The Gift of Now

My sister (the bicycle lady) responded to my two last posts. I think the essence of her comments is: you have to work with what you have. If you don’t have the floating lift of joy, you have to power on anyway. If you’re not feeling completely holy about your family, you still need them, and they need you, and it is a comfort.

I think she’s right. She brings up a question that must trouble all seekers of a spiritual view: what to do with the messiness of now? So you know Spirit is the only thing that sustains - how does that wash the dishes and pay the bills? How does it intervene in an awkward conversation? How does it impart grace?

Here is what I think: although I may say that spiritual sustenance is not found in material things, it’s always true that spiritual sustenance is found right here. In every single right here, in the opportunity of every moment. Whatever I’m seeing right here and now, therefore, has the ability to provide me with deep spiritual sustenance. A kitchen full of dirty dishes? Check. There’s the symphony of sound, the clanks and pings, or there’s the music I put on to accompany my work, or simply the opportunity to move in grace. My son? Check. I can be delighted by Spirit revealing itself to me in his unique being.

I have an image of what this looks like. It’s of a bright light released, rising up from a person (like plasma in my picture), an unbelievable illumination. In my vision, every individual in every moment has the ability to be that node of illumination, that place of opening. The opening has the feeling of incredible richness. I have examples in mind: the way my father-in-law can, in a certain moment, feel deeply loved, uniquely appreciated, so his spirit floods with a sense of comfort and gratitude for the simple care provided him. That comfort is the light-release of that moment, similar to the looks of joy on the faces of the dying men suddenly cared for by Mother Teresa’s ministries, in the movie I saw about her. Another example is the spark between two young people (or people of any age) awaking the possibility of love.

Here’s the big secret: love is not proprietary. We may think it’s only released when all the stars are aligned and all the circumstances are perfect. But any moment, any person can release it. This is the source of spiritual sustenance - the release of those plasma flows of love. And though I make it sound exotic, it is something I have known throughout my life - in my love, as a teenager, of little kids; in my love of my own kids; in my attraction to music and moments of beauty. I’m just learning it’s more universal than I thought.

So for me there’s no asceticism, no denial of anything present. My practice instead is to look at each moment and ask to see the gift of now - the light-release that lifts me up in joy.

What Sustains Me

Today I had my writing group at Angeline’s. (I show up at the homeless women’s day shelter and see if anyone wants to join me for writing, and we publish what they write in The Occasional Times, a newsletter by and for homeless women). My friend Janice joined me, and she had a suggested topic: What Sustains Me? So I wrote the following:

What sustains me? I was thinking about that this morning, wide awake at 5:30 when I needed to get up, aware of my husband’s weariness, the sheer inertia against which he pushed, after a restless night, to start another day. I could feel the weariness a little, but I waited for the buoyant hope to lift me, float up the sunken place behind my eyes, give me the lift to move me through my morning duties.

I don’t know what I’d do, I thought, if I didn’t have it. Don’t know how I’d function, day after day, if I just had to talk myself into moving. Mine is not the fortitude of great determination that powers my sister day after day, fighting off anxiety through bold activity. My movement is more of a floating, held up by a sense of life’s basic joy. I pray for this for my husband and for my sister, not because they need it to function, but because they have a right to joy and peace as they go through their days.

I am sustained by the fundamental joy of life. I am sustained by the sense of goodness - goodness as the law in which we all operate. And I am sustained by Spirit.

I see Spirit in the release of light and comfort that comes when anyone is seen for what she or he is - when their elemental divinity is recognized, or recognizes another. A single smile can unlock it, and the tiniest recognition of that divinity can sustain people for a long time. I try to imagine: what would it be like if we all got used to a lot more? What if we got used to loving and being loved as the baseline for interactions, instead of that rare thing to be occasionally obtained? I think we would save the world.

The Network of Our Support

At the beginning of this year I started to feel the urge to think big, comprehensive thoughts, to lay them out on great sheets of paper, and they would cover The Network of Our Support, That Which We Rely On. It came to me clearly the next morning while I was praying - a rolling list of networks, things we try to put in place to make our lives happy, safe, fulfilled. Church was an example. I don’t generally think of church that way - I usually think about it in spiritual terms - but at the Religious Leaders Lunch I started seeing how for many people it could function primarily as a network you could join for safety and support. If you’re in the hospital, a pastor will come visit you. If you’re a shut-in, church members might come sing you Christmas carols, and otherwise you might find purpose doing such things for others.

I realized that morning that each of the networks could be thought of in spiritual or material terms: marriage, as a spiritual connection or as a financial/social arrangement; career, as a calling in which your deepest being is fulfilled or as an agreement to do certain things in exchange for a name, a recognized place, an economic niche, etc; family, as a holy chord of deep love or as a set of people to count on for company and to keep you from falling through the cracks. I reflected that in each case (and I also considered friends, community, government) the spiritual sense was satisfying, and the material sense, though it might initially seem important, would ultimately feel like a death trap. So I realized, as I was praying, that it was pointless to put my weight into the material manifestations of all those things I feel we need (we being I, my children, my husband) because all the good of them is provided in the spiritual experience, which is already established, and which will, because it must, make itself tangibly manifest in our lives. So. No need for great sheets of paper. A simple clarity small enough to fold up and put in my pocket.

Or, to say the same thing in another way (from my Daily Sonnet discipline):

The focus of my early prayer revealed
A simple answer to an urgent query
What harbors me, what shelters, what will heal
All doubts about security and purpose.
While doubtless through each mortal net I’ll tumble
Not church, not home, not job can keep me safe
With Spirit’s strong support I’ll never stumble
Knowing my Principle will bring me sure relief
For everyone I’ve diligently cherished
In my persistent early morning prayer
And claimed for them a good that wouldn’t perish
Each need is met with Spirit’s constant care
One sweep of Truth enfolds us all in grace
The arms of Love, a radiant embrace.