Surrender

It is that time of year again. As we go deeper into fall, I must surrender summer, the season I always seem to long for. Yet I realize in doing this, what I am surrendering is the mythical summer, the one deep in the recesses of my memory. In that summer, the days are warm and sunny and endless. There is no school and time puts no constraints on the opportunity to play and wander the neighborhood. I can walk to the lake and spend an afternoon watching the sun sparkle brightly off the little rippling waves. Or I can sit up in my warm stuffy bedroom and read for hours, with no one disturbing me. There are fireworks on the fourth of July and long car rides through the country ending at Grandma and Grandpa's. And Grandma will have baked sugar cookies for us. That is the summer of my soul.

Yet that summer slipped away countless years ago. Grandma and Grandpa are long gone from this life. And summer is no longer a liberation from all responsibility - as I like to remember it. Still, there is something in me that longs for summer each year, thinking, "I'll do this during the summer", with the idea that I will have more time then. Then, as summer leaves, I mourn that I did not seem to really experience it as I had hoped. It has escaped me again. I could not resurrect the myth and then hold onto it so that this time it wouldn't get away.

It seems that life is constantly changing. Sometimes it seems like I am constantly losing someone or something. It may be something simple, like the holiday I looked forward to being over. Or it may be something overwhelming, like there never being another holiday with the one I loved. Either way, life keeps changing and I cannot hold on to anything really. Anything or anyone may be taken away from me at any moment and life will never be the same.

Often, particularly when we are suffering, we see the changing seasons of life like this, a sort of surrender not unlike that of the battlefield, a painful giving up because we are broken and have no choice.

Yet there is another sort of surrender, one that leads us into hope. For the constantly changing nature of our lives also means that the bad parts do not last forever either. When I am mourning my mythical summer, I am forgetting the miserably hot, humid days and the night when the power was off, leaving the 90 degree air unmoving. But when I do remember, I can breath deeply of fall's fresh cool air and find beauty even in the wind and rain.

And so it is with the other parts of our lives. The changing seasons remind us that our physical and emotional pains do not last forever either. There is a mercy that took my Grandpa from the nursing home at 87 when in his dementia and depression he no longer smiled. There is a mercy that will also take my parents from this world, much as I do not want to lose them. Someday, that mercy will come for me too. We cannot always see the Mercy. Oftentimes we do not want to surrender. We cannot see any point or see how our letting go will bring us new Gift.

Oddly, the surrender that leads to hope is the one that completely empties me out, where I give up holding on to anything that I want or desire. But unlike the other surrenders, forced upon us when the battle is lost, this surrender is one we offer out of love, surrendering our very being like one lover does to another. Only this surrender is not to another person, who like everything else will come and go, but to the One who is the begining and end and the endless, Creator of the life that is our core.

Many of us, if we were raised with any sense of God, were raised with a notion of God as a supreme being outside of us and that it was our sinfulness that separated us from him. Since we inevitably do wrong things, this notion may leave us feeling that we are always just about to lose what ultimately matters most. While many religions offer a remedy to this separateness, it may leave us feeling at times that God is the one who takes away, that forces our surrender. How often I hear mourners lament, "why did God have to take him/her from me?". This sort of God forces separation on us, separation from him, separation from those we love, when we aren't good enough for him.

This is not the God I believe in. The One I believe in has never been separated from me and has loved me from the moment of my conception. I believe he lives deep within each of us, the very Being of our being, waiting for us to discover him. Sometimes I imagine his presence within to be like a tiny seed in me, upon which I (and the world) have heaped so much that I can no longer see that the seed is there. Longing for a Presence and not seeing one results in the perception that we must be separate ... and it must be my fault.

Certainly I am a sinner and my faults and failings lie heavy on the tiny seed. But also heaped upon the seed is so much else: unhealed wounds, mindless distractions, angers, hurts and guilts, both deserved and undeserved, wants and pleasures, pious thoughts, attention-seeking ego longing to be loved and admired, all kinds of busy-ness, some of it doing "good" things and some just squandering of precious time. All that is heaped on the little seed convinces me that I am separate from my God- until I start the emptying out. The surrender.

This surrender is the one I choose. The one that longs for nothing and no one more than Him. The emptying is indeed a labor, a clearing away, a letting go, a forgiving of myself and others. It is a healing and a hope. For as I allow myself to be still and empty of all else, I discover that He is there, that He has always been there. And I discover that He is in all others and all others are in Him, so that nothing has really been taken away.

