Posts Tagged ‘thrive’

Who Are You?

Posted: December 30, 2019 in becoming
Tags: , , , , , ,
1

Who am I?

Who are you?

Let me help us both.

We are a multiplicity of overlapping, interacting and changing identities.

I think over my own many morphing identities and my points of awareness of them.

Let me tell you my story, the story of my identity formation, and what it might suggest about what God is doing with us

Let’s start with gender. I grew up as a male in a predominately male household. It was rough and tumble, sock and be socked. My sense of being a male increased when I went to school and there were the girls! Those beautiful creatures! I liked the look of them better than I liked the look of my brothers, but they were a bit scary. What could you say other than to blurt out that you loved them and what then! Awkward! I know. I did that!

There were my summer camp friends, Connie and Beth and Cindy. They were like sisters to me. They were good for me, less threatening than the brothers, and I think they were preparing me for a life of working appropriately and respectfully with females.

There is another thing that I ran into regarding gender. Arriving at college I realized males were being criticized for being unemotional, insensitive, domineering and violent. There was something off about being a male, and yet, while acknowledging the abuses of my kind, I found I was still been able to love myself as male and to develop deep and loving relationships with male friends, especially those who weren’t overly competitive.

At home in my early years I identified more with my mother than my father, her love of art, nature and beauty, and her affection, openly expressed. Watching males who ruled, (my father with his armamentarium of discipline) I began to understand the structural and emotional power of patriarchy, the competitiveness and dominance of males, my own tendencies to dominate, and my hatred of that very thing when in our world it has led to oppression and abuse and shame of females. Later in my professional career, I made it my goal to use the power of my gender to advance women in the positions of power and leadership. I felt as if on a mission to do this.

Besides gender, age is a great shaper of identity. I became acutely aware of my age in my twenties, although every age has his poignant moments of awareness — of it’s time stamp, of the power of time to shape our lives. In my middle to late twenties I felt the cultural push, the societal expectation to get married, to develop a career, to find and initiate my own family. To not do would be a social failure — or so it seemed. We are dominated by the traditional identities we are expected to assume. When I was 27 I met a young woman, Linda, who became a friend, over time a trusted confidant, someone I felt extremely comfortable with, someone I could be myself with. Ah, the freedom to explore what’s inside — what a gift Linda gave to me! Together we made a bond, we came of age, we married, we began to help shape each other’s identities. We created a shared identity, we made a family. We had girls. Rosalind and Laurel. Those years seemed as if they would never end. They did. Age is power to be and do certain things. Certain ages contain more power than others. As I age and lose some physical power I see that age identity keeps shifting.

Racial identity hit me between the eyes when I took my first job as a teacher at a school where 70% of the students were black, 20% Hispanic, the rest a mix of other cultures. I was white, I stood out, white faculty, and my understanding of the power dynamics of race greatly increased. A majority of the teachers were white.

I had an epiphany. I needed to find a connection with the backgrounds of my students, dialogue with them on identity, understand them better, help them sort out their identities. So I found and assigned ethnic literature, and we explored the power dynamics of race through writers like Malcolm X, Langston Hughes and Sandra Cisneros. My eyes were opened to how heavily race shaped power in our culture. I saw so many of my students suffering from poor self-esteem, from fear of success, from the criticism of their own community.

I was able to see up-close the emasculation of the black American male by American history. Slavery was one of the powerful institutions that created white privilege and the effects of that remain with us to today. I came to hate racism, passionately, to hate it in myself, and to do everything possible to rid the world of it.

Eventually I took a job as a pastor. As a Christian, I began to grapple with my religious identity and feelings and thoughts about other religions. I was never comfortable with the stereotype of intolerance and judgmental mismanagement that I knew some would place on me. The divide between those with different Christian doctrines and those with different faiths became something to explore and understand, not to fear. Over time I grew in appreciation for others unique struggles to find God. At one time I saw my Christianity as separating me from others, but I eventually came to see it as linking me to others. So many Christians are against so many other groups. They are stuffed with divisive morals and doctrines. Following Jesus, I have moved in the opposite direction. I am more for people, for understanding, for dialogue, for acceptance, for appreciation of what so many of us have in common — a thirst for God. I don’t diminish the significance of differences, of contradictions, but I find myself drawn much more to the similarities that we have as we struggle to understand and experience life and God.

Now let’s consider social class. I grew up poor because my parents were engaged in Christian social work. My parents were absolutely committed to helping people who struggled, who we might consider stuck in a bottom social class. My dad spent a lifetime working in drug and alcohol rehab programs, helping and mixing lovingly with those struggling with addiction. I grew up making friends with and hanging out with men who were self-described alcoholics. My mom started a halfway house in Los Angeles for women and children living on the street. But I was never very conscious of class as a young person.

