A Theory of Limits

Why do I keep thinking I can finally get it all done?  Why do I imagine that I must finish the ever-lengthening to-do list before I can kick back and relax?

I continue to fool myself daily, thinking, “today is the day I will organize all my class notes into one notebook,” “today is the day I will finally get to act on the little orange sticky notes stuck all over the desk beside my computer.”

And try as I might, everything takes longer than I expect, new “to do’s” demand my more immediate attention, and responses to emails take twice as long as I expect…

I am not complaining, I am just marveling at how there are always more things that call for my attention than there is time to complete them. I need to figure out how to cope with those things—important things—that need to be completed but must wait for another day.  I am definitely not good at living with unfinished business.

I am hoping that a part of this is just the first year in a new position: first preps for all my classes, curriculum surprises that take time and energy to resolve, new routines and different schedules.

But the reality is that I can never complete all that needs to be completed—not just at work, but in my life.  I cannot spend as much time with family as they need and I want to.  I nurture friendships as intensely as I wish.  I cannot write all the articles and stories that are in my heart and soul.  I cannot really teach my students everything that I feel they need to know.

Still, I give what I can and finish what is possible to finish.  The problem is not so much that I cannot finish it all (no one can) but that I do not let myself be satisfied that I have given what I can.  Parker Palmer calls it “the theory of limits”:

There is as much guidance in what does not and cannot happen in my life as in what does.

Dawn Markova writes about this, “…we burn out not by giving away too much, as most of us think, but by trying to give what we don’t possess.  In other words, our limitations as well as our gifts are great indicators of where and how we should be living our purpose.  None of us can do everything – the skill is in knowing how to capitalize on our strengths and allow our limitations to indicate what not to give.”

And so, this Friday afternoon, I am powering down my computer, despite the unfinished “stuff”.  I have given what I can today. Tomorrow will be another day.

A glimpse of spring in the dead of winter…

After 70 degree temperatures and warm breezes last Friday, Monday’s snow was a surprise.  At 6 am that morning, I had to open my front door to see if it really was snow on our walk, or just reflected light from the streetlight.

This week in my Pastoral Care and Counseling class we are discussing loss and grief.  I find a parallel between the grief process and that first warm day—a parallel with how we breathe a sigh of relief that winter is finally over with spring’s first warm day– only to be surprised with another snowfall (and another and another…)

Grief is like that.  It sits heavily on your chest, making it hard to breathe.  It colors the world in ugly grays and muddy browns.  It slows your movements like a heavy anchor attached at the waist.  Your eyes feel gritty and you never feel rested.  You feel like part of you has been ripped away and you are sure you will be permanently crippled—only half of who you once were.  Grief steals your energy, your joy, your ability to feel comfort, and leaves only a sharp ache of longing and emptiness that seems never to fill.

And then, there comes a brief pause in grief (sometimes after several months, sometimes more or less) when color seems to return to your world.  The anchor seems to be a manageable few pounds.  You remember a snippet of your life before loss and smile (instead of cry).  The hole left by what has been ripped away from you seems to be less a bottomless pit and more like a slowly filling well.  You breathe a sigh of relief that the worst of loss must be over.

Then grief returns and steals it all away.

Grief is like that—alternating moments of unbearable sorrow with moments of reprieve.  At first, healing comes in tiny slices of a day… moments when the sun seems to shine brightly, or when your step seems lighter, although not quite joyful.  But always, it seems, grief comes rushing back to reclaim you for its own.  You are certain that you will never again feel deep joy.

At 6 months post-loss and again at 12 months, the grief seems bent on destroying any progress you have made.  But if you pay attention to the healing  journey, you begin to notice that the occasions of hopeful moments come more frequently, and the gray fogginess of grief seems to obscure your path for fewer days at a time.  Little by little the lacerating stab of longing becomes more like an ugly bruise tender to the touch.

There is no timeline for grief and loss.  Like spring, the healing of grief comes early in some lives and very late in others.  Yet, the invincible healing force of life is always at work just below what seems lifeless.  Life and healing always prevails over all that would crush it—winter’s death grip or grief.  Always.

