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Maintaining your Resolve!

1/7/2023

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Every time I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until it passes.

Mark Twain


​New Years!  The Times Square ball, confetti, Guy Lombardo (for people of my vintage) and… New Year’s resolutions!

Most of us make some kind of resolution for the New Year. It’s a good opportunity for a fresh start. Change isn’t easy, though, and lapsed New Year’s resolutions are certainly part of the common lore of our culture.

There is no lack of advice out there about how best to manage the resolutions we set for the year to come. Set clear goals (I prefer the word, “intentions,” by the way). Write them down. Check in regularly about how you’re doing. Enlist the caring and support of somebody else.

These are perfectly fine ideas that I’m sure you have heard before. I want to share with you, though, three ideas that get less press, that arise from some combination of empirical literature and my own experience working with people for a long time. 

1. Remember why you want to be different.

I concluded long ago that for most people, “health” and even longevity don’t really have much inherent value. The status of our health and the length of our years are important, though, insofar as they allow us to live our lives in ways that matter to us. 

Psychologist David Waters at the University of Virginia differentiates “health goals” and “life goals.” “Health goals” are the choices and lifestyle behaviors that people can pursue to address their most important health issues.  Exercising, stopping smoking, developing a good nutritional plan.  “Life goals” touch on the things that are most important to people in their lives… the things that they care about the most.  Being a better teacher, coaching young people, being able to work in stained glass.

Waters argues that it is important for all of us (and our health care practitioners) to recognize the way that life goals energize health goals. The formula is “What is really important in my life is ________; therefore, my health goals are ________.”

Before I wrapped up my practice in 2015, I worked with a woman who had smoked for many years and had recently become involved in Buddhist tradition and practice. She said, 

“Health” is not enough to motivate me to stop smoking. My reasons for stopping need to be more important than my reasons to smoke.  I have taken a vow to work toward enlightenment, for me, and to help other people toward enlightenment.  Smoking obstructs the inner channels where the chakras are… if I am serious about enlightenment, I have to quit.

You may not think much about enlightenment or inner chakra channels, but you get the idea. Changes in health practices (or any personal changes, really) need to be grounded in life values. Loving your partner. Caring for a needy family member or friend. Being an agent of disseminating kindness or compassion into the world. Working on behalf of causes that matter to you… environmental awareness, musical appreciation and creativity, social justice, or limitless others. 

Remembering life values energizes personal changes.

2. Recognize the larger context.

How you’re doing overall either facilitates or inhibits personal changes.

A 2020 study from the University of British Columbia explored the relationship between purpose in life (yes, there are reliable and valid measures of this) and health behaviors in almost 14,000 people over a span of eight years. Researchers found that subjects with higher levels of purpose in life were significantly less likely to become physically inactive, to develop sleep problems, to develop unfavorable body-mass indexes, and modestly less likely to relapse in smoking cessation over the study period. 

Those are some data about purpose, but I’d expect to see similar effects from any number of other global qualities… finding more joy in your life, or laughter, or social connections, or creative expression… apart from whatever you do to cultivate specific personal changes.

3. Be gentle with yourself with the ups and downs along the road

The journey does have its ups and downs, doesn’t it? Some days, like Mark Twain, you won’t exercise. Some days you’ll go for the mega sirloin in the restaurant rather than the Cobb salad. Sometimes, you will let emotions get the better of you and be unkind, rather than being an agent of forbearance and understanding.

Setbacks (the psychological literature calls these “relapses”) are common expressions of our humanity. In whatever way you may slide in a backwards direction, people have been there before. Having setbacks really isn’t an issue; the issue is how you deal with setbacks.

One of the exciting developments in the behavioral health world in the last few years is the emergence of research and practice in the arena of self-compassion. Arising mainly from work by psychologists Kristen Neff (UT, Austin) and Christopher Germer (Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance), self-compassion takes aim at our cultural tendency toward self-denigration when we don’t find ourselves behaving or managing our lives as we think we should.

Being gentle and compassionate with oneself has two benefits. First, it attenuates the health and emotional costs of unforgiveness, bitterness, and self-judgment. Second, self-compassion gives us the emotional space to be able to choose how we are going to react to setbacks.  In our relationships with ourselves, just like our relationships with others, you forgive so that you can live your life.

Setbacks are unpleasant, of course, but they are also marvelous opportunities to step back and explore the conditions that prompted them. When you experience a setback with any personal change, what were the social circumstances that may have been involved?  What internal experiences… thoughts, feelings, and images… may have been involved?  How might you address these challenges better going forward? 

So… as you find yourself teetering backwards with some personal change, think about what someone who knows you well and deeply loves you would say to you.  Can you find it in your heart to treat yourself the same way?

There are many other lines of research and empirically based practice that bear on such things, notably work on gratitude, mindfulness, and on the larger picture of forgiveness.  Stories for another day! For now, I’ll welcome your thoughts and comments on these ideas.  

The quotation at the top, by the way, is a witty comment that has been attributed to a variety of people… Jimmy Durante, Edna Mae Oliver, Robert M. Hutchins, and Chauncey Depew among them. I imagine that they all probably said it at some point, with the original source being long lost. It is most frequently attributed to Mark Twain (who is likely not to have said it himself; he died before the quote began making its rounds), so that’s the way I’ve left it.

Best wishes for a meaningful, peaceful, and joyful New Year!

