Finding Center Again

 Todays worship sharing topic in my worship community was about how we re-find or renew Center?  A Friend shared a sort of amusing dream where he was in a vehicle with his parents and his father was struggling to get the vehicle to work correctly and to find directions.   His mother kept suggesting she had some magic words for finding direction if we wanted them.  When he finally asked she said: Use GPS.  We all laughed in recognition of the stubborn part of each of us that will not take guidance.

I have a lot of reliable ways to re-center.   I wonder over and over again why I don't make regular use of my spiritual practices.  Why I am so determined to try to navigate by my own brain?   I liked the metaphor that I could have direction if I would just decide to turn on the GPS.

I thought of a time in my childhood where my Dad and my sister and I were visiting Cambridge and trying to go to the Friends Meeting there.  There is a round about quite close to it that does not connect directly to it.  We kept going around this roundabout, getting off at different spokes and not finding the Meeting.  We were already 10 mins late, I was begging my Dad to stop at a gas station and get directions but being a man he stubbornly refused insisting he was going to find it.  We were 15 mins late.  Finally at 30 mins late he said we were too late and it would be too embarrassing to enter late and so we gave up never having gotten there.

Many Friends shared this sense that we actually do know how to center but that we allow ourselves to be distracted, to be "too busy", to try to gut our way through things.   That for reasons mysterious to most of us we refused to turn towards the guidance that is available to us when we will turn to it.

Yes for those who have wondered about why this is the picture for my blog, it is about focusing on the center.

Pushing and Pulling

Early Friends believed that we could receive Divine Guidance for our lives.  That we could listen to the "still small voice within" for that guidance.  They were clear that we had to still ourselves so we were not let by ego or vanity.  Below is a quote from a modern day meditation teacher.

 This path of using life to evolve spiritually is truly the highest path.  There really is no reason for tension or problems.  Stress only happens when you resist life’s events.  If you’re neither pushing life away or pulling it towards you, then you are not creating any resistance.  You are simply present.  In this state, you are just witnessing and experiencing the events of life taking place.  If you choose to live this way, you will see that life can be lived in a state of peace.

Michael Singer

Another Quote:

I am sorry there is fear in the world.  That is what you have come to transform.  I am sorry for the forgetting that cause dark nights of loneliness for all of you.  You have come to walk in the forgetting in order to move to the remembering again.  In dark nights, in fear, ask your heart,  “Is this all there is?”  Your heart knows the answer.

 This second quote suggests the dark night of the soul experience where we forget God - that while pushing or pulling and coming from a place of fear that we are forgetting God, but this opens up the opportunity to be remembering God again and moving towards the Holy again.  The question is this all there is?  Is posed as a way to notice if we have gotten caught up in a world of superficial or illusionary concerns.

What is your experience with the pushing and the pulling of life described above and of the just being?

What pushing or pulling might you need to lay down?

What happens if you ask your fear – Is this all there is?

Everything Matters; Nothing Matters

 "I saw, also, that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that also I saw the infinite love of God, and I had great openings".  George Fox

 

"Eventually you will understand that there is an ocean of love behind all this fear and pain.  That force will sustain by feeding your heart from deep within."    Michael Singer

 

"Nor is the God-blinded soul given blissful oblivion but, rather, excruciatingly sensitive eyesight towards the world.  The sources of suffering for the tendered soul are infinitely multiplied, well-nigh beyond all endurance.  I recently had an unforgettable hour with a Hindu Monk.  He knew the secret of the paradox “Nothing matters; everything matters.”  It is a key of entrance into suffering.   The one who knows only one-half of the paradox can never enter that door of mystery and survive."

Thomas Kelly

 

"God give me the strength to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot and the wisdom to know the difference."

Serenity Prayer

These 4 quotes come together in an interesting way for me.  As a life long Quaker I have most of my life had an outsized sense of what we have the strength to change - ie Quakers lead the Abolition movement and the suffragette movement, etc. so it seemed possible to change BIG things.  

As someone in my 20's I was very much an "everything matters" person and as Kelly describes with excruciating sensitive eyes to the suffering of the world.  I worked hard on the disarmament movement and through most of my 20s did not intend to have children as I thought they would simply be blown up in a nuclear war.  Somehow in my 30's that shifted enough to have my beloved daughter, and now I live with the irony that instead it maybe climate change that will destroy her and her peers life.  In my 2o's I also took that famous Fox quote as a powerful affirmation that love wins, that love has the power to overcome the darkness.

