A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK
Live Wholehearted Making Space for Wonder and Delight
Terry Hershey
2 Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK
Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight Copyright © 2018 by Terry Hershey, 12/08/1954 — All rights reserved.
For reprint permission, contact: Rev. Terry Hershey PO Box 2301 Vashon, WA 98070 800-524-5370 www.terryhershey.com
SABBATH MOMENT BOOKS
Permission to Be You Find Your Own Voice Create Sacred Spaces Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight It’s Not Where You Arrive, It’s The Direction You Are Going Slow Down, Savor Life Your Life Begins Today Do Less, Be More
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Contents Introduction ...... 5 Ballroom Dancing ...... 8 Buddy Ball and Easter ...... 13 Credible ...... 17 Infectious Passion ...... 24 Living from Love ...... 29 Looook! ...... 33 Now I See ...... 40 Pennies and Delight ...... 46 Wrestling Times ...... 51 Waking Up Begins With Wonder ...... 56 About the Author ...... 62 About Sabbath Moment Books ...... 63
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Live Wholehearted Making Space for Wonder and Delight
Introduction I’m often asked for advice about living a meaningful life. The assumption here is that there is something to add that makes this attainable. Something to try, to master, to accomplish. And we are struck in a self- defeating paradigm. It’s time for a new paradigm. Now, the questions I ask are different.
All of earth is crammed with heaven, and every bush aflame with God, but only those who see take off their shoes. Elizabeth Barrett Browning The child inside of us experiences moment, in ordinary days, "without shoes." Because in the world of a child, awe precedes faith. Jesus is unequivocal. "Unless you become like children, you will not experience the kingdom of Heaven." For children, wonderment grows in the soil of surprise.
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In our adult world, we place a premium on belief (or belief systems) instead of awe. We put the cart before the horse. Somewhere down the road our filter (as adults we have filters--which act like security checkpoints--for evaluating, judging and appraising events or emotions on a cost-benefit basis) removes us (distances us) from the experience, …from our emotions, …from our yearning, …from our pain, ...and from our prayers. It reminds me of the woman who told me that her prayer time was always bogged down by the fear that she "wasn't doing it correctly." Mercy. So why oh why, do we put a governor on our capacity for risk or acceptance or delight in ordinary daily miracles? Are we afraid there is no room for indiscriminate passion or risk or compassion or magnanimity? Are we afraid that it will take us too far? What if we crack? What if we offend some rule of propriety? Or what if we don't deserve this bounty— this world soaked in grace? Are we afraid that because it is easy to become disheartened, to wish our eyes and ears closed, as if real life is still far, far away? As if there’s nothing we can do to make a difference? The journey to wholeness it not about me becoming something I am not. The journey toward wholeness is about reflecting what is already there. The consumer myth tells me that there is something else I must add to my life. But savoring is not about addition. It is about subtraction.
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I begin by removing the restrictor plate. Which is learning to let go of my need for some kind of assumed need for control. And when I do, I see that there is a connection between savoring and mindful awareness.
Rabbi Abraham Heschel's reminds us that "We teach children how to measure and how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe."
It is all about our capacity to receive. To live pusillanimously means to live with a small soul. To live with magnanimity means to live with a large (or great) soul. Here's the deal: I want to live with magnanimity. I want to live with a large soul. I want to live wholehearted.
Terry Hershey Vashon Island, WA
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Ballroom Dancing In intimate moments, you have been touched by something you cannot yet endure or carry, but you still love the touch and the invitation to carry. You are always larger after any intimate encounter; in fact, it might well be the only way to enlarge spiritually. It is always grace. —Richard Rohr
Robben Island is famous. It is the South African prison where Nelson Mandela and many others were incarcerated because of their struggle to end apartheid. (Mandela served 18 of his 27 years in Robben Island). Margaret Wheatley tells this story of a time that she had the unique privilege of touring Robben Island (now a UNESCO World Heritage Centre).
The tour group stood in a long narrow room that had been used as a prison cell for dozens of freedom fighters. Picture yourself in a space crowded, cramped and barren. The prisoners lived without cots or furniture, cement floors now their beds. The only light entered through narrow windows near the ceiling.
The tour group listened to their guide’s narration. “I was a prisoner in this very room,” the guide tells them. The gravity of his words comingles with the cold seeping up through the floor. There is a chill.
The group stares through prison bars, surveys the lifeless cell, and tries to imagine the stories about the suffering from relentless threats and capricious brutality.
The guide pauses, as if remembering, gazing the length of his former cell. Speaking quietly, almost a whisper, he says, “Sometimes, to pass the time here, we taught each other ballroom dancing.”
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Okay, when I first read this story, I wasn’t ready for that ending. Even with the gut-wrenching bleakness, I confess to grinning, and then, laughing out loud.
Ballroom dancing? A group of demoralized and weary men, beaten down and brutalized, teaching one another to dance. You gotta love it.
And yes, we know that “it is wiser to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” But let’s be honest. Sometimes life is dark and not fun. Adversity is real. Life can be cruel. (People can be crueler.) Suffering happens. Suffering hurts. We reach a tipping point. And prison walls are made of real concrete. And finding a candle is not always easy, let alone the motivation to light it.
The medicine of intimacy That’s why I love this story. Because it is so counterintuitive.
Let me get this straight, in times of anxiety or fear or suffering or distress—when our equilibrium is catawampus—we are invited to open our heart? We are invited to dance? The prisoners would say yes. That in adversity, the medicine of intimacy allows us to become more human. That even times of sorrow or discontent can become fertile ground for generosity of spirit, mystery, delight, touch, tenderness, vulnerability, risk and yes, even gladness.
That doesn’t make sense, because our tendency is to shut down. To let our heart constrict. Or to appear tough and self-sufficient. Or to find safe haven. Or at the very least, to find an enemy. With an enemy, at least there is someone to blame for all this muddle. The irony is that in every choice above (and they are choices), we relinquish or surrender our very ability to choose.
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Our heart tells us to resonate with this sentiment to dance. And then, we hope that someone will provide us with the instructions. You know, a check-list. Because with instructions, we will learn to dance correctly.
Here’s the deal: Somehow, we do not believe it—the dance, the perseverance, the light, the tenderness, the intimacy, the whole- heartedness—is already within us.
Where there is no love, put love and you will find love. —St. John of the Cross
Love is courage The word vulnerable itself comes from the Latin vulnerare which means “to wound,” and so at the root of vulnerability is my own sense of woundedness. To be authentic in a moment in which I feel wounded, I have to honestly acknowledge the places where I feel hurt and then muster up the strength to just be with the pain. This takes tremendous courage.
Literally speaking, courage comes from the Latin cor, meaning heart. So when I open up to any experience fully, with courage—whole hearted—it naturally opens me up to a deep love. And the good news? The blind musician Facundo Cabral said it beautifully: “If you are filled with love, you can’t have fear, because love is courage.” True vulnerability, in its most profound form, is an act of love.
Ballroom dancing indeed.
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Richard Rohr reminds us, “It is woundedness transformed. You still carry your scars forever, as both message and trophy. They still “hurt” in a way, which keeps you mindful and humble, but they no longer allow you to hurt other people. Pain transformed is no longer pain transmitted.”
In other words, pain transformed becomes a dance that fuels a fire that changes the world around me.
