Today’s special occasion.
Today is the day.
Seize it.
Savor it.
Enjoy it.
Walking humbly.
When we find ourselves in challenging times and are unsure which way to turn, let these words help guide you.
Do justice. Peace, justice, love are things we do and bring about, not things we wait for. With our best discernment, we offer ourselves to the world, hoping to make a difference. Kind words, loving hearts, calm demeanors, patience, forbearance, and forgiveness. The way of the One we follow. A servant’s heart but a leader’s strength.
Love mercy. Oh, how the world loves vengeance, cancelling, grudges, getting even, punishment. To love mercy is a kinder, gentler path, one that believes in the redeem-ability of every last one of us. One that doesn’t insist on being avenged or having the last word. One that delights in forgiveness and healing.
Walk humbly. No matter how hard we try to do or be right, we may be wrong. The other guy might be right. And, get this, God loves the other guy as much as God love you.
Remember the puggle.
Black white. Up down. Left right. In out. We are a people who love to categorize. Categories simplify things and help us to sort out our place in the world.
But then there’s that puggle, a baby platypus. Classified as a mammal but laying eggs with a duck-like bill, aquatic, poisonous. No wonder the platypus astounded the scientific community when it was first discovered in 1799. Indeed, the skin of the first platypus discovered, preserved in the British museum of Natural History, still bears the marks made by the curator at the time who tried to pry off the bill, convinced the creature was a fake.
The puggle doesn’t categorize easily.
While categorizing can be helpful, it can also be limiting if we fail to see outside the norms and lines we draw. And when it comes to humans, where do we draw the lines? We humans are nearly impossible to sort into classifications because we have so many unique characteristics. Categorizing might even keep us from looking for and seeing the individuals behind the label.
We can find differences and commonalities among any group of people.
We are all puggles.
Balcony people
Are there people in your life who encourage you and make you feel stronger and lifted up? Are there some who drag you down or take the wind out of your sails? In her book, Balcony People, Joyce Landor Heatherley argues there are two types of people: the evaluators and the affirmers. She suggests:
I am sure, if there were a way to view a movie and see instant replays of all the strategic change points in our lives, that we’d instantly spot the people who either broke our spirits by their critical or judgmental evaluations, or who healed us by their loving, perceptive affirmations.
To be honest, I seem to be able to remember the negative comments of evaluators faster and more clearly than the positive remarks of the affirmers. I’m not alone in this ability to recall the negative….I suspect that not far from anyone’s conscious level of thinking lies the memory of an evaluator who pulled on his or her spiked boots and stomped deliberately over our bare soul and personhood.
Do you have any of these evaluators in your life? Maybe you can recognize the voice in your head that tells you that you can’t do something. In her book The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Julia Cameron calls these the censors. Maybe you have many censors, a rogue’s gallery of them.
So what do we do with these evaluators and censors to keep them from stifling our blossoming with their negative talk or opinions? Heatherley suggests leaving them in the past, even if that past was five minutes ago:
We all have the choice to replay the harmful remarks from evaluators, or we can choose to let them pass on. We can even choose to make allowances for their discouraging, destructive words. But best of all is the choice to willingly focus our minds and hearts on today’s person who is affirming us.
So who are these affirmers in our lives? Think back…
Who by one small sentence or more, has changed and lifted your opinion of yourself? Who was the person early in your life who recognized the first sparks of originality in the labyrinths of your mind and soul and saw what no one else saw? And who is the special affirmer who catches quick glimpses of the flames from the fires of your potential and tells you so? Who, by his or her words, helps you to respect and believe in your own value as a person? And who is the affirmer who encourages you to stretch and dream beyond your self-imposed limits and capabilities?
These affirmers are your Balcony People, cheering you on to blossom and stretch. These are the people whose words you must cling to when working toward your goal. These affirmers see you “by a clearer, truer light. They [are] able to peel back the layers of pretense [you] wear like like costumes for a bad play. Most of the time they [see] through and past the masks [you] hide behind. Then, once having broken through to [you] they’d get on with the business of motivating [you] to be all [you] can be.”
