Reconciling Perspectives

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Reconciliation is not some final tactic, a way to tie up loose strings. Reconciliation is not a peace treaty signed on a battleship. Reconciliation is a continuous state of consciousness. What Lincoln had in mind throughout was to save the Union. What Gandhi had in mind throughout was to free both colonized and colonials. What King had in mind throughout was to liberate everyone from the scourge of racism. ~ “How Can I Help?” p 176-177

I’d like to wear this excerpt on a sign around my neck. So much of our definition of success—in social justice, politics, sometimes religion, and definitely in corporate America—is built on the goal that “our side” triumphs. If we’re feeling generous, we may say that we seek a win-win solution, however, it is unfortunately often a tactic rather than a true objective. How will we resolve the issue of gun violence without an honest, open approach to understanding the fears, concerns, and even joys of gun owners? If antagonism is seeded in our thoughts, words, and protest, we can expect to grow a full-flowering garden of animosity. I’m not suggesting that it’s wrong to oppose violence and injustice; only that there’s a way to go about our opposition without increasing polarization.

I also wholeheartedly embrace this philosophy when it comes to prayer, silence, and meditation. They’re not mere tactics—we can’t afford to consider them means to peace or even what we need to “do” to become enlightened. Prayer IS. Because God IS.

I had a conversation with a seminary student recently who, as we were studying the way of Christian mystics, dismissed and even denigrated devotion to prayer as a way of life. I asked, “Do you consider ‘doing’ better than ‘being?’” After a moment, she said no, she didn’t. She includes a moment of silence at the beginning of meetings. She recommends prayer and meditation to those she works with because they bring about a calm and peaceful spirit. (Clearly she’s not been in MY prayer and meditation sessions, ha.) But, she said, prayer is not enough—we’ve had enough of thoughts and prayers and we have to do something about gun violence in this culture. I agreed that the issue is in dire need of resolution. However … is it possible that a resolution could be found if prayer were MORE authentic and widespread, not just a cliché? Is it possible that wisdom and right action could overflow from prayer if our intention was wholeness rather than one-pointed righteousness? What if we didn’t  pray to end gun violence and just concentrated on praying for the sake of … prayer? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that all religions point to this model of prayer over prayer for what we need or want to happen.

The submission/surrender of Islam, the non-doing of Buddhism, the spiritual death spoken of by the Christian mystics—the heart of all religions point to the paradox of sacrificing our little-s self for the True Self. In Gandhi’s list of Seven Social Sins, he mentions religion without sacrifice. It’s not the blood sacrifice of old. It’s not the harmful sacrifice of my physical, spiritual, and emotional boundaries for the sake of another’s benefit (as in codependency). This sacrifice asks us: What unhealthy habit, philosophy, and behavior are we willing to let go of to let God have God’s way with us and, through us, our world? How long, O Lord, will we continue to misunderstand the nature of unconditional love? Most often, underneath the layers of our unhealthy habits is the core belief that we are not worthy unless we “do” something to justify our existence, to be worthy of love. Isn’t this what most needs to be sacrificed?

What better place than prayer, meditation, and silence to just be. Can we let go of judging our prayer time by whether or not we were moved by insight? Felt close to God? Left it feeling more calm? It’s not a means to an end. It is the end in and of itself.

In the Isha Upanishad: In dark night live those for whom the world without alone is real; in night darker still, for whom the world within alone is real. The first leads to a life of action, the second to a life of meditation. But those who combine action with meditation cross the sea of death through action and enter into immortality through the practice of meditation. So have we heard from the wise. In the Christian scripture (Luke 10): As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught. But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.” But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”

The Christian passage in particular has often been misunderstood to suggest that prayer/meditation is superior to action. But the truth of the teaching is that when we are centered in prayer, as a way of being in everyday life, we can both be and do in love.

Stepping Out of the Past

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“On this path we will stumble, fall, and often look and feel a little foolish. We are confronting long-standing patterns of thought and action. Compassion for ourselves, perspective, humor … these are our allies. With their help, we can come to see, in the words of the Bhagavad Gita, that “no step is lost on this path … and even a little progress is freedom from fear.” The reward, the real grace, of conscious service, then, is the opportunity not only to help relieve suffering but to grow in wisdom, experience greater unity, and have a good time while we’re doing it.”—Ram Dass, “How Can I Help?“

“If they’d planned better, they wouldn’t have these problems.” “I didn’t ask for help—I did it by myself. They can, too.” “People just expect everyone else to take care of them. And then they complain if they don’t get everything they want.” When it came to people in need, our family mottos were “suck it up, walk it off” and then “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

My father was only 10 in Manchester, England, when Britain entered World War II. My mother was raised, also during WW II, as the first generation NOT born into a poor family farm community in the Midwest. Their views of life were undoubtedly shaped by their childhood experiences of rationing, scarcity, duty, and survival.

The great writer Nora Ephron, when pondering the cliché “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” said, “It’s not true. It could just make you bitter.” I’m with Nora on that one. We make choices every day whether to pull back or reach out. My good days are the ones when I can reach out one more time than I pulled back. We each come from different family conditioning, world events, personal experiences, and expectations. How do we break the bonds of long-standing patterns?

My parents stopped going to church shortly after my birth, so I didn’t grow up with regular exposure to the norms of spiritual community. Even if I had, there was no way on God’s green earth that our family would’ve tithed. Money was a closely guarded resource. We didn’t worship it so much as we feared it—afraid that it could abandon us at any moment. So the idea of automatically forking over 10 percent of our income to support some nebulous needs of “the Church?” Anathema. When I became Catholic in my early 20s, I fell deeply, madly in love with learning about God, faith, and habits that expand our sense of self and Spirit. I realized that money was one of my stumbling blocks. In a Lenten frame of mind one year, I decided to donate my entire tax refund to the church.

Collection_Basket

I remember the nervousness fluttering in my chest as I signed the check, my hand shaking as I dropped it in the collection—and then the flood of tears that rained down on the back of the wooden pew, as I knelt in sheer panic. You’ve heard of buyer’s remorse? I had donator’s remorse. That check was the equivalent of 1.5 months of rent. I lived by myself in a tiny studio apartment in San Francisco, about 200 miles from any family. What if my landlord raised my rent next month? What had I done?

Some people say this is how we step out of our limiting beliefs, how we stretch and grow into new patterns of giving and service. Those people are often on the church stewardship committee. But seriously, sometimes we think we need to do BIG things, act heroically, to change the world. What about how we change OUR world?

While my Lenten offering was well intended, I had acted without compassion. Compassion for myself. I’d tried to go zero to 60 in 2.4 seconds in a Model T mindset of giving. I thought bigger was better, a pure act of selflessness. Instead, I’d triggered every ounce of conditioning I’d grown up with. I became self-conscious of every penny, every bill, every outing I couldn’t afford. I morphed into miserly. I may have given a month’s worth of rent, but I’d given a year’s worth of resentment. I hadn’t grown out of long-standing patterns of penny-pinching—I had discovered how to land squarely back in their grip.