After Nelson Mandela was released from prison he ran for office and was elected president of South Africa in 1994. His message? Forgiveness.
I gotta admit, that’s not a common political platform these days.
And then cynicism abounded. Many assuming that his declaration was lip service. And yet, something within his core allowed him to rise above situations, and surprise others with strength. He began with his staff, keeping both Afrikaners and Black. There was understandable tension.
In a scene from the movie Invictus, Nelson Mandela models the behavior, telling his guard (who was certain this new integrated South Africa would not work):
The rainbow nation starts here recognition starts here forgiveness starts here too forgiveness liberates the souls it removes fear that is why it is such a powerful weapon so please, try.
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After time change weekend, the reality of winter sets in here. It gets dark early now, as if the day’s dimmer switch is set on hunker down by late afternoon. It is overcast tonight, but last night, the sky itself appeared to pause, between storms. The clouds to the southwest congregate as if calling a truce, and a waning half-moon rests on the azure November sky. Looking up at the sky, I realize that there is just enough light to walk out onto the patio and dance.
REFLECTION FOR THE DAY When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you have. When you make a difference with what you have it expands. —Lynne Twist
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Buddy Ball and Easter Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows. —John Betjeman, Poet
Have you ever heard of Buddy Ball? Beth Campbell started the program in 1994 in Bellevue, Washington. Because of his disabilities, Beth’s son Stevie, age 7, was unable to play in the regular t-ball program. So Beth started a baseball league that mixes children with disabilities and able-bodied children.
Every player has a buddy.
Each team has 18 players.
If you can’t hit, a buddy hits for you.
If you can’t throw, a buddy throws for you.
If you can’t run, a buddy runs for you.
If you can’t catch, a buddy catches for you.
A child with cerebral palsy (confined to a wheelchair but allowed to hit for themselves) is pushed around the bases by a buddy.
You’ve got to go to a Buddy Ball game. Just to see the unmitigated joy on the face of a child, who may never be able to catch a fly ball, but who knows that he or she is playing baseball; is in the game.
Oh, by the way. I need to let you know one of the “rules.” In Buddy Ball it is against the rules to strike out. Once you get six strikes—six tries—you
Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight 13 A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK get to go to first base. (You are rewarded for trying. Some of you are thinking, “Well, I could have played with those rules!”)
That kind of freedom But here’s the deal: Six strikes and you go to first base is about grace, and such grace unnerves people. At a conference for professionals, I told the Buddy Ball story. After my lecture, a therapist literally was “in my face,” letting me know where I went amiss, “Six strikes and you still get to go to first. How dare you teach that kind of freedom to children!” his face puffed and red.
“Sir,” I said, “with all due respect, you could use more roughage in your diet.”
I’m quoting now (from memory) from an article in the Seattle Times, “When Beth’s son gets to first base he doesn’t stop there. But he doesn’t go to second either. He runs out into the crowd and hugs everybody.”
The reporter continued, “It is what sports can be, children running and jumping and playing because nobody’s keeping score because nobody cares.”
I can’t improve on that. That where this Sabbath Moment should end. But then, I’m a writer. Without an editor.
In the Christian tradition, this week begins Semana Santa (Holy Week), leading up to Easter Sunday. For those connected to a church, the week 14 Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK will be chock-a-block with happenings and celebrations. (And many will renew their church connection with this, their once-a-year outing. It is Easter after all.)
The question, of course, what on earth does Buddy Ball have to do with Easter?
Easter is about liberation Many years ago, when I was a pastor in a local church, I needed to preach an “Easter” sermon each year. The question, “How do I make a resurrection more exciting this year?” As if I needed to add something to the story.
That’s it isn’t it?
A resurrection is not enough.
The empty tomb is not enough.
We have this need to explain it to people.
In Bible College we were required (and graded on our ability) to both explain it and prove it. Lord help us...
(Which is ironic considering that every Easter, after we sang “Up from the grave He arose,” we went home and hunted for chocolate eggs. I still don’t quite get the connection, although I do enjoy chocolate...)
Easter is—after all the preaching is done—about liberation.
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And grace.
And Buddy Ball.
I know this now. Instead of preaching a sermon, it would have been more appropriate if I had dismissed the service and told the congregation to run out into the crowds of their day, and hug everybody.
I would tell them that Holy Week is about not being held back or down by a large stone—or by death for that matter—but to let the light (already inside you) shine, in whatever corner of the world you find yourself.
I had a lovely weekend to work in the garden. For me, a weekend of sanctuary and bliss and soreness all rolled into one. The tulip bulbs— butter yellow and cheerful—are about to flower. The beds are now covered with manure (an annual and sacred liturgy). I power-washed the stone patios—(something about boys and machines and virility). I mourned the loss of many of my Mediterranean style plants (who met their fate in the very wet Seattle winter) and said a eulogy at the compost heap. The trees and shrubs begin their leafing pageant—each leaf promising and embryonic—in effervescent lime green, ephemeral and effusing hope. And I sat on my back patio, now clean, (glass of wine in hand) and talked with the pair of mallard ducks who call the garden pond their home.
I hope your Easter week will be peace-filled. And I hope you hug somebody. Or a maybe a few somebodies. And I hope you feel hugged in return.
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REFLECTION FOR THE DAY Beyond living and dreaming there is something more important: waking up. —Antonio Machado
Credible If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. Sometimes the great famine of blessings in and around us derives from the fact that we are not living the life we love; rather, we are living the life that is expected of us. We have fallen out of rhythm with the secret signature and light of our own nature. —John O'Donohue
“In the arid foothills of the Wasatch Mountains, the Milky Way arched over us. This was my personal universe, with its own inherent truths,” Terry Tempest Williams writes in When Women Were Birds.
In those foothills, summer days offered a buffet for exploration, imagination and discovery. Places where creativity is birthed with secret maps and codes, currency from found shards of colored glass, and time in tree-house hideouts.
For most of us, from such childhood years (if we are lucky), there is a reservoir we draw upon for wonderment and resilience and curiosity and the love of mystery.
Terry’s inspiration was winged. Magpies, evening grosbeaks, and scrub jays were family.
One day, sitting in the tree house, she spotted a white bird perched directly above. Unlike anything she had ever seen, she ran to the house to telephone her grandmother, still able to watch the ghost bird from the
Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight 17 A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK sliding doors. She described the mysterious bird as the size and shape of a robin, only without a brown back, black head, and red breast. Her grandmother listened, both enthusiasts with bird books in hand. “Perhaps it is an albino. A bird without pigmentation.”
“She might as well have said of the spirit world,” Terry remembers.
As it turns out it was indeed a robin, “the most common of birds, free of its prescribed dressings, white with red eyes. I was inspired and called her ‘the Holy Ghost.’”
When she reported this finding to the local Audubon chapter—as an eight-year-old bird-watcher—the president said that because of her age, he could not legitimately count it as “a credible sighting.”
Which begs the question. How old do you have to be before something is real?
Thankfully, her grandmother knew better. “You know what you saw. The bird doesn’t need to be counted, and neither do you.”
Shifting the paradigm It begins early doesn’t it?
We internalize—and discern—what score is being kept...
What counts. Or what matters.
And by extension, what doesn’t.
And yes; more often than not, we take someone else’s word for it. Because for whatever reason, we do not believe we have been given the freedom to trust our own discovery.