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Prayer flags and distant intention

3/8/2021

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Earlier this week, I worked with a group of fellows from the integrative medicine program at the University of Arizona where I teach, making prayer flags.  (I’m the spirituality curriculum guy, and prayer flags fall in my domain!) The idea of prayer flags, as you know, is that they are endowed with energy, in the text or images, and that this energy is “carried on the wind” to bring goodness, well-being and wisdom to all people and all beings. 
 
The exercise for my integrative medicine friends was to bring words or images to blank prayer flags that would represent their “vision (and prayer) that is at the heart of what it means to be a doctor and support people in their journeys of healing.”  There were beautiful expressions of values such as kindness, presence, empowerment, vulnerability/authenticity, and love.
 
In creating prayer flags, or in any other way declaring an intention that is personally meaningful, we are making commitments to embody what we say.  If I create a flag that highlights kindness, I’m making a commitment that this is a value and quality that matters to me, and at the very least, I’m creating an imperative to be kind.
 
But it’s more than that.  The energy of prayer flags is “carried on the wind.”  Setting an intention brings the very real possibility of touching other people directly, at a distance, apart from whatever may be the influence of my own behavior. 
 
Everyday life has countless examples of this “distant intention” that most of us can relate to.  Dogs know when their owners are coming home, right? We’ve certainly seen tis with our dogs, when my wife or I will be driving home from somewhere and our dog will come awake and go to the front door while the car is still much too far away to see or hear.  Or with your phone.  How many times have you had the experience of dialing the number of somebody you love, at a random time (I date myself with that phrase, of course) and find that they are calling you at precisely the same time?  Or crossing the country as we often do in our snowbird lives, my wife and I will sit quietly in the front seat for the better part of an hour and then one of us initiates a conversation that is just what the other person had been thinking about.  We are connected in ways that go far beyond what we might expect from our historic, materialistic world view.
 
There is abundant cultural/ethnographic evidence about distant intention or “nonlocal” connections.  Aboriginal communities apparently drew upon nonlocal connections just as a matter of course.  In his fascinating 2013 book, One Mind: How Our Individual Mind is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why it Matters, Larry Dossey points out that smoke signals in aboriginal communities didn’t send messages per se, but rather prompted distant community members to pause, sit down, and hold a posture of openness to messages that were being sent.  Dossey says that these nonlocal connections, by the way, are mediated by love.
 
There is also quite good modern empirical evidence for distant intention and nonlocal effects.  Laboratory studies consistency show, for instance, that Person A has the ability to influence various physiological functions in distant Person B to a statistically significant degree by holding an intention for that person.  Real-world, clinical studies are methodologically challenging and less conclusive, but what data there are about practices such as distant intercessory prayer suggest that there is enough possibility that something is really happening to warrant continuing exploration.
 
For those of you who are academically inclined, there is an excellent review of a number of meta-analyses by Dean Radin and colleagues in Global Advances in Health and Medicine (2015).  See 10.7453/gahmj.2015.012.suppl
 
So especially in the long isolation of the pandemic, you might consider the idea… the reality… that we are all connected in ways that transcend direct contact.  What would you put on a prayer flag about your “vision or prayer that is at the heart” of what it means to be who you are?  Who is there out there who you love, for whom you may hold an intention of love even at a great distance?  


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Further reflections on resilience in a time of COVID

7/1/2020

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A few weeks ago, I was invited by Diane Atwood to contribute a piece for her blog, Catching Health, as part of a collection of reflections about how people are making out in the time of COVID. Diane is probably best known for her years as the health reporter at WCSH 6, now NEWS CENTER Maine. She also managed marketing and public relations for Mercy Hospital before launching her blog, featuring health and wellness topics, in 2011. You’ll find her work at CatchingHealth.com and in newspapers and magazines throughout Maine.
 
Diane’s introduction:
 
A Challenging Time
 
For 37 years, until he retired in 2015, Dr. Fred Craigie was a full-time faculty member at the Maine-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency in Augusta. He is a clinical psychologist and taught behavioral health for residents and students and provided behavioral health care to a largely underserved primary care population. Currently, he is a Visiting Associate Professor at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine (AWCIM) at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

Dr. Craigie is passionate about the role that spirituality can play in everyone’s life, but particularly in health care. He teaches and writes extensively about “the healing and life-giving roles of spirituality in health and patient care, in the experience of health care providers, and in the life and culture of healthcare organizations.” You can learn more about his work on his blog Goodness of Heart.

I met Dr. Craigie in 2018 at the 32nd Annual Thomas Nevola MD Symposium on Spirituality and Health at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He was the symposium chair and invited me to be on a panel about the value of public discourse and the need for many voices. I also attended his presentation on The Inward Work of Civil Discourse, which was about “looking at our own thoughts, feelings and attitudes so we are emotionally and spiritually able to engage in respectful conversations with other people or, for that matter, to think and speak about people we are never likely to meet.”

Oh, my, couldn’t we all benefit from such a presentation at the current moment? I stayed connected with Dr. Craigie after the symposium because I signed up to receive his email reflections, which I look forward to every week. Here’s a recent one:

The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are moments when we touch one another, when we are there in the most attentive or caring way. This simple and profound intimacy is the love that we all long for.
​

Jack Kornfield

I think the work Dr. Craigie does matters a great deal and am grateful that he agreed to take the time to write about how he has been affected by the pandemic and the challenges it presents. He wrote this from his winter home in Tucson, Arizona where he and his wife are hunkered down until they believe it is safe for them to return to Maine.