The reason is that my stumbling block wasn’t actually money. My stumbling block was—and still is, to a lesser extent—proving my “worth,” my dedication, through extreme efforts. It’s the shadow side of ego. But a life of conscious service is not the sum total of our labors; it’s not a math equation. It’s an orientation, a way of being in the world that is fueled by and focused on sustainability—for all involved. It’s a non-dual, paradoxical, “put on your own oxygen mask first before you help another” way of service.

Since then I’ve been on a journey to discover how to give and serve out of abundance. In the process, I try to not only respect but also have compassion for my own needs and limitations. And if I can’t do that, I try to find humor in my temporary fumbling. Every step counts, even when we seem to be standing still. And when we fall back into old habits, we can choose to let that experience fuel our empathy rather than judgment. When we do this, even our imperfections become conscious acts of service. Because sometimes the real heroic act lies in refusing to serve our ego that says “bigger is better.”

From the poet David Whyte’s “Start Close In” —

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

(Not Your) Garden-Variety Prayer

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(Sermon on April 9, 2017, Palm Sunday, at Umstead Park United Church of Christ)

Meditation passage

It is a basic principle of spiritual life that we learn the deepest things in unknown territory. Often it is when we feel most confused inwardly and are in the midst of our greatest difficulties that something new will open. We awaken most easily to the mystery of life through our weakest side. The areas of our greatest strength, where we are the most competent and clearest, tend to keep us away from the mystery. —Jack Kornfield

Scripture:

Mark 14:32-42  New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

They went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”  He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be distressed and agitated.  And he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake.”  And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.  He said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”  He came and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep awake one hour?  Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words.  And once more he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to say to him.  He came a third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough! The hour has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.  Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.”

 

Garden-Variety Prayer

This is the Sunday in Protestant churches where some pastors cram the entire emotional rollercoaster of Holy Week into just 17 minutes. Or less. It’s like offering a Passion week sampler platter, where you get a little bit of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the betrayal, the trial, the crucifixion.

Since I’m not a pastor and I don’t play one on TV, I chose a different route: tie my message into the topic of the forum that I’m facilitating after service. I may be liberal in my theology, but I’m conservative when it comes to my energy.

And since I am talking all about prayer today, I thought you should know a little of my background. My first memory of praying was when I was about 8 or 9 years old—a little older than most. I was the last of three children, born 9 years after my sister and almost 7 after my brother. Over the years, Mom had fought the good fight in trying to get the whole family to go to church. But after I came along, she followed her life-long calling– to be a latent agnostic. I’m not saying there was a direct cause-and-effect relationship between my birth and her “calling.” Just saying I didn’t go to Sunday school or learn the way others did. While my friends were going to catechism and making their first communion, I was making up my own prayers on Sundays. “God, please, please, for DAD’S SAKE, PLEASE let the Oakland Raiders win today so he doesn’t have a heart attack!” In church language, I believe this qualifies as some lesser-known subset of intercessory prayer. And so began my deeply devout journey on the inner mysteries of communicating with God …

If you’d told me back then that I’d be standing here today talking about one of the most intense, mysterious, multi-layered, sacred moments of prayer in the Christian tradition … I can only say that this is proof that God has an incredible sense of humor.

At the beginning of today’s service we celebrated with the children what’s often called “Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem” for the Passover. Now we fast-forward to the night of Holy Thursday, after the Passover Supper. Jesus and a handful of disciples decide to take a walk outside the city walls of Jerusalem to go pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane was one of his favorite places to pray when visiting the Holy City, which is why Judas would, later that evening, know where to find him to hand him over.

So why go out beyond the city walls to pray? Why at that moment? The tension between Jesus’s reform movement and the religious authorities had been running very high. Keep in mind that Jesus and his followers were one of a number of Jewish reform movements at the time. The Pharisees, the religious authorities, were trying to hold onto a vision of Judaism that was under constant threat from the OUTSIDE by Roman rule. And at the same time, they were trying to keep a steady stream of liberal-minded reform movements from fracturing Judaism from the INSIDE out. This week, this week of Passover, is the week that all parties—the Roman governor, the Pharisees, Jesus and his followers—have made their way to Jerusalem. It’s a bit of a tinder box.

So Jesus and the disciples, they arrive in the garden, and he asks the disciples to remain there and stay awake. He doesn’t ask them to go find the betrayer or convince the authorities to back off. He doesn’t ask them to go find a second house where they can hide in an undisclosed location. In fact, he doesn’t ask them to DO anything. The time for doing has been faithfully fulfilled in the hours before. This is the time for being. He says essentially, “I’m gonna go over there and pray—be with me in prayer.”

As a society, we tend to measure everything by goals and accomplishments. We want outcomes, results, progress, forward movement. We want to HELP, oh lordy do we want to help. Sometimes the help is good and is what’s needed. Sometimes helping is merely our own ego’s way of checking the box that we did something. In our Western world, we see action as strength, and perceive “inaction” as weakness. Let’s be honest:  “being with” is not easy. It takes practice. It takes prayer. It requires first an ability to be with our own moments of pain, our own times of ambiguity, our own frustration – so that, later on, we can be there for others. Prayer is a muscle we have to build like any other muscle. We gradually strengthen our willingness to override our ego, our intellect, and say, there’s an opportunity for something bigger to be present in this in-between place. On the outside, this “being with” looks like the most passive thing in the world to be NOT-doing at such a critical time. Our egos say, don’t just sit there—do something! Jesus says, “Sit there and pray.” The reality is, it’s the most intensely active, counter-cultural, life-affirming thing we can do. When we choose to BE WITH ourselves and others during deeply troubling times, we have an opportunity to be channels of fierce grace. Fierce grace. Fierce grace says, I BELIEVE IN A UNIVERSAL interconnected web of love that’s so much bigger than me. It’s even stronger and more pervasive than what I see, hear, and feel around me. And because I believe this, I choose to BE first so I know better what to DO. We quiet our minds and hearts and see what’s present here, in THIS moment. What’s needed right now? And most importantly, we ask, what is mine to do? Not, why aren’t those people over there doing more or doing better. What is MINE to do? We need A LOT of fierce grace in this world of ours right now.

As Jesus prays, he acknowledges that God is all-powerful, God can do anything. He understands that God can work in unexpected ways. And so he asks for what he wants—that the suffering and brutal path ahead may be altered—but ultimately he says, “Not what I want but what you want.” And then he listens. I once heard someone describe prayer as listening for the heartbeat of God. This is how Jesus syncs his own heartbeat with God’s.