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On crayon days I remember that burnt sienna and magenta pleased my mother because she loved Italy. Reluctantly, she bought us coloring books to go with our crayons. She was convinced that staying between the lines of factory-issue images only went so far before her children should think up lines of their own, on the blank white tablets she provided, and draw what stormed out of our little heads with the innocence of trickster stories. —Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise
Terry’s story touches me. At some time in our lives, every one of us have experienced what it means to feel (or be) dismissed. As if we have no voice. And as a result, we internalize—or bury—our discovery, our opinion, and our passion. Or we learn to stay silent. Lord knows it would not be helpful to rock any boat. And, we hold our heart back, because there is a question mark before we can enter any moment, encounter or connection wholehearted.
The insidious part is that we are now susceptible to odd ways of measuring, and of assigning value. As if every experience—moment of discovery and passion—requires a pop quiz in order to weigh and justify.
It may not even be conscious. Chances are, it is not. It is as if something inside is making up for an absence of affirmation, or value, or voice.
In Terry’s grandmother’s wisdom, this is not about self-worth. This is about a paradigm shift. Because we live in a world with invented price tags.
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The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. —Marcel Proust
For me, the paradigm shift is from scarcity to sufficiency.
As a child, I begin living from sufficiency. I’m not looking for meaning. Because I am alive in the wonder of it all. And then one day, I am told I need to pass muster (to be credible, to be believable, to be important). And I work overtime at giving meaning to my days and encounters.
Am I credible now?
The color of your voice Here’s the deal: Once I’ve internalized that my experience—my perception of the world—is not credible, I over exert myself, becoming overly conscious about finding meaning. As a result, I question everything. Is it enough? Of course, the answer is always, No. Whatever I do is never enough. Because I have been trained not to value my own voice.
Whenever I lead a retreat, Crayolas and coloring are mandatory. It is an unwritten spiritual principle: Thou Shalt Color. It is remarkable how many adults—otherwise very confident and secure people—who will say, “Do I have to? Because I’m not very good at coloring.” And I ask, “Who said anything about the need to be good at it?”
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Somewhere along the way, we give up our voice.
So I invite you: Take back your voice.
Live this day through the eyes of an eight-year-old bird enthusiast, and see the day filled with wonder, elation and connection... and extraordinary ordinary creatures.
Try this.
When you see a moment filled with wonder, elation and connection, consider it a deposit made in a “savings account” for your well-being.
My friend taught me this phrase, “Have you felt your heart catch?” Because when you do, you pause, listen, and pay attention to the treasure unmeasured that is here, now, in this moment. When I tally the catches of the heart this week, I realize that I can see my life through the eyes of the eight-year-old child that is within.
Today I can...speak, notice, wonder, celebrate, savor, give without need for return, and receive without being stingy with my heart.
Enlightenment is expressed by being just where you are (says Zen master Suzuki Roshi). A woman told Roshi she found it difficult to mix Zen practice with the demands of being a householder, “I feel I am trying to climb a ladder, but for every step upward I slip backward two steps.”
“Forget the ladder,” the Roshi told her, “when you awaken everything is right here on the ground.”
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It is another way of saying that resilience involves inviting all of life in...the longing, hunger, wildness, energy, appetite, hope, humor, beauty and irony.
Only when we embrace, do we see.
If I hide or bury, I do not honor.
If I do not honor, I do not allow for the space that enables me to give, receive, move, and grow.
Lynne Twist writes, “My friend Janie was visiting the home of an old potter at Santa Clara pueblo. She was admiring the enormous collection of pots her host had on display throughout his home. ‘How many do you have?’ my friend innocently inquired. Her host lowered his eyes. ‘We do not count such things,’ he replied quietly.”
Summer arrives here in Pacific Northwest with July. We have the heat— well, our version of heat, mid 90s—and are already missing the comforts of a grey cloud cover. The gardens are beckoning, but the afternoon is best spent in a lounge chair with a cold beer and good book in hand. I look up at the bird feeders. And I smile. There is a lone goldfinch. Not that I’m counting.
REFLECTION FOR THE DAY To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and
22 Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common—this is my symphony. — William Henry Channing
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Infectious Passion The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. —Henry Miller
I love the story about Henry David Thoreau’s visit to New York City. (Yes, visit, as in singular.) He reported, “I visited New York City last Tuesday, and met no real or living person.”
(Okay, I have friends in New York City; so blame Henry. Even so, his point is well taken. And truthfully, it could have been in any neck of the woods.)
There’s a wonderful movie, Don Juan de Marco, about a young man who believes he is Don Juan. Literally. A psychiatrist is given the job of curing him of his delusion, to bring him back to reality. But the psychiatrist is intrigued by the boy’s story and the boy’s infectious passion of life. The psychiatrist wonders about his own life, its obligations and a nagging sense of disenchantment. The boy senses this. One day he says to the doctor, “You need me for a transfusion. It is only in my world that you can breathe.”
Yes. Sign me up for some of that.
Believe in the now There is no denying the fact that we live in a world where we don’t breathe all that well. It is too easy to opt for, or be tempted by, distraction; to create a life filled (suffocated) with encumbrances and cares. And especially urgent meetings. It is something about an inherent
24 Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK need to justify our time as well spent. Even if it involves our passion. As if our passions (and even our hobbies) must be justified to be valid. I picked up a book the other day with the title, What You Are Really Meant to Do. (I honestly couldn’t wait to find out.) A well-meaning title (because we all have a place where our passions do come to life), but it ends up creating an itch exacerbating some internal clock that tells us we find meaning only when or after we arrive at our dream job. There is something dispiriting about believing that now—this present moment— now, can only be an interim life where we tread water.
There is a consequence to be sure. Frances Mayes recognizes this, writing of her time in Tuscany in her book Bella Tuscan: “Gradually, I fall into time (there). At home in California, I operate against time. My agenda, stuffed with notes and business cards, is always with me, each day scribbled with appointments. Sometimes when I look at the week coming up, I know that I simple have to walk through it (tread water).”
Enchantment happens Here’s the deal: As time goes on—the time we operate against—we will feel a reluctance to let enchantment happen. Something about holding back the cards that have been clutched so close to the chest, hedging our bets, not wanting all of our eggs in one basket, afraid to let go lest we be disappointed.
Passion. The very word puts some of us on edge.
Enchantment. Okay to describe a children’s movie. But considered optional and no longer vital for our adult psyche.
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A quirky movie with the sophisticated title, Joe versus the Volcano, is about a young man who has resigned himself to slogging through life. He puts in his time at a job he detests. He is hampered by persisting attacks from a “brain cloud,” a supposedly fatal ailment. (I laugh out-loud when his friend asks incredulous, “You mean you were diagnosed with something called a brain cloud and didn’t ask for a second opinion?”)
Through a bizarre twist, Joe is presented the chance to sail to an obscure island where he is to be offered as a sacrifice to the volcano gods. Believing that he will die anyway he takes the offer. The trip, of course, awakens him from his soul-sick stupor.
And for the first time, he notices.
He sees.
He is enchanted.
He feels gooseflesh.
And he learns the lesson that it is not just where you look, but how.
“My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement” (from Joe versus the Volcano.)
In 1995 Volkswagen ran an ad. The ad conjured up what it felt like to drive their car. Taking it around fast curves. Or maybe over rocky desert roads. It felt liberating and unbound and precarious. What I do remember best are the words at the end of the ad. Simply this: “Drivers wanted.”
