onehouse

Lent 4: Leap

A one ton boulder

falls from the mountain

and lands on the highway

near Horseshoe Bay.

For no reason.

It was its day to fall-

to take the plunge

and land with a crash

disturbing the sleep

of highway workers and

police officers and the 

dreaming state of drivers

who slammed on their 

brakes with an "Oh shit!"

and then, "Jesus..."

No seismic activity 

to shift rock from

cliff to ground

like so many pounds 

lost in the shimmy and sweat 

of a morning jog.

Just a leap

and a new place to land.

Lent 3: Repost: Obsession

From March 2006, so long time coming.

To be too conscious is an illness. A real thorough going illness.
-Dostoevsky

You can't heal your own sick mind with your own sick mind.
- Anne Lamott

I was joking with a friend last night about giving up God for Lent this year. Sort of joking. There are times when I just let go of all my little rituals to make sure that there is still a river beneath me and I am not in a leaky boat of my own making. I used to try really hard at religion and life and work, nearly squeezing the life's blood out of my own self and, in turn, those around me. I have seen in myself and in others that what we so quickly describe as meaning and passion can turn out to be obsession and sickness.

Detachment cures much of this. Not apathy. Not lack of care. But healthy detachment even to those things we think are good or we swear are bringing us so much joy and happiness. I am reminded of Cynthia's Bourgeault's reflection on the Psalms:

How does one become perfect (which in the language of Christ's time meant whole, truly and fully alive)? Not by theologies or theories, but by an actual spiritual practice that teaches you "how to get from here to there." This is the missing link people are really hungering for, and it's the wisdom the Benedictine tradition still has to offer. Embedded in the time-honored Benedictine motto of Ora et Labora--"prayer and work"--is a balanced path to conscious selfhood...

A conscious selfhood that is whole, true and fully alive. When I am overly conscious and overly conscientious (especially about my place in the world "Is this about me? No. Well then I've lost interest." Seinfeld) I become fragmented, false, and sick. So sometimes it is good just to give up for a little while, float along and enjoy the view. If God disappears because my tiny little mind stopped paying attention, well, it would be good to face that now rather than later.

let all go-the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things-let all go
dear
       so comes love

ee cummings

Lent 2: Fear Not.

And so Lent seems as good a time as any to talk about losing my religion. I won't be going into great detail here as some is just for me and some is just for a few good friends. I lost my attachment to North American evangelicalism long ago but this next step is a little farther away from many of the things I grew up with and now have grown out of. Of course, you risk people calling you names which is curious to me. Why should leaving something be personally offensive to folks? I am not sure. It seems like so many have decided that this about their personal identity that if someone leaves certain things behind they decide to take personal offense. It becomes incredibly insulting to them as if their whole life and their whole choices are under indictment rather than someone saying, "I have chosen these ways over here and I wish you well with your life over there." 

My friends and I often talk about how we feel so much better about what we have left. We watch the "oh you are leaving this and this is all-of-the-world" sorrow in some folk's eyes but we feel that sorrow in reverse. You should see this big wide world that is beyond the eye of the needle. Enjoy. Explore. Fear not. 

2009: Ashes to Alvin

I read this article every Ash Wednesday.

Ashes to Alvin by Anne Lamott

My father's ashes have poured through my fingers like sand. So have my friend Pammy's. I poured their ashes off sailboats out on San Francisco Bay. I poured my father's into the water near Angel Island, late at night, but I was very drunk. And I tossed a handful of Pammy's into the water way out past the Golden Gate Bridge during the day, with her husband and family, when I had been sober several years. And the second time I was able to see, because it was daytime and I was sober, the deeply contradictory nature of ashes, that they are both so heavy and so light.

They're impossible to let go of entirely. They stick to things, to your fingers, your sweater. I licked my friend's ashes off my hand, to taste them, to taste her, to taste what was left after all that was clean and alive had been consumed, burnt away. They tasted metallic, and they blew every which way. We tried to strew them off the side of a boat, romantically, with seals barking from the rocks on shore, under a true blue sky, but they would not cooperate. They rarely will. It's frustrating if you are hoping to have a happy ending, or at least a little closure, a movie moment when you toss them into the air and they flutter and disperse. But they don't. They cling, they haunt. They get in your hair, in your eyes, in your clothes.

Giving up distraction.

One of the problems with giving up distraction for lent is that the focus suddenly turns to things that you may have forgotten or ignored for a while. I think this is why we enjoy being distracted by foolish arguments and what we think are noble causes. Stillness disturbs people and I am convinced that this is why it receives the occasional  eyeball roll from those who don't understand it and think it's all about staring at trees and singing kum bah yah.

Stillness is a part of the winding pathway to peace of all kinds, yes even world peace for let it begin with me. It has no numbers associated with it - time spent, column yes and no prayer requests, religious texts memorized and put into proper chapter and verse. It's hard to know what to do  when that stillness becomes a knowing - turning the bits of inner soil more than all the years of running your little arse off to attend to  another good thing.

So Lent finds me a bit disturbed, a bit grumpy as I notice these things that were once buried beneath what I thought were good things.  But I keep reminding myself that I making my way towards and away from things. I'm still grumpy but a few squares of dark chocolate and a rousing chorus of kum bah yah might help with that...