“Ah, yes. I see the resemblance…”

In this week’s Pastoral Care and Counseling class at Moravian Theological Seminary, we are considering family transitions . . . births, adoptions, pregnancy loss, the impact of parenthood on the marital relationship.  Researching articles for class, I came across a true story related by Jean Stevenson-Moessner in her Journal of Pastoral Theology article, “One Family, Under God, Indivisible” (2003). Stevenson-Moessner tells of a child born to an unmarried mother in a small Appalachian town where everyone knew everyone else and where the grapevine was the social technology of the time.

The boy (who would grow up to become a two-term governor of the state of Tennessee) was teased and bullied unmercifully by students in his school, called “bastard” and worse by neighborhood bullies.   He hid during recess to escape the ugly name-calling.  He tried to screen out the adults’ whispers as he and his mother went to town – their stares said they were trying to guess who his father could be.

The boy felt great shame, and could easily have become one of the sad headlines we see when children, rejected and judged and with little positive support from those around them, grow into angry, hopeless adults.  If it hadn’t been for the following experience. . .

When he was starting middle school, his mother and he started to attend a small Church.  It wasn’t much to look at – an old structure, back in the woods, no electricity and only kerosene lamps to light the small, plain sanctuary.  The preacher was an old man with a long beard, a weathered face, and a deep voice.  The boy liked to hear the preacher speak, but also was aware of the adult “looks” he and his mother received each Sunday.  To escape the embarrassment of stares, the boy would stay through the sermon, and then immediately rush out and wait for his mother down the road.

One Sunday, the boy stood to leave after the sermon, but found his way down the aisle to the door blocked by parishioners.  He looked frantically for a way to escape when he felt a hand on his shoulder.  Stevenson-Moessner continues:

“I looked around and I could see the face and the beard of the preacher.  I was scared to death because I was always afraid of being embarrassed in public.  He stared at me as though he was trying to guess what man in the community was my father.  After he looked at me carefully, he said, ‘Boy, you are a child of …’

He paused there.  I just froze.

‘Boy, you are a child of … God.  I see a striking resemblance.’ He swatted me on the bottom and said, ‘Go claim your inheritance.’

That was really the first day of my life.”

In that moment, the boy became part of a family.  The family of that Church, certainly.  But also a part of the family of God, a family which includes within its circle of relatedness every people, every religion, every ethnicity.  That journey from Other and Outsider to One Who Is Claimed By God was life changing.  The shame which had bred self-hatred was slowly blotted away through the Love that was incarnate in the old preacher and congregation.  And this young boy went on to touch thousands of other lives in a life of service spurred by adoption into the Family of God.

“Beloved, you are a child of God.  I see a striking resemblance.”

The preacher’s message is for you – and for me.  Today, let the old preacher’s message sink deep into your being.  Let it be incarnated in you so that it may be your message lived out with your clients, friends, strangers so that all may hear and know: “Beloved, you are a child of God.  I see a striking resemblance.”

Ashes to Ashes

Today is the first day of Lent.  Some of us will go around today with black smudges on our forehead.  If we are spending time in our counseling role today, what will clients perceive about us?  Is it appropriate to wear such a sign of our faith and practice?

Pastoral counselors perhaps have a bit more leeway with visible symbols of faith practice than counselors with a more secular practice.  Yet, one may wonder if the visible practice of one’s faith tradition is consonant with the inclusive, accepting stance of the ethical therapist?

What about wearing a cross or star of David or a head scarf?

A therapist is always a target of projections.  No matter what we wear or what we refrain from wearing, therapists working in anything beyond the brief therapy mode will need to be aware of transference and client projections.  And as with any kind of transference, client projections onto symbols of faith will need to be unpacked and brought to consciousness.

What is called for in such therapy is a therapist who is conscious of his/her own counter-transference and who can use that as a clue to the transference occurring in the therapy session.   Seen by Freud as a negative indication of the therapist’s need for further analysis, countertransference is actually a powerful therapist tool which can, indeed, indicate the need for further work on oneself, but which also can create in the therapist the internal emotional awareness of the client’s feelings and issues.  In this post-modern age, countertransference is a valued part of the therapist’s toolbox as long as it is consciously noted and used appropriately.

