What Is Hope?

Like nearly all Americans today, I watched and listened and hardly dared to breathe, least I miss a moment or a word. But I started realizing that it wasn't about the man. I started hearing people of reason acknowledging how much work we all had to do. I heard a leader talk in realities. No flowery platitudes, no campaign promises. Just realism and challenges and hard work ahead. So why is it that I feel so hopeful?

I have grown tired of empty suits and political rhetoric. I am wearied from chest-thumping machismo and might-makes-right mentality. I have been worn down by far too many agendas. I need to have my feet planted flatly on the floor.


I don't need to hope for things to come. I don't live my today in the promise of a hereafter. I need to be present - here - right now, and nowhere else. and when I see another who looks like that is what is up for him, I am heartened and lifted up.

I don't know if he can live up to the expectations but I know that those whose expectations are unrealistic will certainly be dashed. I do not know if he will win over his opponents, but I am certain that those who think less of him will find all the evidence they will need in future days. But I am filled with hope today, because one man told his truth. I am encouraged today because the cameras saw all the colors of the faces. I am uplifted because I saw strangers smiling at each other and embracing in the cold air. And I really really want to believe that we can be more together than we are separately, and that something started today that is unique and different in the world. It started today - and I felt it and saw it. And that is what hope is all about.

The Well of Grief

In honor of the surviving family and lovers of Jon Choate and Rebecca Raboin, I submit this brief poem by David Whyte:

The Well of Grief

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface of the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown away by those who wished for something else.

By David Whyte from Close to Home

Words Fail Emotions

There is a fundamental problem we have as humans and that is that we invented words and then made the mistake of letting them become the feeble container of what we really meant. Though poets can write volumes in just a few short lines of well-chosen words, somewhere around the space of emotions, words just fail.

I am certain that if you look up the word "love" in a dictionary it would say something like "a warm fuzzy feeling about some person or thing." And I am equally certain that such a definition doesn't enter the neighborhood of the length and depth and breadth of the actual feeling I have for my wife or my children. That definition (or any definition) doesn't have the color, depth, vibrancy, history, pain, joy, pleasure, and myriad other dimensions that my love has at any nanosecond.

And grief, I believe, is more complex.

I was reading my daughter's blog as she prepared to eulogize her step-dad Jon Choate, and let the half dozen other responses from friends and family sink in, really touch my inner being, as I read through them. And I am in awe at the texture and dimensions of grief/love that abound in and through all of that discussion. That we humans are capable of such love and only then open to such pain and loss is beyond miraculous. It is stunningly beautiful. There are no words when smiles and tears and love and pain all embrace each other simultaneously. There is only being.

My friend Bill had a daughter born 18 years ago so severely handicapped that she never walked, talked or even fed herself. Faced with the option of institutionalizing her, Bill and his wife decided to love her for as long as she lived. That commitment ended last weekend as Rebecca finally slipped into death. Though there were so many times it felt like a burden, Bill never stopped loving and caring. And now he still cannot stop. He doesn't know how or where or what it looks like. Grief has that depth of love in it that only lovers and parents and real risk-takers know.

I am proud and honored to be part of a family that so easily and openly expresses emotion, and who so fully risk loving. And with all of our words, we don't even come close to what we know each other to be feeling. I love you guys!

Testamony to a Great Man

A little more than 20 years ago I was involved in a rather nasty set of events that resulted in my divorce. My ex, a wonderful woman, professional and mother eventually ended up building a life and relationship with another man. John was a farmer but so much more. Running an organic farm just a mile down the road from my refuge at the time, Karme Choling, I am certain John, too, was a frequenter of their halls in those days. He had a depth and a quiet spirit that I admired. He epitomized the salt of the earth and gave a stability and grace to the growing-up days of my two girls, who remained behind with their mom when I left.