When I married, my wife and I both developed professional careers, and as a result we did the things that cemented us into the middle class, bought houses, took vacations in Europe — to Paris, to London, to Rome, to Kona, to San Francisco to Washington D.C. — visited national parks and provided rich experiences for our children. We mixed with other professionals socially who did the same.

But in this upwardly mobile movement I experienced the endemic economic insecurity of the middle-class, the anxiety that there wasn’t enough even when there was more than enough, the compulsion to spoil our children with things. But interestingly in my work as a teacher and as a pastor I again became very connected to people without resources and very passionate about relating to them in fair, honoring and personal ways. I traveled to countries that looked a lot different than our vacations destinations. I went to and worked in places like Nicaragua, Brazil, Puerto Rico, South Africa and Mexico leading crews to embrace, build with and empower the people there.

And in the second church I pastored, we set up programs to feed people, we built a beautiful counseling center, and we made counseling affordable, and invited recovery groups into the church as an integral part of our ministry. And all this I could feel the effect of my parents model in my life.

My life has given me an education in class differences and it has increased my appreciation for people independent of the dividing walls of class

Disability, the identity of disability also defines me. One of our daughters. Rosalind, was born with brain damage. She developed epilepsy. She went to school in special-education classes. Through her I became acutely aware of what it means to be disabled, to have that identity as a family. I morphed. At one point I was an intellectual snob, preferring, I thought, the smart, the intelligentsia, the great writers, the intellectual elite, but living with my daughter, living through the pain, the loss, working through a disabled identity with her, loving her equally to my “smart” family members, I put my snobbish intellectualism aside, used my intelligence to try to understand others, worked not to let education or intelligence come between me and anyone. Intelligence does not equal worth; being equals worth. This is a lesson I hold in my heart.

Gender, age, race, religion, class, disability and more — all make up my complex identity because identity is the interaction of multiple factors and to grow in understanding ourselves and others we must refuse to be simplistic and naïve about who we are sociologically and systemically. We all have multiple identities have the capability of shifting toward the positive.

Especially for we Christians, trying to follow God, we can be sure that God is in the mix. God is the divine sociologist, the great anthropologist, the shaper and maker of the components of identity.

The famous dictum, know thyself should be expressed as know thy multiple selves. I do not have a multiple personality disorder, (although you couldn’t get all who know me to assent to that) but I do have a multiple identity disorder. The disorder is I don’t always know who I am. The disorder is that I haven’t honestly faced my role, my privilege, my dysfunction within the culture that I exist within. At times I have resisted my identity and my daughter’s identity as disabled. At times I have completely embrace this. When one night Rosalind cried that she couldn’t read and said, I hate myself!” I cried with her and she looked up and asked, “Daddy are you crying for me?” And I was and we bonded deeply in that eye-streaming moment.

Let’s be very honest here. Gender, age, race, religion, class, patriarchy, and disability have always been grounds for the determination of value, and they have also been the brutal playing field upon which horrible, harming attitudes, policies and discriminations have taken place. In my own life I can see how I could take identity in one of two directions: to bring harm; to bring help.

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and other modern scholars have developed a concept that can help us very much in understanding identity. The concept is now widely known and discussed as intersectionality.

Intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.

Intersectionality is now widely understood to illustrate the interplay between any kinds of discrimination, whether it’s based on gender, race, age, class, socioeconomic status, physical or mental ability, gender or sexual identity, religion, or ethnicity. The multitude of modern research done on the intersection of race and gender has mainstreamed the concept of intersectionality. For example, to be black and female can result in a double whammy of discrimination. If you want proof go explore how the courts frame and interpret the stories of black women plaintiffs.

Only gradually, overtime, have I come to realize where I stand on the Axes of Identity Privilege. I have been given an advantaged, privileged identity that many others have not. Being a white, educated, middle-class male with intellectual acuity, being tall, attractive enough, able bodied and capable of reproduction has given me great advantages.

I applied for jobs and got them easily. I aspire to supervisory and leadership and executive roles within the organizations I worked for and I was given them. I was supplied ample remuneration for my work, I applied for loans and got them, I invested with professional guidance in the stock market and in housing and accumulated wealth. I was and am a part of a system that has rewarded my kind.

“Come on,” you might say, “You earned what you got, you worked hard, you make good choices.”

The truth is that many people work hard, many people much poorer than I am work harder than I have and many people without the privilege that I have experienced have made good choices. And yet our culture has marginalize them, limited them, not rewarded them with leadership roles, not loaned to them, held them back, seen them as lesser. And being in multiple minority groups involves an intersectionality that leads to even less opportunity.