Now, here, in my imperfect life, I cannot fully see or understand. Loss still frightens and hurts. But there is a greater Truth, a sacred Truth, that beckons. I will learn to be still and open... I will begin again and again.

Please join me.

(photo taken on this rainy day in autumn...)

The Journey

strengthen me
for the journey
O my God…

i feel you drawing
me Home
pulling me toward you
on a journey
far too great
for my fragile
little self.

how can i find
my way
to a Home
I have never seen?

how can i know
where to go,
when there is
no map
(except the one
you have written
on my heart)?

you have given me
beauty to drink
and i am
filled,
sated…
yet thirsting still
with all my being.

my heart
goes flying,
searching for
your Heart,
flying
and
flying
until
i can fly
no more.

and then
at last
i rest
…
you are there.
i am Home.

      - mary

(a small annoucement)
 

Greetings! This is just a short message to alert you to something new. I have decided to start "micro-blogging" on Twitter. For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter, it is used by many for social networking but by others, such as myself, for very brief blogging. Brief, because every posting is limited to 140 characters! I am going to try to post a few words there every day in the same spirit as this blog.

 I will continue to blog here, with longer reflections, photos, etc. I am simply adding the Twitter so as to be able to be in touch more frequently. To go there, see the side bar at the left of this page.


(Note: if you and I have a professional relationship, please do not try to contact me through my Twitter account. It is a very public forum and not a good place for discussion of personal issues. You may always be in touch through our regular modes of contact. Thanks.)

Day 5: An abundance of grace

It was just a week ago that I came home after a day of working on the edge of migraine. My brain was foggy and my body tired. I had come home from work a little earlier than usual, looking forward to getting some much-needed rest. As I was driving toward my house, I glanced over at a neighbor's garden where I have taken some lovely photos this summer. Something looked a little different but, from my car, I couldn't see what. Was there something new in bloom?

Parking my car in the garage, I emerged with the thought: I could take a little walk over and look. Another part of me argued back that I was so tired and I didn't feel well; I should just go in and rest. However, dropping off my things in the house, the curious part of me won out. My camera and I went over to investigate. It was not a long walk.

I paused at the fence, scanning the somewhat overgrown garden for something new. Everything looked about the same as the last time I had come... I had never met this neighbor before and no one ever seemed to so much as peer out of a window when I ventured onto the driveway to get a better shot. On one occasion, in fact, I had been so bold as to go up the drive to their private sidewalk because I had seen a beautiful tiger swallowtail butterfly flitting around their butterfly bush. No one had emerged to object but the butterfly had been a restless sort, not taken to sitting still and posing for amateurs like me. Thus the few photos I had taken were blurred by my rushed attempts to capture the image of the tiny creature before it skipped on to its next destination.

I was about to go up the driveway once again that evening, to explore a bit further, when I saw him: a man leaning into his car right in front of the house. "Why did I come?" I thought miserably. "If this is his house, I can't just  walk up the driveway like I have a right to be here." My shyness suggested that I just forget this silly escapade and go home... Yet there was something in me that didn't want to leave. "Excuse me," I said to the man's back, "Do you live here?" He looked up, puzzled, and stated that he did. I held up my camera and asked if he minded if I walked up closer to his garden. He was granting me his permission and guiding me up his driveway when I saw it. A large, beautiful, almost perfect tiger swallowtail, gliding toward his butterfly bush.

Moving toward it, all thoughts of fatigue and shyness vanishing, I drew up my camera, ready to take a quick shot as the butterfly landed. It landed gracefully and remained still, perhaps drawing its nectar or just basking in the evening sunlight, its wings lazily opened. I focused and took my first shot. The butterfly did not seem to notice as I walked around it, trying new angles and distances. It fluttered to another cluster of blossoms, resting as contentedly there as on the first. After nine shots, I decided that I had had my fill of the "nectar" I had come for and I headed back to the neighbor who was watching from his doorstep. After exchanging a few words and offering my thanks, I returned home full of joy.

It was not hard to choose words to complete the poster above. An abundance of grace. Not because the butterfly itself was graceful, though certainly it was. Abundant grace that there are butterflies... grace that my spirit was unknowingly drawn to a beauty that I had been chasing, only to have it given to me with utter generousity at the moment I most needed it... grace that my focus on my fears and my ills did not keep me from following... grace that I can now share this with you.

An abundance of grace... my wish for you always.

Day 4: That which God said to the rose...