Here’s what he might have been listening for: how does he oppose the powers of injustice and oppression without hate and violence? What is his part to do, this day, if his opposition colludes with a Roman governor (aka, foreign agent) to decide his fate? What if all the good he has been trying to do could now be undone? Was that all in vain? Had he heard wrong back then? Was he supposed to do something or be something different now? What about all those people who expect him to save them from an oppressive regime? What if he’s not sure whether his fellow believers have the spiritual fortitude to persevere, to find their way through?

Maybe that’s too much of a stretch for us in 2017 to imagine or understand how that might have weighed on his mind.

It must’ve been a tad more than frustrating to return from his prayer and find Peter, James, and John sleeping. In the midst of confusion, chaos, and sadness, we often have two speeds: full-on DOING, or hopelessness and helplessness. Our minds become heavy with grief, and we essentially fall asleep. Often that happens when we stay in our heads too long, worrying about all the events of the world and in our lives, without taking the time to ground ourselves in something bigger. Deeper. So, although our spirits are willing, our flesh—our prayer muscle—is weak. We haven’t practiced BEING WITH. And in our self-induced trance, we close our eyes.

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“Can you not stay awake with me an hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not enter into the time of trial.” In other words, pray that we may not be tempted to give in to rash, knee-jerk reactions. Pray that we may not try to help in the wrong way. Pray we’ll know what’s ours to do. Pray that we don’t inadvertently do something we might later regret. Like resorting to violence so that we feel better for at least DOING SOMETHING. Or like running away and shutting ourselves off while innocent people are tortured and killed.

And there’s another kind of temptation we need to avoid. It’s dangerous for any of us to conclude definitively what is and is not God’s will. If God’s will looks repeatedly like what we personally believe, we’ve made God too small. And that is true even when we’re fighting for truth and goodness, even when we’re trying to protect the marginalized. What Jesus shows us is that even when our deepest desire is peace, radical equality, and love, we can’t make an assumption about how that should play out. I’m not suggesting that God’s will is EVER for people to suffer. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe in that kind of God. I believe in a God that is bigger than we can ever imagine, a God who can work through a broken humanity even if the midst of the worst of times.

That’s why, unlike my first attempts at prayer in childhood, we don’t for God to DO SOMETHING. We don’t pray to change God’s mind. We pray to change ours. We ask that we can be responsive, willing, courageous to follow wherever life leads. We pray to know the difference between what’s ours to do and what’s not. We pray we’ll understand when it’s time to BE WITH, when it’s time to act, and when it’s time to let go of our own agenda so that something bigger might take shape. We pray to stay awake and open to possibilities. Because that’s where fierce grace lives.

“Can you not stay awake with me one hour?” —God asks this of us, today, too. I’d like to invite you to join me in a little practice, a little muscle building. Rather than an hour, will you join in three minutes of silence? For all of you with young ones who are suddenly nervous about whether you need to run to the nursery, please know that silence has never been about the absence of sound. It’s a posture of our heart. Sometimes, in the midst of silence, the most wonderful thing we can hear is the cry of a baby or the whisper of a child. It’s all good. And as we pray, I encourage you to lean into the fact that you’re surrounded by a whole community where everyone is actively engaged in BEING WITH.

At the end of three minutes, David will begin playing the intro to our chant. We’ll remain seated. The choir will begin to sing, and I encourage you to listen for the moment when it seems like it’s your time to begin singing. Or humming. There is no wrong answer. And your time to join may be different than the person next to you.

So now… Will you stay awake and pray with me three minutes?

 

Making Room

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[From July 24 Worship, Umstead Park United Church of Christ]

Matthew 5: 21—22; 43—47

“You’re familiar with the command of the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.”

“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.”

Matthew 23: 13—22

“I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won’t let anyone else in either.

“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.

“You’re hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, ‘If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that’s nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that’s serious.’ What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: ‘If you shake hands on a promise, that’s nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that’s serious’? What ridiculous hairsplitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless.”

[Eugene Peterson’s “The Message”]

Pie Jesu, today’s anthem, translates as “Merciful Jesus.” When we listen to today’s readings, though, we don’t exactly hear the sweet merciful Jesus we tend to think of. And while written in the same Gospel, they seem a little … contradictory. Maybe. Maybe not …

Some of Jesus’ harshest criticism in the New Testament is reserved for the Pharisees. You know them as the influential Jewish leaders who had many, many rules and were vying for political relevance among the people. At the time this was written, the writer of Matthew and Jesus’s followers were getting a lot of heat from the Pharisees. So we hear Jesus criticizing them for not recognizing God at work in the world and therefore being a roadblock to people who seek God. And then they convert other people to this wrong-headed philosophy, which means even more people can’t see God at work. Their focus on the minutiae of the law is preventing them from seeing what’s really at stake. He’s essentially saying that these Pharisees, who consider themselves keepers of the law and of God, are actually lawless and Godless. And he’s calling them out for their self-righteousness that blinds them to this truth.

Before we assume that the Pharisees were all bad, let’s consider a little of what THEY were coping with. The Pharisees had been working to preserve the Jewish tradition from Roman social, political, and religious influence. They sought to reinforce a religious philosophy of “law and order” so that they could hold onto sacred tradition. They were troubled by a number of liberal-minded reform movements, only ONE of which was Jesus and his followers. In their eyes, the Jewish community, which had survived so much, was being fractured. The Pharisees saw that their Jewish identity — who they were and what they held sacred– was in danger of being lost altogether.

Does this sound even a tiny bit familiar? On this Sunday poised between two political conventions?

Here’s the hard part. We’ve all heard these readings many times. And we have a natural tendency to see Jesus as right, Pharisees as all wrong. After all, we aren’t called a United Church of Pharisees congregation – we kinda picked a side a long time ago. But what if these words are meant for us, and not just those on the other side of the aisle? Is it possible that we are blinded at times by our own identity as open-minded Christians? Do we sometimes hate people we consider close-minded? The ones at the other convention? The ones in that Christian denomination who say we’re going to hell? The politicians who make laws that attack our identity and humanity?

Let me be clear that I am not suggesting that we should stop speaking up for what we believe in.  We absolutely need to denounce and work to eliminate laws, policies, and every single practice that discriminates against and oppresses people. Injustice is never ok. Hatred is never ok. We were born for freedom. We were born for love. Our faith COMPELS us to settle for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING less.

What I’m talking about is the intent BEHIND our words and actions.  There is a fine line between denouncing and demonizing. Can we make room for people we completely disagree with?