Fred’s reflections:

Thanks to Diane for the invitation to contribute to this dialogue about how we make our ways through the pandemic. I am touched and inspired by the other postings.

For me, as for so many people, it has been a challenging and disheartening time. As I write this, there have been close to 300,000 deaths world-wide, over 80,000 of them in the United States. I grieve for the people who have been lost, and for their loved ones, who remain. My heart goes out to the 20 million people who have lost jobs here, many with a very uncertain future. As a semi-retired professional person, I’m making out fairly comfortably, but I worry for all of the people who don’t have the luxury of staying or working at home, and I worry that the pandemic seems destined to further strain the economic inequality that has been growing for many years. I am appalled by what I see as an unconscionable lack of accountability, integrity, and human compassion at the highest level of our government. 

None of this, of course, is within my control. 

I remember, however, the comment of American essayist Rebecca Solnit, speaking about activism, to the effect that even if you don’t profoundly change the world if you “embody what you aspire to… if you live according to your beliefs… you have already succeeded.”

It makes for an interesting exercise. What do I aspire to? What are the beliefs that I would hope to embody? If criticize somebody else for a lack of accountability, integrity, and compassion, how do I express these qualities?

In my teaching and writing, I talk a lot about what is “sacred” for people, and what it means “to live a good life.” What are my answers to such questions, in these extraordinary times?


I don’t have a single, over-arching response, but here are some things I’m doing to try to be faithful to the questions.

I love my wife. I wake up every day with the thought of what might being her joy, and I am blessed that I think she wakes up this way with the same thought for me. 

I do my best to be a grandparent at a distance. With the younger grandchildren, this means being silly together. With older ones, it’s more organized, as with 9-year-old Henry, with whom I am corresponding back and forth, writing a story together, The Great Blorb Revolution! It’s his title, his characters, and our combined narrative, evolving email-by-email.

I write letters to legislators and contribute to electoral campaigns of candidates who look to bring people together, rather than driving them apart. 

I jog. I’m not going to set any land speed records, but at my age, it’s less about split times than nurturing body and soul in one package.

I practice fiddle. Soldier’s Joy. Rights of Man. Moonlight on the Water. Maybe, with a dedicated chunk of practice time, I can take it to the next level. Or maybe not.

I keep up my semi-retirement work, finishing editing on my second book, due in the fall, and teaching online at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. I am learning to ZOOM.
 

I laugh.

I reach out to people in my life with whom I don’t have much regular contact, in a spirit of “How are you doing?” I am gifted that people reach out to me in this way, as well. 

I support local business.

I eat a little too much ice cream and not enough fruits and vegetables. My wife, however, reminds me that guilt probably harms one’s health more than the moderate indulgence of many of the things we feel guilty about.

I spend a little time on hobbies. Taking apart, cleaning and trying to reassemble an 1870s clock movement has to help prevent Alzheimer’s, right?

I read. At the moment, it’s Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile, the story of Winston Churchill’s forthright, uplifting moral leadership during the Battle of Britain.

I sometimes kick back and do nothing productive, and I remind myself that this is OK.

I practice gratefulness, looking for the small gifts and blessings, taking to heart the observation of my friend, Dr. Robert Emmons, that “In times of trial and tribulation, gratitude becomes our spiritual lifeline.”
​

There. That’s some of what I do. May you who are reading this be safe and well, and may we together come out of this with an even deeper appreciation for being, for each other, the people that we aspire to be.

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Spirituality, resilience and COVID

4/5/2020

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As usual, David Brooks’ column in the Times last week is well worth reading.  It is “Mental Health in the Age of the Coronavirus: The Struggle between Fear and Comfort.”  See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/opinion/mental-health-coronavirus.html.  He comments on both the heartening trend for a deeply partisan America to come together in acts of compassion and generosity, and the disturbing likelihood that social isolation breeds greater anger, substance abuse, and domestic violence.  He shares some thoughts about what I call “resilience,” and invites readers to send in descriptions of their own psychological health and what they do to support it.
 
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the privilege of doing some online teaching with upper-level undergraduates and graduate students about just this subject; mental health in the COVID era.  I’ve had some really rich dialogues with students about the challenges that they’re facing… health, isolation, educational and career disruptions… and how they have been addressing them. 
 
In the spirit of Brooks’ solicitation of ideas about psychological health (I’m too wordy to send in his form), I thought I’d describe some of my thoughts, informed in many cases by students’ wisdom, and grounded in my long-time particular interest in the confluence of spirituality, mental health and well-being.
​
 
  1. Remember who you are. 
 
It is absolutely normal to have a range of feelings in these hard times… anger, fear, sadness, boredom, agitation.  It’s important to recognize and face such feelings, as long as you don’t let them run the show.  Remember what really matters in your life:
 
  • Who are you?
  • What is sacred for you?  What do you cherish?
  • What kind of person do you aim to be?  What are the values and qualities that you’d want to be expressed in your life?
 
Practice living according to your values even if you have uncomfortable thoughts, feelings or emotions.  If you value kindness, be kind.  If you value compassion, be compassionate.  If you value creativity, be creative.  Even if you are emotionally uncomfortable, there is power and resilience in embodying what you believe.