I never really got to know him much because I only saw him at dance recitals, weddings and graduations. But to me his testimony and his legacy are evidenced in the exquisite women that my girls have grown into. Both have chosen great men, but especially my younger (three at the time of the divorce), who was most influenced by John, chose a strong, silent and peaceful man like him. I am certain that his fathering was a source of much of her understanding and choosing a mate. But John also loved and cared for their mom, most likely in ways I could not and did not. He was calm, and accepting, and seemed (from my vantage point) to never expect more of her than who she was. And when his body began to fail him, she hung in and cared for him in a way that he deserved.

John died this morning, leaving behind a world a little less stable for lacking the pillar that he was. Thank you, John. I wish I could have told you how very great I thought you were.

What's It All About, Alfie?

Reflections on Job and the Mystery of Suffering, by Richard Rohr

Though I barely remember the 60’s version of the Michael Cain film and did not bother with Jude Law’s newer/fresher Alfie, the “what’s-it-all-about” question has all the staying power of an old cigarette jingle, without any of the narcotic effects. It is an ancient and hauntingly human question that has no real answer. All of our “why’s” seeking some rational explanation to life, the universe and everything (short of Douglass Adam’s whimsical 42), inevitably fail to assuage the empty itch at the source of the questions. Why am I here? What is the purpose to my life? Why do bad things happen to seemingly good people?

Take, for example, Job – the ultimate Alfie questioner. Faced with what must have been years of insufferable pain and despair, Job keeps asking god, “Why?” “What is this all about?” “Did I do something to deserve this?” Job had lived a good and devout life and he felt that he had done nothing to deserve the pain, loss and despair that he now suffered. To make matters worse he is taunted by three of his (self-professed) friends, Moe, Larry and Curley, who try to convince him of his guilt and harangue him with mainline religious platitudes. No one from the mainstream will ever understand the journey of the dark night. It refuses to fit into logic and comfort.

But Job has to go on a trip of monumental spiritual proportions to get to the other side of his suffering. Through the process, Job seems to map out the emotional course that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described many thousands or years later – shock, anger, denial, bartering, and finally acceptance. And the cosmic lesson that Job (and all of us) must learn (though I pray not so harshly) is that there is no rationale to justify suffering as long as we are looking for it from a personal/human, ego-justification level. If we read Job thoroughly, we find that he pleads his case before god like a lawyer in court trying to make sense out of it from his (Job’s) ego-perspective. It is not until Job gives up trying to make it make sense and surrenders to god, that god actually concedes to talking to Job.

It seems that there are three deeply profound lessons that we must learn in the Job experience. First and foremost, as long as we are looking for understanding of events from our perspective – as if suffering, or joy (do we ever inspect that in the same way?) must have some deeper meaning – we are bound to come up empty handed. There is no meaning that exists outside of our own personal meaning making. Things and events have no intrinsic meaning. Nothing means anything until we make up a meaning. So Job’s attempt to find some cosmic meaning is fruitless because there is none to be found - and god knows this so he doesn’t even play the game. Furthermore, despite lacking meaning, Job wants to be justified – found innocent of any wrongdoing (the meaning he has ascribed to the source of suffering) – so that his ego can feel okay and virtuous. Again god refuses to even play the game of ego importance. God maintains a stonewall approach to these machinations of Job. But the third (really big) lesson is that not only is god in charge of the whole game, god and divine understanding is so beyond our human comprehension that to try and fix a human rationale to it or to apply some kind of right and wrong checks and balances to it is not only impossible it is downright illogical.

With a final sigh, Job gives up his attempts and instantly, god steps in and speaks – not in answer but in beautiful, powerful metaphor. Even then, when god speaks, he does not even address the questions of rationalization. In a sense, god says, “I am in charge and always have been. Just trust that and try not to figure it out!” It is the ultimate spiritual message – the message of the experience of Job, the teaching of the Nazarene, and of the Buddha and of every great spiritual sage throughout time. Live in the question, surrender to god’s way, and live in relation to god, to others and to the world around you. Let go of your ego’s need for self-important meanings. It is a humbling and simultaneously filling message. Alfie would have been gravely disappointed. Dionne Warwick sang in the theme song, “What’s it all about, Alfie? Is it only for the moment we live?”

