the feeling of aliveness. And feeling alive comes so often that I don’t always remember that it is how I know the presence of God. But from the perspective of darker times I’ve noticed that this answer by fire is even more essential and convincing than physical fire. It is impossible to conjure it up or construct it from any materials other than itself. It is the quality that makes me want to live, the desire without which it would be impossible to explain the presence of life.
So the prophets of Baal do their offering first, and though they pray all day, they get no answer. Then Elijah prays to God and, even though he’s had the people pour twelve barrels full of water all over the offering and the wood, fire comes down and consumes the whole thing. So all the people fall on their faces and say, “The Lord, he is the God, the Lord, he is the God.”
In the past I’ve been somewhat incredulous about this story, even to the point of wondering if Elijah could have tricked the people somehow (like maybe it was mineral spirits instead of water they poured on the fire). But when I was reading the story last week I realized - this was then, and still is, a very accurate measure of the presence of God, and it’s a test that I do all the time. I look for the god that answers by fire. I look for what it is in my life that ignites me and makes me feel alive.
God is everywhere, so it’s not surprising that there are so many ways to get the feeling of aliveness. And feeling alive comes so often that I don’t always remember that it is how I know the presence of God. But from the perspective of darker times I’ve noticed that this answer by fire is even more essential and convincing than physical fire. It is impossible to conjure it up or construct it from any materials other than itself. It is the quality that makes me want to live, the desire without which it would be impossible to explain the presence of life.
Preparing the soil (more)
Jesus tells a parable about a sower, casting seed. Some of it falls by the wayside, and it gets walked on and the crows eat it; some falls on rocky ground, where it springs up quickly but soon dies; some falls among thorns, where it’s choked by them; and some falls on good ground, where it springs up and bears fruit. Jesus explains that the soil is the Word of God. Those by the wayside are the ones who hear the Word but the devil comes and takes it out of their hearts. Those on rocky ground receive the Word with joy, but have no root within themselves, and soon are offended. Those among the thorns have the Word choked by the “cares and riches and pleasures of this life.” Those on good soil bring forth fruit.
One way I’ve looked at this is to sort of hope that I’m one of the ones with good soil. The sentence from Mary Baker Eddy that I quoted at the top of my last post leads to deeper consideration. She talks about God preparing the soil for the seed. This awakens my awareness that my consciousness is liable to all the conditions in the parable, and that it’s good to be open to receive God’s preparation, because I can sure use it.
The wayside, in my consciousness, is the place whereon the traffic of the world moves - the place where I consider my relative accomplishments and failures, where I try to make a name for myself or at least, within myself, to justify my actions and failures to act. The devil that steals the Word from me is that old paradigm that tries to interpret my experience along a scale of winners and losers, in which worth is a relative commodity which may be earned by some, while others must languish, worthless, in the dust. If I try to interpret any glimpse of the Word within that paradigm, I have lost it. If I think my gains in understanding will help make me better than other people, or better than the person I was before, they won’t be able to do anything - no growth, no fruit.
I have a couple of different thoughts about the rocky ground. One is about when I feel my intention has sprung up fast and then withered. It’s often been when I’ve made a resolution to do something better next time. Then when the next time comes, I find myself in the same struggle. It occurs to me that those resolutions are planted in the belief of temporal life - a state of imperfection that has the possibility of improving along the path through time. Doing well can’t take root in that belief, because doing well needs to be rooted in the fertile knowledge of timeless perfection. If, instead of making a resolution to be better, I find and take in the truth that my being comes from the One sustaining infinite, then my roots can drink and send that truth through everything I do.
I also thought about rocks in terms of what in my consciousness is hard and impermeable. Judgments about others, resentments, self-consciousness, fear. When these are in my thought, I can’t let anything tender in. If I want to bear fruit, I need to let Love prepare the soil by breaking up those hard thoughts with tenderness towards me, melting them away.