    2. 
Find sacred space. 

Many people find peace and comfort in the natural world.  Here in Tucson in the first half of April, there is a stunning profusion of blooming flowers and sequentially-blossoming cactus, against the backdrop of majestic canyons and peaks.  Your landscape might be very different, but is there not something in your world that’s beautiful in its unique way… a city park, a neighbor’s garden, a tree leafing out in the spring?
 
Even indoors, you can create your own sacred space.  Set up a particular place with some personally-meaningful objects… a spiritual symbol, a picture of people you love, a card with brief words to remember… and pause there to affirm and experience the spirit that it fosters.

    3. 
Cultivate relationships. 

A number of the students commented that they had rekindled relationships with friends and family.  It is a Godsend of our point in history that we have so many platforms on which to interact with people, visually, in real time.  My experience, like that of the students, is that I have reached out to quite a few people in my life who are dear to me but with whom I don’t normally have much contact, and been gifted with many people reaching out to me in the same way.  One of my hopes for this crisis is that the steady state to which we will eventually come will witness greater depth and valuing of all of the relationships we have with people we love.

     4.  
Be grateful. 

Gratitude helps us to attune to the blessings and possibilities of life.  In easy times, gratefulness practices (like the now-iconic daily gratitude log) give us heightened vision to see the gifts that are all around.  In hard times, gratefulness helps to transform fear and despair with the energy of hope.  Even in hard times, what are the blessings and possibilities that are close at hand?  You are alive.  You are loved.  You have the ability to love, and the ability to make all manner of choices in how you are going to react to the circumstances that come to you.
 
As a so-far safe and comfortable person, I do need to say that I recognize the profound suffering of so many people in this crisis.  People who can’t avoid crowded living conditions.  Public servants, who are out there day after day.  Minority communities, such as some remote Navajo/Dine' people here in Arizona who lack the infrastructure to follow recommended health practices.  But the stories that I’ve heard from so many people who have suffered more than I affirm the idea that being able to see some light in the midst of darkness can be sustaining and liberating.

     5.  
And, follow spiritual practices that are meaningful for you. 
​
If you are part of a religious or spiritual community, stay involved.  Most spiritual communities that have regular gatherings for study or worship together seem to stream these activities online.  Maybe, in fact, there is a community out there that you have wanted to check out, and now have the opportunity to do so.
 
Engage calming practices.  Meditation, prayer, stillness… help to engender a peaceful spirit, help to focus on the present moment, and often bring us into relationship with God, or an over-arching Presence or Spirit.
 
Read and study.  Sacred literature in your tradition, or spiritually-uplifting material from authors you admire.  Our students consistently said that they had substantially reduced screen time and the compulsive checking on the ever-updated news cycle, in favor of spending time in more intentional ways.  What you focus on grows, right?
 
Walk a labyrinth.  As you may know, I have a particular interest in the labyrinth, which has been a resource and discipline for spiritual wisdom and growth for over 4000 years.  You can find labyrinths near you at www.labyrinthlocator.com.   They are widely available, but typically not so busy that you won’t be able to maintain appropriate social distance, assuming that your community allows you to go out.
 
Those are some thoughts for today.  I’d encourage you to comment and share your own ideas below or, perhaps, you can respond to David Brooks!  I wish you the best to be safe, be well, and perhaps find these extraordinary circumstances as an opportunity for a fresh perspective on what it is in your life that you hold most dear.
 
Blessings,
 
Fred

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Miracles, Part IV

4/22/2019

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​Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
 
Helen Keller
 
The story of the man being kind to his challenged wife introduces a vital element in the idea of miracles.  Thinking of miracles as “objects of wonder,” calling forth “awe and admiration,” making you smile… does not presume a rosy and gleeful understanding of life.
 
To the contrary.  Life entails suffering, and it is perhaps in the setting of suffering that the ability to pause and behold at least the shadow of the miracle can be most life-giving.
 
As we move toward the end of the second decade of this century, the cohort of women and men who survived the Holocaust is dwindling, but their powerful stories remain.  Edith Herz was born in 1926 to a comfortable Jewish family in Germany.  They lived in Worms, which had been a center of Jewish culture for hundreds of years.  Her parents operated a small and successful business, and their extended family enjoyed the same opportunities of community life, travel and spiritual practice as other Europeans of the time. 
 
With the rise of the Nazi movement, this began to change.  The coordinated attacks on the Jewish community of Kristallnacht… the Night of Shattered Glass in November, 1938… witnessed the desecration of over a thousand synagogues, the destruction of several thousand Jewish businesses, and the internment of 30,000 Jews.  Edith’s father, a decorated German veteran of the Great War, her mother and Edith were transported to Thereseinstadt, which was a labor camp and holding area for Jews who were later moved to death camps to the east.  Edith’s father died there, and in the following months, Edith and her mother were sent to Birkenau/Auschwitz, where it is estimated that over a million people perished, and subsequently to Stutthof concentration camp, from which they were liberated by the Russian army in January, 1945.  In addition to Edith’s father, sixteen uncles, aunts and cousins had been killed.
 
Edith uses the word, “miracle,” to describe a number of remarkable events that allowed her and her mother to survive.  With dozens of other women, they are herded into the gas chamber and it malfunctions.  She is called before Josef Mengele and he waves her to the right, to labor, rather than to the left, to death.  A German officer on Christmas break offers her a morsel of food.
 