So ashes on Ash Wednesday, you ask?   I am reminded of the bumper sticker “Honk if you (fill in the blank) “ and how easy it is to forget you put this on your car when others honk at you. . . .   So be aware, if you participate in this faith practice, that the black smudge on your forehead will be noticed.  Be prepared to acknowledge it, if you sense the client looking at you differently, or if you are questioned.  This is not a time for proselytizing, but of calm, brief explanation that today is the first day of Lent and that you observe it by being aware of your mortality and the value of each day’s opportunities to serve the Holy One.  Then let it go.  If your client wants to talk about this, use your therapist sensibilities to determine if this is about him/her and a valid issue within his/her therapy, or if it is a distraction from other issues.

Everything within the therapy interaction is appropriate for consideration,  especially something visible.  So practice your faith tradition, but don’t impose it, and be aware of your client’s response.

The Wonder of Walking a Straight Line and Touching the Sky

Before you read further, stand up, stretch your arms toward the ceiling, put them down comfortably at your side, then close your eyes for 15 seconds (Yes, I mean it …I’ll wait …  :^)

A week ago, I would not have been able to do that.  As I reached for the ceiling, it would have begun to whirl around, and if I dared to close my eyes, I would have had to grab a chair or the desk to keep my balance.  I couldn’t roll over in bed without feeling like the room was spinning.  I was baffled by this vertigo that seemed to come and go over the past 2 years, and that was treated repeatedly and unsuccessfully by my docs as an ear infection.

But this week, I can walk a straight line, close my eyes without losing my balance, reach for the ceiling, and roll over in bed without symptoms.  The problem was tiny crystals in my inner ear that had somehow wedged their way out of where they were supposed to be and were causing havoc by being in the wrong place.  A 5 minute procedure called the Epley Maneuver put them back in place  (http://www.neuroanatomy.wisc.edu/selflearn/BPPV.htm).

As a result of this miraculously simple treatment, I am filled once again with gratitude to God who created our astonishingly complex bodies and gave us the intellect to discover what can restore us to health.

Wonder, awe, surprise, astonishment.  Such tiny miracles there are in each day.  Miracles like walking sure-footed without fear of falling.  Miracles like having eyes that see letters on a page and a brain that perceives meaning in the patterns of pixels.  Miracles like the calm that replaces anxiety when we breathe slowly and deeply, recognizing that with each breath we are breathing in the breath of God.

I am grateful today to walk sure-footed, to feel rooted and grounded, to feel certain of my steps.  How easy it is to take for granted such simple miracles.  A yoga teacher of mine, many years ago, suggested that we buy a strip of tiny colored adhesive dots—the kind you find at an office supply store that are no more than a quarter of an inch in diameter—and go around our houses putting a small dot here and there where we are likely to see it sometime during the day:  in the corner of the bathroom mirror…on the inside of the cabinet where we keep our morning coffee mugs…on the wood trim surrounding the door we use to get to the car…on the clock radio by our bed.  Whenever we notice one of our dots, we are to stop what we are doing and breathe slowly as we let ourselves become gratefully aware of our surroundings.

I haven’t done that in a long time, but today I will buy some dots.  I want to be more aware of the tiny miracles that I take for granted.  So when you see my little red dots…take a breath and be grateful!

Open my eyes,
O God,
to the marvels that surround me.
Show me the wonder
of each breath I take,
of my every
thought,
word
and movement.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
The Gentle Weapon

Having a Mind of Winter …

I’ve been intrigued this year with how easy it has been for me to cope with a tough winter.  Snowfall was substantial.  Ice covered everything for weeks after one storm.  It has been a season of record-breaking cold.  And I moved less than a year ago from Memphis, TN, where in early February the daffodils are blooming.  I thought I that by now I would be booking a flight to wherever there is sun and warmth.

Cabin fever? Yet another forecast for snow at the end of the week?  I have felt pretty equal to Mother Nature this year, and have seemed to float (or ski?) through the winter without a lot of angst.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not gloating.  I am looking forward to spring and to lilacs and daffodils and putting my hands in dirt to plant more flowers.  I just wonder where the struggle is?

As a native Pennsylvanian prior to moving to Memphis, I grew to hate winter.  Biting cold winds, shoveling snow until my arms ached, driving on ice-slick roads … winter seemed endless and certainly not welcome.  Yet, coming back to Pennsylvania, I have come to delight in the change of seasons – late August when it seems like someone flicked a switch to bring cool fall nights; late November when pungent woodsmoke tells me a neighbor has lit her fireplace; the quiet stillness of just-fallen snow; the brightness of a midnight when the full moon shines on our snow-covered yard.