As for the thorns - I note that cares and riches and the pleasures of this world can all choke the Word. Cares are not any more virtuous than riches - both of them are material. That is, they act as if certain material conditions determine whether goodness is present or not. The pleasures of the world are the same way. Pleasure is the natural state of being at one with God, but the pleasures of the world say that this good feeling is the result of certain conditions being met. So if I’m following the pleasures of the world, I’m looking for those conditions instead of finding joy here and now.
So I remind myself: God prepares my soil. Love draws my attention to the true things, the ones that absorb the water of Life and nurture sweet seeds. Love compels me to leave the wayside and kneel on the soft ground. Love sends grass and dandelions to break up the rock - experiences that force me to question my assumptions and opinions. Love teaches me to stop spending time among the thorns - stop looking for happiness-engendering conditions and look at present happiness. I am willing to have this be done to me. Which is good, because ultimately I have no other choice.
One way I’ve looked at this is to sort of hope that I’m one of the ones with good soil. The sentence from Mary Baker Eddy that I quoted at the top of my last post leads to deeper consideration. She talks about God preparing the soil for the seed. This awakens my awareness that my consciousness is liable to all the conditions in the parable, and that it’s good to be open to receive God’s preparation, because I can sure use it.
The wayside, in my consciousness, is the place whereon the traffic of the world moves - the place where I consider my relative accomplishments and failures, where I try to make a name for myself or at least, within myself, to justify my actions and failures to act. The devil that steals the Word from me is that old paradigm that tries to interpret my experience along a scale of winners and losers, in which worth is a relative commodity which may be earned by some, while others must languish, worthless, in the dust. If I try to interpret any glimpse of the Word within that paradigm, I have lost it. If I think my gains in understanding will help make me better than other people, or better than the person I was before, they won’t be able to do anything - no growth, no fruit.
I have a couple of different thoughts about the rocky ground. One is about when I feel my intention has sprung up fast and then withered. It’s often been when I’ve made a resolution to do something better next time. Then when the next time comes, I find myself in the same struggle. It occurs to me that those resolutions are planted in the belief of temporal life - a state of imperfection that has the possibility of improving along the path through time. Doing well can’t take root in that belief, because doing well needs to be rooted in the fertile knowledge of timeless perfection. If, instead of making a resolution to be better, I find and take in the truth that my being comes from the One sustaining infinite, then my roots can drink and send that truth through everything I do.
I also thought about rocks in terms of what in my consciousness is hard and impermeable. Judgments about others, resentments, self-consciousness, fear. When these are in my thought, I can’t let anything tender in. If I want to bear fruit, I need to let Love prepare the soil by breaking up those hard thoughts with tenderness towards me, melting them away.
As for the thorns - I note that cares and riches and the pleasures of this world can all choke the Word. Cares are not any more virtuous than riches - both of them are material. That is, they act as if certain material conditions determine whether goodness is present or not. The pleasures of the world are the same way. Pleasure is the natural state of being at one with God, but the pleasures of the world say that this good feeling is the result of certain conditions being met. So if I’m following the pleasures of the world, I’m looking for those conditions instead of finding joy here and now.
So I remind myself: God prepares my soil. Love draws my attention to the true things, the ones that absorb the water of Life and nurture sweet seeds. Love compels me to leave the wayside and kneel on the soft ground. Love sends grass and dandelions to break up the rock - experiences that force me to question my assumptions and opinions. Love teaches me to stop spending time among the thorns - stop looking for happiness-engendering conditions and look at present happiness. I am willing to have this be done to me. Which is good, because ultimately I have no other choice.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
It Matters Not ...
There’s a place in Science and Health where Mrs. Eddy says, “A germ of infinite Truth, though least in the kingdom of heaven, is the higher hope on earth, but it will be rejected and reviled until God prepares the soil for the seed.”