Some will argue back that no matter the odds against any of us we are still responsible for our choices. A victim’s mentality will get you know where. Make your own opportunity. Push through the barriers. I agree. Yes, fight for your identity. If no one helps you help yourself. But systemic discrimination makes it very hard to win, to get a piece of the pie. When the majority create a wall around opportunity that can be a high barrier to try to scale. Is there systemic discrimination in the United States? There is.

There are many startling examples in our country.

In 2016 major league baseball had only one Latino and no black managers. As we turn the calendar to 2020, Dave Roberts of the Los Angeles Dodgers remains as the only black manager among the league’s 30 franchises. The examples of this kind of thing are endless.

Women hold 6.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEO roles.

Black homeownership rate (32.7 percent) has fallen drastically since 2000 and is now just over half the rate for whites. Independent reviews confirmed by The Associated Press showed black mortgage applicants were turned away at significantly higher rates than whites in 48 cities, Latinos in 25, Asians in nine.

People of color make up 37% of the U.S. population but 67% of the prison population. Overall, African Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested; once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, they are more likely to face stiff sentences. Black men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men and Hispanic men are more than twice as likely to be incarcerated as non-Hispanic white men.

I know this kind of thing first hand in my own profession. It is extremely difficult for a young, female pastor with children to land a role as a lead pastor in a church.

So what to do?

One, understand this problem of bias in America, of intersectionality. Don’t deny it. Don’t falsely claimed that we are not a part of it. Grapple with it. We all own the race issue. We all own the gender issue. We all own the class issue.

Secondly, review your own history as I have mine. I have told you my story, how life has shaped me and changed me. I believe that God is in the story. I believe that God had been working —as you can see in my narrative — to disabuse me of my discriminatory tendencies, to help me understand intersectionality.

Tell yourself your own story. Do you realize where you have been advantaged or disadvantage? Can you see God helping you to work against discriminatory attitudes and behaviors. Have you changed to be a more accepting, empowering and loving person?

Thirdly, seek out experiences with people different than yourself and grow in an understanding of intersectionality.

Lastly, bring fairness, justice, empowerment to people of all kinds in the places you work, school, worship, play, live and do business.

Who are you?

Who do you want to be?

Who is God shaping you to be?

Let justice roll down like waters,and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Amos 5:24

Love Your Hurt Self

Posted: December 28, 2019 in helping
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Life is full of simple choices — in two directions.

Today I drove to pick up my wife after her walk to Sprouts netted too many veggies for her to carry home. She needed that rescue. I was glad to do this.

But on the way out of the garage I backed over a piece of our stored gazebo that had fallen out of it’s box and under my tire. Really? Out of the box and under the back tire? Ruined it! But instead of beating myself up about this, upon arriving back home I immediately called the company that made the patio cover and ordered a new part ($5.99). I consider the whole thing a success. By taking care of this, by protecting my emotions, I didn’t have to regret ruining a $200 piece of equipment.

Helps, rescues — they run in two directions, towards others and towards ourselves. We are to be good Samaritans to others— and also to ourselves.

When we read the story of the good Samaritan we are tempted to come at it in a monolithic way. We interpret the narrative so that we are always the Good Samaritan.

And while of course this is valid, and we do well to let the text implicate us and convict us to care for others, this is not a complete reading of the text. In truth we are both the good Samaritan and the one robbed, beaten and naked along the road.

This is a more expanded but still accurate view of the text. It provides a way to view our wounded selves. Consider this.

“When the Samaritan found one who was robbed and beaten and naked along the road the text says,“He [the Samaritan] went to him [the wounded one] and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’”

Magnanimous! Just! Above and beyond. We must not neglect the wounded among us.

And yet the truth is that sometime that naked one is us. Life robs us all! Life beats up on us all. We all make mistakes. Life leaves all along the road in need of help at some point.

Today that was true of me. I was in pain all day from several old injuries. So I lovingly medicating myself. I lay down. I distracted myself cleaning and gardening.

When we are the beaten up, we must, to follow the teaching of Jesus, help ourselves. We must carry ourselves to those who can help us. Discouraged perhaps we need to make a phone call to a friend. Hurting we may need to take our medicine. Hurting we may need to do some stretches.

We must at times carry ourselves to ourselves to experience the oil and wine of our own kindnesses. We must be the innkeeper we pay to care for our very selves. We must be willing to pay for help for ourselves, perhaps for counseling, perhaps medical treatment, perhaps a gym membership, perhaps good food, perhaps a new book to inspire us.

It is not enough to be the hero of the text, the excellent Samaritan. It is not accurate that we always will be. At times we are at the hurt one.