It is probably the newness of this year’s experience of winter that triggers my delight rather than frustration.  Next year, I may complain and sigh as others do. But this year, as Wallace Stevens (a native of Reading, PA) writes in The Snow Man, I seem to have developed a “mind of winter”:

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Changing the World

Hosni Mubarak.  The Muslim Brotherhood.  Tahrir Square.   Anti-government protesters.

Names, groups, and places that once were far away and almost out of our awareness have become the central focus of our attention over the past two weeks.  A country’s people have gone from seeming hopelessness to hope that even in a military dictatorship people can make a difference.  As I write this, it is rumored that Mubarak will step down, fulfilling one goal of the protests.  It is still to be seen if the military has instituted a coup, replacing one dictator with another and calling it progress.

Margaret Mead is alleged to have said, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. As an admitted optimist and idealist, I want to believe that is true.  I want to believe that the world as I sometimes see it and experience it with its inequality, mistrust, cruelty, and hatred of difference, does not have to remain that way.  I want to believe that the good work being done by so many can bring about change and transformation.  My faith teaches that it is through God’s grace that transformation happens, but that our efforts are part of bringing about the transformation.  We are to live as though God’s kingdom is among us/within us, for if we look with the eyes of faith, it is (at least “here and there”), and as we live “in the kingdom” we bring it about.  But still — it can seem to me, at times, that  evil in the world has an unfair advantage.

Perhaps that is why events like the protests and revolution in Egypt are so transfixing.  Something so unexpected that started from a simple honest post on Facebook has gathered supporters and people of like concerns, has survived police attacks, brutal government-supported gangs, and gunfire, and has resulted in nearly a million people gathered in Tahrir/Liberation Square and widespread worker strikes.  We watch or read the news and are amazed that such power truly seems to come from the grace-filled courage of individuals who would not back down . . . individuals who were willing to risk everything to tell truth to power.

Whatever your politics, honor the courage of those who live what they believe regardless of the cost.  It’s a Jesus thing:  Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets (Mt. 7:12).

We must be the change we wish to see, Gandhi said (and is what he lived by).   Amen, I say – so be it, truly.

Learning to Fall

A life-threatening diagnosis like ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), cancer, or any of a number of fearsome health challenges can bring forth the best of our humanity — or cause us to react with anger, bitterness, and resentment of healthy others.  Most often, it is a combination of the above.  As a breast cancer survivor, I’ve been there, and as a psychologist and pastoral counselor, I’ve companioned others as they traveled that path.

Facing the possibility of death or a drastic change in one’s life puts one at a crossroads where the choices are not just left or right, but also the possibility of creating a new direction to our lives – a path of greater awareness of the gift of a day.  Surprised by illness’s sudden entrance into our lives, we are often stripped down to the essentials of what is really important, whom we really love, and how we can live so as to make each day meaningful – because we know, now, that our days are numbered.

Lest you think I’m waxing melodramatic, I’m not . . . well, maybe I am.  The reason is that I’ve just seen a powerful music video that moved me to tears.  I stumbled across it on the NY Times website during my Saturday morning laptop ramble.

Although I had not heard of him before, Eric Lowen and his sidekick, Dan Navarro have been a musical item as a singer/songwriter duo for 20 years.  Lowen was diagnosed with ALS in 2004. Lowen wrote the song Learning to Fall, inspired by his experience with ALS (and a book by Phil Simmons Learning to Fall: The Blessing of an Imperfect Life).

Some of Lowen’s lyrics:

I was young and knew nothing, now somehow I know even less . . .
Forgive my foolishness.
It’s so simple now, I’m sure what I like, who I love and who I’m gonna fight . . .
As long as there’s time on my hands . . .
I’ve had to run, I’ve had to crawl, be rich as a king, had nothing at all.
Still raising hell, tearing down walls, I know where I stand, I’m learning to fall.
It’s beautiful how new blessings unfold in ways
I could never have known,
I’ve still got some time on my hands …

Lowen recorded the song in 2008 (available on iTunes) with a group of ALS patients and families.  The lyrics are sung with deep feelings — children and adults, some in wheelchairs, some standing, swaying to the music.   ALS is a disease that inexorably steals every shred of dignity and independence we take for granted and leaves its victims unable to move, speak, or swallow.  Yet, Lowen, who admits to facing “a scary prospect,” observes that life with ALS “is pretty much like regular life, just amplified.”