At times I have wondered what about Truth would be rejected and reviled. After all, it’s all good stuff - it’s all about goodness, so why should it be rejected? More recently I asked myself, like what? What germ of infinite Truth would be reviled before the soil was made ready for it? - And then I knew. This one, for example: It doesn’t matter what your material circumstance is (or, as Mrs. Eddy says, “It matters not what be thy lot”).
What does that mean? That it doesn’t matter whether I got what I wanted, it doesn’t matter whether I’m cold and wet or dry and warm, whether I’m rich or poor, whether I have any friends, whether I have succeeded or failed in my life pursuits, or even whether I have failed to try?
Yeah. It really doesn’t matter. But God has to prepare the soil for the seed. What is that? How does God do that?
God prepares the soil of consciousness by so infusing it with the sense of goodness that all sense of material requirements for goodness is overwhelmed. Material things can no longer say that they are needed for goodness to be here, since goodness is so obviously the very substance of being.
Then none of the circumstances of life that I’ve deemed so crucial to my well-being matter, because the good they promised to withhold or deliver is already here.
I’ve visited this concept before. I asked myself, so what would be the incentive for doing anything at all, if I don’t stand to gain anything by it? And I answered, I do things because I’m the expression of Life, and Life is active. I do things because goodness directs me to do them, and I am joyfully humble enough to listen and follow. I do things because I love, and I love to express Love.
It doesn’t matter what my material situation is, but it does matter that I know God is here, and owns each moment. It matters that I notice goodness, and its constancy, and that all my actions proceed from the awareness of goodness. It matters that I keep myself from being deceived into thinking that any picture of someone else being less than good is true.
If my soil isn’t prepared for the seed, I will think it callous to hear that my material circumstances don’t matter. It will sound to me like I don’t matter, or that the standard of goodness demands that I deny goodness for myself. So when I speak to others, I must be very clear in my message that they matter, and this will include careful attention to their creature comforts and to their sense of self-worth. It will include honoring of their stories and their circumstances. It will include compassion for them in whatever difficulties face them.
It is with myself that I have the opportunity to consider that none of these things matter, to be unfazed by cold-and-wetness or lack of sleep, or inattention to my story or disregard of my point of view. And God must prepare my soil for the seed, too. I can only do it as it feels joyfully right, as I move in the consciousness of God’s ever present goodness. I, too, deserve compassion from myself when my consciousness is tangled up in a story. God’s story is always about goodness, and it’s able to reach into any story I might be running and turn me to the consciousness of good.
At times I have wondered what about Truth would be rejected and reviled. After all, it’s all good stuff - it’s all about goodness, so why should it be rejected? More recently I asked myself, like what? What germ of infinite Truth would be reviled before the soil was made ready for it? - And then I knew. This one, for example: It doesn’t matter what your material circumstance is (or, as Mrs. Eddy says, “It matters not what be thy lot”).
What does that mean? That it doesn’t matter whether I got what I wanted, it doesn’t matter whether I’m cold and wet or dry and warm, whether I’m rich or poor, whether I have any friends, whether I have succeeded or failed in my life pursuits, or even whether I have failed to try?
Yeah. It really doesn’t matter. But God has to prepare the soil for the seed. What is that? How does God do that?
God prepares the soil of consciousness by so infusing it with the sense of goodness that all sense of material requirements for goodness is overwhelmed. Material things can no longer say that they are needed for goodness to be here, since goodness is so obviously the very substance of being.
Then none of the circumstances of life that I’ve deemed so crucial to my well-being matter, because the good they promised to withhold or deliver is already here.
I’ve visited this concept before. I asked myself, so what would be the incentive for doing anything at all, if I don’t stand to gain anything by it? And I answered, I do things because I’m the expression of Life, and Life is active. I do things because goodness directs me to do them, and I am joyfully humble enough to listen and follow. I do things because I love, and I love to express Love.
It doesn’t matter what my material situation is, but it does matter that I know God is here, and owns each moment. It matters that I notice goodness, and its constancy, and that all my actions proceed from the awareness of goodness. It matters that I keep myself from being deceived into thinking that any picture of someone else being less than good is true.
