This is who I am...

In my last post, I wrote about change and the seasons of life. I am now on the threshold, watching my life seasons changing.

When I think back to my younger years, I remember being very passionate about my values - the ones I thought would never change. One of the most central was my desire to lead a life of voluntary poverty, a life of simplicity in which material possessions had little place, a life lived in solidarity with those for whom poverty was a grim reality every day.

Why would anyone volunteer to be poor?

When I search my memory for the roots of this value, I find many. One of the earliest was when I was in high school. As was often the case in Catholic high school religion classes, we were given the assignment to give a presentation in front of the class on some social issue. This having been in the early 1970's, such topics as war, abortion and drugs were among the popular choices. I gave a presentation on voluntary poverty (weird child that I was).

I remember my older brother bringing home some literature on voluntary poverty, apparently authored by some college liberal. This, of course, gave it immediate appeal. I was extremely conscious of the Vietnam war, the horrors of which regularly visited the front pages of the newspaper. The argument made in this treatise was that one could avoid paying the federal taxes that supported the war by keeping one's income below taxable level. There was no question in my black-and-white adolescent mind that this war - and all war - was morally wrong. Hence, this argument for a voluntary poverty was a potent one.

Looking back, even prior to that, I see another root. Between my sophomore and junior years in high school, my family moved from liberal, urban Minneapolis, Minnesota to conservative, suburban Columbus, Ohio. During the summer prior to the move, I had an eye-opening volunteer experience that exposed me to the realities of how poor people lived. When we moved into our new ranch style house in the affluent mid-Ohio suburb, I was bombarded by the contrast more than ever. Our new house had central air conditioning. I could not stop thinking about those sweltering in the heat. Why should I be comfortable when they were suffering?

And this was just the beginning of the "why" questions. The answers that came to me were strong. "I don't want to be among the privileged." "I don't want to be white." "I don't want to have things that other people cannot have." And so, like St. Francis of Assisi, I wanted to cast my father's riches out the window and be a poor person living among the poor.

But there was something more. Like St. Francis of Assisi, there was something deeply spiritual about this longing. It was more than just a political statement. It was more than just a rebellion against my parents' generation. It was a radically sacred call to give up everything that did not matter for the One thing that did matter.

In my youthful attempts to embody this call, I wore my blue jeans patched and frayed. When I wanted to visit Cincinnati the summer after college graduation, I stayed in a women's "inn" as a transient for $4 a night. (I gained a much deeper appreciation for the notion of "sweltering".) I then joined the volunteer corps that brought me to Cleveland. I lived in a community in a large old convent, with $50 a month for a stipend. I later took a job at an inner city mental health clinic where the director kept begging me to allow her to pay me more. I declined. I was living my version of poverty.

When I went to graduate school in Kent, like most of my ilk, I continued to have a low income. While I continued to cherish that, experience and maturity helped me to realize that my voluntary poverty was not really poverty at all. True poverty is not so much about income or possessions as it is about loss of control, about not having choices. My education gave me choices. My middle class parents in the background were my safety net. I did not have to be afraid of not having food or a place to live or people to care about me.

But I found poverty another way. I found it in the gripping anxiety that I felt when I walked away from the security of my home, job and friends to start a difficult course of study in which I might not succeed. I discovered the poverty of not being in control - and it was terrifying. Yet what it taught me was grace beyond measure. In my panic, I had to trust in something beyond myself - or I would die. I could trust in God - but I needed something, someone more tangible. And my therapist was still there for me, a gift greater than I can explain.

By the grace of God, I survived and I graduated with my PhD in Clinical Psychology. I then began the job that I have had for the past 20 years. And now it is time to move on.

As I stand on the threshold looking back, I contemplate why I stayed at this job so long. As much as I love being a psychologist, I'm not sure that this particular place of employment was ever a good fit for who I am. I began there because they were willing to hire me and supervise me until I was licensed. Once I began, I fell in love with all of the beautiful patients who came and shared their lives with me. I developed dear friendships with a kind and caring cadre of coworkers. But something else happened too. Something I never thought would happen to me.

I became attached to the security. I became gradually more and more comfortable with my paycheck and the benefits that enabled a comfortable lifestyle. By many professional people's standards, my lifestyle never gained extravagance - or even close to it. But I discovered one day that something had changed in me so gradually that I had hardly noticed.

As the world of healthcare changed and the style of providing care increasingly conflicted with the call of my spirit, I began to consider leaving my job. And I considered it some more. For years. One of the things that held me back was my patients. How could I ever leave them, these people who had trusted me with their deepest pain? I remembered the gift given to me in my poverty and it seemed unthinkable. I also feared losing the closeness of my colleagues, whose support was always there when either personal or professional trials came my way.