Here’s my deep, dark confession: I am a self-admitted communications nerd. Some of you may know that corporate communications is what I do for a living. And so I’m always intrigued by how we can authentically communicate and influence others. 20 years ago I read a book titled “You Are the Message: Getting What You Want by Being Who You Are”— written by Roger Ailes. Oh, wait, that’s a different sermon. That IS an actual book of his and I DID read it way back then. But what I’m currently reading is, “I’m Right and You’re an Idiot” – that IS truly the title and it is NOT by Roger Ailes. It’s by James Hoggan, who runs a Vancouver PR firm and is a long-time advocate on climate change issues. He chose the title to purposefully call out the state of toxic discourse we find ourselves in. In the book, he interviews a variety of other experts on advocacy, and they talk about something called the ADVOCACY TRAP – the point at which we believe that people who disagree with us are wrongdoers. It happens over time; we don’t start out that way. But when someone repeatedly criticizes our values, and calls us names, we get defensive and we start to think of them as an enemy. If you behave like an enemy, then I believe you to BE an enemy. When I first read that, I thought, well, YEAH. But then I let it sink in. We’ve moved from “they’re wrong” to “they’re wrongdoers” to “they’re enemies.” The problem is, he says, once we do that, it’s nearly impossible to do anything over time other than pointlessly push each others’ buttons. We are caught in what he calls the foe stance. Or, given today’s readings, we might call it the “woe” stance. Woe to you – you’re hopeless, frauds, a brood of vipers. God can’t possibly be working through them.

I’ll admit that there have been times where, in the tradition of my mother, I have yelled at the TV and said, “You fear monger! Total narcissist!” And I pick apart the rhetoric until I’ve satisfied my need to reveal all their nonsense. Some of you might want to assure me that I’m not entirely wrong in what are clearly unbiased assessments, and I appreciate your support. But … setting aside the spiritual aspect for a second. On a practical level, is this approach—this reproach—even the slightest bit helpful? If what I really want, deep down, is to persuade people who disagree with me to hear what I believe in? It’s like I expect these folks to have an epiphany and say, “You know, you were SO RIGHT about me. THANK YOU because without your humiliation I might never have seen the error of my ways.” And Hoggan says, this is the inherent risk of advocacy: “when you accuse someone of being stupid, or make them feel foolish or dim, it only serves to reinforce their default position—which is to activate their self-justification.”

So where is that fine line between denouncing and demonizing? How do we avoid hating the haters? I think that the most important thing we can do is to keep asking those questions and not settle for easy conclusions. But since this IS a sermon, let me move right along to my version of answers …

I’m a huge believer that the solution to most problems starts with self-awareness. I have to be aware of what I’m doing, thinking, saying, and listening to—even if it’s just in my head. Because words mean things. There’s a tendency in society right now to discount political correctness. I DO think the term has outlived its usefulness. Because what I think we’re ACTUALLY talking about is a commitment to decency and dignity through language. Our first reading today: Our words have the power to kill. How we think and treat another can either mend or tear the intangible fabric of humanity, whether we witness the results or not.

In his book, Hoggan also talks about being aware of naïve realism—the built-in bias that we are NOT biased. “Naïve realism allows people on two sides of any issue, whether it’s the Middle East or climate change, to each think their view is the only reasonable one.” In one social experiment, “researchers gave a sample group of Palestinians a peace proposal designed by the Palestinians, but [they] labeled it as coming from the Israelis. [They] also gave Israelis a peace proposal that had come from Israelis, but was labeled as a Palestinian proposal. Each side soundly rejected the proposals. They weren’t rejecting the idea in the proposal; they were rejecting who they thought it came from.”

So how do we become more aware of our own blind spots? One of the advocacy experts suggests the best way is to repeat the opposite camp’s point of view.  “We need to be able to hear the deniers’ arguments if we are to be able to persuade them to hear ours. Listen openly, and see if you can understand the sources of people’s fears and concerns. And then DON’T ask them to repeat their views—see if you can repeat theirs.”

I also believe we have to ACTIVELY CHOOSE to understand alternative viewpoints. In this “age of information” we can tailor our online music stations to our likings, tailor our news to confirm our viewpoints, tailor our circle of friends to those who agree with us … we run the risk of becoming very insulated in this “age of information.” We need to make room in our news feed, our circle of friends, and our lives for perspectives different from our own. In 2008, Jonathan Haidt gave a TED talk called “The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives.” Haidt who’s a professor of ethical leadership at NYU’s Stern School of Business, explains how tribal thinking—our tendency to create our own teams of like-minded people—can blind us to open-minded thinking. It’s what can lead any one of us, on either side, to believe what we wanna believe, despite the mounting evidence of facts to the contrary. He says, “Our righteous minds have been designed by evolution to unite us into teams and divide us against other teams, to blind us to the truth.” He explains how Liberals seek diversity, new experiences, novelty, question authority and speak for the weak and oppressed—even at the risk of chaos. Conservatives, in general, speak for “law and order.” They crave things that are familiar, safe and dependable, predictable—even if that means some folks might not enjoy all the freedoms that others do. They support institutions and … TRADITION. Sounds a bit like Jesus and the Pharisees, right?

The part I most love about this TED Talk is where Haidt explains that in the Hindu faith, both Vishnu—the preserver and protector—and Shiva—the destroyer and bringer of change—share the same body. It’s the age-old Asian philosophy about the interdependence of opposites, the Yin and Yang. If we can make room for the possibility that each has value and that TOGETHER they create balance … I think we’re on the path to making a difference.

And now I’m going to make a really radical suggestion. We can start with prayer. Not prayer that others will change their minds. Not even a prayer for unity. We can pray that we might see our blind spots and that OUR hearts will be changed. And if we’re not yet ready to pray for our own change, then we pray for the WILLINGNESS to be changed. Or even the willingness for the willingness. So that we can make room at the table for even those we can’t stand.

So let me close with this. In the heart of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah, there’s a different story about how God brought the world into existence. It’s not the two stories in Genesis that we’re used to. But I find it equally—if not more—poetic. Isaac Luria was a Kabbalist in the mid-16th century who wondered: If Ein Sof—the Infinite God—was indeed infinite and pervaded everything, how was there even room for anything OTHER than God to come into being? What Luria taught was that the first divine act was not creation, but withdrawal. Ein Sof withdrew into itself to create a vacuum. In some versions of Luria’s teaching, this withdrawal was seen as cathartic: to make room for the elimination of harsh judgment from Ein Sof. God made room for the world to come into being, so that we might make room for God in the world. And may it always be so.

 

The Charmed Life

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I had lunch with a friend of mine who was worried—worried about her worrying. Recently promoted to a high-powered position in a Fortune 100 company, she now works closely with the CEO in a much more visible role. Her every word is weighed, her charisma dissected, by employees, investors, the press, you name it. But this wasn’t the crux of her concern.

“You consider me a rational person, don’t you? I mean, I try to be objective … calm … thoughtful. Last week, I had a bump on my nose, and I was frantic. I told my husband I was sure it was cancer. I was completely freaked out! He told me to get a grip, because it was just a zit—a simple zit! Isn’t that insane?!” She said she repeatedly jumps to the worst case scenario when she or her children have health issues. I could totally empathize with her, because that same week I’d been trying to quell my own panic about symptoms that made me wonder if I was on the verge of a flare for a rare autoimmune disease I had four years ago.