If my soil isn’t prepared for the seed, I will think it callous to hear that my material circumstances don’t matter. It will sound to me like I don’t matter, or that the standard of goodness demands that I deny goodness for myself. So when I speak to others, I must be very clear in my message that they matter, and this will include careful attention to their creature comforts and to their sense of self-worth. It will include honoring of their stories and their circumstances. It will include compassion for them in whatever difficulties face them.
It is with myself that I have the opportunity to consider that none of these things matter, to be unfazed by cold-and-wetness or lack of sleep, or inattention to my story or disregard of my point of view. And God must prepare my soil for the seed, too. I can only do it as it feels joyfully right, as I move in the consciousness of God’s ever present goodness. I, too, deserve compassion from myself when my consciousness is tangled up in a story. God’s story is always about goodness, and it’s able to reach into any story I might be running and turn me to the consciousness of good.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Traveling Lighter
I was talking with the mother of the friend with whom my daughter did her search and rescue training. She said, I'm so happy that Kelsi accomplished this, because it means I know she can go anywhere. She knows how to make shelter, and she knows how to find her way. It has been an important part of the whole process of letting go and having her move out on her own.
I think it's true. The two things I need to know how to do are find my way and make shelter. I can think of that these days as I practice traveling lighter.
I'm traveling lighter by leaving behind a couple of big things that used to define me to myself. One of them is idealism. Growing up, I felt being idealistic was heady and lofty - it gave me a feeling of deep purpose. I couldn't imagine not wanting to be that way - it gave me something to think about, and a way of feeling good about myself, at least some of the time. I think people told me at times that being idealistic maybe wasn't such a great idea, but I didn't understand them. Now I'm looking at it differently.
As I parse out what it is to be idealistic, I define it as having a picture of the way things should be, and then trying to live out my life as close to that picture as possible. The problem with it is the assumption that any picture I could have in my head would do any kind of justice to the wonderful, convoluted, earth-smelling intricacy that is life. Holding a picture like that as my first reality would lead me to miss most of the crucial and alive things that make up each moment, the surprise bumps and the secret hollows, and all the things that ask to be noticed and responded to in the moment they present themselves to me. It was highly presumptuous for me to think I could predict any of that before the moment, and it prevented me from having the humble and supple readiness to meet life as it came.
So I've left my idealism behind - left it behind in favor of faith in the goodness of life as it presents itself in this moment; left it so I can expect to be surprised, and expect to find, in the present-moment-giving of life, everything I need to navigate the moment with grace.
The other thing I'm working on traveling without these days is criticism. It's actually a related thing: criticism is about thinking that I have a picture of how things should be done or how people should be, and then measuring them according to my picture and complaining about the things that don't match. Now I remind myself that God is the Mind of other people, and I am not. Primal goodness tells them how to be, compellingly. I can't, both because I can't know what's right for them from the inside, and because I'm not the voice inside them which speaks from their center and moves them with poise and balance. But God is that voice, and God is here. My job is to be humble enough to notice what God is doing, in me and in everyone.
The two things I need to know how to do are to find my way and to make shelter. I find my way by noticing what's here and how the law of goodness is manifest here and now. I make shelter by welcoming everyone I see into the warmth of being loved.
I think it's true. The two things I need to know how to do are find my way and make shelter. I can think of that these days as I practice traveling lighter.
I'm traveling lighter by leaving behind a couple of big things that used to define me to myself. One of them is idealism. Growing up, I felt being idealistic was heady and lofty - it gave me a feeling of deep purpose. I couldn't imagine not wanting to be that way - it gave me something to think about, and a way of feeling good about myself, at least some of the time. I think people told me at times that being idealistic maybe wasn't such a great idea, but I didn't understand them. Now I'm looking at it differently.