Something for Lent

I decided to give up distraction for Lent which is both a moving away from and moving toward, detachment and paying attention. Distraction comes in many forms. Simplistically, I might think anything that is relaxing, humorous, or entertaining belongs in the distraction column but this isn't necessarily the case and one person's distraction might be another's entry point to deeper understanding.

But there is a point where I recognize that things have become trivia - angry voices bolding out texts to prove points and the rattling off of statistics of all kinds - pop, sports, religion. There are so many yucky lucky charms that are supposed to be taken as wisdom and are really just sugared distraction disguised as engagement.

I've watched a few of these creep into my mind in the last year and they are joy busters - things that spoil what could be a more attentive life and they usually come from foolish people who either think they will save the world with their narrowness or just fill space with the bland meanderings in music, thought, or art.  So for these forty days, I will try to dismiss some of them and see what else comes to the fore.

Ash Wednesday

It's hard to believe that it is Ash Wednesday again. Last year I was in Dubai.  And each year, at Onehouse, that means it is time for Ashes to Alvin by Anne Lamott.

And an intro to Lent post that I usually read on this day.

Into the Desert for Lent

Pray-as-you-go is always a good resource for Holy Week especially for those of us outside of a formal community.

And Monastic Musings  hosted a series of blog posts called Into the Desert for Lent this year. I missed a lot of it but I'm going to tuck it away here for next year. I especially enjoyed Friday's entry:

I Am in Trouble (Into the Desert for Lent)                     

A brother came to a very experienced old man and said to him, "I am in trouble."

I experience relief just reading the first line of this very short saying. At this time in the semester, I often have more work to do than there are hours in the day. Much of it is work that is due to other people: students' papers, letters of recommendation, reports or minutes to draft and distribute.

I am not alone. I said to a colleague, "It seems as though I work hard all day, but I am more behind when I go home than I was when I arrived." He said, "You just described my life."

But we put a brave face on it, try to look competent and productive, with a confident demeanor. The anxious "how will it ever get done?" goes unsaid, even if many here feel it.

What a relief to hear someone say, simply, "I am in trouble." The young brother has examined his heart, and knows the ills. He has sought out an abba with great experience in discernment.

I expect the elder to ask questions, uncover the nature of the trouble, propose solutions. In modern terms, I expect him to do problem-solving. His response surprises me.

The old man asks no questions. The exact nature of the trouble does not seem to matter much. If I think about my recurring bouts of overload, the details differ but the dynamic is much the same. Perhaps the old man has learned his - he is very experienced.

The old man said to him, "Sit in your cell and God will give you peace."

What? A person is in trouble - with thoughts of sin, perhaps with actual deeds - and this is the answer? The story records nothing more; its inclusion in the wisdom of the desert is evidence that the answer was recognized as true and insightful.

The reason is twofold, I think. First, the old man is not simply telling him to take a break. He sends him home, to a place of prayer and of orderly life. In his cell, the young monk will feel the call to prayer, to manual labor, to the daily horarium, to simplicity. Whatever the trouble, when he is in his cell, the elements that are not part of his primary desire, to seek God, will become apparent to him. The practices of the monastic life will recall him to the essence of his identity, help him to be more of his best self. Sitting in his cell is active and healing, not merely restful.

Second, he sees God as the source of change and help. God could give him peace by preparing his heart for reconciliation where a relationship is broken, or to amend a fault, or change a behavior. Peace may come through confessing sins, or doing penance. Peace may come through prayer. In the cell, with heart open to God, he is receptive and ready to listen for God's call on his life. Peace will not come because he solved the problem. Peace will come because he has become attentive and obedient to God's will in his life.

Obsession

To be too conscious is an illness. A real thorough going illness.
-Dostoevsky

You can't heal your own sick mind with your own sick mind.
- Anne Lamott

I was joking with a friend last night about giving up God for Lent this year. Sort of joking. There are times when I just let go of all my little rituals to make sure that there is still a river beneath me and I am not in a leaky boat of my own making. I used to try really hard at religion and life and work, nearly squeezing the life's blood out of my own self and, in turn, those around me. I have seen in myself and in others that what we so quickly describe as meaning and passion can turn out to be obsession and sickness.

Detachment cures much of this. Not apathy. Not lack of care. But healthy detachment even to those things we think are good or we swear are bringing us so much joy and happiness. I am reminded of Cynthia's Bourgeault's reflection on the Psalms:

How does one become perfect (which in the language of Christ's time meant whole, truly and fully alive)? Not by theologies or theories, but by an actual spiritual practice that teaches you "how to get from here to there." This is the missing link people are really hungering for, and it's the wisdom the Benedictine tradition still has to offer. Embedded in the time-honored Benedictine motto of Ora et Labora--"prayer and work"--is a balanced path to conscious selfhood...

A conscious selfhood that is whole, true and fully alive. When I am overly conscious and overly conscientious (especially about my place in the world "Is this about me? No. Well then I've lost interest." Seinfeld) I become fragmented, false, and sick. So sometimes it is good just to give up for a little while, float along and enjoy the view. If God disappears because my tiny little mind stopped paying attention, well, it would be good to face that now rather than later.

let all go-the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things-let all go
dear
       so comes love

ee cummings

Gold dust/Ash Wednesday 2007

I usually post something for Lent and always refer folks to Lamott's Ashes to Alvin on Ash Wednesday.This year I was at the Gold Souk (market) on Ash Wednesday. I kept looking at window after window filled with gold and thinking "Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.".