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Miracles, Part II

2/4/2019

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.

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?”

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.

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.

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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Life's Work

3/2/2016

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Last summer, after 37 years, I left my full-time position (I smirk as I refer to it as “the day job”) to transition to other professional and personal pursuits.

Rather than give me a gold watch (which I don’t need; I know what time it is) or tickets to Cancun (which wouldn’t much interest me), my colleagues and friends gave me a gift that is greatly more creative and meaningful. Dozens of people contributed time and money to build a labyrinth at our hospital campus in my honor. I have, I guess, a reputation in our organization and community as “the spirituality guy,” arising from my teaching over the years and chairmanship of our annual symposium on spirituality and health, and this certainly was a touching tribute.

We held a work day to lay stones in September. A beautiful late-summer day, with all of us lugging granite paving blocks, little children running around, and a friend providing music on hammer dulcimer.

A reporter and photographer from the local newspaper came to develop a story that appeared on the front page of the feature section the following day. It was a very nice article, with good information about labyrinths and kind and generous comments from a number of participants.

The title of the article, however, gave me pause. It was, as you see, “A fitting tribute to life’s work.” Of course, I can see that 37 years at one job would seem like a lifetime of work. But it also made me wonder. What is one’s “life’s work,” anyway? What is my life work? Has it been this professional position and everything that has been a part of it, or does it run deeper than that?

It was an exercise that reaffirmed my belief that “life’s work” (you can also use words like “mission,” “calling…” Parker Palmer uses the word, “vocation”) really has to do with who we are and how we live our lives, more than what we do in particular roles.

Two reasons. First, our abilities to do work we do in specific settings is never guaranteed. Jobs come and go. Companies close. International volunteers are displaced. An extraordinarily talented and dedicated legislator in Maine is going to be termed out in the next election cycle. People develop illnesses and disabilities.

Qualities and values having to do with who we are, however, are always with us. I think of “calling” or “vocation” in terms of qualities like kindness, compassion, understanding, and a commitment to help other people to understand and give expression to the best that is in them. These qualities or values are always with me. I always have a choice whether (or not) to be faithful to these values. They can’t be taken away.

Second, life’s work has to pertain to all of life, not just to one’s employment. I have the opportunity and responsibility to express and give life to who I am not only in a workplace, but when I wander over to my neighbors’ place and greet them and their little boy. When I play pick-up basketball with friends. When I talk with customer service representatives on the phone. I wonder, in fact, if there may be more authenticity in how I live in settings like these, than in the workplace where I faithfully perform the expected role of the kindly and attentive psychologist.

I remember Marianne Williamson telling the story about a time in her life when she had been a cocktail waitress. She realized that her work was not serving up drinks; it was being present to the people she served. She reflected that “every business is a front for a church.” Perhaps we can all think of ourselves as emissaries of churches… synagogues, mosques, temples… in our lives’ work of being who we really are.

So… how do you think about your “life’s work?”

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Resonant words

9/21/2015

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I remember meeting a poet a number of years ago who said that the main reason she wrote was to learn something about herself.

I’ve come to believe that this is true. By putting ourselves “out there,” putting words on a page or speaking to a group, we can move ourselves to a finer understanding of “What do I care about, really?” “What do I believe, really?” “Who am I, really?”

I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when I was developing this website. Websites need domain names, and I found (not surprisingly) that all of the obvious choices are already taken. “Spiritualityhealth.com” gets you to Spirituality and Health magazine. Plain “Spirituality.com” redirects you to the Christian Science Journal and Sentinel. “Heartandsoul.com” provides health and wellness resources directed toward the African-American community. And so forth.

My solution began with making a list of words that I love:

Heart
Soul
Compassion
Presence
Empowerment
Sacred
Caring
Transcendence
Divine
Life well-lived (OK, phrases, too)
Good life
Dignity
Best that is in you
Goodness
Journey of transformation
Positive spirituality
Vital and sacred

These are words that resonate with me. “Resonant” words.

It was good to sit with this list and think about “Why these words?” I’m not sure that there is a single theme, and I suppose that a list of words can just have its own voice, without searching for additional words for elaboration. These words do, however, touch on qualities of innerness, depth, “core…” or perhaps the recognition and honoring the essence of what it means to be human.

This fits for me. I do occasional things directed toward peace and justice for all humankind… fully aware that I'm not going to change the larger world… but my particular passion is in working with people, one by one, to support and empower them to live well and fully and to give expression to the best that is in them.

The exercise didn’t end there. Having chosen to string together the words “goodness of heart” for the website (success…an available domain!), the question to sit with then was “Why these words, among these words?” You see my reflections about this in the home page for goodnessofheart.com.

So I’ll invite you to the same exercise. What words do you love? What words really resonate with you? Make a list and sit with it. What do these words say about who you are and what you cherish? Is there perhaps some insight or some new angle that comes to you, or perhaps a warm affirmation of what you already see?

Comments welcome!

Blessings, Fred

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Welcome

5/29/2015

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The site goes live! I have wanted for some time to develop a website where I could have conversations with other people who share in the same passions about spirituality, healing relationships and personal resilience and flourishing as I do. My intention is to post monthly reflections beginning in the mid-summer and to invite reactions and dialogue. There are so many cool things going on out there, and there is such richness in our collective experiences that I look forward with great eagerness to where we may journey with these things together. Stay tuned!

Blessings, Fred

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