It has been a long day and it is late. Perhaps I shall learn to be brief.  :-)  I was later than usual coming home because a therapy group for women had its final meeting tonight. They had first gathered 7 weeks ago, coming together in search of self esteem. Some had experienced abuse, many had experienced divorce, almost all had bad feelings about their bodies. In the course of the 7 weeks, we discussed a number of topics, reflecting on such things as boundaries and assertiveness and self talk. We talked about life as a process with all of us being works-in-progress, and the group just a few steps on the journey.

When I came out to get them this evening, they were all sitting together in the waiting area and burst into laughter when I walked in. Not just a little laughter. Uproarious laughter. They later confessed that they had been placing bets on what time I was going to come out for the 7 o'clock group. (The times wagered upon ranged from 7:06 to 7:15). When I thanked the 7:06 person for her confidence in me, another member quipped that it was just that all the longer times were already taken. More laughter. And they generously told me I was worth waiting for. (For the record, I came out at 7:08 pm...) Such lovely, lovely women.

In one of my neighborhood walks recently, I noticed a small, carved wooden sign planted amidst a simple garden in front of a church. I had walked that way many times before but had never paid much attention to it. Most of the church postings were in Spanish but I could read this sign: "Matthew 6: 26-34". Of course I took a picture of the sign, complete with a little sparrow perched on top, peering down with curiosity. An excerpt from the passage:

"Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them." 

In the the picture above, I see that splendor in the rose. I see it and I wonder: what could God have said to "cause it to laugh in full-blown beauty"? Of course, I do not know. But, as he implies in the passage from Matthew, this is just the beginning, "are you not more important than they?" And the Sufi mystic Rumi intimates that God says the very same thing to my heart. And to your heart. And to the hearts of the women tonight, some of them just beginning to learn to laugh their full-blown beauty.

Let us laugh out our beauty, each in our own unique color and size and shape. Let us laugh it together, with all our imperfections and doubts and fears. And let us watch it multiply and multiply, becoming "a hundred times more beautiful".

Day 3: Everything that lives...

I took a walk this evening, up to the park to pray and watch and listen - my camera at my side, of course. It is a warm evening with a lively breeze - fine walking weather for late summer. I had just finished taking a picture of some beautiful red roses, when I heard a man calling out. I looked up and he appeared to be waving at me and calling out to me in a friendly way. Since I didn't recognize him but no one else was around, I pointed at myself with a quizzical expression. "Yes", the large black man called out, hurrying up to me and shaking my hand. He reminded me that we had met, that he was the guitar player. Then it came back to me. I had passed him once, months ago, when he was sitting on the park bench with his guitar. He had stopped me to ask me if I knew that Jimi Hendrix was god. I hadn't heard this news before but we had parted under amiable circumstances. Now here he was before me again, greeting me as though we were old friends. He asked if I would like to take his picture. I agreed and he posed for me with a dignified smile. I showed him the picture in the camera viewer and he said, "Yep. That's me." He told me his name and we went our separate ways.

After my brief meditation, I headed on home. Just after leaving the park, I spotted an older white man with a cane, standing in the bus shelter. He had an interesting appearance and I mused that he might make a nice photographic subject - but I decided not to ask as I didn't want to risk disturbing him. I glanced at him with a vague smile as I walked by. "Are you all right?" he asked. Secretly wondering what about me had prompted the question, I replied, "Yes, I am. Thank you for asking.... Are you all right?" "Yes." "Have a good evening then," I said and continued walking.

I took the above photograph in late June, when the summer was still fresh and new. It was not hard to match nature's finery with William Blake's words, "Everything that lives is holy..." - each little leaf lined up in a neat row with its brothers and sisters, playing with the sun to make shadows on the large leaves, delicate pink blossoms in contrast. This holy bit of life had been springing forth in an abandoned community garden in the inner city, unstoppable and oblivious to funding cuts. Today, when I walked by, the large plot was quite overgrown and weedy looking - not so fresh and lovely, but still wildly alive and chirping with crickets.

"Everything that lives is holy, life delights in life." I delight in today's glimpse of the vast array of life - the guitar man, the older man who cared, the overgrown weeds with their crickets - they are all holy, as holy as the fresh young blossoms captured in my photo. Each is living out the unique lifespan bestowed upon it by the Creator.

I am holy. You are holy. Not holy like a sinless saint, fasting and praying in church - but holy with Life infused in each of our cells and organs and limbs (even the ones that aren't perfect). Go ahead - let yourself know your holiness, without judgment. Live it. Delight in it...