More broadly, she credits her survival to her partnership with a remarkable mother and to their shared spirit of “hope” and “optimism.”  “What good would it do,” she asks, “to whine and cry?  None.  Those who did, perished.”  She and her mother maintained a sacred commitment to be together, supporting one another in the inevitable times when one of them felt like giving up.
 
The world is full of suffering and of the overcoming of it.  Is this not a miracle?
 
Reflection

  • Think of a time when you have made your way past suffering.  How did this happen?  Do you see some miracle, some object of wonder?
  • Notice how you address times of challenge or disappointment in the coming week.  What, indeed, would the miracle look like… how would you want to be addressing times of challenge or disappointment?
 
Author
 
Helen Keller (1880-1968) is surely legendary in her overcoming the suffering of deafness and blindness with the support of her teacher, Anne Sullivan.  Appropriate to our subject, the theatrical and film rendition of the relationship of Sullivan with Keller was called “The Miracle Worker.”
 
Keller graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904, the first deaf/blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree.  Her adult life consisted of advocacy for causes related to disabilities and widespread political activity, helping to found the American Civil Liberties Union and speaking on behalf of women’s suffrage, socialist causes and international peacemaking.
 
The quotation comes from Keller’s 1903 book, Optimism.  Readers might appreciate the larger context:
 
"I know what evil is. Once or twice I have wrestled with it, and for a time felt its chilling touch on my life; so I speak with knowledge when I say that evil is of no consequence, except as a sort of mental gymnastic. For the very reason that I have come in contact with it, I am more truly an optimist. I can say with conviction that the struggle which evil necessitates is one of the greatest blessings. It makes us strong, patient, helpful men and women. It lets us into the soul of things and teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and everyone, and make that Best a part of my life. The world is sown with good; but unless I turn my glad thoughts into practical living and till my own field, I cannot reap a kernel of the good."
 
Edith Pagelson (b. 1926) eventually came to America and has been blessed in relationships with two husbands who have passed on.  She aims to strike a balance between remembering and speaking about the Holocaust, and living a full current life.  Her story, written in collaboration with my colleague and friend Ronnie Weston, is available in Against All Odds: A Miracle of Holocaust Survival (Rockland, Maine: Maine Authors Publishing, 2012).
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Miracles, Part III

3/3/2019

1 Comment

 
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The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that Love is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, Love is under the porch as well as on the top of the mountain, and joy is both in the front row and in the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.
 
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
 
It’s always a delight to see family greetings in airports.  When I travel, or when I’m waiting for arriving visitors, I pause to watch the little celebrations.  Couples come back together.  Little children run to grandparents, who toss them in the air.  Families hold banners; “Welcome home, Trevor and Kate!” 
 
We can certainly appreciate miracles… objects of wonder… in the physical world.  People flying to the moon, doors that open and close, crocuses popping through the snow in the spring.  But isn’t it the greatest miracle that you are loved?  And isn’t it the greatest miracle that you can love?
 
Love is everywhere.
 
Love is in the sentinel events of your life.  The birth of a child.  Marriage.  The mixture of grief and celebration at the passing of someone who has been dear to you.    
 
Love is also in the countless joys of daily life.  An elderly couple walks hand in hand.  A kindergarten teacher gets down on the level of a little girl and really listens.   A golden retriever wags his whole body when his owner comes down the stairs in the morning, and his owner is just as enthralled to see him. 
 
In working with many people around family relationships over the years, I’ve commented that it is easy to love somebody when they are cheerful and engaging.  The real challenge is how not to lose sight of love when someone is not.
 
I saw a man who had been married for many years to a woman who had significant, episodic emotional difficulties.  She could be sweet one day and caustic and isolated the next.  “It’s not easy,” he said, “but I try to be kind when she’s like that.  I know her behavior isn’t who she really is, and I know that when she gets upset, kindness will usually help her to feel a little more peaceful.  Even in the ugliness of life,” he continued, “you can’t let that keep you from the joy and the beauty.”
 
Love, the object of wonder.  The miracle.
 
Reflection
 
  • Think about a time when you have been loved… a time, perhaps, when you were not especially easy to love.  Do you see the miracle?
  • Open your heart to continuing ways, and to new ways, that you can express the miracle of love in the coming week.
 
Author
 
Mark Nepo (b. 1951) is a poet and philosopher, the author of over a dozen books and audiotapes, including the acclaimed collection of daily reflections, The Book of Awakening (Conari, 2011), from which the quotation comes.  A survivor of cancer in his thirties, Nepo highlights the transformational journey toward full, present and joyful living, even in the presence of suffering. 


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Miracles, Part II

2/4/2019

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​Miracles… seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our own perception being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.
 
Willa Cather
 
To behold the wondrous miracles of everyday life, you have to see. 
 
Consider the miracle of moveable wall sections.  For tens of thousands of years of human history, people created dwelling structures with portals for coming and going. They covered these portals with weavings or bear hides, which gave them some visual privacy and cut down the wind and cold, but were not particularly helpful in securing their homes against intruding animals or marauding neighbors.  Then, somewhere, someone invented the hinge.  With the hinge, everything changed.  People could now make their portals into doorways when they wished to come and go, and make their portals into walls when they wanted security.  An object of wonder, indeed.
 