“What’s the story you’re telling yourself?” I asked. It took a while to sift through the emotions to unearth the thoughts that triggered them. Then she said, “I guess I’ve lived such a charmed life. I’ve always been healthy, never had anything worse than the flu. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

What caught my attention wasn’t the idea that “the good life” can’t last, that disaster would eventually come her way. What caught my attention was the suggestion that health was synonymous with a charmed life.

Is that true? Is health a sign of success and favor? Or, when seen from another angle, is illness a curse?

BandaidThrough the ages, people have come up with a variety of explanations for disease:

God makes us sick; God can save—Most “primitive” cultures believed that demons or spirits caused physical ailments. The Greeks and early Jews adhered to this, too. The writers of the Old Testament sometimes depicted God as “smiting” people who were a tad off the beaten path of righteousness (or sometimes they said God told people to smite others in his name—a little divine delegation, I guess.) The New Testament writers include stories of Jesus healing the sick, making  blind people see, and raising Lazarus from the dead. Muslims attribute health and illness to Allah, while Hindus believe that the heavenly bodies can strongly influence wellness (and so can personal karma).

Curses!—Many people have also blamed their fellow humans, rather than God, for disease. Shamans, witches, warlocks, sorcerers, occultists … those who used their “powers for evil” were suspect. In Europe and early America, many villagers were put to death for cursing their neighbors, which they believe manifested as ill health in their loved ones and their livestock, among other things.

Microbial menaces—In the mid-nineteenth century, Louis Pasteur proved the germ theory of disease. His research led to vaccines for rabies, anthrax, and advances in surgical procedures (not to mention better milk, beer, wine, and silk production).

We are our own worst enemies—Karma and the law of attraction propose that our actions and thoughts create our reality. And medical research has shown links between our personal choices—eating, drinking, smoking, exercising—and our health. Then there’s stress, which is also tied to our individual perception of events and our environment.

So, does it really matter what we believe is the genesis of sickness? I think it might. Thoughts lead to actions and inactions, whether intentional or not. I guess the question is, how do we treat others, and ourselves, when we’re ill?

  • What do you think of people who have had multiple medical issues?
  • Now, what do you really think and say?
    • She’s that kind of person who’s always got a bunch of medical problems. (She’s a victim.)
    • Some are just poor, unlucky souls. (Disease is a matter of pity, which is not the same as empathy.)
    • They don’t deserve to be sick. (Illness is deserved by some but not others.)
  • What do you say and do when you get sick?
    • I don’t have time to be under the weather. (Healing/recovery is not as important as my to-do list.)
    • I’m just lying around here all day doing nothing. (Sickness is akin to laziness.)
    • I should be stronger than this. (Illness is for the weak.)

What if we truly, down in our bones, lived in a way that showed we believe illness is a fact of life—like the changing of seasons—that we don’t need to frantically avoid? I’m not suggesting we completely disregard all efforts to stay healthy, just wondering if we can stop the obsession. What if we took time to consider what sickness can teach us? About ourselves, one another, the Divine. Stephen Levine, author and teacher known for his work on death and dying, suggests we’re not responsible for our illness, we’re responsible to our illness. I can live with that.

How We’re Called

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“It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.”
― W.C. Fields

 

There’s no cool story about how my parents decided to name me Lynn. My brother and sister have stories about their names, and my mom did, too. I loved to hear these stories when growing up. When I asked about my own, there was often a bit of silence followed by, “Hey, is that a fire over at the neighbor’s house?” or some other mild distraction that works well with a seven-year-old.

Determined to find meaning in my personal brand, I started my research when I was about 11. When my parents made a trip to Vintage Faire mall, I’d beg to spend time in B Dalton’s bookstore while they were in some nearby shop. After looking over the new fiction titles to make me seem like a normal bookworm, I’d make my way back to the baby name books. I’d sit down on the cold, dusty tile floor and pull out the spines of the ones that seemed to offer the most hope. Very few had much to say on the origin; most entries linked the name to other combinations (Marilyn, Evelyn, Carolyn) or as a derivative of Linda. I’d pull out the next book, hoping to find more of a provenance. No luck. Once I found reference to a Gaelic word meaning “lake” or “waterfall.” That sounded good. After a while, I’d lose feeling in my legs, my ass would get cold, and my hope would be dashed. I wonder what ran through the mind of any clerk who saw this pre-teen girl sprawled on the floor surrounded by baby naming books, quickly shoving them back onto the shelf when her impatient mother came looking for her.

At some point I decided to check the dictionary at home. I found there was an exotic place called Lynn, Massachusetts. I bet it had a waterfall. And a beautiful reflective pool of water. I imagined that someday I would visit my city and have a mystical experience where my true calling would be revealed in a vision. Kinda like the Lady of the Lake presenting Excalibur to King Arthur. But with more drama.

While I was growing up in the 70s, Lynn Swan was a big name in football, and football was a big deal in our house. My dad used to manage travel for the Oakland Raiders, so I was required to root for the silver and black. And I did … except when the Pittsburgh Steelers were playing. Because then I would see my name spelled out, in actual letters, on TV! Holy cow, that was awesome. It was like I was famous! I wasn’t, clearly. But my name was up there and being talked about by people who made a lot of money. Sure, ok, it belonged to a guy. And yes, he was a top athlete at the peak of his career, and I could barely pass the President’s Fitness Test at school. Alright, he was also African-American. Other than that, though, I totally identified with him.

There were never any characters in TV shows or cartoons named Lynn. No books with heroines named Lynn. I used to check stores that sold chotskies, keychains, and other personalized items to see if they had my name. It usually skipped from Linda to Louise to May. People would often tell me that their middle name was Lynn. Wow, great, so the name that probably only got called out when their mother was mad at them was the same as mine. My grandmother made a ceramic mug for me and painted my name on it. She spelled it with an “e” on the end but it was close!

I’ve always liked the name Amanda. Amanda Lynn. Kinda musical, don’t you think?

7349260-hi-my-name-isI’m going to start ending my blog posts with writing prompts. I’ve been scouring books for ideas that spark my imagination, and I haven’t found any that really resonate with me. So I decided that I’d try to create my own and share them.

Today’s writing prompt: what’s the story behind your name? Have you ever gone through a time where you had to change your name or reclaim what it means to you?

Finding my Voice. Again.

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Number 1 rule of blogging and social media: make a schedule and stick to it. Don’t go dark for a long period of time … don’t allow dead air, as they say in broadcast. Well, now that I’ve broken THAT rule, let’s get on with the show.