Affirmation is vital to our health and progress:
When others discern the good, the noble, the honorable, and the just tenets of our character (no matter how minuscule they may be) and proceed to tell us how they admire those traits, we feel visible. We begin to ‘see’ ourselves and our worth. We feel nurtured and nourished, but mostly we feel loved.
The Basement People do just the opposite. With their words they cause you to doubt and shrink. They focus on your flaws or failings. They encourage you to not try, to stay where you are, to wallow in the “murky waters of failure and discouragement.” We don’t need to linger on their words.
Who is in your Balcony? Who cheers you on and sees your unique worth? Who do you admire in history for their accomplishments or moral victories?
When you struggle, picture these people, your Balcony People. Remember their words. Let their affirmations encourage and comfort you in defeat and to keep pressing onward in your goals.
You are meant to blossom not wither. You are meant to shine not lurk in the shadows.
You are meant to soar.
Presence over presents
It’s getting harder to find the right presents for my granddaughters. I’m keenly feeling their growing up and the fact we are of different generations. Their world now contains so many things that I have so little clue about.
And Christmas for us, with kittens in the house, requires a whole new game plan. Making things festive without creating feline hazard zones is challenging.
And, with a family filled with different eating preferences and diets, food is a puzzle.
But, as with the Whos in Whoville, Christmas will come and find us regardless of how decorated we are or how many presents are under the tree, and we will learn the underlying truth again that Christmas isn’t about the stuff. It’s about the love. And that, we have in abundance.
Presence over presents for the win.
Carrying your lost love
How hard it is to lose someone you love. There is so much that seems unseen or unfelt without being shared together. So many visceral, tangible reminders of your loss are everywhere. Sounds, smells, songs, times of day, stories, jokes, and so on. Everywhere you look. There’s no escaping the weight of the loss really.
The only thing that makes it bearable is to consider it not loss, but a gift. Moments shared colored your life and made it brighter and more nuanced. The threads of memories you shared become woven together with threads from all the people you’ve loved and become the tapestry that is your life. And that ever-presence becomes not a stab, but a comfort.
e.e. cummings captured it well:
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
To all those we have loved and miss dearly, let us look back fondly, grateful for all the colors they brought into the tapestry of our lives, and repeat together:
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
Keeping Christmas
Love wins.
Isn’t that the bottom line of Christmas? Strip away all the decorations and gifts and songs and celebrations, and what remains is: love wins. It’s about love. God loves us, and we are to love each other. And even in a world divided by hate, blind to oneness, driven by greed, love will win. Because that’s the point of Christmas.
It’s about the love.
Remember whose you are
The days before Christmas can be frantic. We sometimes find our tempers short, our tongues loose, and our wits frayed. We think of Christmas as something in the future, speeding toward us, that we need to hurry around and prepare for so that we can enjoy His coming. But a birthday, like Christmas, is a celebration of something that has already happened. And, in the case of Christmas, it is a celebration of a whole new world order that is here. We are His now, not just at Christmas. We need to shine with His love now and everyday. Particularly when the world is harried. We need to reflect the joy and peace that comes with knowing that love conquers all.
Pause. Breathe. And remember whose you are.
Rest and be thankful.
Without the rests and pauses, music would just be noise. The pauses add shape and definition to any composition and allow the rise and fall of the melody to stand out. In order to hear the music that is our life, we need to pause. Between tasks, before we react, when others are speaking. We need to rest when we are weary, to conclude that not everything needs to be done today, now, or maybe even at all. Sometimes less is more.
And as we pause, let us give thanks. For this life, these opportunities, these people (including those who vex you), and the abundance of life all around us.
Thanks for it all.
Opening to gratitude.
Happy thanksgiving.
In honor of the holiday, what is a way we can open to gratitude? Sometimes the veil is pulled back, and we can glimpse a larger picture, a connection between all things, an appreciation for the here and now, and we are grateful.
Brother David Steindl-Rast explains how these jolts into a different reality can change a day, and, perhaps, even a world:
My vision of the world? My hope for the future? This topic sounds a bit big. Allow me to start small—say, with crows. They are my special friends. Just as I am writing these lines, one of them, the shy one among my three regular guests, is gobbling up the Kitty Fritters I put out for them. This brings to mind a short poem by Robert Frost that might provide a stepping-stone for our deliberations about world-vision and hope for the future—if any.