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That’s not a comfortable invitation when we live risk-averse.
There are ways that this culture can lull you to sleep if you aren’t careful, and don’t occasionally stop just to look around. The irony is that it’s a sleepwalking induced and kindled by the notion that life is meant to be perpetual motion, as if life lived fully implies relentless activity.
What are you doing?
Nothing?
Nothing? How do you get away with that?
Life undistilled Yesterday our bird-feeders were visited by three Cedar Waxwings. I sat watching through my study window. Waxwings are not uncommon, but this is a little late in the season for them. They are surreal in their elegance. They are a crested bird, greyish brown with a canary yellow belly. Zorro-like, they wear a black mask and chin. Each looks like a fine porcelain figurine, delicate and without blemish. While I watch, a nuthatch shuttles from feeder to tree trunk, one sunflower seed per trip, each time wedging the seed into a crevice of the bark where he would, from my way of seeing, stand upside down while pecking away at the shell.
Sometime during this pageant, it occurred to me that this is it. This, as in this elusive essence we call life. I tried to remember the Thoreau quote about going in the woods to drink from the very marrow of life, but I couldn’t quite come up with it and realized that it didn’t really matter anyway. I doubt that the cedar Waxwings would have been impressed.
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If you are lucky, you grab hold of these moments when they come, for they are parcels of life undistilled. And you save the analysis for later on down the road.
You could, I suppose, stop and take a picture, maybe post it to Facebook, if you wanted to take the time to find your phone. Or chuckle at the need to confine the moment, push it aside and curl up on the couch to watch the birds, listen to their song, and feel the gooseflesh reminding you that your heart is still intact.
REFLECTION FOR THE DAY If we want to be happy at all, I think, we have to acknowledge that the circumstances, which encourage us in our love of this existence, are essential. We are part of what is sacred. That is our main defense against craziness, our solace, the source of our best politics, and our only chance at paradise. —William Kittredge
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Living from Love To laugh often and much, to win the respect of the intelligent and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, to redeem a social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
I spent the weekend leading a retreat at the Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. A sanctuary in the desert. The retreat, Real People. Real Communication. You know the adage: Relationships wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the people. This is the kind of subject that entices you with optimism only to give way to a nagging sense that we should have done more, sooner, and with an improved skill set.
Brian kicks us off with a music montage; relationships according to the Beatles. The kind of set makes me want to shout “Amen,” and call it a day. But there’s work to be done. We gathered here with our stories. And there are times when we all need a safe harbor to be nourished and replenished.
We built the weekend around a children’s book, Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch.
And here’s the deal: healthy relationships begin when you live as if you are loved. There’s a lovely scene when Mr. Hatch discovers that an open heart spills laughter and music and parties and giving and helping and dancing.
So my invitation to the group: We are invited to live (choose, give, receive) FROM love instead of FOR love.
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Easy? Heavens no. But the alternative is to attach my identity or value or worth or capacity to make a difference on “what do they think?” or “how well did I perform?” and other self-conscious mantras. Which is another way of saying that we miss the point when we are keeping score.
Something happens when we tear up the scorecards and live from love...we find ourselves knee deep in delight, in something that isn’t even on your list.
Dancing at the barber shop A few summers ago, I danced in a barber shop. On a May day, I drive by the Mud Creek Baptist Church. In contrast to the name, the building is new red brick. Down the road sits a tired and weathered sandwich-board- sign: Helms Barber Shop. Beyond the sign, a double-wide. In front, a simple wood sign and a red, white, and blue barber pole. It could be 1965. I am standing here, in front of Helms Barber Shop, on an early Thursday morning, just outside of Hendersonville, North Carolina.
Carroll Helms has invited me to stop by and listen to the music.
Every Thursday morning is music jam. Has been every Thursday morning for 12 years. There are maybe a half dozen cars in the lot when I arrive, coffee in hand, before 8:00 a.m. From the parking lot, I hear Jim Reeves, or at least someone who sounds a bit like him. The air here, humid and dense, holds the music.
The rule at Carroll’s is simple: If you have an instrument and a love of music, you’re welcome to drop in. I see banjo, guitar, bass, mandolin, and fiddle.
Carroll is standing behind the barber chair, scissors and comb in hand, working at a customer’s hair. I’m not sure that cutting would be the correct verb. From what I can tell, the choice here is short, shorter, or
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Marine. Carroll is affable. With wavy silver hair, he welcomes me with a handshake and a warm smile. “Glad you’ll could visit,” he says.
“Glad to be here,” I try to match the Carolina lilt.
He looks at my hair and says, “It looks like you’ll haven’t been in a barber shop in some time. You want me to work on that?”
I look at the customer sitting in the chair and tell Carroll, “Maybe next time, if that’s alright by you.”
The space inside Carroll’s is about 12' x 25'. The musicians—a dozen or so on this Thursday—are squeezed into one end of the room, chairs pulled together, but they don’t seem to mind. They take turns, going around the circle. “Let’s do some Hank Williams, key of G,” and off they go. When a new person arrives, he (or she, there are two women in the group) pulls up a chair and joins in. The group ranges in age from late 30s to mid or late 80s.
During a break I ask what they love about these Thursdays. “This is not a time for politics or differences or whatever’s weighing you down. If you love music, you’re welcome here.” The younger woman adds, “Our idea for a bumper sticker, is ‘make guitars, not bombs.’”
By the wall, just listening, sit two local good ‘ole boys, John Deere hats riding high on their foreheads. And I bet if I asked them, they might tell me that listening to music down at Carroll Helms’ every Thursday makes for a pretty full life.
Learning wonder and awe I figure that would be right. I do know that there is something going on at Carroll’s we all could use on a regular basis. And it’s the kind of place Mr. Hatch would love to be...
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When we live FOR love, we feel the need to put every moment (or encounter or conversation) through its paces, evaluating it, judging it for significance and worth. We want to know if it measures up, and then, and only then will we embrace it, and make it a part of our lives. It is not surprising that it is easy to live lives and relationships based upon comparison and in the end, shame or regret.
I agree with Rabbi Abraham Heschel, “We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift.”
Here’s the point: As long as success is measured by keeping score, we lose track of most everything that makes us human and therefore, glad to be alive:
- small gestures of kindness - acts of inclusion or community to someone left out, or someone on the fringes - extending a hand of healing or acceptance to someone who hurts - reveling in the gifts of the senses and being present - resting in a moment of gratitude - sharing laughter, a smile, camaraderie, dancing or joy - dancing in a barber shop, somewhere in the Carolinas...
When one younger friend told me about a relationship issue, I asked, “So what’s next for you?” She replied, “I’m just waiting for God to show me what he wants from me.” Okay.
But in the meantime, you know, until you have your life and self figured out, I have a suggestion: Live today. Live this day, with this self, without 32 Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK holding back. Today... savor, doubt, embrace, question, wrestle, give, risk, love, fall down, get up, accept your incomplete and fractured self, know that anything worth doing is worth doing badly, speak from your whole heart, and whenever you can, lavish excessive compassion and mercy on anyone who crosses your path. Who knows, you may even love someone “into existence.” If you practice all of this while you’re still waiting for God’s instructions, I’m sure God won’t mind.