But eventually I had to admit that I was also afraid to give up the security. Not just the money but the assurance and predictability of knowing that I would have enough. This was not an easy discovery. In fact, I suspect that it was one that could only be made through pain. As the breaking points became more frequent and more profound, I cried out, "I would rather be poor" than work there. This, of course, was just a fleeting anger. But it gave me pause. When had financial security become so important to me? When had my trust in God become so feeble?

And so it began: the changing of the seasons. I began to explore the possibilities and in almost no time one emerged. I have been blessed now with an opportunity to continue as a psychologist and to allow many of my long term patients to continue to see me. And I have no idea how much money I will make and it is freeing that it no longer matters all that much. What matters is the One who has always mattered more than anything or anyone. I follow Him and all shall be well...

(If there are any former patients who have lost touch and want to know how to reach me, my new business e-mail address is: mary.findhope@gmail.com. If there are any readers who do not know me but have stumbled across this site, you too are welcome to use this e-mail. Friends reading this blog are asked to continue contacting me via my personal e-mail so that my business account doesn't become too congested. Thank you and blessings to all.)

Change

When I was a young adult, just emerging from college with my strong ideas and ideals, I remember thinking: "I will never change." I joined a volunteer corps after graduation and that was what brought me to Cleveland.

I was hungry to live out my values. I was to live simply, in a community with others, sharing spirituality and a lifestyle that promoted social justice. I was to work for a small, ecumenical church-based agency that assisted ex-offenders. I was ready to change the world - although I would have told you at the time that I was not that idealistic.

One of my coworkers at that agency was a politically radical, often frenzied, much caring minister of a different denomination from mine. He was familiar with my volunteer corps in that the agency had had a volunteer the year before. Often when he was introducing me to others, he would say that I was "taking a year off" to do this work and live this way. I always wanted to correct him, though I don't remember if I ever actually did. I wanted to say: "I'm not just doing this for a year. This is how I want to live all of my life. I will not change from this way of living - when I'm thirty, forty or fifty. This is who I am."

Recently, my parents faced the difficult task of downsizing twice in a short period of time - first from their house to a senior apartment, then from the apartment to an assisted living apartment across the country. All of this downsizing meant discovering possessions that they did not remember that they had and having to make decisions about what to do with them. One discovery was a large collection of cards and letters sent to them by my brother and me. Quite possibly every card or letter.

My mother gave me the bag of my own, suggesting that I read through them and decide if I wanted to keep any of them. My first thought was just to pitch them. Of course, curiosity got the better of me in the end. There were predictably cute ones from when I was very young. The ones that made the most striking impression, however, were the ones from college and my young adult years.

It was so peculiar. I thought I remembered myself at that age, how I thought and felt and wrote as a young adult. Yet reading the letters I had written home were like reading letters written by a stranger. A rather strange stranger. Now well into my fifties, there is no doubt. I have indeed changed, much as I had vowed I wouldn't.

In my youthful exuberance, I was not mistaken in believing that my core ideas and values would guide the course of my coming decades. What I lacked was the experience to understand that life must change. Life, as part of its "aliveness" is dynamic, constantly in motion, growing, developing, withering, dying and being reborn - anything and everything but staying the same.

Life has its seasons. It is no coincidence that I write now, as the season changes from summer to autumn. But life's seasons are so much more than the cycle that repeats, year after year.

My life has its seasons, even when I haven't recognized that that was the case. It is much like when one is used to the summer heat and then suddenly notices that there is a bit of a nip in the air when the sun goes down. When did that start happening? Yet the seasons of my own life are even more mysterious. While I can predict that my hair will gray and my mind will slow (and surely they have!), there is much about the changing seasons of my life that I cannot know before I get there.

Even my response to the changes in my life has been changeable. Sometimes I have feared change. Changes that I chose sent panic shooting through my body as I could see nothing before me but risk. Other times, I have longed for change, but could not see how to make it happen. Yet so often it seems that, when I allow it to, life unfolds and change simply is. Not always easily or without effort or without pain. But I fumble through the fears and obstacles, living the questions until they turn into answers. (The answers too, because life is always changing, turn back into new questions...)

This, now, is a time of major change in my life. I have both longed for and feared it. I tried to make it happen many times and discovered that I couldn't. I was afraid. I didn't know how. And now I understand why. I could not be in charge of the change. To be my true self is to be in God. To be in God means that I cannot be God. Rather I must entrust myself to the sacred movement, the sacred dance of the living universe... I found that I did not know how to do even this.

Yet there is grace. And that grace is like an irresistible melody that guides my heart to dance in its rhythm, though I do not know (and cannot know) the steps. In that sacred dance, it is He who leads - and so I follow...

If you are a patient or friend who has been out of touch and do not know of my life changes, feel free to contact me. If you do not know how to contact me, a link will be provided sometime in the next few weeks. If you would like to read more about life-in-motion, Father Stephen Freeman, an Orthodox priest, posted a wonderful article on his blog: 
http://glory2godforallthings.com/2012/09/10/everything-is-in-motion/

(To celebrate the changing seasons, click on the image below to view my 50 favorite photos from summer of 2012. To watch them as a slide show, click on the slideshow button in the upper left; to stop the slideshow, hit the escape key. As always, you are welcome to download any of my photos for your personal, nonprofit use.)
 

summer 2012

The broken wing

“O most Holy One,” the little one lamented. “You gave me these beautiful wings with which to soar the heavens. I am so ashamed: one of them is broken.”