I’m sure you can find countless examples in the built environment and in the natural world, things that complete the sentence, “When you really think about it, isn’t it incredible that…”  Last summer, I had FaceTime calls with my Oregon family from the UK, 4600 miles, instantaneous, rich in sound and visual clarity.  Skyscrapers are now 2000 feet tall.  People have flown to the moon.  Flocks of birds somehow know to make instantaneous turns together.  Forests regenerate after devastating fires.  People are endowed with emotions, that give them vital information about how to navigate through the world.
 
It is in our ability to pause, to really see these things that are “about us always,” that the ordinary becomes miraculous.
 
How is it that our perception may be made finer?  It is a practice, a discipline.  A spiritual practice.  Stopping to examine everything that we tend to take for granted wouldn’t leave much time for living our lives, but a practice of pausing, sometimes, to really see and hear opens our hearts to the wonder that is all around. 
 
The spiritual practice of pausing can be intentional.  As you read this, pause to look around. Perhaps, think back over your experiences in the last day or two.  What do you notice that makes you smile in wonder?
 
Or, the spiritual practice of pausing can mean choosing to sit with the wonder in something that comes to you as a surprise.  Putting together Legos with children (a universal experience among the parents and grandparents that I know), it occurred to me that it is miraculous how the company creates these little blocks with such precise tolerances that they are easy for little hands to put together and pull apart, yet hold securely once attached.  This makes me smile, too.
 
Reflection

  • Pause once or twice a day to really see something ordinary and allow the miracle… the object of wonder… to appear.
  • Do this for a few days.  What do you notice about your sense of wonder?  What difference does this make for you?
 
Author
 
Willa Cather (1873-1947) was an American writer, poet and editor, who is best known for her novels of the West in the early years of European settlement.  She was born in Virginia and moved with her family to the Nebraska frontier in 1883, being amazed and unsettled by the vast and barren landscape she encountered.  As she began to write, her career took her to New York where she served for several years as managing editor of McClure’s Magazine, whose authors included Joseph Conrad and Henry James.  The third volume of her Prairie Trilogy, One of Ours, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1922.
 
The quotation comes from her 1927 novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop, the story of a young Catholic bishop who is called to establish a diocese in the newly-formed territory of New Mexico.  It is spoken by the bishop to his friend Joseph.  The complete quotation is that “Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest…”   This detail is appropriate to the novel, but it seems to me that the idea is not limited to the Christian tradition, and I have presented it in the form in which it is commonly cited.

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Miracles, Part I

12/31/2018

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There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.
 
Albert Einstein/Gilbert Fowler White
 
A young woman hobbles to the shrine at Lourdes, throws away her crutches and walks.  A middle-aged man is diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer and six months later, it’s gone.  A 5-month-old baby is discovered alive in the rubble of an earthquake in Nepal, having survived against all odds for nearly a day.  Nineteen golfers in Colorado suffer a direct lightning strike and live.
 
In our culture, we think about miracles in events like these; potentially-dire situations that turn out in ways that far exceed reasonable expectations or rational explanations.  Sometimes we embrace them, sometimes we are skeptical.  Almost always, they are cause for celebration.
 
But spiritually, the idea of miracles runs deeper.  Everything is a miracle.
 
Word origins are often revealing.  Our modern word “miracle” has its roots in the Latin miraculum/mirari/mirus; referring to an “object of wonder,” a “marvel,” and inspiring “awe and admiration.” The Latin, in turn, has origins in the earlier smeiros/sméyros, to “smile or laugh.”
 
With this broader understanding, miracles are not so much mysterious deviations from what we think is possible.  Rather, they are things that are all around us, that we hold in wonder and awe, and make us smile.
 
You cut your finger chopping kale.  You clean it up and do the usual first aid care, and a week later, there is absolutely no indication at all that anything happened to your finger.  Your infant daughter crawls one day and joyfully takes halting steps the next.  Your infant daughter grows up, and you smile as you see her marry a person that she loves.
 
A letter travels across the country with such accuracy that neither you nor anyone you know has ever experienced a postal error.  A military cargo plane with a takeoff weight of almost 175 tons, flies.  Somehow, there is enough water for millions of people in Tucson and Phoenix, the principal populated areas of the Sonoran Desert, where I live seasonally.  With scattered clouds on a summer day, the sunset lights up the sky with vibrant shades of red and orange.  You are alive, and you have the ability to choose the kind of person you want to be as you live your life.
 
Are these not “objects of wonder?”  Do they (some of them… you might have your doubts about the postal service and you might not think much about cargo planes) make you smile?  Are they not miracles?
 
Reflection
 
  • What difference might it make for you if you were to view everything as a miracle?
  • What has there been in your everyday life this week that has been “an object of wonder” and has made you smile?
 
Author
 
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a world-renowned physicist who profoundly changed our understanding of time and space.  It is noteworthy, for this particular reflection, that four of his seminal papers were produced in one year, 1905, that has been described as his annus mirabilis (miracle year).
 
The provenance of this familiar quotation is not clear.  I find no direct record of Einstein having said it, although he did write often about the relationship of science and his spiritual views.  He did famously say, “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.”
 