It was hot in the desert, yes. But our Seattle heat wave has been prepping me for this, I tell myself. No matter, because every time I visit the Franciscan Renewal Center, the mountains settle me. Something about the clear demarcation of the caramel colored crests against a gemstone blue sky. When you look closely, the three dimensional texture comes alive with creases and furrows, all created by shadows.
I’m home tonight... walking the garden to see what I missed while I was away. It’s as if the sunflower blooms are smiling. And who knows, maybe inviting me to dance.
REFLECTION FOR THE DAY Kids—they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music. — William Stafford
Looook! You must have a place to which you can go in your heart, your mind, or your house, almost every day, where you do not owe anyone and where no one owes you—a place that simply allows for the blossoming of something new and promising. —Joseph Campbell Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight 33 A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK
A woman stands at the window and stares. We are on the morning commuter ferry, from Vashon Island to Seattle. A snow-covered Mount Rainier dominates the panorama. It stands prominent, imperial in the dawn light. (It is true. Here in the Northwest, the first time you see Mount Rainier, you do a double take. Some divine-sleight-of- hand. Where’d that mountain come from?)
The woman is wide-eyed, as if she is surprised by the mountain. As if she is seeing it for the first time. All of the other early morning commuters (and there are many) go about their business. Reading the newspaper. Drinking coffee. Paying bills. Talking with friends. Napping on benches.
Morning sacrament “Looook,” she announces loudly, “we can see the mountain. Everybody looook!”
She has the demeanor of a person “not all there.” You know what I mean. She is clearly one of those people who embarrass us. (Or realistically, one of those people we choose to ignore.) As other commuters walk by, they (we) knowingly smile at one another and roll our eyes. She’s not normal, we tell one another in code.
“Looook,” she says again, pointing this time, almost reverential, “the mountain.”
I’ve seen the mountain a thousand times, but I figure, “What the heck.” So I put down my book, and look. The rising sun has just crested the Cascade Mountain ridge-line. It looks as if it is sitting in a saddle between 34 Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK two peaks. The shaft of light from the sun glistens on the snow face of the Cascades, the color of a good English beer. It hits the Puget Sound, and dances across the water, now a golden pathway from the ferry to the sky. Rainier, backlit and venerable in this morning light, appears etched, as if a great artist rendered it in charcoal or pen and ink. The water of the Puget Sound is gun-metal-grey, and calm. To the south is Tacoma harbor, where a crescent moon hangs in what I can only describe as a melancholy blue sky.
I do not pick up my book again.
I look. A morning vista as sacrament—a dose of grace; a brew, fortifying and settling.
“Looook,” the woman is talking again. “The mountain. Everyone looook, the mountain.”
To exit the ferry, we walk by the woman (still standing, still pointing, still talking), wondering, I suppose, what went wrong in her life, what finally snapped, and what made her leave her senses. How sad for her. We walk hurriedly, you know, in order to take care of those more important obligations awaiting us in our day. However. On this morning, the “crazy woman” is my sage. My seer, my rabbi, my priest, my pastor. She is my reminder. For whatever reason, she sees the day without the extra layers of defense. (Or if you’ll permit an impenitent play on words, she seizes the day, carpe diem.)
I tell this story whenever I can.
And if you’ve heard me speak, chances are you’ve heard this story.
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Whenever I tell it I get gooseflesh.
This much is certain; every time I tell it, I absorb....
It’s not just that she looked.
It’s that she lived the moment wholehearted. There is for her a very visceral engagement. She is, literally, all in.
This is what I would love to bottle and sell...
She didn’t need permission.
She didn’t need approval.
She didn’t need skepticism.
She didn’t need a motivation to impress.
She didn’t need evaluation or justification.
She needed simply this... “Looook how beautiful,” she says, “the mountain.”
Removing the armor This week I told this story to a group of caregivers (an event sponsored by Evergreen Healthcare in Kirkland, WA). Many were professionals. Others caregivers not by choice, encumbered with the daunting responsibility of caring for a dying or ailing loved one. (No, I can’t yet imagine.) My assignment? To talk about living a balanced life (I’ll give you a hint—it’s not possible). And, to talk about the reality of compassion fatigue and what it means to be a caregiver. But before I talked, I needed to listen. Tell me what you carry? I asked. We feel invisible, we try and try
36 Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK and still can’t fix it, we feel the guilt, we juggle grief, we feel unwanted, we learn to cope only to find the expectations keep changing, we can’t find time for refueling. And the list went on.
What they didn’t need was more heaped on their very full plate.
Life is difficult. And sometimes, too heavy.
And we don’t give ourselves the grace to be seen or embraced.
We don’t give ourselves the grace to feel exasperated or disheartened.
Because to receive grace, let alone wholeheartedly, is not an easy thing.
Here’s my take on the story about the young woman: To see (life in its mysterious and extravagant fullness) begins with an inner disarmament. Sooner or later we need to remove pieces of the armor we wear that keep us from allowing life in.
Most of the time, I prefer the armor.
My armor keeps me safe. But it also keeps me from seeing. From feeling. From paying attention. But, hey, it’s a small price to pay. At least I’m not crazy.
It is no secret that we numb ourselves. And it’s all too easy to point the finger at those whose drug comes in pill or needle form. Trouble is, I have found that resentment, fear, apathy, self-pity, being a victim, and shame are just as effective. They all serve the same purpose: censor. Each one, numbing us, keeps troublesome feelings (grief, sorrow, sadness, dejection, anger) and wonder (ecstasy, awe, amazement, and grace) at bay. Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight 37 A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK
Public opinion is a powerful thing. I think about how we (on the ferry boat) conspired to agree about the crazy woman. “We’re sane, she’s crazy,” we reassured each other. Is it possible that we need numbers on our side, because deep down, we know that only “crazy” people can see?
That the Spirit can madden us, and drive us, literally, out of our senses (or is it fully into our senses?), just like the Psalm which reminds us that “They shall get drunk on the fullness of thy house” (Ps. 37).
Is that what I’m afraid of, intoxication (what Rabbi Heschel called radical amazement) with this life? What if we are here to get lost, to fall in love with life, to give in to the courage to be mad with the wonder of it all, to live and dance on the edge of grace (where we have nothing to show to justify our existence)?
And the young woman’s gift to herself? Gladness.
The gladness—to just be.
Beholding faith Here’s the deal. This gladness doesn’t tidy our life. It doesn’t remove pain or sorrow or grief. It does however let us see the sacred in the midst.
Can we live smack dab in the middle of this life—wholehearted, no matter what comes our way?
I didn’t say it is easy. Just that it is worth it.
To see is to change. Seeing allows awe.
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And awe gives birth to gratitude. Which means, in the words of Meister Eckhart, “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”
Borrowing from Barbara Brown Taylor, that which draws me to faith is not the believing parts, but the beholding parts. In other words, awe always precedes faith.
Today couldn’t decide; rain showers, and the clouds move on like swift set changes giving way to sunlight and optimism. I found the time to begin spring cleaning on a couple of garden beds, one with lavender blooms of Iris Reticulata peeking through the debris. The first spring flower in my garden. And a reminder that there is always hope. In this case, a hope regally attired.
