What is worth fighting for? Sometimes a battle is won in a courageous show of strength and derring do. A fireman runs into a burning building to save a child. A passerby stops to help victims of an accident. A pilot steers a damaged plane to safety.
But sometimes the battle requires showing up time after time with love, kindness, and patience. Not giving up on someone. Having faith that love will win. Believing that relationships can be salvaged.
That takes courage, too.
We wear many masks and fluff ourselves up with many props, but how’s that working for us? Nikki Giovanni notices:
A lot of people refuse to do things because they don’t want to go naked, don’t want to go without a guarantee. But that’s what’s got to happen. You go naked until you die.
What guarantees do we have in this life anyway? To health, to wealth, to job security, to happiness? Not so much. There really aren’t any guarantees to anything we do, and we delude ourselves to think otherwise. When we ‘go naked’ we engage from a place of authenticity, without the masks and props. We, our actual selves, enter into this thing called life.
J.K. Rowling notes:
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all– in which case, you fail by default.
This is it, our one shot, our one life, and we owe it to ourselves to go into it as ourselves and with gusto.
Dick Van Dyke is a national treasure, still singing and dancing his way through life at nearly 100. He reminds us that there are dark times, but behind the clouds the sun still shines. We show up. We do our best. And we realize that not everything is within our control.
He says,
We should never judge a day by its weather. It means you never know what’s going to happen,’ I said. ‘You do your best, then take your chances. Everything else is beyond our control.
Enjoy this lovely interaction between Van Dyke and Chris Martin, a balm for any troubled soul.
‘If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden,’ muse the characters in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. And, perhaps, on a more intimate level, so our mind is too a garden.
We cultivate our thoughts, enrich them with information, learn, grow, stretch. But weeds can overrun any garden, and we can find our minds overcome with anxiety, negative thinking, and endless catastrophic thinking.
But Burnett notes:
Much more surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.
When we find ourselves overcome with negative thoughts, we can imagine our mind a garden. Something we can lovingly tend, plucking weeds, nourishing blooms, replacing gloom with gratitude, planting seeds of possibility and promise.
While there are many things in this world we cannot control, we still can control our thoughts and find a way to focus on ones that keep our mental garden thriving.
Do you like to read the end of a novel first? Maybe especially when it’s a particularly stressful novel, and you want to make sure your favorite characters come out ok? It’s comforting, isn’t it? To know how the story ends, that no matter how deep the characters are in trouble, they will find a way out. And then you can read the book without being so nervous.
In this world, though, we don’t get to peek at the end of the book. We soldier on hoping and working toward better tomorrows. And we don’t know what will happen to our favorite people. Or even ourselves, for that matter.
But we do know, when we look back at the story of our own life, or at the greater story of the world, that great things have often come out of very trying times. Great art, certainly. But more than that, great advancement–inventions, cures, technology. Maybe even peace.
As we go through these challenging times, let us keep our hopes on the possibility that tomorrow will be a better day, even if that tomorrow is still a ways away.
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.
Just when we think we get what life is all about, something comes along to knock us upside the head and show us we have it wrong. It forces us to reevaluate our foundational assumptions about the purpose of life and look at things in a whole new way. It’s a paradigm shift.
Stephen Covey tells of a paradigm shift he experienced:
“I remember a mini-Paradigm Shift I experienced one Sunday morning on a subway in New York. People were sitting quietly — some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene. Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed.
“The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people’s papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing.
“It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive to let his children run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that everyone else on the subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, “Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?”
“The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly, ‘Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either.’
“Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished. I didn’t have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart was filled with the man’s pain. Feelings of sympathy and compassion flowed freely. “Your wife just died? Oh, I’m so sorry. Can you tell me about it? What can I do to help?” Everything changed in an instant.
“Many people experience a similar fundamental shift in thinking when they face a life-threatening crisis and suddenly see their priorities in a different light, or when they suddenly step into a new role, such as that of husband or wife, parent or grandparent, manager or leader.
“It becomes obvious that if we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.
“In the words of Thoreau, ‘For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.’ We can only achieve quantum improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude and behavior and get to work on the root, the paradigms from which our attitudes and behaviors flow.”
(from Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)
Or consider the paradigm shift that Ebenezer Scrooge’s partner, now a ghost, Jacob Marley, recounts to him before the visit of the three Christmas ghosts in Christmas Carol. Both Scrooge and Marley thought they had life figured out–it was all about business and making money, the more the better. But Marley has had a paradigm shift since dying:
“‘But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,’ faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
“‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ‘Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.’ “
Get ready to get hit upside the head, metaphorically speaking. It may be time for a paradigm shift.
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.
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 cats 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.
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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