The “miracles” quotation was documented (attributing it to Einstein) in the 1940s by Gilbert Fowler White (1911-2006).  White was an American geographer with special interests in flooding and water management.  Active in the Society of Friends, he was a conscientious objector in World War II, working with refugees in France.  He was also a distinguished academic, serving for several years as president of Haverford College and teaching at the University of Chicago and University of Colorado.  His New York Times obituary comments that his “philosophy of accommodating nature instead of trying to master it had profound effects on policy and environmental thought.”



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Coming alive

7/12/2018

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Don’t ask what the world needs; ask what makes you come alive and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
 
Howard Thurman
 
Several years ago, I was in Chicago for a professional conference.  Life-long baseball player, fan and addict that I am, I never pass an opportunity to see a major league game on the road.  I took the Red Line to the Sox-35th Avenue stop for U. S. Cellular Field (where the White Sox play; it will always be “Comisky Park” to me) and got off with the crowd.
 
On the platform was a small, thin, elderly man with Chinese features, playing a two-stringed fiddle (which I later learned is called an erhu), with the accompaniment of a small CD player.  The music had a beat to it and was really moving along.  His eyes were closed, as in reverie, and he had a smile on his lips.
 
Facing him was a young African American woman dancing to the music.  Enthralled, arms and legs flowing with the music, her face an image of delight.  It was clear to me that they hadn’t come together as an act; it was more that they were drawn together… crossing divides of age and culture… by the energy of the music.  The crowd mostly shuffled past, heading to the game.  A few people paused.  I was captivated by how alive they both were in that special moment together.
 
Most of us want to save the world.  Sometimes, we aim to change the world through social and community activism… volunteering at the food bank, serving on a nonprofit board, marching for a cause, teaching English to refugees.  Sometimes we find life and aliveness in ventures like these.  Long-time justice and peace activist William Sloane Coffin commented on how “wonderfully alive… cheerful… courageous” were the black civil rights leaders he worked with in the South in the 1960s.  You can, he said, be more alive in pain than in complacency.
 
But do we not also bring a little goodness into the world just by the very experience of being fully alive?  The musicians at the subway stop were not, I assume, driven by an assessment of “what the world needs.”  They were immersed in their passions for music… alive to their passions for music… and the energy of that moment touched the heart, at least, of a middle-aged psychologist walking by.
 
There are four reasons to cultivate and give expression to “what makes you come alive.” 
 
  • It’s good for your soul, and probably, for your body.  You add to your ledger of resilience and wholeness with an accumulation of moments when you are enthralled with your life.
 
  • Aliveness creates energy that ripples out into the world.  You know this; you have felt touched in the same way that I have when you have been in the presence of someone who was fully alive. 
 
  • Your particular contributions to the world… your vocation, your career, how you choose to spend your time… will be more genuine and impactful if they “make you come alive.”  I have worked with physicians and other health care providers whose hearts were not in their work, and I have known others who clearly found deep delight and joy in their work, even amid the daily frustrations and challenges that we all face.  I can tell you who I will seek out for care when the need comes. 
 
  • What are you doing with your life, anyway, if not to live in full and vital ways?
 
So… what does it mean to be fully alive?  Well, you know it when you see it, the subway musicians as an example.  You also know it when you feel it, hence the importance of a habit and practice of self-reflection.  For me, it has to do with
 
  • Loving the people close to me. 
 
  • Looking for, seeing and encouraging the best that is in other people.  As a psychologist, I dutifully challenge people when they pursue directions that are inconsistent with their stated values, but it particularly warms my heart and enlivens my spirit to help people to see and recognize the goodness and irreplaceable individuality and grace that is in them.
 
  • Standing in awe.  Seeing the majesty of the Grand Canyon, the formed drops of spring rain on a leaf, the sweet image of an elderly couple walking had-in-hand.
 
  • Working cooperatively with a team… work initiatives, community projects, making music, basketball.
 
If you do noble things to save the world that are outside the circle of your heart, it draws the life out of you and doesn’t really change anything.  If you nurture the things that make you come alive, you are indeed addressing what the world needs.
 
Alas, the game, by the way, was rained out.
 
 
The Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was an African-American theologian, educator, writer and civil rights activist.  Born into poverty, he was raised by a grandmother who was a former slave.  He pursued an education at Morehouse College and Rochester Theological Seminary and subsequently served as a pastor, seminary professor and dean at Howard University, Founder (with the Fellowship of Reconciliation) of first racially integrated, intercultural church in the United States, the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, and then professor and dean and Boston University. 
 
Thurman was at the forefront of social thought and issues of justice and reconciliation in the mid-twentieth century.  He studied with the Quaker mystic Rufus Jones in the late twenties, and then, in 1935-36, participated in the first African-American Delegation of Friendship to India and adjoining countries.  It was on this trip that Thurman and two colleagues met with Mohandas Gandhi, and were moved by Gandhi’s ideas about social change and inter-cultural understanding.  Thurman’s writing, in turn, was strongly influential for Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders of the American civil rights movement.

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On being in the moment (or not)

5/26/2017

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​Last week I enjoyed a lovely evening bike ride along the Rillito River next to our seasonal home in Tucson.  For people who haven’t lived in the desert southwest, “river” means a dry wash that occasionally has flowing water if there is enough rain or snowmelt.
 