As I parse out what it is to be idealistic, I define it as having a picture of the way things should be, and then trying to live out my life as close to that picture as possible. The problem with it is the assumption that any picture I could have in my head would do any kind of justice to the wonderful, convoluted, earth-smelling intricacy that is life. Holding a picture like that as my first reality would lead me to miss most of the crucial and alive things that make up each moment, the surprise bumps and the secret hollows, and all the things that ask to be noticed and responded to in the moment they present themselves to me. It was highly presumptuous for me to think I could predict any of that before the moment, and it prevented me from having the humble and supple readiness to meet life as it came.
So I've left my idealism behind - left it behind in favor of faith in the goodness of life as it presents itself in this moment; left it so I can expect to be surprised, and expect to find, in the present-moment-giving of life, everything I need to navigate the moment with grace.
The other thing I'm working on traveling without these days is criticism. It's actually a related thing: criticism is about thinking that I have a picture of how things should be done or how people should be, and then measuring them according to my picture and complaining about the things that don't match. Now I remind myself that God is the Mind of other people, and I am not. Primal goodness tells them how to be, compellingly. I can't, both because I can't know what's right for them from the inside, and because I'm not the voice inside them which speaks from their center and moves them with poise and balance. But God is that voice, and God is here. My job is to be humble enough to notice what God is doing, in me and in everyone.
The two things I need to know how to do are to find my way and to make shelter. I find my way by noticing what's here and how the law of goodness is manifest here and now. I make shelter by welcoming everyone I see into the warmth of being loved.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Digging Ditches, and other spiritual experiences
I’ve taken great pleasure, in the last few weeks, in doing hard physical labor - using a digging bar and a post hole digger to make a deep hole in the ground. The four-foot wide hole goes down three and a half feet, and the narrow post-hole dug one extends an additional four feet down. The last six feet of the excavation is through hardpan - a compacted mixture of clay and sand and rock which needs to be speared with the heavy digging stick to break apart. After the hole got too deep to allow for effective swinging with a shovel, I climbed in and used my hands to fill a bucket, which I would stand up to dump outside the hole. When going deeper down with the post-hole digger, I would pull the dirt up and dump it into the bucket in the bottom of the deep hole. When the bucket was full, I would dump it.
There’s a tangible substance to the satisfaction of the work. Part of it is made of doing something harder than what I am used to doing. Part of it is in the perseverance, and the success of actually making it happen. I feel a steady and warm light, about the size and weight of a fist, a coalescing of the reward of the work, solid inside of me. It makes me feel nourished, strong, and substantial.
I’ve started collecting things that make me feel that way. There is love,similarly solid and powerfully centering, when given freely and with no tally about how it is received. And there is honesty. Last December my friend Laurie, who was visiting from Bali, lost her wallet in a Seven Eleven parking lot. She didn’t even know she’d lost it till the man who found it contacted her. The wallet had everything in it - all her documentation for travel, all her money, her credit cards, the PIN of her debit card . . . And the man was willing to wait there until she could come for it.
I thought about what it would have felt like to be that man. I could feel how what he found in that parking lot was the precious opportunity to exercise his honesty - to reach out and make a big difference to someone. I imagine that that opportunity must have left him with a greater reward than anything that was in the wallet. I could identify with the glow - entirely independent of the gratitude he might receive from Laurie; the internal reward of acting according to his best nature.
I got to exercise my honesty a month after that. The kids behind the counter at the computer store were ready to let me go without paying for the optical drive they had just installed. I asked them twice - they said that was all, I was free to take my mac and go. (And in a way I would have liked to; I wasn’t happy about my mac burning out so soon after the warranty ended - first the hard drive then the optical drive) But I said, Are you sure? You’d better check that - I expected to pay for an optical drive. Then I waited about twenty minutes while one of them went in to talk to a supervisor. And when he came out, he charged me $236 for the optical drive - more than the price I’d been quoted, or the one that appeared on the printed receipt (which their records seemed to show I had already paid). He didn’t thank me for my honesty or for saving him from his mistake. So I didn’t get any external reward for being honest. But as I walked away with my mac, I acknowledged to myself that it was worth the price to feel the surging, centering, comforting glow of an act of honesty. A gift that had been given to me through the circumstance of their inexperience. I felt grateful to them then, and felt compassion for them and whatever mix of thoughts they had that made up their world view and life experience.
