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.

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.