When this is the case, do this. Love your hurt self. See yourself and have compassion.

To do this well ultimately we must carry ourselves to God himself and present our wounds and our soul’s neediness to him. To do this is to see ourselves accurately, to not look away from our own nakedness and weakness.

Thus evening my wife talked me into going out to dinner. I needed this. I needed her to feed me with a time out with good food. I let myself be taken care of.

Interesting, the day began with me helping her, and that it ended with her helping me.

“Go and do likewise,” said Jesus.

And a sword will pierce …

Posted: December 27, 2019 in becoming, difficulty
Tags: , , , , , , ,
1

Through the holiday season I have been thinking about Mary, the mother of Jesus. In reading through Luke’s account I was struck by Simeon’s comment, almost an aside, to Mary, “And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Hearing this we think of one sword, and of course the literate reader immediately recognizes the connection to Christ on the cross, pierced. The sword that pierces Jesus pierces Mary, his mother.

But as I thought over her story, I could see that there were many piercings in her life. The astonishing and yet confusing circumstances surrounding her pregnancy, the complications it must’ve created with her family, Joseph and her community, the birth away from home, the flight to Egypt, the son who disappeared for three days and then rebuked the parents, the loss of her husband Joseph, the disciples replacing the family, her certain awareness of the brutal and dangerous threats again Jesus when he began to teach and to contradict the religious establishment, the cross and then the painful and often bloody birth of the church.

All swords.

In all this Mary seems the passive figure, hunkered down under the many stabbings that she had little or no control over. And what is her response?

Priest Richard Rohr makes the point that, “Not a word is spoken by Mary in either place, at his [Jesus’s] birth or at his death. Did you ever think about that? Mary simply trusts and experiences deeply. She is simply and fully present. Faith is not, first of all, for overcoming obstacles; it is for experiencing them—all the way through!“

Our natural tendency is to resist and fight and try to control the piercings of life, the downturn’s, the ailments, the rejections, the failures. And some times we must not be passive. We must fight through to a new future. But if we get stuck with an inability to accept all of life, the ups and the downs, this can actually makes life harder.

Life is an up and down affair. It involves swords. There will be piercings. Simeon words to Mary have a universal application.

Richard Rohr addresses a way to deal with this writing, “Welcoming the pain [of life] and letting go of all your oppositional energy against suffering will actually free you from it! like reversing your engines. Who would have thought this? It is your resistance to things as they are that causes most of your unhappines …”

There’s a fine line here to observe here. To love ourselves and others we can and should do all we can to alleviate suffering, to gently care for ourselves, to compassionately care for others, to be good Samaritans. And sometimes resistance is necessary; resistance may at times carry us on to new accomplishments and adventures.

But what we can’t control, the swords that fly upon us when we have no shield up nor can put one up, those we do well to accept as they are, with all they bring. What we can’t control or stop we can still endure and even perhaps learn from. Perhaps we can learn to be more like Mary, fully alive, living the life that has come to us, in a quiet kind of way, hanging on to God through it all.

Loving the Foreigner

Posted: December 15, 2019 in Food, goodness
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

“NO PASSPORT REQUIRED,” a new six-part PBS series hosted by chef Marcus Samuelsson takes viewers on an journey across the U.S. to celebrate the diversity of immigrant traditions and cuisine woven into American food and culture.

In an interview about the show Marcus says, “ As an immigrant myself [born in Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, and now living in Harlem] it is a dream to be a part of a show that shines light on the food culture of immigrant communities all around us. I love nothing more that heading to a new city and making my way to a local market or being invited into a family home for dinner. My hope is that the program helps show people how similar we all are, —something that I think is incredibly important in our current climate.”

I agree! We are so similar to the many diverse immigrants and refugees who have come to the United States, and we were different too, and those similarities and the differences too need to be celebrated and honored!

As a Christian, I am sometimes saddened by my fellow countrymen who have so much anger toward and mistrust of immigrants. Jesus modeled what should be our attitude, a willingness, a warmth — much like Marcus Sammuelsson’s — to embrace the stranger, to love the alien, to eat with them, and more than that, to provide for the weary or wounded traveler we meet along the road. Jesus told us to go out to all the nations to make friends with people, and yet now we see that they have come to us to be friends with us. How cool is that?

In the show “No Passport Required” we meet many immigrants who were brought to the United States by the UN because of the wars in Iraq and Syria, people who are now America’s business owners, contributing members of their American community and providing jobs for others in their community.

How courageous! How admirable! How worthy of respect and love.

There’s nothing wrong with us being proud of our country. But it is also noble, profoundly Christian and loving to be proud of people from other countries too, and to embrace them.