However, through my life I have seen much personal suffering as well as watching my clients suffer and much of the social justice gains of the 70's and 80's dismantled by the Bush and Trump administrations.   I began to feel some what disconnected from the power of love....it seemed hard to locate it in the face of so much suffering.   

It is helpful to hear Singer, a mindfulness teacher, slight twist on the ocean of love, that it is "behind the fear and the suffering.  Jampolsky famously said it is not hate that is the opposite of love but fear...it is fear that causes us to shut down and disconnect from that Divine Ocean of Love.   Recently I heard a podcast with the author of Eat, Love, Pray.   And she described her daily spiritual practice of decades - she writes a letter between she and Love.  Just hearing it my mind turned towards Love and started talking and I was amazed by the ocean like wave of Love that rushed towards me with compassion and encouragement!  It is important to me to realize that it is a Presense that is always there - and that is quite divorced from whether it "overcomes" hate or darkness or fear.   In other words - this is not a competition where one is winning.  Both suffering and Love are constantly present - it is simply how we learn to live with them.

A decade or so ago I heard a famous mindfulness teacher.  He was talking about observing our emotions, observing suffering - from a position of "just noticing"   He described his wife who he was happily married to coming to him upset and angry and being able to just observe and hear a voice that said: "and this too".   It was to me an acceptional ability to notice that everything matters and nothing matters.  That of course it mattered that she was upset - and that in the hugeness of human experience and the vast universe - it also did not matter.   It was a surrender to the fact that there are no seperate or protected parts of our life - immune from the suffering or strife.

I have been wondering if I have become numb or if I indeed are coming to some of the "wisdom" of the serenity prayer, but I have noticed in the last 5 years that as the long, ever increasing list of calmaties, system failures, irreverible man made environmental collapses occur that there is a voice in my head that just says "and this too".   This does not stop me from still trying to effect change.   But it does (usually) stop me from despair or desperation.  I remain in a calm center acting as I can and surrendering the rest to the ocean of Love.   This week I have faced that we may all soon die in a nuclear war...or we will once again skate thru another confrontation by nuclear powers with the price of the conquered Ukraine, and all the death and suffering this has brought.   Given the US invation of Iran, Iraqi and Afgahstan in the last two decades (also encased in death and suffering)....I can hardly find any difference between these acts of aggression by imperil powers.  So everything matters and nothing matters.

Sacraments

 Quakers don't participate in Sacraments.  We rejected them as forms made empty by ritual.  I certainly understand that.  The "How are you?  I am fine" ritual is meaningless and insincere in our society regularly pushing people to hide and given insincere answers.  Even the regular parting of "I love you" can be come so routine with someone we truly love that it is no longer connected to our heart when we say it.

So boo for empty rituals, but it seems we threw out all rituals.  Well actually we also have unconscious rituals  - old practices like calling it First Day that most modern Friends no longer no the reason we do this.  (the days of the month and of the week often had secular reference - August was named after Caesar Augustus.  This was an attempt by Friends to forsake the secular and let all days belong to God.)  Even the sitting in silence and the idea that one speaks only once...these are our rituals whether we recognize them as such or not.

But what about the creation of rituals that are not repetitive and are sacred?  Mystics have often used symbols and intention to create deep and meaningful ceremonies or sacraments.  I lament that our ritual of sitting and in silence leaves little space for spontaneous ritual.  I once saw a woman rise and dance in the middle of the room and was struck by her bravery because I could feel some Friends shock as she did.

When I was about 23 I sat in a circle at a Young Friends of North America Gathering.  We were doing worship sharing.  Someone started by referencing the story of Adam and Eve.  They had an apple in their hand and they took a bite out as they said the query of the evening: "What for you is knowledge that would disrupt innocents?  What is temptation that would take you away from God?"   Each person took a bite as they answered the query and passed the apple on.  The answers were deep and the act of the apple going the circle became a sort of sacrament - a breaking of the bread.

I am told that in recent years at FGC, the Young Adult Friends group celebrates a "feast of love" where they feed each other.   This to me is a meaningful ritual that brings us into deep spiritual fellowship with each other.

How can friends make spontaneous and symbolic acts that help us go deeply and touch the sacred between us?

To Lay it Down

 In the Quaker lexicon is the phrase "to lay it down".   Sometimes we talk about laying down a committee.  Other times we talk about laying down a leading.  Very occasionally we talk about laying down a whole Meeting.  This language is different than the secular notion of ending or terminating a committee or a position, because with all things Quaker it implies that there is discernment and faithfulness involved.   The idea is that that The Holy One both leads us into or gives life to a thing and will in due time lead us out of, or allow for the death of a thing.   As written about in a previous post, we are not to "out run" a leading, to stay at something beyond the time that the Creator intends for us to carry out this activity.  The idea here is that both the beginning and the end are Divinely determined - not just driven by one's own thinking, will or ego.