There are other things that give me that feeling. The heart-soaring response to a majestic vista, the delight of an “aha” moment, the satisfaction of creating a work of art, the warmth of being in community with others. I’m using these collected experiences to redefine my sense of substance. What if my substance is that solid, glowing feeling? What if the whole point of life is to bring out that substance? What would it mean for me to understand that I don’t need to seek out activities, or manipulate events, to experience that substance? Could I have it all the time?
At our spiritual formation group last Monday, the scripture that was shared referred to drawing water from the springs of salvation. What came to me as I listened was that the springs of salvation are made of the same substance that I’ve been collecting in my experience. I draw water from the springs of salvation when I acknowledge that this is the substance of being. I can have it right now - it’s not dependent on having any material conditions met. And if this is true for me, it’s true for everyone.
There’s a tangible substance to the satisfaction of the work. Part of it is made of doing something harder than what I am used to doing. Part of it is in the perseverance, and the success of actually making it happen. I feel a steady and warm light, about the size and weight of a fist, a coalescing of the reward of the work, solid inside of me. It makes me feel nourished, strong, and substantial.
I’ve started collecting things that make me feel that way. There is love,similarly solid and powerfully centering, when given freely and with no tally about how it is received. And there is honesty. Last December my friend Laurie, who was visiting from Bali, lost her wallet in a Seven Eleven parking lot. She didn’t even know she’d lost it till the man who found it contacted her. The wallet had everything in it - all her documentation for travel, all her money, her credit cards, the PIN of her debit card . . . And the man was willing to wait there until she could come for it.
I thought about what it would have felt like to be that man. I could feel how what he found in that parking lot was the precious opportunity to exercise his honesty - to reach out and make a big difference to someone. I imagine that that opportunity must have left him with a greater reward than anything that was in the wallet. I could identify with the glow - entirely independent of the gratitude he might receive from Laurie; the internal reward of acting according to his best nature.
I got to exercise my honesty a month after that. The kids behind the counter at the computer store were ready to let me go without paying for the optical drive they had just installed. I asked them twice - they said that was all, I was free to take my mac and go. (And in a way I would have liked to; I wasn’t happy about my mac burning out so soon after the warranty ended - first the hard drive then the optical drive) But I said, Are you sure? You’d better check that - I expected to pay for an optical drive. Then I waited about twenty minutes while one of them went in to talk to a supervisor. And when he came out, he charged me $236 for the optical drive - more than the price I’d been quoted, or the one that appeared on the printed receipt (which their records seemed to show I had already paid). He didn’t thank me for my honesty or for saving him from his mistake. So I didn’t get any external reward for being honest. But as I walked away with my mac, I acknowledged to myself that it was worth the price to feel the surging, centering, comforting glow of an act of honesty. A gift that had been given to me through the circumstance of their inexperience. I felt grateful to them then, and felt compassion for them and whatever mix of thoughts they had that made up their world view and life experience.
There are other things that give me that feeling. The heart-soaring response to a majestic vista, the delight of an “aha” moment, the satisfaction of creating a work of art, the warmth of being in community with others. I’m using these collected experiences to redefine my sense of substance. What if my substance is that solid, glowing feeling? What if the whole point of life is to bring out that substance? What would it mean for me to understand that I don’t need to seek out activities, or manipulate events, to experience that substance? Could I have it all the time?