For the Christian this isn’t optional. We have been told to exude warmth and love to all people.

The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 19:34

Jesus Said, “ Look!”

Posted: December 4, 2019 in beautiful, goodness
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

Matthew 6:26

Jesus offers an invitation.

Look!

Instead of worrying, look.

Look at the birds, or the rain, or a family member, or even something as simple as your good food, even if it imperfect or limited.

It was and is provided. Be grateful. This is mental health. Gratitude for the present replaces worry about the future.

Looking is therapy!

Seeing what is present and understanding why and how it is present is healing. What is present is grace. What we worry over is not, it is a kind of self-inflicted punishment. Worry rushes from the present to live in a tortuous future.

But to look at the in-your-face good is to enter into a divine reality, to pick up a spirit of gratitude, a sense of safety, and this drives us away from our obsessive tendency to worry.

I am practicing this today. This morning I felt the fluffy of my cat which is the same fluffy of my sweet wife’s bathrobe. Comfort there.

I listen to the rain. I listen to the soft flicker of the fire. I listen to the click of the refrigerator door. The microwave plays a four note tune to tell me it has heated my drink properly.

Wisdom is about the present, noticing the beauty of the present, as it is, being grateful for the things smack dab in front of us without wanting them to be different.

“Look” said Jesus. Look at what is around you that reminds you that God is present, that he is in control, that he is taking care of the smallest things.

Look and see, God is all over the abc’s, the basics, the 1,2,3’s of living. Understand the beauty of what is now, the “what” or the “whatness” of our everyday life. To see and appreciate this is to make friends with reality and with God.

When we ground ourselves in the sentient now and revel in immediate “here” — the sounds, smells, colors that waft over the sides of our boats, the sensory gift fish we happen to haul in today, then we are following Jesus and making peace with ourselves and our world.

Live!

Posted: December 4, 2019 in clarity, gratitude
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Tonight I made chicken Satay.

Spontaneous decision. Thinking too much about have fun is not having fun.

I threw lots of ingredients in this culinary delight. I was missing a few. Who cares. Like I’m going to get it as good as a Thai restaurant anyway.

Live-cook-drool-chew — whatever you have — and do this pre-cognitive.

Live fully, stop thinking overly.

I practiced that today! Had pain. Didn’t overthink it. Hurting sucks. Ignored it! Thinking about things we don’t like makes them worse. I would know. I’m the master of self-inflicted mental torture.

But today, no introspective side trips, no wandering into the unknown future. Made delicious French toast. Whipped cream on top. Espresso on the side. Read. Painted a door. Talked on the phone. Fed the cat. Made Satay.

Again didn’t think much. It’s been said that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Some truth there. But I say this. The over-examined life isn’t lived worthily.

Much of life is best taken on board like a fish. You just receive it with gratitude and feel lucky you caught it.

Like Satay. Satay, or sate in Indonesian spelling. It’s an Indonesian gift.

I’m so glad it exists.

We’ve eaten chicken Satay in a great little Thai restaurant in Point Loma called Supannee House of Thai. I order it every time there.

Here is the concoction for the consumption: coconut milk, soy sauce, curry powder, turmeric, garlic, ginger, brown sugar, fish sauce smeared and grilled on chicken. It’s especially good dipped in peanut sauce.

To live well is to live with spices and sauces aplenty.

“You think too much,” said my wife recently.

Nailed me!

Over-process; over-suffer. I’d know.

But maybe today just this:

Live.

Receive.

Eat.

Rejoice.

Quiddity: Straw It Up!

Posted: November 30, 2019 in beautiful, goodness
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

One of the ways that we derive acute meaning and pleasure and see beauty in life lies in our ability to experience the quiddity or essence of persons or things.

Rembrandt’s genius was his unparalleled ability to render a person’s quiddity in a single portrait.

My wife’s genius, her quiddity, lies in her ability to see a problem and devise a solution that helps another person get something they need.

The word quiddity originated in the Latin word quid meaning “what.” Quiddity was defined by the ancients as the real nature of a thing; its essence.

In medieval scholastic philosophy “quiddity” quidditas literally meant “whatness.” For these philosophers quiddity described properties that a particular substance ( say a person) shared in with others of its kind, and so entails a description by way of commonality.

The quest for a quiddity represents a romantic and idealistic human quest for meaning. It represents a way of thinking, an effort to get to a main thing, something bordering on a quest for universals, something Platonic, a quest for the Plato’s forms, something that helps us understand a complex thing in a simple way.

And yet it’s not so high flying as all that. Quiddity is smaller than universal. It is more attainable. It is that fleeting fragrance of the flower I just passed by, the honeysuckle in my backyard, experienced for a brief moment, absorbed, loved but not catalogued as eternal or forever fixed. What is the quest for beauty. 

