befriending disappointment as embodied prayer...

It's Sunday morning in Montréal where, once again, I've been invited to practice letting go of my expectations and embrace what is real. This is fundamentally the wisdom path for the second half of life. We get clues earlier, however, and for me it began some 30 years ago as my first marriage came to a close. Feeling like a failure - and grieving the loss of my precious family - my spiritual director encouraged me to learn how to simply rest into God's loving hands. Don't think too much, don't try too hard: give it time and before you know it you will "know" from the inside out that no matter what you do or who you are, you are always God's beloved. Fr. Jim was right. After about seven weeks of consistently sitting quietly and waiting on the Lord, I "felt" myself enveloped by the sacred and "knew" I was loved. My outward life was still a shambles, but inwardly I knew a deeper love.

Three decades later I am still a novice at living into this wisdom with one exception: now I know that it's true. How does Job put it at the close of his lament? "Once I had only heard of you with my ears, but now (the eyes of my heart) see you and I lcan et go of all my previous expectations." (Job 42 with my emphasis) The Americana musician and record producing genius, T. Bone Burnett, calls this the sacred "trap door."

Fr. Richard Rohr, teaches that when we're fully into "the second half of life," it's crucial to befriend disappointment. And Brother Niebuhr tells us this in his Prayer for Serenity: 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time;

accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;

taking, as Jesus did, this (broken) world as it is, not as I would have it;

trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will;

so that I may be reasonably happy in this life

and supremely happy with You forever in the next.

The good news is NO ONE is automatically good at befriending disappointment. The more we get it wrong, the more we know we need to move in a new direction. The paradox of this spirituality asks us to realize that our wounds and dashed expectations can simultaneously become our spiritual director. Falling through the sacred trap door is both death AND new life.Henri Nouwen speaks of embodied resurrection succinctly:

The great conversion in our life is to recognize and believe that the many unexpected events are not just disturbing interruptions in our projects, but the way in which God molds our hearts and prepares us for his return. Our great temptations are boredom and bitterness. When our good plans are interrupted by poor weather, our well-organized careers by illness or bad luck, our peace of mind by inner turmoil, our hope for peace by a new war, our desire for a stable government by a constant changing of the guards, and our desire for immortality by real death, we are tempted to give in to a paralyzing boredom or to strike back in destructive bitterness. But when we believe that patience can make our expectations grow, then fate can be converted into a vocation, wounds into a call for deeper understanding, and sadness into a birthplace of joy.

This Montréal adventure is our chance to befriend going slow. It's asking us to honor our disappointments even as we grieve them trusting that if we watch and wait, they will help us discern new ways of living. Not as we expected nor as we have lived in the past: but fully alive in THIS moment. A week ago at this time, I was in the emergency room with a blockage in my esophagus that scared the crap out of me. Today I am sitting in a lovely second floor kitchen looking out at the summer flowers of my favorite city. Di and I have journeyed to Montréal many times before - and the holy is whispering to us that this trip will be different whether we like it or not. So why not befriend it? These days I know this in my head but still resist it in my heart and flesh - and reality is showing me that my abstract beliefs need to become incarnated. Lutheran pastor, the Rev. Mindy Roll, learned much earlier than I what embodied prayer and faith is all about. In an article she crafted for The Christian Century she notes that:

Sometimes embodied prayer uncovers joy, sometimes sorrow, sometimes peace, sometimes connection, sometimes strength, sometimes my own history, and sometimes nothing. I am still learning the practice, still surprised each time at the intimacy of God’s presence and the sanctuary that God has carved within. It turns out God was indeed in the business of speaking back; I just needed to discover how to listen. (Check out the full article @ https://www.christiancentury.org/article/first-person/how-i-came-love-embodied-prayer) 

Roll's description of how to move from the head into our flesh is instructive. Her spiritual director put it like this:

God lives in the deepest parts of you, deeper even than your thinking, she would tell me. She outlined the process: We would begin with a period of deep breathing, followed by a body check-in (letting my attention wander from my head to my feet, checking in at each space). She would then invite me to listen to where my attention was drawn, then to listen for an emotion, then to listen for a story (not telling a story or analyzing a story, as I was first prone to do, but simply listening to what comes). The process would end with a period of reflection, holding the question, How might God be speaking to you through that story?

The journey continues, yes? Di and I are entering a wholly new was of being - and travelling - and caring for one another. Our lives now are so wildly different from what they were even a year ago let alone 30+. Like those mystical mentors in the Grateful Dead insist: what a long, strange (and transformative) trip it's been. Thanks be to God.