How then might one discern to lay something down?  If the thing no longer has life or vitality this might be regarded as a sign.   If a new leading or a new direction has arisen to supersede the old path. Sometimes a thing begins to feel heavy and a burden.  Sometimes it seems as if the path forward has nothing but obstacles and difficulties and is "no longer open". Friends sometimes speak of a "door closing" and that when one door closes another may open.

One of the most famous stories about laying something down is the apocryphal story of William Penn speaking to George Fox.  In this story William Penn was, as was the way of men of title wearing a sword.  But he was troubled by this as he sensed it did not fit the Quaker testimony on nonviolence, and so he asks George Fox if he should still be wearing his sword.   Fox is said to have replied: "Wear thoust sword as long as thoust can."  Meaning it is up to you, your conscience will guide you.  This I think speaks loudly about a Quaker sensibility that a time will come when a thing will come clear and nothing else will be possible.

I think Friends would be well served to examine carefully our committee structure and to see if some committees are perhaps ready to be laid down, to not simply assume that because we have already had such a committee for a long time, because it is "traditional" to have that committee that it is still rightly ordered to proceed with it.   Many a Friends Meeting as it shrank in size has struggled to keep and fill all its committees when it would have been better served to pare down the number of committees so there more energy and vitality on each committee.   The sense of stress and over stretchedness maybe in deed a sign of something ready to be laid down.

I once witnessed the nominating committee of the Yearly Meeting come and report that they recommended that they be laid down because they had struggled mightly to fill many committee positions and had not been able to do so.  They felt they had been faithful in their work but that the way was closed and they wished to name it as so.  The crisis this caused on the floor of the yearly meeting led to an ad hoc committee being formed on the spot to address the situation and many Friends stepping forward to fill unfilled positions.   By their faithfulness the energy was shifted and a new way forward was found.   This was profound faithfulness, that ego would not have allowed for.  It points to a profound truth about laying something down: it takes courage.

Quakers are greying terribly, the average age is now in the 70's.  Many Meetings are shrinking terribly and are struggling to have enough members to pay the upkeep of the building.  The truth is...we are now facing, as are many churches all across America, that many of our Meetings will need to be laid down in the next decade.   How can Friends discern to lay down a Meeting?  How could it serve a greater good?  Here are some queries that occur to me:

When is the ownership of a building a burden rather than a support to a worshipping body?

Is our worship still vital with this number?

Are there circumstances we can forsee that might grow this Meeting again?

What other good works could be done with the Building? - as tenants or as recipients of a gift?

If we sold our building what other good works could we empower with the money?

Does it feel energizing or deadening to consider releasing our building?

How would my life be different if I did not attend this Meeting?

Pastoral Care

 For over 300 years Friends have had Ministry and Oversight committees or just Oversight or just Pastoral Care, or Care and Concerns.  Recently Friends have begun to shed the term oversight for its cultural insensitivity.   Really the purpose of the committee however named is to do pastoral care.  But what does that mean in a setting where we have no pastor?  It would seem it means how do we care for each other?

Pastoral Care committees (or substitute other name your Meeting uses) traditionally handle membership applications, weddings, clearness committees of all kinds, the creation of the annual state of the meeting report, etc.  Since the AIDs crisis brought the death and dying of many members who often did not have close family, Meeting has also created Care committees for those in poor health or in some stage of dying and those are typically managed by the Pastoral Care committee (or in some very large Meetings by a seperate Care Committee that manages the care committees.)  Many other churches do have the casserole brigade that brings food in the case of a death or illness....mostly in my experience we don't do this so well.

But what kind of care do we need?  It has been my observation that many older friends are fiercely self sufficient and while willing to help others would be mortified at receiving "help" from others.  This stands in contradiction to the reports from folks who have served on care committees that talk about it being deeply meaningful, and being spiritually enriched by the opportunity to give.   Are we willing to give the gift of receiving?

I also note that our original pastoral care practices were developed when Friends lived and farmed in the same community, often having many other daily paths of intersection: as neighbors, business owners/patrons, mid-wife, social relations, etc.  So they knew if someone was sick or dying, they knew if someone suffered a financial loss, or lost a job or suffered in various ways.  Now Friends are often spread out, seeing each other only on Sunday and mostly in silence.    How then do we learn of each others spiritual and physical needs?   Some meetings do some version of sharing joys and concerns (that may happen once a month or weekly).   Some meeting take prayer requests (which only some are brave enough to participate in) and some meetings have worship sharing with some kind of frequency which may fill in some details about people's lives...but for the most part we are often in the dark about each others needs which is why we struggle to do pastoral care well.