Well, yup, that’s about it!

Of Joy and Suffering

I am preparing to run a series of workshops for the unemployed and soon-to-be-unemployed in our church and the first thing I think of is the emotional state that I hear everyone is in. But a thought came to me in this preparation that is a distinction I have not made before. Think of this: the nature of fear, grief and depression – of most “negative” emotions is aloneness. That is, we almost always experience those emotions uniquely and by ourselves. In fact, we most often feel that no one feels the same as we do, no one fears this or that thing the way we do at that moment. Who is comforted in the least by someone coming to you in your grief and saying, “I know how you feel.” Like hell you do! This is my grief, my fear, my depression and no one knows how it feels but me!

Now bear with me for a moment while we go to the other side. What about joy and passion and excitement? Who among you can contain those feelings; who, upon first feeling them, does not want to immediately jump up and find a friend or even a stranger with whom those feelings can be shared? Joy, passion, elation, excitement, and all of these “positive” emotions are made even better by sharing. They are public emotions where the downers are private.

But what if we have it backwards? What if we do not feel those emotions first and then have the public or private reaction? What if being alone is the source of fear, being abandoned is the source of grief, and being isolated is the source of our deepest depression? Contrarily, what if it incoming together that we first feel elation, if passion is the feeling only two or more can experience, and joy is only joyful when it is shared? What if?

I think our culture is suffering from a disease of epidemic proportions – the disease of individuation or individualism. We suffer from terminal uniqueness. We are so convinced by the harangue of advertisements and marketing that insist that we can “have it our way” – from form-fit clothes to designer drugs. But we humans were meant to be social creatures – to come together, not to move apart. In indigenous cultures where the norm is belonging, people are invariably described as happy and the incidence of depression is almost nil. Even their grieving is done collectively – but then it is over.

So this job search group will not be an individual experience. We will be in it together, to draw from the positive energy of being with our own kind, to share leads and laugh through mistakes and learn collectively. And in doing so, perhaps we can fuel the passion, and increase the joy, and revel in the success that can only come from working “with” instead of “against.”

Miracles?

This time each year, my wife and I run a holiday gifting charity that serves a bunch of kids in shelters and temporary living settings around eastern Mass an southern NH. It involves getting the wishes of these kids and hooking them up with about 250 volunteers who then purchase the gifts and get them to a central location so that we can truck them all out to the charities and shelters. In the process of doing that over the past seven years it never fails to provide the opportunity to observe – directly – a miracle.

Last year just as we were bursting at the seams in handling twice as many kids as we ever had, we got a call from a shelter that had heard of our project (Operation ELF) and wondered if we could help them – they had about 70 – 80 kids who were getting little or nothing for Christmas. We couldn’t say no but we said that we often have a few extras that were bought “just in case” so she would be welcome to come at the end of the event and take what was left over. The very next day we got a call from a person who said that she normally took a bunch of presents to an Air Force base in upstate New York but that she was ill and couldn’t make the trip this year – could we use the presents? We said yes, that would be most helpful. She showed up that Sunday with 150 presents and toys for our Elf kids. When the last shelter came for the “leftovers,” we filled two more cars and made a celebration happen where none was even hoped for.

Another one just happened again this year, though the numbers are not officially in yet. However, I begin to wonder is it a miracle? A miracle is what happens when you don’t expect anything. But the nature of god and universe is abundance. It is our scarcity that is always surprised. So why should we be surprised when this happens yet again. Rest assured that we will not slip the other way into arrogance and expect that it should happen. But why should we be surprised by the miracle when it is the natural response of our caring and providing god? Is it a surprise to a child when, having skinned his knee, he gets a hug, kiss and a band aid from a compassionate mother? No – it is just how it happens. Maybe it is a miracle. But the miracle already happened (we are loved despite ourselves), and all this other stuff is just the state of living we get because of it.