“Go, now, your sins are forgiven. Which is harder to say? Your body is healed or your soul is healed? You have forgiven yourself in the same measure that you have forgiven others. Forgive yourself as We forgive you. Forgive, and Live.” (Paraphrased from The Wise One)
The following are in part, at this time, some of my fledgling reflections on some of the seminal and profound ideas in that great chestnut by M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled.
*
I shall decide that today is a miracle,
“Today is a miracle”.
I shall imbibe of the salty and sweet,
and watch the small miracle of my carefully placed feet.
And when I feel faint or uncertain in knowing,
I shall not retreat from the knowledge that’s growing,
that every small moment that I have of living,
is a strange unknown mercy, not earned, simply given.
*
And we fear all the things that we don’t understand,
but, in truth, even as rational thought does expand,
we are ever more fearful, and anxious, and fetal.
While religions have certainly quite often been evil,
we might miss the deep truths of our innate and primeval,
amazing, inscrutable sense of the ineffable,
by ignoring the fact that true faith is accessible,
by simply and humbly accepting right now,
that we are still living — and we do not know how.
*
Oh, I shall with skeptical prodding, intact,
be carefully aware, we don’t know all the facts.
But how else to explain my survival today,
when all history and science point quite different ways?
One must say, “It’s a mystery.” And then one must face,
that the answer is simple: It’s a matter of grace.
*
Today I shall decide that I am a miracle.
This moment — a miracle.
My eyes — a miracle.
My breath — a miracle.
My fingers — a miracle.
My thought — a miracle.
My feeling — a miracle.
My health — a miracle.
My family — a miracle.
That bird — a miracle.
That pond — a miracle.
The sky — a miracle.
A dandelion is a stunning miracle.
You and Them — miracles…….
Oh, there are not enough pages or scientific journals or theological tomes in the whole of the world’s history! — to hold all the miracles of grace, in just this moment!
*
Dear Nameless, Unknowable, Miraculous, Gracious Giver of All Life:
Help me to keep this holy but foolish vow:
This day, I will step into the miracle that I am alive.
And no matter what may befall me or my world or the planet today,
may I count not the things that have been lost,
but the pearl of great price I have found.
If I lose my eyes, may I be grateful for my heart still beating.
If my heart stops beating,
may the memories of my heart of love still live in others.
If I lose all that is dearest to me — my loved ones — my ability to think — my shelter —
may I even in utter despair,
believe that Eternity exists because Love never dies,
and may I trust that when all facts seem to point to hell on earth,
there is a heaven, most real, to be found in the Mystery of Grace.
May I embrace an inexplicable joy in my journey today,
and tonight, lie down in perfect peace, knowing that
fear and even death, have no power
against the Eternal Power of Grace and Love.
Oh, I bless the time in which I was born,
and I stand in wonder that all the factors of my existence,
and that the science and religion and books and other people
have all given me just enough knowledge,
to burn my fingers and my wings,
but not enough fire to blind me, or kill me.
Oh yes, like the primordial, cosmic, foolish, and absolutely brilliant being that I am,
I shall keep rubbing together the two little sticks I have been given.
I shall keep making my small little fire of miraculous light and life.
And I shall keep burning within me,
the friction caused between knowledge and faith.
And with the miracle of the scientific fact that nothing is ever destroyed,
and with the scientific fact that my very existence and life today
is an unexplained miracle of grace,
I will rejoice that in this moment, I miraculously live forever.
I: I’m trying harder to catch what You are saying.
One: You aren’t really trying hard enough. You keep letting the flotsam and jetsam of this world, of your emotions and of your limiting of Time, clog the flow of the Stream. You say you want to hear Me but you are afraid, and so you put up blocks, and fill your ears with anesthetizing ear buds, and put blinders around the eyes of your Soul. You allow all of your scars and fears to interrupt the airwaves of Our communication to the deepest, truest you. And so, your mind is consumed with chatter and not communication. You let your mind keep talking. Just listen. Just try, for even just a moment, to listen.
*
I: No one loves me. Not even him. Not even her.Not all those whom I have done this and that and the other for. No one.
One: All love is fractured and fragmented, and comes to you in broken pieces, just as your love has been felt as incomplete shards in their hearts. Only We put all the pieces together, but you can not see the Whole now. What you must do is stop considering love piecemeal — “here today, gone tomorrow”… “he loves me for this but not for that”….. “she doesn’t really love me”… and so forth and so on. Love will never feel whole until you see that Love is not a reality from one individual or group or accomplishment, but all Love is from Us and Ours, through others, through you, through time and space and hands and feet and hugs and smiles. And while Love is seemingly imprisoned by the powerful frailty of words and actions, true Love is always free and freeing and if you let yourself love and be loved, Our Eternal Love will give you the freedom to see the reality of Our Universal Love in every little broken heart and mismanaged and awkward event and in every piecemeal, incomplete, unsatisfying and yet, truly noble action of love that humans try to share with other humans in their quest and desire to love and be loved. You will know you are loved. In him. In her. Yes, even in them. And then you will know how to love even that most difficult of all beings to love — yourself.
*
I: How can I feel and believe You love me, when I am not even sure that You exist? Are you real? Or are You All something each person creates out of the need of psyche and the crutches and clutches of culture?