Truth is, it’s been a struggle to restart this blog. I had lost my desire to write, but mostly I’d believed the lie that it didn’t matter whether I did or not. I had let others’ opinions of me matter. Last year I signed up for a 10-month leadership program that wrapped up in February. I absolutely L-O-V-E-D the premise of it: we’re all leaders, regardless of title or power, and when we align with our individual purpose we can lead in ways we never thought possible. Yeah, baby, sign me up for some of that. That resonated in the marrow of my bones, and it still does. When it came to the methods and demeanor of the leadership team, though, let’s just say I experienced tissue rejection. But at the time, I kept thinking that I was the problem, that if I just stuck with it, I’d feel the euphoria of connection and belonging that others seemed to experience. By the final retreat, 11 out of 25 of us had formed a quasi support group to try to weather the cliquish dynamics and our feelings of unworthiness.

A friend asked recently if I resented the whole thing. Right now, the best I can say is that I’m trying very hard not to. Because I don’t think resentment has anything to teach me. So instead I keep looking for what I did learn and what I choose to take with me. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

  • Sometimes the truth hurts. It can sting at first, but then you feel a deeper resonance and say, yeah, ok, I might want to look at that. But if it scalds and scars, that’s not truth and doesn’t need further consideration. I don’t need to look for meaning in someone else’s meanness.

Keep-calm-and-move-on

  • In the same way, some people tend to run away from experiences and conversations that take them out of their comfort zones. And for them, growth can be found in “staying” with the discomfort. For others of us, we’ve made a life of staying with discomfort and ignoring our own needs. For us, our growing edge is found in recognizing our limits and getting the hell out of Dodge. Without second-guessing it.
  • Only people who can truly see a person’s inner brilliance and reflect back the light of her soul are qualified to offer “feedback” on how she might also improve in a particular area. And those folks rarely if ever offer their insights without invitation, nor do they do it with disdain for the times she didn’t see her own light.
  • Those who dismiss my story and my perspective are merely showing me that they’re not worthy of hearing my truth at this time. They may not be ready to understand how much we have in common. Their loss.
  • I can speak my truth and be criticized for my words, and I can listen and observe and be criticized for my silence. I will continue to speak sometimes and observe at others, because their criticism says more about them than me.
  • No one gets to demand my transformation or map of personal progress, regardless of their high-minded intentions. My lessons are not on their timeline.
  • There is no size or weight requirement for a quest; dreams are neither big nor small, as long as they inspire us. Sometimes a “big dream” is merely a cloak of ego. The people I admire have chosen to change their world, not THE world per se, by starting with what’s around them. That’s big.

shake the world

The Secret About the Law of Attraction

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I’m an avid reader, mostly nonfiction. Probably 80 percent of what I read falls into the spiritual/religious realm, usually of an Eastern or East-West tradition. But this past year I’ve been bumping up against a lot of “law of attraction”-type chatter from friends and the CTI leadership program, and it’s been grating on me. It took a lot of searching and figuring out what exactly was ticking me off.  I have never fully resonated with the Law of Attraction. Years ago I tried—oh, how I tried—but it felt like putting icing on a sand cake: appealing and yummy at first but the more you dig in, the more it falls apart (and the grit stays between your teeth).

antidoteThen I found the antidote. Literally. Here are the points that truly resonated with me.

  • At its core, the law of attraction is an attempt to control our experience; we determine, by our thoughts and intentions, what comes into our lives. If we think positively enough, we can manifest happiness. Control is a tactic that usually doesn’t end up paying off with the best results, just sayin’.
  • And, when did we decide that happiness is the goal? When I look at the oldest religions and philosophies—the ones that have stood the test of time—they tend to emphasize compassion and understanding as the highest calling. And from that, happiness, joy, and contentment can emerge. It’s a byproduct, not the objective.
  • Barbara Ehrenreich in her book Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America traces this “cult of positive thinking” back to a semi-religious movement called New Thought in 19th century America. It rose as the great societal pendulum swing away from American Calvinism, which emphasized hard work and predestination. New Thought was appealing because practitioners could achieve happiness and success through the mere power of their minds. It’s so understandable in this light: from “work hard, but you still might go to hell” to “you control your destiny.” This New Thought is what also gave rise to the religion of Christian Science.
  • hqdefaultEhrenreich notes that “New Thought imposed its own kind of harsh judgmentalism, replacing Calvinism’s obligatory hard work with obligatory positive thinking. Negative thoughts were fiercely denounced – a message that echoed ‘the old religion’s condemnation of sin’ and added ‘an insistence on the constant interior labour of self-examination’.”
  • Here’s what seems to be so insidiously addictive about positive thinking and the law of attraction: you can explain any and all events as proof for the power of positive thinking. And any doubt or question is just negative thinking. Well, how … handy. How “positively” fallacious.
  • “The effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable. And that it is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative – insecurity, uncertainty, failure, or sadness – that is what causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain, or unhappy. {Psychologists and philosophers] didn’t see this conclusion as depressing, though. Instead, they argued that it pointed to an alternative approach, a ‘negative path’ to happiness, that entailed taking a radically different stance towards those things that most of us spend our lives trying hard to avoid. It involved learning to enjoy uncertainty, embracing insecurity, stopping trying to think positively, becoming familiar with failure, even learning to value death. In short, all these people seemed to agree that in order to be truly happy, we might actually need to be willing to experience more negative emotions – or, at the very least, to learn to stop running quite so hard from them.”
  • “These days, this notion certainly gets less press than the admonition to remain positive at all times. But it is a viewpoint with a surprisingly long and respectable history. You’ll find it in the works of the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, who emphasised the benefits of always contemplating how badly things might go. It lies deep near the core of Buddhism, which counsels that true security lies in the unrestrained embrace of insecurity – in the recognition that we never really stand on solid ground, and never can. It underpins the medieval tradition of memento mori, which celebrated the life-giving benefits of never forgetting about death. And it is what connects New Age writers, such as the bestselling spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, with more mainstream recent work in cognitive psychology on the self-defeating nature of positive thinking. This same ‘negative’ approach to happiness also helps explain why so many people find mindfulness meditation so beneficial; why a new generation of business thinkers are advising companies to drop their obsession with goalsetting and embrace uncertainty instead; and why, in recent years, some psychologists have reached the conclusion that pessimism may often be as healthy and productive as optimism.”
  • Our obsession with the positive leads to survivorship bias,  which focuses on the things or ideas that survive a process and overlooks failures because they’re not as visible. Burkeman tells the story of Jerker Denrell, a management theorist from Oxford University, who was attending an academic conference in Stockholm. A fellow researcher was explaining his findings about the personality traits of highly successful entrepreneurs. “It may well be true that successful entrepreneurs possess perseverance and leadership skills, of course. What is less obvious – and much less boring – is … that those traits are likely to be the characteristics of extremely unsuccessful people, too. ‘Think about it,’ Denrell observed [after the conference]. ‘Incurring large losses requires both persistence  … and the ability to persuade others to pour their money down the drain.’ People without much perseverance or charisma are more likely to end up in the middle, experiencing neither great success nor great failure. (If you never stick at anything and if you can’t persuade others to follow you, you may never lead an army of like-minded souls to a stunning victory – but neither will you lead them off a cliff.) It seems entirely likely that the very successful and the very unsuccessful might actually have rather similar personalities. The only indisputable difference between the two is that the very unsuccessful are much, much less frequently interviewed by management scholars who are studying the causes of success.”
  • In theology, the term ‘theodicy’ refers to the effort to maintain belief in a benevolent god, despite the prevalence of evil in the world; the phrase is occasionally used to describe the effort to maintain any belief in the face of contradictory evidence. Borrowing that language, Chris Kayes termed the syndrome he had identified ‘goalodicy’. … What motivates our investment in goals and planning for the future, much of the time, isn’t any sober recognition of the virtues of preparation and looking ahead. Rather, it’s something much more emotional: how deeply uncomfortable we are made by feelings of uncertainty. Faced with the anxiety of not knowing what the future holds, we invest ever more fiercely in our preferred vision of that future – not because it will help us achieve it, but because it helps rid us of feelings of uncertainty in the present. ‘Uncertainty prompts us to idealise the future,’ Kayes told me. ‘We tell ourselves that everything will be OK, just as long as I can reach this projection of the future.’
  • “The most valuable skill of a successful entrepreneur, Chris Kayes is convinced, isn’t ‘vision’ or ‘passion’ or a steadfast insistence on destroying every barrier between yourself and some prize you’re obsessed with. Rather, it’s the ability to adopt an unconventional approach to learning: an improvisational flexibility not merely about which route to take towards some predetermined objective, but also a willingness to change the destination itself. This is a flexibility that might be squelched by rigid focus on any one goal. … ‘Start with your means. Don’t wait for the perfect opportunity. Start taking action, based on what you have readily available: what you are, what you know and who you know.’ A second is the ‘principle of affordable loss’: Don’t be guided by thoughts of how wonderful the rewards might be if you were spectacularly successful at any given next step. Instead – and there are distinct echoes, here, of the Stoic focus on the worst-case scenario – ask how big the loss would be if you failed. So long as it would be tolerable, that’s all you need to know. Take that next step, and see what happens.”
  • ‘The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning,’ argued the social psychologist Erich Fromm. ‘Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.’ Uncertainty is where things happen. It is where the opportunities – for success, for happiness, for really living – are waiting.
  • And from my favorite monk and spiritual teacher, Thomas Merton, in his autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain:  ‘The truth that many people never understand’, he wrote, ‘is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt.’ Seen this way, it becomes clear that security-chasing is a large part of the problem with the ‘cult of optimism’. Through positive thinking and related approaches, we seek the safety and solid ground of certainty, of knowing how the future will turn out, of a time in the future when we’ll be ceaselessly happy and never have to fear negative emotions again. But in chasing all that, we close down the very faculties that permit the happiness we crave.