Recently a F/friend of mine who belongs to two Meetings broke her foot and was in a foot cast and confined to her house with orders to walk as little as possible for two weeks.   She later confided to me that no one from either Meeting had reached out to her or asked what she might need.  This is what I mean about how do we do Pastoral Care?  In other churches the pastor might have checked in on her.

Years ago a member of the Meeting I then belonged to who was a very active member, clerk of various committees over the years, weekly attender, etc began to report her mother was dying.  She was absent flying across the country to be with her mother several times.   We said prayers for her and waited for her return to give her hugs and sympathy. Her mother died.   But she did not return.   We thought she was taking time to grieve.  After about 3 months Pastoral Care called, to discover that she was mad, quite angry with us.   No one had called her during that time, Pastoral care had called once, and she had received no cards or emails.   She felt abandoned and uncared for by her spiritual community and had begun to question what kind of community was it really?   

For me it raised many questions about our assumption that we would do all our pastoral care when we see each other.   What does it mean to be in a spiritual community?

Perfectly Unfinished

 We all live unfinished lives.   With the exception of an older man I know who had recently updated his will, paid all his bills on a certain day and went out for a run, came back feeling “tired” and lay down and never got up again…all of leave a lot of things undone.  A client of mine’s father was a hoarder and when went to a nursing home her siblings and her had to hire a squad of workers with a truck to spend two weeks basically excavating the house and taking everything to the dumb.  (A task made harder by the fact that there were a few valuable objects and documents mixed into the mess.)   My best friends mother, mad after her husbands Aunt died leaving them excuators of her estate in another state (without asking) and the years it took them to handle everything, was determined to not leave this sort of burden to her kids.   Unfortunately, her husband who declined into dementia did not have the capacity to do the same.  So for years after his death she sorted boxes and got rid of things and organized and gave things away.   And yet after her death it took her daughter a good six months to separate out the items for family members and get them to them, have Salvation army take other things, and yes sort….the boxes and boxes of photos before putting the Condo on the market, and there will still be paperwork for another year.  I think somewhere between the man who died at the end of bill day and the hoarder, there is a balance that represents living but being thoughtful of those who will clean up behind us.  (I have to say all three of these people died as they lived.)

There are no finished lives.   A friend of mine is dying in a hospital right now. (post note she died 10/26/21).  She is essentially without family.  There will be no one to clear the stuff out of her apartment.  The landlord will be left to get a squad to haul everything out, and that is with a month unpaid rent as well.  She also had established no medical power of attorney which made things very difficult after she got in the hospital.  Those she was most close to were not allowed updates on her medical status and had to beg the doctors to hear the relevant information we had about her health condition.  The law defaults to next of kin, meaning the hospital found and called a sister she had not spoken to in years and asked her to make final decisions about medical care for my friend.   Reader, if you don’t have a medical power attorney established, stop pretending you will never die and get the paper work done!  We are all after all in a pandemic.

There are no perfect lives.   A client of mine has struggled for years with a sort of perfectionism that keeps her stuck.  Afraid to choose anything for fear of making a wrong choice, or passing up a right choice she remains firmly affixed to the fence unable to make choices that would move her forward.  She is a potter and recently as we worked on the perfectionism in the rest of her life she had the insight that in pottery she knows she had to be experimental or she would do nothing.  That it is all “practice” and that sometimes she likes the piece enough to keep it and others are composted and she begins again.   She realized she has to live life this way.   That she has to be able to be experimental, make mistakes and start again. She said: “Nothing is perfect.  Nothing is done.  Safely never finished”.   It is true there is safety in being unfinished because if we had to live our lives with everything just so, everything ready to be in its final state. …we could not live.

Live a perfectly unfinished life.   I have told me daughter that when I die the box of college papers I could not part with, the file drawers of old campaigns I worked on and finacial papers, and old journals can go straight to recycle.  I have shown her where the one file is that has important legal paper work in it and where all the passwords to my computer stuff can be found.  I have told her to take what possessions of mine she wants and give away or dispose of the rest.  But I hope that whatever laundry is undone, dishes undone, projects or paperwork, that the expression of love, and the acts of kindness and the fight for justice has been done in a perfectly unfinished way!  I hope that I will feel that over all I have spent the hours of my life on the things that matter most.