REFLECTION FOR THE DAY I perform admiration. Come with me and do the same. —Mary Oliver
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Now I See There's a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call, and answer in extraordinary ways. —From the film Mother Teresa
A frail old man went to live with his son, daughter-in-law, and four-year- old grandson. The old man’s hands trembled, his eyesight was blurred, and his step faltered. The family ate together at the table. But the elderly grandfather’s shaky hands and failing sight made eating an adventure. Food fell off his spoon onto the floor. When he grasped the glass, milk spilled onto the tablecloth.
It didn’t take long for the son and daughter-in-law to become irritated with the mess. “We must do something,” the son decided. “I’ve had enough of his spilled milk, noisy eating, and food on the floor.” So the husband and wife set a small table in the corner. There, Grandfather ate alone while the rest of the family enjoyed their dinners together.
Since Grandfather had broken a dish or two, his food was served in a wooden bowl. The only words the couple had for him were sharp admonitions when he dropped a piece of silverware or spilled his food.
The four-year-old watched it all in silence. One evening before supper, the father noticed his son sitting on the floor, playing with a piece of wood. He asked his son sweetly, “What are you making?” Brightly, the boy responded, “Oh Daddy, I am making a bowl for you and Mama to
40 Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK eat your food in, when you get old.” The four-year-old smiled and went back to work.
The next night, Grandfather joined them at the family table.
I once was blind, but now I see.
This is the text from the Gospel of John. (It is an avowal made famous by John Newton, former slave trader, and author of the world’s most recognized song: “Amazing Grace.”)
Embracing grace Yes, the story in the Gospel of John is a moving story. When I preached the story this year during Lent, I told the congregation that this is not a case study or cerebral exercise or illustration. At some point, this is personal. I am the man in that gospel story.
I told the congregation, “We need to decide whether or not we are playing church.
Either we believe in real transformation or we do not.
Either we believe in grace or we do not.
Either we believe in hope or we do not.
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This transformation cannot be orchestrated or coerced or predicated on shame. It can however, be embraced, celebrated, and shared.”
Giving up our blindness But here’s the deal: I prefer to live with my blindness. Of course, it’s always for a good reason. And it seems to serve me well.
Perhaps you can relate. Oddly, our “blind self” is a false but secure self. Perhaps our blindness is not complete darkness, but scotoma (selective blindness). Regardless, it is a way of not-seeing, and in the end, a way of not-living. And in our increasingly polarized world, this blindness prevents us from being present. Or aware. Or compassionate.
Whether it is to those close to me, or to injustice, or to joy, or to passion; when we are blind, we hide behind...
...self-righteousness
...narrow-mindedness
...an unfair life
...self-doubt
...fear
...victimization
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Here’s what I find heartening about the gospel story. The power or transformation comes when the man recognizes that his sight—this new way TO BE in the world—as a GIFT. It didn’t happen because he tried harder. Or had more faith.
What difference does it make?
If we give up our blindness, we accept and embrace responsibility.
Grace give us sight.
And sight connects us.
(I love the greeting in the movie Avatar, “I see you.” I acknowledge you.)
One of the reasons we don’t have peace in this world is that we have forgotten that we belong to one another. —Mother Teresa
I wish I had great advice here. I don’t have three steps to compassionate living. However (and I know this to be true); if we are open to it, grace changes our life. And that change spills to everyone around us.
Even if we can’t explain it.
“All I know,” said the man, “is that once I was blind and now I see.”
Which means that maybe today...
...I will have the strength to persevere even when life isn’t what I planned, Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight 43 A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK
...I will have the guts to rebuild or take a chance or follow my heart, ...I may acknowledge that my preconceptions about you are dead wrong, ...I may celebrate the freedom to offer the gift of grace without expecting anything in return.
I just came in from watching the sunset. I’m in Englewood Beach (on Florida’s west coast on Manasota Key), where I return every May to spend a few days with some old friends. It’s a ritual. And yes, they are old, as in we’ve been friends a long time—over 30 years. And yes, they are old, as in they (like me) take an odd pleasure in getting their AARP discount at the movie theater.
We will spend the days on a friend’s boat, swapping stories, talking about the way life is, and the way life should be if we were in charge. And how life is not easy for some of us—struggles and challenges with kids, or jobs, or health, or marriages, or expectations (selective blindness). Or all of the above.
We don’t use our time making a bucket list, but instead, enjoy the days with its endowment of gifts, taking great delight in the little things. When the sun dissolves on the horizon, and the water turns the color of spewed lava, my friend Ed blows a conch shell. It is his variation on a Benedictine Compline, a prayer to end the day. We raise our glasses and toast life and these moments of grace.
REFLECTION FOR THE DAY If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of.
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There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person. —Fred Rogers
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Pennies and Delight What would happen if we removed value judgments from our thinking? What would happen if, in place of good and bad, positive and negative, high and low, we used words like resting, listening, waiting, starting, returning, savoring, celebrating, dancing, learning, growing? —Mike Yaconelli
While a young mother waits at a post-office-counter, her four-year-old daughter occupies herself with the opportunity for self-entertainment, exploring the lobby, looking, prattling, not an item left untouched.
The girl finds a penny on the floor. “Look momma,” she says proudly, “a penny!”
Risking delight Her mother, busy with a clerk at the window, mumbles an acknowledgment. Others in line smile, while some shake their head and cogitate about the regrettable decline in discipline. The girl walks to the other side of the lobby and places the penny back onto the floor. Feigning surprise, she says, “Look mamma, I found another penny!”
Delighted, she keeps at her enterprise, placing the penny in a different location, until she has found five pennies, each one of them brand new.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. —Jack Gilbert
Yes, the story is infectious in its charm. But then... my “consumer mentality” kicks in. And I want to know the answer to the “HOW”
46 Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK question. You know, “How do we live that way?” After all, it must be a matter of technique. So...what are the steps? And what is the secret?
Should we stop dancing? Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760 and founder of the Chassidic movement) was asked: “Why is it that Chassidim burst into song and dance at the slightest provocation? Is this the behavior of a healthy, sane individual?”
The Baal Shem Tov responded with a story: Once, a musician came to town—a musician of great but unknown talent. He stood on a street corner and began to play. Those who stopped to listen could not tear themselves away, and soon a large crowd stood enthralled by the glorious music whose equal they had never heard. Before long they were moving to its rhythm, and the entire street was transformed into a dancing mass of humanity.
A deaf man walking by wondered: Has the world gone mad? Why are the townspeople jumping up and down, waving their arms and turning in circles in middle of the street?
“Chassidim,” concluded the Baal Shem Tov, “are moved by the melody that issues forth from every creature in God’s creation. If this makes them appear mad to those with less sensitive ears, should they therefore cease to dance?”
They dance because they have tapped (in the words of George Fowler) the “unmined gold” that is inside.
Infectious indeed. “Look mamma, I found another penny!”
Okay. So here are the steps.
Step 1: Sometime today, take delight. It sounds so simple. And yet, we find any number of ways to rob delight of its essential joy. Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight 47 A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK
(I love to cook...the tastes, scents, a glass of wine, the camaraderie, the process. But this week I saw an infomercial for the magic bullet, which promises to make the fastest omelet ever, in 10 seconds or less. So now, cooking has changed; from a delight, to a race. Someone please tell me, this is beneficial...how?)
In our earnest need to focus on the correct way (or the fastest way, or the approved way), we keep both delight and the dance in check. After all...what if, God forbid, it all gets out of hand? I saw this sign posted by a large company’s HR department: “No hugging, touching, or complimenting.” No complimenting? Yes, because we all know how excessive complimenting can be a serious liability.