The Heavens were silent and the little one nearly lost hope. “What can I do?” he wondered. “What can I do, damaged as I am? There is no place in this world for butterflies with broken wings.”

As he contemplated his fate, he noticed sister bee, busily hopping from flower to flower, collecting pollen to feed her brood, fertilizing as she went. “Her wings are not colorful at all, nor do they span as broadly as mine,” the little one thought automatically, used to being monarch of all of the winged.

But then he remembered his plight and felt a deepening sorrow.

“How could the Holy One allow this to happen to me?” the angry thought burst forth. “It simply is not fair.” But again he felt ashamed, knowing that the ways of the Holy One are beyond the knowing of the small.

The little one considered. “Perhaps I could pollinate too. Surely I would not be as efficient as sister bee who was made for such work. And I could not go far with my broken wing…”

He thought some more. “If I could pollinate even a few flowers, certainly that would serve the Holy One better than giving up and dying.”

And so, with a newfound humility, the little one began. He was much more accustomed to being admired than working hard. He was not sure just what to do or how to go about it.

To his surprise, sister bee quickly noticed, joined him and taught him what to do. Soon, he was so busy that he forgot all about his own lost glory. He found joy in helping the Holy One create beauty amidst the growing things.

The day was nearly over and the little one grew tired. Evening Sun shown deeply through his stained glass wings. Yet the little one kept working. “I want to give the Holy One fitting praise, for new life has been given me this day.”

At last, Sun set and life ebbed from the little one just as light ebbed from the sky. The Holy One came to him and asked for his wings. “My wings?” gasped the little one, “I cannot take them with me?”

“They are mine,” said the Holy One, at last breaking His silence. “They too are mine. Come along now, little one, come.”

The Holy One bent to scoop up the stiffening body of the little one and whispered, “I take you to My home where we soar the heavens without wings. No longer can you be broken. For now you are truly mine - as I am yours.”

For a closer look, click on the image. The broken wing is the upper right wing. Of course, it no longer matters :-)

(If you would like to jump to the future and read the sequel to this story, click here.)

A gift

I received a beautiful gift today.

I came home from work in the early evening and immediately changed into shorts and a t-shirt. It has been a very hot and dry month, leaving the yard parched. Early this spring I decided to plant a butterfly garden, hoping to draw some of my little friends to the back yard. Unfortunately, between the heat, a groundhog and my stingy watering habits, the garden has been looking rather sorry.

However, I never let such things stop me in my quest for beauty. I grabbed my camera and ventured into the yard. "I can begin by documenting how very dry it is", I thought, reminded of how my soul thirsts for God. There had been a very meager shower earlier in the afternoon. It was still warm, cloudy and prematurely dark.

I took the picture.

Clearly not the
beauty I was seeking.

Yet it was a start.

I decided to walk over to my poor little garden and assess the damage wrought by another sizzling day. Something drew my attention to a plain yellow leaf. It had not occurred to me that it was not the season for leaves to turn yellow and fall. Something else had caught my attention. Was that a butterfly resting on the leaf?

From afar, I took a picture.

(My tiny friends can be rather skittish.)

Ah, a Red Admiral. It was in the news that they would be plentiful this year. I moved closer, shooting new photos as I approached. He (or she? hard to tell with this type...) did not seem to be going anywhere.




Droplets of rain.

Perhaps that is what drew him?

So beautiful.

And suddenly he was gone! I did not see where he went... but I a sensed some fluttering near me. And there he was - perched first on my shorts, then hopping onto my t-shirt. I gazed down at him, delighted. I thanked him for visiting me and invited him to step onto my arm.

And so he did, his wings closed.

I waited.

And then they opened.

I expected him to dash off at any moment but, oddly, he did not. His wings folded again and he remained perched on my arm while I talked to him. (Yes, I do talk to butterflies... and birds... and squirrels... )  I apologized that my garden did not have any nectar to offer him.

I took him to my neighbor's garden.

I showed him her flowers, offering them.

Yet he stayed with me.





Back in my yard, I wondered what was next. And then, without warning, he was once again gone, vanished from my sight ...

Looking up, I saw him. He was fluttering against the sky with a new-found energy, jostling with another butterfly.

I smiled.

Beauty visited me today. (May He visit you as well...)

Surrendering spring...

Note: I wrote this somewhat unusual poem for a "poetry party" at www.abbeyofthearts.com . Today, as we leave spring for summer, I decided to illustrate it with photos/collages, one for each stanza. (If the print is too small to read, clicking on the photo produces a larger image...)

prayer for today