At our spiritual formation group last Monday, the scripture that was shared referred to drawing water from the springs of salvation. What came to me as I listened was that the springs of salvation are made of the same substance that I’ve been collecting in my experience. I draw water from the springs of salvation when I acknowledge that this is the substance of being. I can have it right now - it’s not dependent on having any material conditions met. And if this is true for me, it’s true for everyone.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
More on Humility
In an article entitled, “A Timely Issue,” Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Mothers should be able to produce perfect health and perfect morals in her children . . . by studying this scientific method of practicing Christianity .” I think in prior times reading this, I kind of threw it off as something impossible, or at least something I didn’t have the ability to do. Lately I’ve realized that, perhaps counter-intuitively, this throwing off was an arrogance on my part. The humble position is to take the statement at face value and ask how it is to be done, and be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it.
In my career as a mother, I’ve wrestled with voices from society, and some of my own, that have said I should protect my own rights and dignity by not doing too much for others. I shouldn’t pick up after my kids too much, shouldn’t be the main person keeping the house clean, shouldn’t let my life get too enmeshed with theirs. Lately I’m moving the line I’ve held on that.
When I look at the successes of other people, a primary common quality is that they didn’t stop at any kind of a line that said “this should be enough.” There’s been no line, no limit, just the continued dedication to living in the truest possible way. My cousin Debbi has been like this with her kids. When her youngest was a toddler, she used to take him to the beach every summer day, and they would crawl along looking at everything. It was entirely at his pacing, at his interest. She didn’t think about how she could be sitting reading a book or whether it looked funny or was appropriate to dedicate that many hours, day after day, to the explorations of a toddler. Her love, and her willingness to give all, silenced any such voices. There were similar activities with her other kids - massive amounts of time that she dedicated to being with them at their pacing, doing what was of interest to them. I thought of this last summer as I witnessed, again, the wonderful relationship she has with them, and how willing they are to work with her, to let her encourage them to excel. I realized, it wouldn’t do to come in and just wish my kids would be that way with me, or to expect them to be. A huge investment went into those kids and that relationship, and that is how such fruits are achieved.
My sister is an artist who makes vessels in clay - wheel thrown porcelain, altered and carved to explore the minimal substance required for structural integrity, and the fractal patterns that reverberate through all things of the earth. Though for years she has been creating pieces beyond the skill of others to replicate, she is compelled to continue to push the edges of her skill and her artistic sensibilities. It requires a great humility to continue, year after year, with no sense that she should have done enough by now and should be able to slack off. It requires humility to put oneself daily in the place to be moved by Spirit, to leave behind all tallies and measurements and take a ride on the wind train of infinity. And that is what it takes to actually get anywhere.
So in the case of my mothering, I’m no longer asking if I should stop, because I must have done enough by now. In the case of “producing perfect health and perfect morals in [my] children”, I now recognize that there’s no way that I could ever do that if it were up to me, to my prowess or enlightenment. So it must be a matter of stepping aside to acknowledge that the laws of Truth already have established that perfection, and that I, through humble and never-stopping attention to the law, can sufficiently get my own tangles out of the way so I can see what’s true.
So here I am, at the kindergarten of humility, trying to practice a little bit more each day, so that I can be free, at least in moments, from the tangles of worry and arrogance. And I’m considering: what is meant by the scientific method of practicing Christianity? I know that Christianity is the practice of knowing and loving God, and of loving my neighbor and my enemies with enough strength that they are healed. I think the scientific method of practicing it entails reminding myself of the ontological system that makes it make sense to do so: the fact that, since God is good and all, there is no evil, so I don’t engage with evil or contend with it; instead I hold out for good, bear witness to it, and thus bring it into experience.
I’ll tell you about a way I applied it this morning. It’s Saturday, chores day, and my son was, once again, pleading for me to not make him do his chores before he had a friend over. I refrained from sliding into the usual debate, the tiresome repetition of all the reasons we must do chores first. Instead I looked at the image of my son that was forming in my thought: was he an effort that I had failed at, someone who hadn’t developed the strength of character to pull himself into action and do what was needed? Or was he the expression of perfect Soul, receiving all the information about who he is from the very source of his being, including all right understanding of what each moment calls for and the means for following through? I held to this latter image as I formed my responses to him. The result - chores were completed on time, and our relationship with each other regained the sweetness it should have.