Ballet artist George Balanchine was asked, “What is your ballet about?” “Just dance,” he responded. “Yes, but what’s it about?” Finally, he said, “I’d say it’s about fifteen minutes.” Maybe, just maybe...it’s about the dance.
Physical and spiritual growth cannot be reduced to mechanics. I’m all for getting the mechanics right, but spiritual growth is more than a procedure; it’s a wild search for God in the tangled jungle of our souls, a search which involves a volatile mix of messy reality, wild freedom, frustrating stuckness, increasing slowness, and a healthy dose of gratitude. —Mike Yaconelli
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“In Hebrew the opposite of holy is chol, which is translated not as ‘profane’ but as ‘empty’; in other words, ‘not yet filled.’” writes Irwin Kula. “The word for holy in Hebrew is kedusha. A more accurate translation of kedusha is ‘life intensity.’ To be holy is to be intensely dynamic, ever-changing, and ever-realizing. The Biblical command ‘You Shall Be Holy’ is an invitation to celebrate what philosopher Mark Taylor calls ‘a maze of grace that is the world.’ Live as richly and passionately as possible; that’s as close to meaning as you will get.”
Step 2: Share your delight (your discovered penny) with someone else.
Tonight I sit on my back patio (enjoying my glass of Bordeaux), and drink in the solitude, the birds at the feeders, the energizing spring air and the vibrancy from the outrageous buds on the peonies, swollen and ready for their annual floral cabaret. “Look,” I say to the sky, “I found another penny!”
To experience delight is a risk. And to share it with someone is also a risk. But when we do so, we are affirming that there is indeed another way... In this life, we can risk loving. We can risk living less than tidy lives. We can risk asking for less than perfection from others (and ourselves).
In a glance. In a word. In a touch. In a gesture, there is healing and kindness and hope...and the permission to dance is offered. We cannot change the pain in our lives or the lives of others. But we can accompany each other, and along the way, look for pennies....
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REFLECTION FOR THE DAY Be still: There is no longer any need of comment. It was a lucky wind That blew away his halo with his cares, A lucky sea that drowned his reputation. —Thomas Merton
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Wrestling Times What is required to make a place holy? The ordinary becoming extraordinary, The common interrupted for a moment that we wish would last forever, God coming into our forest, decorating our trees, Inviting us to remove our shoes. —Rev. Robin Ringland
My friend Tim Hansel wrote a book on parenting. He asked his young sons, “Boys, how do you know Dad loves you?”
He figured that they would say, “Daaaad, remember when you took us to Disneyworld, like for 10 days!” They didn’t say that, so he knew he wasted all that money.
He figured they’d say, “Daaaad, remember Christmas and you bought us all that great stuff!” They didn’t say that. They said,
“Dad, we know you love us, when you wrestle with us.”
He remembered two times. He had come home, hungry, tired, late, and he didn’t care. But these urchins were yanking on his pant leg. “So I rolled with them on the floor. Toward the kitchen.” He said, “just to get them out of my way.”
And then it hit him. In the middle of that very ordinary, boring, mundane experience, real life was happening. Unfeigned joy, love, intimacy, connection, grace, sacrament—the really good stuff—all woven into the commonplace.
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“But,” Tim laments, “I missed it. Because I was only tuned into Disneyworld and Christmas.”
There is nothing wrong with Disneyworld or Christmas. But they have meaning, only because of the sacred in the ordinary. Because of the wrestling times.
I love telling this story whenever I’m invited to speak or lead retreats. It’s a good reminder. It came to mind this past week when someone asked me about New Year’s resolutions. (They were still equivocating and wondered what great plans I had made. Well, I had just come off of a truly bad week, and wondered out loud what it means when the first few weeks of your new year don’t go as planned; do you get a do-over when it comes to resolutions? The look on their face told me they had hoped for a more cheerful response.)
Which all reinforced to me how easy it is to buy the myth that life proceeds according to our specifications and designs. My ability to handle chaos, disarray and disappointment is not too different from my son. Have I had enough sleep? Have I had too much sugar?
Or, in my case, at this moment, am I bonding with the incompetent idiot at the customer service counter? (Oops. That slipped out inadvertently.) So in the airport—this past week—I was looking for that room where I could stew in the invigorating juices of exasperation and irascibility.
Speaking of Disneyworld, there is this hope—scarcely disguised—that the New Year offers a cleansing. As if we wipe the slate clean of last year’s tumult or disorder or blunders. I get it. I do...we want to eliminate worry. But it doesn’t help if we see our freedom from interruption as linked to
52 Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK luck or goodness or faith. That’s just another variation of control. Or closure.
Where was I? Oh yes, standing in the airport stewing. And Bruce saved my emotional bacon. I cranked up Springsteen’s “This Little Light of Mine.” And though I didn’t know how my day was going to end I realized (stewing in a departure lounge) that this day, this moment, is a lot like wrestling time.
In the Bible, God is real in small gifts and simple pleasures. God is present in the commonplace, the weak, the flawed, the compromised. The profane is not the antithesis of the sacred, but the bearer of it.
We are so bent on removing ourselves from the mundane, that we miss miracles. Not surprisingly, once we see it, we do our best to turn it into a project: five steps to creating wrestling times. We do not rest in the solace that God is present, having nothing to do with our faith, or our effort to invest the moment with meaning.
In other words, there is freedom in this gift of wrestling times.
I don’t need to craft the moment, I can live it. I don’t need to read-into the moment, I can receive it. I don’t need to find control over the moment, I can let it be. I don’t need to orchestrate closure in the moment, I can pay it forward.
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When the Shawnee and Chippewa (and other early people) went on hunts or vision quests or long journeys, each traveler would carry in a small rawhide pouch various tokens of spiritual power—perhaps a feather, a bit of fur, a claw, a carved root, a pinch of tobacco, a pebble, or a shell. These were not simple magical charms; they were reminders of the energies that sustain all of life. By gathering these talismans into a medicine pouch, the hunter, traveler, or visionary seeker was recollecting the sources of healing and bounty and beauty. (Adapted from Scott Russell Sanders, Hunting for Hope)
I like the image. And if wouldn’t hurt us if we carried a medicine pouch. Or at least asked the question, What am I carrying with me today?
Knowing that these elements of the ordinary, nourish and heal and sustain...offering hope, a will to live, wonder, fortitude and a generosity of spirit.
Wrestling time...let’s call it a whiff of the holy, in the muddle of ordinary life. Can we see the gift there?
Back to Bruce and “This Little Light of Mine,” it reminds me that... My light can shine even when I don’t have all the answers. My light can shine even when everything doesn’t add up. My light can shine even when the pieces of the puzzle don’t make any sense.
Dad, we know you love us when you wrestle with us.
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Yes. This little light...there are gifts in the ordinary, the boring, and the mundane...gifts to embrace, gifts to receive, gifts to give.
My mind was given to football today. I had my lucky beer and lucky snacks and did my best to keep my heart from cardiac arrest. It turns out I needed more than one lucky beer. (Football fans will understand.)
After the game I sat in the living room (figuring out a way to get to the Super Bowl), watched the flames in the fireplace and waited for my pulse to return to normal. I stepped outside to look up at the moon, but the sky is murky tonight. Last night, the moon rested, as if sitting on an upper branch of a large fir tree, and the entire garden posed, an old fashioned photo in sepia tone. I smiled. Glad to be alive.