And that is the “gift” of illness that so many people remark on as part of the package of challenge and loss that life-threatening illness brings: the “gift” of a clearer vision of what is important, keener recognition of everyday miracles, an amped up sense of gratitude for love and friendship, and an appreciation of the thinness of the veil that separates this world from the next.

In the midst of my fight with cancer, I found myself drawn again and again (still do) to the psalmist’s words, “So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Ps. 90:12).  Lowen’s lyrics reminded me once again, and I am grateful.

In the Bleak Midwinter, It’s a TIME Thing!

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

(Christina Rosetti)

As I write this, the NOAA website forecasts yet another storm to hit the Northeastern U.S. three days from now.  In this first winter back north, I have delighted (yes, really) in the snowy beauty of winter.  I’ve been relieved to find that I still know how to drive in snow and can even make my way through slippery slush.  It takes patience on my part (always a lesson I must relearn) and planning ahead so I am sure to leave with a sizeable cushion of time to get to where I need to go.  It’s a “time thing” I need to pay attention to.

The “time thing” is a challenge to me right now. As a new professor with first-preps for all my classes and administrative tasks (a colleague calls it “administrivia”) to complete. I want to finish the thing I am working on before leaving for another task or appointment.  Too often, I work past the deadline to leave and arrive safely at my destination.

The “time thing” challenges me (and probably you) in more than one area of life.   There is simply not enough precious time to finish it “all,” whether “all” is those tasks we have as part of our employment, or those things we want to do with good friends and family, or those things we need to do to keep ourselves healthy (oops—I need to schedule a dentist appointment . . . ), or those things we ought to do to help those less fortunate . . . the list goes on.  It’s a “time thing,” and there is never enough.

There is no irony lost on me when I urge my students (and clients) to take time for self-care.  Without it, I know that none of us can be whole and centered and grounded enough to be of any help to others.  Learning to use the “time thing” wisely is what allows us to be present in the moment with each other — not mentally chasing the “to do” list in our minds as our clients open their lives and hearts to us.

The last stanza of Christina Rosetti’s poem is “What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.”  As  I write this blogpost today, I will give Him time.  So easy to forget — it is self-care and renewal to give time to God, to meditate for 20 minutes, to write in my prayer journal, to pray.  And I trust that when I return to whatever tasks still await, I will be more centered and cognizant of the Presence beside me loving me and promising, “I am with you always, even to the end of Time.”

Praying Without Words, Praying for Sanity

Prayer

(Mary Oliver)

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

I’ve mentioned before in this blog how very powerful poetry is for me.  You might call me a Mary Oliver groupie.  If you haven’t read Mary Oliver before, you must Google her and read some of the wisdom she shares with us through her words.  One of my favorites is The Journey.  Another is The Wild Geese.  I recently found the poem above:  Prayer.

Oliver is a muse for me.  She opens my eyes to see the wonders of the world in a new way.  She speaks of animals and insects and marshes and her eccentric dog in ways that make me see my world differently as I walk through my days.  Oliver sees God in every blade of grass and every grasshopper and owl – and yet she rarely mentions God by name.  The reader just knows through the wonder of her words that she is speaking of the numinous and the Sacred.

Prayer.  It doesn’t have to be something beautiful that makes us notice God’s creation and Presence.  It can be something we usually pass by.  Something pedestrian, common.  But if we are mindful, if we pay attention, most anything will grab us and speak to us of the blessings of being alive in this wondrous world.  And when we see in such small and unimportant parts of creation the work of the Holy One, we need only open the door of our heart to let our gratitude flow – in simple words or in simple silence.  And in the silence, we may be touched by the Holy.

When you read this, it will be two weeks since the tragic violence in Tucson.  The horror will be fading (except for those directly touched by the evil).  I hope all of us will have been changed by the events at that day in a way that will move us toward paying attention to the simplest, most ordinary of things and being grateful for this day of life.  Yes, that is very Pollyanna.  But I also think that hoping for and believing in the possibility of such miracles of attention and gratitude is one way I can pray that this world that can seem so crass and ugly and violent and evil, yet can be moved towards acknowledgement of the miracle of life and Creation and of our connection and kinship with each other.