I found myself observing my own flow of thoughts.  At times, I was very much in the moment, seeing the stunning beauty of the range of Catalina Mountains in the setting sun, experiencing the sensations of riding in my legs and arms, and being aware of feeling blessed to be where I was, with the dear people who are in my life.  At other times, I was aware of having ridden a couple hundred yards and having no recollection of doing so.  I was mentally somewhere else, thinking about the next teaching session, the task list, and whether or not there is any hope for the so-far-mediocre Red Sox.
 
Observing my thoughts in this way prompted the question of when it’s appropriate to be in the moment… to be present to our current experience… and when (or whether) it is not.
 
In recent years, the idea of being in the present moment has been a theme (and often, a spiritual article of faith) in both professional health care research and in pop psychology.  Distress, the argument goes, comes when our attention and hearts are focused on suffering in the past or in an imagined future, and the antidote to this process is to be fully present to the current moments of our lives.
 
Certainly, this is sometimes true.  There are thoughtful voices, however, making the case that there are good reasons sometimes not to be in the moment.
 
Two recent articles in the New York Times Sunday Review stand out.  Journalist Ruth Whippman (“Actually, Let’s Not Be in the Moment,” November 26, 2016) argues that some present moments just aren’t very compelling (“I’m making a failed attempt at ‘mindful dishwashing’”) and, more notably, argues that a focus on mindfulness can be an indulgence of material comfort and security that skirts around real sources of suffering; “So does the moment really deserve its many accolades?  It is a philosophy likely to be more rewarding for those whose lives contain more privileged moments than grinding, humiliating or exhausting ones.  Those for whom a given moment is more likely to be “sun-dappled yoga pose” than “hour 11 manning the deep-fat fryer.”
 
And last week, world-renowned psychologist Martin Seligman (“We Aren’t Built to Live in the Moment,” May 19) cites brain and social science research in making the case that for most people, thoughts frequently turn to future possibilities, and that this tendency is innate and beneficial.  Seligman suggests that, more than “Homo Sapiens” (“wise man”), our species could be more aptly called “Homo Prospectus,” in recognition of the central human role of considering future prospects.
 
We are not in the moment (appropriately) when we wonder whether we have enough cheese for the taco salad and where we’ll go to get more if we don’t.  How we’ll plan to avoid Aunt Myrtle (who doesn’t like Uncle Don) making a scene at the family reunion.  When was the last time we remember holding the sunglasses and where we might have put them.  What we can do in the next six months on behalf of social justice and world peace.
 
So when may it be helpful or meaningful to immerse ourselves in the present moment?  (I’m back now; sorry, I was daydreaming for a few minutes.)  I think of four circumstances.  I invite your comments.
 
  1. In suffering.  If it’s the past or the future, it’s not necessarily distress.  If it’s distress, it’s very likely to be the past or the future.  For most of us, suffering wears the face of emotionally-laden thoughts, feelings or images about failings, abuses or losses in the past, or about ways that we envision the future unfolding very differently from what we might wish.  How could this have happened to me?  How could this have happened to our nation?  What if this happens to me?  What if this happens to people I love?  What if this happens to our country?
 
For the most part, the circumstances that prompt such suffering are beyond our control.  We can’t fix a history of abuse, or larger economic conditions, or your boss’s behavior.  Nor can we typically (or, at least predictably) control our own internal reactions to these circumstances, which come to us as unbidden and unwelcome intruders. Anxious thoughts, angry feelings and fearsome images just appear, involuntarily.
 
In suffering, focusing on the present moment offers a pathway to control and integrity.  “Here is my suffering.  Now, who am I?”  “How am I going to live my life, in this present moment?”  “How can I best be faithful, right now, to the values that I hold that signify a good and honorable life?” 
 
  1. In awe.  Years ago, I remember the comment of a dear sister-in law that, in our culture, we too often rush to take photographs of things that inspire awe, rather than experiencing them. 
 
The world, is it not, is filled with majesty, large and small?  Beholding the vastness of the Grand Canyon for the first time.  Seeing your child pulling herself up to a standing position.  Being greeted joyfully by your dog, even after you’ve left him at home for eight hours.  (It’s beneath the dignity of most cats to show such reactions.)  Looking at the moon and knowing that people have been there.  Cutting your finger slicing carrots and, a week later, having no indication whatsoever that this had ever happened.  Seeing the resilience of a man who has been though unspeakable horror in his home country to seek asylum in America, and is ready and willing to make a positive contribution to his new home.  The list is endless.
 
In awe, being in the present moment means to pause to really experience such majesties, and let them form as images in your soul.
 
  1. With other people.  How often have you been in a conversation with somebody else and found them focusing somewhere past your left shoulder?  Not good.  Being present to people honors them and, really, honors us all because it affirms the richness of humanity that is lived in relationships with other people.  If you’re in a conversation you don’t like, learn some assertive skills to change the subject or make a graceful exit.
 
  1. As a discipline.  Finally, I suggest practicing being present. Cultivating, by practice, the ability to be present.  Pick a regular time… pick a random time… and just be where you are and be open to your experience.  What do you see?  What do you hear?  What do you feel?  What do you observe going on in your body?  Your mind?  You may become an explorer of majesties yet unknown.
 
There are, of course, formal meditative and mindfulness practices. A subject for another time.
 
So, may you invite your attention and your heart to the past, the future and to the present moments of your life in ways that bring joy and honor to your unique journey.
 
Blessings,
 
Fred

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