When a Friend is Seriously Ill: What Not to Say

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I visited a friend who’s in the middle of chemo treatments—11 more weeks to go. Ugh. I didn’t know her that well a few months ago, but once she was diagnosed, the cancer-survivor part of me kicked in. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Or neither, maybe; it’s just a thing. It’s like an alter-ego that only comes out to play when the Big C visits people I know. I get this urge to be there for that person the way I wish someone had been there for me. Truth be told, though, I’ve been hit-or-miss with people over the past 17 years since I was diagnosed. Sometimes it just brought up so much crap for me that I couldn’t get over myself to do much of anything. And sometimes I’d take a small step and then crumble or fumble or something. But … my desire to be there for others in the midst of health crises has never gone away. So this time I really wanted to stay with that urge.

I went there to find out what she might need, how I could help—even if it was just to listen or distract her for a bit. And in that 25-minute visit, I learned a lot about myself. Mostly I found that I wanted to “help” more than I wanted to comfort, which is a very common pitfall. What was shocking was that I was even momentarily tempted to say the things that I swore I’d never say, the things that were so unhelpful when I was in her shoes—or slippers, as the case may be. So, I thought I would share my Top 10 Things NOT to Say to Someone Who’s Ill.

  1. “You’ll be fine in no time”—or any of the myriad variations on this theme. Our intentions are great; we want to help someone be positive. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves. The fact is, we say this when we are the ones who can’t deal with sadness, grief, or ambiguity, which means we then can’t be with someone else’s sadness, grief, or ambiguity. Whether or not this statement is true is totally irrelevant. The point is to be with the person where they are at that moment in time—not project into the future. I can tell you this with all sincerity: if that person is feeling depressed or wrestling with sickness, pain, and fatigue while you’re visiting, projecting into the future means you are actually leaving them alone in those feelings at that very moment. We don’t have to fix the person or make them feel better.  That’s not our job. They just need us to be with them. Right then, right there. That’s all. It’s more simple—and yet harder—than we think.
  2. “My cousin had the exact same thing, and she visited a holistic healer who worked a miracle. You should totally go see this healer.” It’s pretty rare when a friend’s illness— combined with her personal health history, age, gender, ethnicity, etc.—completely line up with your cousin’s situation. Unless you are also your friend’s physician, don’t assume you know exactly what they have and how it can be “cured.” Your friend probably already has plenty of doctors to consult with—she doesn’t need yet another piece of advice. What she really needs is a friend. If she asks you for resources, herbal remedies, alternative foods, recommended doctors or healers, by all means share what you know. Wait to be asked, though.
  3. “Is that [surgery or treatment] really necessary? I’ve read about this new procedure …” Or, at the opposite end of the spectrum: “How do they know for sure if they got it all?” I got both of these comments and more before, during, and after 10.5 weeks of radiation treatment. My sister-in-law, a nuclear medical technician, was convinced that I needed more than CT scans to be sure that I was clear of cancer. I assume she had positive intentions but … seriously? I began doubting my doctors. There’s a delicate balance between a patient’s personal responsibility to understand and engage in her treatment, while still partnering with—and trusting in—her medical team. Don’t need get yourself entangled in your friend’s prognosis, her course of treatment, or whether it’s “working.” Ask her what she’s thinking and feeling, and let her get that off her chest. That is healing in and of itself.
  4. “I remember when I was going through my heart transplant. At the time I felt really good and positive about the future. But then, about 10 years later, I started getting panic attacks.” Yes, this was really said to me, too, by a coworker. If you are clairvoyant or have personal experience with the ups and downs of serious or chronic illness, you do not need to share your knowledge with your friend. In this case, sharing is NOT caring. Use your all-knowing powers for good: make sure that you’re there for her if something should suddenly take a turn.
  5. Similar to #4: “When *I* was going through treatment …” This is just a twist on what parents say to their children when they’re  trying to show empathy but what they’re really doing is seeking healing of their own past. Your friend has her own story that is currently unfolding. Listen to hers, if she chooses to share. (And if she’s not ready or in the mood that day, don’t push it.) Then get your own therapist to heal yours.
  6. “You can’t be scared—you have faith, don’t you?” Fear and faith are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they’re quite often different sides of the same coin. Don’t make her feel like she’s a spiritual light-weight because she’s scared—whether it’s about the next treatment, the future, or anything, for that matter. Instead, ask her if there’s anything you can do to help. Give her space to express her fear, and just sit with her in the not knowing. It may go away and come back—a lot. It’s all part of the process.
  7. “Just keep a positive attitude. Y’know, studies show that people who have a positive attitude experience fewer side effects in treatment, heal more quickly, and live longer.” I believe in the power of positive thinking. And … I know that very positive people still die—some of them even die very quickly. Were they just not trying hard enough to be positive? Don’t tell her what or how to think. Go along on the journey right alongside her. Ask her if she wants to watch some old “I Love Lucy” shows or the latest stand-up special on Comedy Central. If she does, great. If she’s not interested, ask her if she might be interested on another day and set a date.
