Riding through the ups and downs...

Wow... the day is only half over but its already full.  Some days are like that, yes?  One

surprise and/or challenge after another with still much more to come.  These days I can't handle it all at once - I have to pace myself - so before heading back to the hospital it seemed wise to have a pot of pumpkin chai - and a little poetry.  My honey turned me on to this one by Aaron Smith entitled, "Like Him."

I'm almost forty and just understanding my father 

doesn't like me. At thirteen I quit basketball, the next year

refused to hunt, I knew he was disappointed, but never 

thought he didn't have to like me 

to love me. No girls. Never learned 

to drive a stick. Chose the kitchen and mom 

while he went to the woods with friends who had sons 

like he wanted. He tried fishing--a rod and reel 

under the tree one Christmas. Years I tried

talking deeper, acting tougher 

when we were together. Last summer 

I went with him to buy a tractor. 

In case he needs help, Mom said. He didn't look at me 

as he and the sales guy tied the wheels to the trailer, perfect

boy-scout knots. Why do I sometimes wish I could be a man 

who cares about cars and football, who carries a pocketknife 

and needs it? It was January when he screamed: I'm not 

a student, don't talk down to me! I yelled: You're not 

   smart enough

to be one! I learned to fight like his father, like him, like men:

the meanest guy wins, don't ever apologize. 

I quit the realm of rough and tumble politics almost 20 years ago because I didn't like who I was becoming.  As my life fell apart back then, I came to experience what Richard Rohr wrote about today:

We don’t come to God (or truth or love) by insisting on some ideal worldly order or so-called perfection, but in fact we come “to knowledge of salvation by the experience of forgiveness” (Luke 1:77)—forgiveness of reality itself, of others, of ourselves—for being so ordinary, imperfect, and often disappointing. Many also have to forgive God for not being what they wanted or expected. One reason why I am so attracted to Jesus and then to Francis is that they found God in disorder, in imperfection, in the ordinary, and in the real world—not in any idealized concepts. They were more into losing than winning. But the ego does not like that, so we rearranged much of Christianity to fit our egoic pattern of achievement and climbing.

Isn’t it strange that Christians worship a God figure, Jesus, who appears to be clearly losing by every criterion imaginable? And then we spend so much time trying to “win,” succeed, and perform. We even call Jesus’ “losing” the very redemption of the world—yet we run from it. I think Christians have yet to learn the pattern of redemption. It is evil undone much more than evil ever perfectly avoided. It is disorder reconfigured in our hearts and minds—much more than demanding any perfect order to our universe. Much of the Christian religion has largely become “holding on” instead of letting go. But God, it seems to me, does the holding on (to us!), and we must learn the letting go (of everything else).

It is good to remember that a part of you has always loved God. There is a part of you that has always said yes. There is a part of you that is Love itself, and that is what we must fall into. It is already there. Once you move your identity to that level of deep inner contentment, you will realize you are drawing upon a Life that is much larger than your own and from a deeper abundance. Once you learn this, why would you ever again settle for scarcity in your life? “I’m not enough! This is not enough! I do not have enough!” I am afraid this is the way culture trains you to think. It is a kind of learned helplessness. The Gospel message is just the opposite—inherent power.

Thomas Merton said that the way we have structured our lives, we spend our whole life climbing up the ladder of supposed success, and when we get to the top of the ladder we realize it is leaning against the wrong wall—and there is nothing at the top anyway. To get back to the place of inherent abundance, you have to let go of all of the false agendas, unreal goals, and passing self-images. It is all about letting go. The spiritual life is more about unlearning than learning, because the deepest you already knows and already enjoys (1 John 2:21).

Sometimes I wish I had more energy - or wisdom - or love. Sometimes I wish I was a tougher kind of man - or a better pastor and husband - but the truth is I am just me - and that is sufficient, yes?  Incomplete, to be sure, but sufficient.  My call is to learn to accept and cherish just have what I have so that I might be able to love it as much as God does.  Ok, my cuppa is over so it is off to the hospital and a few more meetings.