REFLECTION FOR THE DAY Everything has already been given. What we need is to live into it. —Thomas Merton
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Waking Up Begins With Wonder Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life — learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. —Robert Fulghum
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium is the strangest, most fantastic, most wonderful toy store in the world. The store is run by Mr. Edward Magorium (who claims that he is two-hundred-forty-three years old), assisted by an insecure Molly Mahoney, and a very young Eric Applebaum, a lonely hat collector (who has only Molly and Mr. Magorium for friends).
Mr. Magorium hires Henry Weston, an accountant, to adjust the accounts of the Emporium.
Henry is a very serious and humorless man. Henry is working behind a window, intent on his work, when Eric approaches the window with a request, written on a piece of paper, held up to the window for Henry to see. Do you want to play checkers? It reads. I did when I was a kid. Henry writes his response.
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(Eric) Want to play? (Henry) When I quite working. (Eric) How about after work? (Henry) I never quit working.
This is not just a story about work. (I have friends, including Sabbath Moment friends, who have lost jobs and would be grateful for the opportunity to work.) This isn’t about jobs either. It is a story about how our fixation—or busyness or distractions or work—will absorb us. And in the end, we see our value tied only to this burden of busyness. (It helps if we convince ourselves, “we are busy with matters of consequence.”)
Waking up begins with wonder This is a story about the way we perceive our identity. And ultimately, about how we perceive what is important.
Trapped (like Henry), we lose our sense of play. And we lose our sense of rest and restoration. And we lose our sense of wonder.
Which means that this is also a story about the invitation to wake up.
The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make
Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight 57 A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it. —David Orr
The planet needs people who wake up. So...what if waking up begins with wonder? What is waking up begins with gladness, curiosity, gooseflesh, delight?
Without wonder we approach life as a self-help project. Eugene Peterson reminds us, “We (only) employ techniques; we analyze gifts and penalties; we set goals and assess progress. Spiritual formation is reduced to cosmetics.”
I have a full plate right now. Perhaps you can relate? And when the treadmill beckons, the inner-Henry comes out.
It hit me the other day, standing at the self-help table in a Barnes and Noble. (I’ll ‘fess up. I needed to peek at what these books are promising in order to know what I need to imitate.)
The first book I picked up got my attention. It boasted, “This is the one book we’ve all been waiting for!” (With a promise like that I opened it just to see if it included a tube of some mind-boggling anti-aging cream, or at least a sexy photo.) The other books offered instruction, assured to “transform” my life.
One, in nine ways. Another, in nine days. Still another, in nine steps.
Which made me wonder what ever happened to seven?
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Until I saw a book that offered results in three steps.
And then I saw the book that told me I couldn’t “just live” my life, I needed to “overcome” my life.
That was enough to make me dizzy, so I left the store without buying a single book. And sat in a Starbucks sipping an Americano.
And I decided that Eric had the right idea: Today I don’t need to overcome. Today I need to play.
So. Do you want to play checkers?
Play = an openness to a part of me that has been closed or discounted.
Welcome to the awakening Which means that play is not so much an activity, as a suspending of control. Or as Henri Nouwen taught us, “Love is not something you have. Love is something that has you. You do not have the wind, the stars, and the rain. You don’t possess these things; you surrender to them. And surrender occurs when you are aware of your illusions, when you are aware of your addictions, when you are aware of your desire and fears.”
It is the same with play.
Here’s the question for every one of us: How do we recapture that child in each of us; that child still smitten with wonder?
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The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.... All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. —Pablo Picasso
Remember the scene in The Sound of Music, when Frau Schmidt delivers bolts of fabric material to Maria (that the Captain had ordered from town to make new dresses)? When Maria asks for more material to make play clothes for the children, Frau Schmidt curtly lectures, “The von Trapp children don’t play. They march.”
Here’s the deal:
Where is the play in your life? Where is the rest? Where is the wonder? Where is the gladness? Where is the gooseflesh?
It is Advent Season, and I see a connection to Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. Advent is about “awakened waiting,” which involves being roused, being shaken up. Eric invited Henry to an awakening.
In December 1944, 37-year-old Father Alfred Delp, S.J., was imprisoned in Tegel Prison in Berlin, having been arrested months earlier on suspicion of being part of the Resistance movement against the Nazis. While in prison, he wrote a series of Advent and Christmas reflections during what would be the last Advent of his earthly life. In an astounding spirit of hope, he writes: “The kind of awakening that literally shocks a person’s whole being is part and parcel of the Advent idea. It is precisely in the shock of rousing... that a person finds the golden thread which binds 60 Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK earth to heaven and gives the benighted some inkling of the fullness it is capable of realizing and is called upon to realize” (Fr. Gregory Schenden).
Yes. And I see this awakening to wonder—this inkling of the fullness—as a seed coming to life when given the right conditions.
When you regarded me Your eyes imprinted your grace in me, In this, you loved me again, And thus my eyes merited To also love what you see in me.... Let us go forth together to see ourselves in Your beauty. —St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle
I have been fortunate to have a week of play. On Florida’s west coast, in a place with warm water, warm air and warm sun—not a bad trifecta. And medicine for any blue mood that can well up the week of one’s 60th birthday. My friends—some of them for more than 30 years—gather. We tell stories, some tall and not remotely connected to reality, but somehow still very true, some laugh-from-the-gut funny, and some reminders of how we find ourselves at this place in our lives because of an invitation to “play checkers,” an invitation to be open to wonder.
I’m tempted to give in to the second guessing that comes with birthdays, but it helps to gather with friends (we are blessed with musicians in our
Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight 61 A SABBATH MOMENT BOOK midst) at night to sip birthday Scotch and sing John Denver, Peter Paul and Mary and Jim Croce, into the very late hours.
As Kurt Vonnegut’s uncle used to say, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”
REFLECTION FOR THE DAY Loosen up. Don’t you have some people to hug, rocks to skip, or lips to kiss?... Someday you are going to retire; why not today? Not retire from your job, just retire from your attitude. Honestly, has complaining ever made the day better? Has grumbling ever paid the bills? Has worrying about tomorrow ever changed it? Let someone else run the world for a while. —Max Lucado
About the Author Terry Hershey—author, humorist, inspirational speaker, dad, ordained minister, golf addict, and smitten by French wine. He divides his time between designing sanctuary gardens and sharing his practice of “pausing” and “sanctuary,” to help us rest, renew and live. He is the author of fifteen books, including Sanctuary (Loyola Press), The Power of Pause: Becoming More by Doing Less (Loyola Press), Sacred Necessities (Ave Maria), and Soul Gardening: Cultivating the Good Life (Augsburg Fortress).
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About Sabbath Moment Books Drawn from the archives of Terry’s popular, weekly Sabbath Moment series, these books provide soul food, filled with inspiration, story, reflection, quotes, and poetry; the gift of pause–the permission to live in a spirit of gentleness, slowness and delight. The series includes: Permission to Be You Find Your Own Voice Create Sacred Spaces Live Wholehearted: Making Space for Wonder and Delight It’s Not Where You Arrive, It’s The Direction You Are Going Slow Down, Savor Life Your Life Begins Today Do Less, Be More
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