Quiddity, at its simplest and most sensory, is a brief flash of recognition and pleasure of essence.

This is how we were meant to live, philosophically and joyfully sentient. Wise Jesus said that he came to give us life, life abundantly, life flowing over the edge of the cup. He came to empower us to experience the quality of being human, and of being one with each other and himself. He designed us to receive essences, to be in receipt of the ultimate essence, love.

But not wanting to fly too high over our own heads, although we can soar into the best things life has to offer (connection, community, love, the divine) we can also talk about this kind of thing, about quiddity, in earthy, historical, everyday, garden variety terms.

Consider Frank Loyd Wright, the famed American architect. It has been said that his architecture is organic. This is a rough and crude distinction, but it helps understand the man. The structures he designed vary widely in look, but the theme of fitting in with the environment is common to many of them.

He himself said about this:

“A building should appear to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there.”

“No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.”

By such statements we begin to get at the quiddity of his designs, a harmony between hill and house. He built to nature. His buildings honor their environments, his “Falling Water” house being perhaps the finest example. A rushing waterfall runs out from under the house.

So why labor to identify quiddity?

For this reason: To discover the nature of a thing is to understand and to increase pleasure in living through our amazing world. It may also help us to understand evil, and injustice, but then that is another exploration for another time.

The quest for quiddity is one mechanism for increasing our understanding and pleasure. As applied to the good things of life, it is a quest to experience beauty. 

So what would it take for you and I to apprehend the quiddity present in people and things around us on a day-to-day basis?

The question is fraught with philosophical, epistemological and ontological problems.

Let’s skip those. We will never all agree on the universal essence of anything, or even on how we come to that, but what we can do is simply savor what we perceive to be the essence or essences of something in any given moment.

How might we do that? How might we dive deeper into the rich essence of experience? How might we see, know, apprehend and classify our experiences of the “other,” the “what” better?

This way: Make the choice to pause, to be in the present moment and to suck it up, straw it up into our awareness. It will take the extended pause needed to really see and hear and feel. It will take the pause that hovers over something, that lets it be for us what it is. It will take the willingness to savor the thing, the thing’s “what,” its pleasure rating, its place on the pleasure spectrum. This will have to be done without rushing on to the next moment in which the lovely, glowing, fragrant, sensuous quiddity of the previous moment is always lost.

This morning as I ground my espresso beans and packed them into the portafilter basket, I breathed them. I breathed in the sweet, poignant, nutty, earthy fragrance of ground coffee, freshly baked.

The quiddity of good espresso exists in its smell and taste, which exists in the art of how it was originally dried, baked and processed. It’s real essence is the land it came from, it’s elevation, it’s rainfall, it’s soil.

When I drink espresso, I drink it’s quiddity, it’s immediate history, the machine it was just extruded from, the water it is dissolved in, the heat that helped extract it, the ratio of water to bean. And when I drink espresso I drink its older history, the place it grew, its geography, the people who grew and harvested it. I drink a complex old-new quiddity that is reduced for me to a beautiful smell and taste that I and so many others know and love so well. And then there is the jolt, the caffeine rush, another very personalized quiddity of the much loved coffee bean.

Quiddity, the word has such a fluid sound. It easily slides into place with its definition. And it offers us a pointer, a crude gesture toward living well.

To pause, over each person and thing we encounter, and closing our eyes to breathe in an essence, a gorgeous “whatness,” the what that is right in front of us — ahhhh.

This is one way to live well.

The Fascinating Relationship Between Doing and Being.

Posted: November 26, 2019 in becoming, Change
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Today I lay quietly on my bed engaged in diaphragmatic breathing, my wife stroking my head, in the moment, soothing, healing — us together, just being, a state being.

Tonight I make dinner, spaghetti squash and turkey meat balls topped with marinara sauce — doing. Delicious – the baked spaghetti squash caramelized and sweet as it plays off the savory meat and tangy tomato sauce. Me doing for myself and my partner. I was in a mode of doing.

Doing and being — these are interesting everyday modes of living with fascinating the similarities and differences! Both being and doing can be delicious, satisfying or frustrating.

Classically, analytically — thinkers have often separated being and doing. There is something to this. Being comes first. You have to be, in order to do. Being is a prerequisite to doing.

Being comes with being born and staying born. Doing follows. Being is preparatory, a kind of becoming, inward and often quiescent. Consider being in the womb. Doing is noisy, productive, outward, driven, active. Consider taking on a career. These crude distinctions make some sense, but reality is a bit more complex.