It’s an arresting question how to put something into practice. Practice takes more humility than does the arranging of planks of conviction in my thought. But it is in practice that I am alive.
In my career as a mother, I’ve wrestled with voices from society, and some of my own, that have said I should protect my own rights and dignity by not doing too much for others. I shouldn’t pick up after my kids too much, shouldn’t be the main person keeping the house clean, shouldn’t let my life get too enmeshed with theirs. Lately I’m moving the line I’ve held on that.
When I look at the successes of other people, a primary common quality is that they didn’t stop at any kind of a line that said “this should be enough.” There’s been no line, no limit, just the continued dedication to living in the truest possible way. My cousin Debbi has been like this with her kids. When her youngest was a toddler, she used to take him to the beach every summer day, and they would crawl along looking at everything. It was entirely at his pacing, at his interest. She didn’t think about how she could be sitting reading a book or whether it looked funny or was appropriate to dedicate that many hours, day after day, to the explorations of a toddler. Her love, and her willingness to give all, silenced any such voices. There were similar activities with her other kids - massive amounts of time that she dedicated to being with them at their pacing, doing what was of interest to them. I thought of this last summer as I witnessed, again, the wonderful relationship she has with them, and how willing they are to work with her, to let her encourage them to excel. I realized, it wouldn’t do to come in and just wish my kids would be that way with me, or to expect them to be. A huge investment went into those kids and that relationship, and that is how such fruits are achieved.
My sister is an artist who makes vessels in clay - wheel thrown porcelain, altered and carved to explore the minimal substance required for structural integrity, and the fractal patterns that reverberate through all things of the earth. Though for years she has been creating pieces beyond the skill of others to replicate, she is compelled to continue to push the edges of her skill and her artistic sensibilities. It requires a great humility to continue, year after year, with no sense that she should have done enough by now and should be able to slack off. It requires humility to put oneself daily in the place to be moved by Spirit, to leave behind all tallies and measurements and take a ride on the wind train of infinity. And that is what it takes to actually get anywhere.
So in the case of my mothering, I’m no longer asking if I should stop, because I must have done enough by now. In the case of “producing perfect health and perfect morals in [my] children”, I now recognize that there’s no way that I could ever do that if it were up to me, to my prowess or enlightenment. So it must be a matter of stepping aside to acknowledge that the laws of Truth already have established that perfection, and that I, through humble and never-stopping attention to the law, can sufficiently get my own tangles out of the way so I can see what’s true.
So here I am, at the kindergarten of humility, trying to practice a little bit more each day, so that I can be free, at least in moments, from the tangles of worry and arrogance. And I’m considering: what is meant by the scientific method of practicing Christianity? I know that Christianity is the practice of knowing and loving God, and of loving my neighbor and my enemies with enough strength that they are healed. I think the scientific method of practicing it entails reminding myself of the ontological system that makes it make sense to do so: the fact that, since God is good and all, there is no evil, so I don’t engage with evil or contend with it; instead I hold out for good, bear witness to it, and thus bring it into experience.
I’ll tell you about a way I applied it this morning. It’s Saturday, chores day, and my son was, once again, pleading for me to not make him do his chores before he had a friend over. I refrained from sliding into the usual debate, the tiresome repetition of all the reasons we must do chores first. Instead I looked at the image of my son that was forming in my thought: was he an effort that I had failed at, someone who hadn’t developed the strength of character to pull himself into action and do what was needed? Or was he the expression of perfect Soul, receiving all the information about who he is from the very source of his being, including all right understanding of what each moment calls for and the means for following through? I held to this latter image as I formed my responses to him. The result - chores were completed on time, and our relationship with each other regained the sweetness it should have.
It’s an arresting question how to put something into practice. Practice takes more humility than does the arranging of planks of conviction in my thought. But it is in practice that I am alive.
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