  8. “Everything happens for a reason,” or any talk of the law of attraction. This idea of creating our own reality gets a bit dicey when applied to things like cancer, people who are raped or murdered, or children born into extreme poverty and starvation. Were they responsible for attracting that? I really, really wrestled with this philosophy when I was sick with Wegener’s granulomatosis a few years ago. It’s an uncommon autoimmune disease, which means the body is essentially attacking its own healthy tissue. I thought to myself, of course—you’ve been mentally attacking yourself for decades so now it’s just manifesting physically. Beating myself up for what I could’ve done differently does not make for a healing mindset. I like what Stephen Levine says in his Conscious Living/Conscious Dying workshops: You’re not responsible for your cancer, you’re responsible to it. He says we are taking a “sickness teaching.” It’s quite possible that somewhere down the line your friend may see her illness as a blessing in disguise. Let her reach that conclusion—or not—in her own time. Help her take care of herself now, in the present moment.
  9. “You look really good!” Let me just say, it’s very inconsiderate to lie to someone who’s sick. She’s ill, not stupid. Don’t focus on her appearance at all. Bring her some fun, outrageous socks or the latest DVDs, or a fluffy new pillow. If she doesn’t need any of these things, don’t worry—she’ll find a use for them.
  10. Saying nothing—as in, no communication. I know, I’ve told myself this story: I don’t know what to say to her, so … I’ll call her later. And before you know it, months have passed and you still haven’t called, visited, or sent a card. Here, instead, are four things you can say:
    • “I just wanted to call and see how you’re doing. How are you feeling?”
    • “I was thinking about you today—do you wanna hear the latest news on [fill in the blank with something she’s interested in]?”
    • “Would you like some company sometime next week? I’d love to come see you, if you’re up for it. And ‘no’ is a totally fine answer, too.”
    • And when you do visit her, after about 20 minutes say, “I should go now.” It really is about quality time, not quantity, especially if the person is in pain or having a less-than-wonderful day.

Pictures: Worth More Than we Think

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The universe has a GREAT sense of humor.

I decided recently to tend to some unfinished business about body image, to let go of a very old story and move on. Twenty years ago I was bulimic, and while I’m no longer in that specific space, I’ve spent years trying to listen to what I’m really hungry for, how I feed my soul, and my relationship with food. I’m in a much better place with years of practice but it’s a daily, conscious choice that ebbs and flows. And I’ve also struggled with being able to actually see myself as I am—the only way I could really figure it out was by seeing pictures of myself. However … I avoided pictures 95 percent of the time, especially if it wasn’t a group shot. My husband would often joke that if others looked at our vacation photos, they’d assume he went on the trip by himself because there were rarely any pics of me. Yeah, well …

My mother also used to avoid the camera, and I really hated that while growing up. I decided I didn’t want to play that game with myself or others anymore and wanted to step outside my comfort zone. I decided to get some nice photos taken. As a bonus, I figured I could also surprise my husband by giving these to him for his birthday on July 26, because he’s always wanted pics of me other than our wedding 10 years ago. I found a photographer and explained my goals—she was totally on board and understood my hesitancy. She also recommended a “dry bar” (first I’d ever heard of such a thing–had no clue) where I could go get my hair and makeup done. Never, ever done that before, not even for my wedding. On Friday, July 12, she came to the house and took pics of me individually and with my three dogs. She was fabulous about making me feel at ease. I joked with her that in one fell swoop I’d gone from the girl who gets her makeup at a drugstore and wrestles the camera away from people, to paying to have her hair and makeup done and then actually [gasp] POSING for pictures. Holy crap. What I loved was that she would remind me to “smile with my eyes.” And then I would pretend I was doing metta meditation, repeating silently “may I be held in lovingkindness.” It took practice—with her help—to recover to that space.

A few days later I got the digital images. As I opened the link, I told myself, Gently, gently— hold this moment gently: don’t criticize yourself or pick apart your clothing choice. And then I noticed that in many of the pictures the lighting must’ve been odd because my eyes were not brown. They were kinda mysterious, kinda like images I’d seen of women in India with green or blue eyes. Well, that’s odd. So I emailed and asked if she could correct them. She said she would, although she noted that she hadn’t done anything to change the images in that way so she found it curious. Next day at work I asked my coworkers playfully—assuming I knew the answer—”What color are my eyes?” Without a pause, they said hazel. What??! Are you kidding me?! That can’t be right. My birth certificate says brown eyes, my passport says brown eyes, my driver’s license says brown eyes. Although, as one of my coworkers pointed out, you can list any weight on your driver’s license and they certainly don’t check THAT. Ok, point taken. I was in an amused state of shock for the rest of the day. It was totally rocking me way deep inside—not necessarily in a bad way, but in a really big way. I was noticing how much this seemingly little revelation was affecting me.

That night I had a little epiphany from that deep part of myself: Well, dear, since you have been avoiding cameras for so long, how do you know what color your eyes really are? [Hmm, good point. And then …]  … and besides, wasn’t your goal to see yourself with new eyes?

Oh, seriously?! Are you friggin’ kidding me?! The universe speaks in puns?? That’s just twisted. But then, so am I, so I guess it all makes sense.

And finally, to nail it home for me, I get a request that night to appear in a video project at work the following day. This is highly unusual. The irony is, I actually am leading the project in which we plan to use this video, but I was hands-off in who they would choose to film. My first instinct was to justify why I should bow out: ohh, no, no, as the leader of this project I shouldn’t appear in it—we need to feature others. But then that small little [nagging, annoyingly wise] voice said, Didn’t you want to leave that story behind? Sigh. So I agreed to the shoot, and I grabbed a coworker to be in it with me—and we had a fabulous time and got to know each other better through the filming.

I haven’t seen the footage yet, but I’m guessing I have hazel eyes …

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