Take painting a room. We think of it as classic doing. If you want a room to look better, you don’t stand in it just being; you paint it. Painting is quintessential doing. It transforms a space. It makes history. Paint covers a multitude of previous trends, and it hides smudges and dirt around the light switches!

My wife and I worked on repainting the bathroom this morning. The creamy, thick paint rolled on sticky and wet. You could whiff the paint and hear the whir of the spinning roller as we pushed it up the wall.

But painting is the kind of doing where you can stand back when you are done and take a deep breath of satisfaction and suck in some fine, toxic volatile organic compounds, VOCS, that turn doing into a state of being — high!

So painting isn’t pure doing. Not at all. Painting can involve a creative state of being at the beginning of the project when one gets inspired and imagines possibilities, and it can include a reflective and appreciate state of being at the end when one admires the work. Painting isn’t all doing. We stand back, just being, satisfied!

As I left my wife finishing our paint job, we kissed on my way out, a kiss of solidarity. Doing this brought us into a state of mutualistic being. Interesting. Doing has the potential to create a community of being, of creating oneness.

But does being require doing to give it value or keep it in existence? We say things like “move or die,” as we validate the primacy of exercise and action. Even babies, who may not seem to be on a mission, kick and stretch and babble in preparation for walking, handling things, talking. What may appear to simply be existing is in fact very active and very purposive. Perhaps being always has a kind of doing built into it.

Maybe, but on the other hand, we can assert philosophically and spiritually that a baby or a very old person does not have to paint a bathroom or make dinner or even clean themselves or be at all productive to retain value. The new born infant in the arms and the very feeble grandma in the wheelchair are both treasured even when they can do little or nothing for themselves. The paralyzed person is yet of inestimable value. These limited ones are intrinsically valuable as being, not doing.

Indeed it is a horrible drift away from humanity and from civilization to only value human beings who are productive or valuable according to the norms of society. We’ve been there before with the ancients discarding unwanted babies to die of exposure or wild animals.

And as we know even today, in some parts of the world through sex-selective abortion, babies are terminated in pregnancy based upon the predicted sex of the infant. This is massively tragic thinking about being, making male being of more value than female being. And in many countries disabled people, especially in third world countries, are isolated from the experiences, school, work, social life. They remain hidden at home. I’ve seen this myself in Nicaragua. For us to do well as a planet we must retain the intrinsic sacredness and preciousness of all human life. Gender, disability, unattractiveness, low mental acuity must not become inferiority markers that entirely limit opportunities for normal productive life.

Yes, but while this is wonderfully noble, to aim at valuing all of humanity, to value nonproductive being, can we live this fancy talk out, practice it concerning our own beings? After a life of doing, can driven ones be content with less doing, with more just being? With resting? With not needing so much accomplishment? With less or even no painting, so to speak.

Perhaps not entirely. Most retired people are happiest when they have a project or are volunteering, or even working again. We are happiest when thinking of and doing something for someone else, not ourselves. We are happiest helping.

And yet the eventuality is that at some point our bodies run down and our opportunities to help become limited. Eventually age, poor health, weariness, changing mood, accidents — life stuff — interferes with productivity. And when this happens — and this can be very difficult for all of us — here is where we have to wisely shift our understandings of being and doing. Doing and being need new definitions for new seasons of life.

Today my wife and I played cards, talked, ate together, relaxed together, watched TV together. We produced nothing tangible during these moments of togetherness but just being together was special, meaningful, valuable.

Being present for and with someone in nonproductive leisure is an essential and precious element of wise living. There is a softness and quietness in these contented and grateful states of being. Such halcyon seas and safe harbors are sometimes missing from busy projects or social events.

It is remarkable and noteworthy that simply being who we are and where we are retains our meaningful place in the world. And there, in a quiet place, simply being kind, grateful and patient with ourselves and others sponsors being’s native sphere of influence. To be in a positive state of mind is to weld powerful influence. Being that is rooted in the nourishing energy of love emanates a power similar to doing. It changes the color of rooms.

Yet such elevated states of being don’t always come to us passively or easily. Sometimes we do great and terrible battle (note the “do” here) to achieve the quieter, more peaceful nodes of being. Often we must cast off bitterness, despair, negativity, jealousy, pride and more to win peace of mind.

My father at 91, lives in a small room with a few books a TV and a small bed. The other day he enthused, “I’m richer than Bill Gates!” The shock waves of that statement are still basing against the doors of the universe. My dad is very godly and quiet man and spends much time alone. And yet his gratitude emanates past the stars and provides a model of being for our whole family and all who encounter him.

To be, to do; to do, to be — life is a sequential, repeating, overlapping, alternating process But people like my father make it implicitly clear that noble states of being are possible in circumstances where there is little opportunity for the kind of doing and having that Fenelon says brings “courage to the senses.”