One: You have done well to study and search, little child. You have done well to open your mind and heart to follow after Truth, wherever it may appear. You are braver than you once were. You have overcome much and fought a good fight against your weaker selves. But at the very center of your being is still the greatest foe of all — Fear. Please, remember you are and always will be just a little child in the ways of Truth and Reality. Because you are so small, We can not be all to you that Parents are to Each Other. You have much still to learn, that is true, but some times you need to put away your books and groups and meetings and even your very thoughts, and you will be assured that We Are and We Have Always Been and We Will Always Be… And there is nothing that can separate you from Us…… if you will simply…..
Getting older has a lot of downsides but on the plus side, when you know people already assume certain things about you because of the color of your hair or the texture of your skin, you don’t mind as much as you did when you were young if they think you are crazy or weird if you speak your mind. Yesterday, I had a medical test — another one (ugh) and I looked at the very efficient and young technician and when we were finished, I looked her in the eye and smiled my crooked old-lady-toothed smile and said “Enjoy every minute of your life. It goes by faster than you think it will.” When you are older you get more medical tests and that’s a bummer because you realize your health is going, going, and will sooner rather than later be gone, and especially if you are a woman and an old woman at that, you realize the medical profession prefers to think it’s all in your head or that removing the pain is the answer because there aren’t really any answers that will “cure you” of an old body breaking down and letting go, but on the plus side, you have a lot more empathy for people who come into this world with two strikes against them healthwise, or who live a lifetime in this prejudicial world, and prejudice-wise have always had to deal with people judging them on how they look or don’t look and you feel a new sense of love for humanity and you hope that kind of not getting anything in return kind of love translates into a new sense of love for yourself — for others AND for little old you. Because empathy just might be the one thing that when translated into truthful, take no prisoners, absolute, crazy Love can change even an old heart and body and mind and soul. Sometimes when people see you as an old lady somewhere like a doctor’s office or a grocery store or your workplace or even your own home with friends and family, you want to say, “you don’t really see me. The real me is not this old shell.”
And maybe that’s just another lesson to learn, that if I am very, very quiet and patient, and open the ears of my heart and eyes of my understanding, then I might see the real you, the real him, the real her, the real them and when I really see them, well, then all I can do is love. Because the only thing in the universe that is worth seeing and holding on to is the Truth of Love. I choose to hope that Love is the one thing that might remain forever. Love never seems to have grown old for me, and I think that is because in whatever this real world might be or become, Love never grows old.
I posted this famous quote by Fred (Mr.) Rogers today, and then a friend texted me back those questions and concerns that go raging through many of our heads and hearts in this day and age. I thought my own thoughts might be of use to some of my blogging friends who are some of the “unseen, unsung” helpers in my own life. Thank you to all of you who keep trying to help others in these times. I hope you can each believe that you make a difference in the world — after all, isn’t that really why we write?
Dear ________________,
I am beginning slowly and painfully to discover a few things:
1. Although I continue to believe as D.L.Moody said that one should have a Bible in one hand and a (valid) newspaper in the other, there is much more opportunity today to endlessly be sucked into “news” and what is ultimately the “junk food” of our times, than to be sucked into spiritually enlightening “food”. There is always bad “news” but I don’t have to believe that it is more powerful or ultimately more true-Truth, than something beyond anyone or any nation or any time and place, whatever people may call the “Other Reality” and what I think of as true Truth and God’s redeeming love for our planet and His children. It helps to say to myself what a friend said wisely to me yesterday, “If it is something that is out of your hands, don’t let it take up too much space in your head.” Hard for me but helpful. This friend is always one of my own “helpers” not just for me but quietly in the world. At the same time, I want to believe that if I do a small unsung kindness here and someone else in the world is doing an unknown kindness over there, then all the little truly unselfish kind things that all the little people do as “helpers” will always tip the scales in the world towards Martin Luther King’s “arc of justice” and towards the mustard seed of faith and the mighty waves created by the power of truly loving hearts. And —
2. Sometimes my being the sort of person who is always trying to help others is more about me than it is about them. There is a difference between being ready and alert to help a need that appears than what we often do which is to look for ways to “fix” people or ways to disguise what the human hubris always is in part, a way to assuage our own ego needs. One struggles with comparing one’s “intelligence” or “compassion” with what one assumes is another’s lack of these things, and so the big beam grows in one’s eye. And conversely, I often neglect loving myself enough to be a helper to myself (Psychology 101 is still a distant achievement for me — LOL)
Anyway, a couple great books to recommend that were recommended to me by some of my “helpers” in the world doing good for others in quiet, unsung ways, “The Wild Edge of Grief” by Francis Weller (helps with grieving for what is happening in the world and on our planet as well as personal griefs). And the other is the Powers trilogy by Walter Wink, which helps put what is really happening in the world in a Judeo-Christian but rather radical context which is both empowering and mind-blowing.
Love you. Thank you for your kind sweet words. I hope to get to your neck of the woods this fall and actually see you, dear friend.
And so Blogger-Pals, carry your weight today because the only way out is through, but also look up, see the sun or lovely clouds that bring rain or the stars that are out in your own “neck of the woods” and know that our grief makes us human and compassionate and better able to be “helpers” in the world; but our love for ourselves and others and the place in which we live, and the planet which I sure do hope we can help survive — all the love in the world, whether they are tiny drops of water like mine, or big rolling waves like Mr. Rogers’, or Martin Luther Kings’, or Jesus’, or Buddha’s, or… ______________(insert the name that comes to your mind in the blank) — all the helpers are here. May you seek and find them today and then go out and do likewise,