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.Surely you will remember a similar experience of your own: some quirky little incident made you smile, changed your mood, and suddenly the world looked brighter. If this ever happened to you, the key for understanding a causal chain of great consequence is in your hand: any change in attitude changes the way one sees the world, and this in turn changes the way one acts. When Robert Frost claims that the crow’s little trick “saved” part of a day he had rued, or of which he repented, he means this in the full sense of a redeeming change of heart. When he got home, I’m sure he greeted Mrs. Frost in a better mood than he would have been able to do without the crow’s nudge. And there is no telling what this did to her—and to the way she treated the dog afterwards, or talked more kindly to her neighbor.
He continues to suggest five small, easily adopted ways to bring this gratitude into your life and, consequently, into the world:
1. Say one word today that will give a fearful person courage.
All gratitude expresses trust. Suspicion will not even recognize a gift as gift: who can prove that it isn’t a lure, a bribe, a trap? Gratefulness has the courage to trust and so overcomes fear. The very air has been electrified by fearfulness these days, a fearfulness fostered and manipulated by politicians and the media. There lies our greatest danger: fear perpetuates violence. Mobilize the courage of your heart. Say one word today that will give a fearful person courage.
2. Make a firm resolution never to repeat stories and rumors that spread fear.
Because gratitude expresses courage, it spreads calm. Calm of this kind is quite compatible with deep emotions. In fact, mass hysteria fostered by the media betrays a morbid curiosity rather than deep feeling—superficial agitation rather than a deep current of compassion. The truly compassionate ones are calm and strong. Make a firm resolution never to repeat stories and rumors that spread fear. From the stillness of your heart’s core reach out. Be calm and spread calm.
3. Make contact with people whom you normally ignore
When you are grateful, your heart is open—open towards others, open for surprise. When disasters hit we often see remarkable examples of this openness: strangers helping strangers sometimes in heroic ways. Others turn away, isolate themselves, dare even less than at other times to look at each other. Violence begins with isolation. Break this pattern. Make contact with people whom you normally ignore—eye-contact at least—with the cashier at the supermarket, someone on the elevator, a beggar. Look a stranger in the eyes today and realize that there are no strangers.
4. Give someone an unexpected smile today
You can feel either grateful or alienated, but never both at the same time. Gratefulness drives out alienation; there is not room for both in the same heart. When you are grateful you know that you belong to a network of give-and-take and you say “yes” to that belonging. This “yes” is the essence of love. You need no words to express it; a smile will do to put your “yes” into action. Don’t let it matter to you whether or not the other one smiles back. Give someone an unexpected smile today and so contribute your share to peace on earth.
5. Listen to the news today and put at least one item to the test of Common Sense.
What your gratefulness does for yourself is as important as what it does for others. Gratefulness boosts your sense of belonging; your sense of belonging in turn boosts your Common Sense—not the conventional mind set which we often confuse with it. The common sense that springs from gratefulness is incompatible with a set mind. It is just another name for thinking wedded to cosmic intelligence. Your “yes” to belonging attunes you to the common concerns shared by all human beings—all beings for that matter. In a world we hold in common, nothing else makes sense but Common Sense. We have only one enemy: Our common enemy is violence. Common Sense tells us: we can stop violence only by stopping to act violently; war is no way to peace. Listen to the news today and put at least one item to the test of Common Sense.
The five steps I am suggesting here are small, but they work. It helps that they are small: anyone can take them. Imagine a country whose citizens—maybe even its leaders—are brave, calm, and open towards each other; a country whose people realize that all human beings belong together as one family and must act accordingly; a country guided by Common Sense. To the extent to which we show ourselves not hateful but grateful this becomes reality.
Who would have thought that a prankish crow shaking down snow from a hemlock tree could inspire this vision of a sane world? Well, if we leave it to the crows, there is still hope.
Small steps; big pay-off. And, to remember, keep your eyes open for the birds. They are there, singing songs of hope.
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