To help us all navigate the tidal nature of doing and being, perhaps a helpful question presents itself:

What is this season of life asking from you?

Perhaps it is more doing, perhaps it is more being. Perhaps it is practicing and increasing in a more contented and graceful form of being. Upping the value of the value of being may be challenging in western culture as there is some bias against giving being a commensurate value with doing. Among many go-getters simply being present, reflection, rest, meditation — even forms of robust tranquility such as prayer — are dispreferred. Perhaps it is a different mix or ratio of these that we need, different from what we have lived before.

Whatever the answer, stay realistic. Change is a process. Navigating the high seas and strong currents of being and doing is paint and brush work. Living out our doing and living out our being is like painting. Expect drips, runs and blotches and redos, and at least two coats of paint on every surface.

And expect success. Expect a kiss at the end. Expect to be kissed by reality. I see the universe as being on the side of the good. I see God as the guide to productive action and to precious, sweet, peaceful, grateful states of being. I see one of the great purposes of life as arriving at a more enlightened state of being characterized by love and kindness and gratitude and the celebration of all kinds of beauty. 

For me, God has provided the quintessential model for us. You work (do) and then you sit down and you rest (be) and you look at your work and out of a sweet, peaceful, calm satisfied state of being you say, “It’s good!”

Who Are You?

Posted: November 25, 2019 in difficulty
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Think with me about difficulty for a moment. Difficulty is difficult — especially as processed by our minds.

The problem is that in difficulty our minds tend to run away from reality and get obsessive and exaggerate the danger. We run hot; we run negative. Our minds terrorize us, make the problem worse by constantly returning to it and focusing on it.

I do this. I do this with my physical pain. Focusing on it is like digging at a wound that already hurts. Poking in there makes it hurt more.

Perhaps you have heard of the RAIN technique for dealing with pain and stress, unpleasant experiences and feelings.

The four steps are as follows:

R   Recognize

A   Allow

I   Investigate

N   Non-Identifiy

The basic idea is to honestly recognize the feelings that we have in any given experience, allow ourselves to sit with them with no judgment, investigate them but gently refuse to define ourselves by these thoughts and feelings.

This approach is a way to de-stress, to calm down, to be curious but not traumatized by thoughts and feelings, especially those that come from negative associations or experiences.

I’m interested in the ideas of the last one (N). The idea is to not identify yourself or define yourself by small parts of yourself or temporary feelings or experiences.

It has been explained like this.

“Disentangle yourself from the various parts of the [painful] experiences knowing that they are small, fleeting aspects of the totality of who you are, arising and passing away due mainly to causes that have nothing to do with you, that are impersonal. Feel the contraction, stress and pain that comes from claiming any part of this stream as “I,” or “me,” or “mine” and sense the spaciousness and peace that comes when experiences simply flow.”

I like this. I have pain from an old surgery, but I am not defined by that pain. When I over-focus on it then it seems to become the whole universe. But it is not. There are whole sections of the rest of my body that don’t hurt at all. And there are huge expanses of time in my life when this pain has not been present.

I may not be productive in my moments of intense pain, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been productive and won’t again be in the future. Therefore, I can work at being patient with the moment that is unwanted. And most importantly I can refuse to define myself by it.

We would all do well to practice such non-judgmental, gentle, patient responses to difficulty. We are not one of our poorly functioning or harmed body parts. We are not defined by one bad relationship we have had. One perceived failure doesn’t define us. We are not one feeling that we might have on one given day. We are not our ability or non-ability to function in any one given moment.

As concerning negative feelings sometimes I’m afraid, sometimes I’m lonely, sometimes I am fuzzy headed, but none of those are me. I am simply having moments, human moments, moments we all have, that flow through us but are not the essence of us.

So what am I that is more consistent than this? I’m a precious human being. I am a father, and a husband, and a brother. I am a friend, I am a helper, I am a Christian, I am a child of God, I am a creature of great value and worth.

So let it rain. Let it rain gentleness. Let it rain self-acceptance. Let it rain wisdom, the wisdom to live humbly with difficulty, the wisdom to define ourself accurately and yet compassionately.

My prayer: God help me to be as gentle and loving with my imperfect mind and body as you are with me.

On Becoming Yoda

Posted: November 24, 2019 in difficulty, journey
Tags: , , , ,
0

As some of you know, I’ve been super healthy of late. It’s as if I have a wall of protection around me.

Yeah, that’s not quite right.

My doctor looked at me the other day and said, “I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t know one person who has had so many issues in so little time. I was flattered! Of all the people in his 30 years of practice I outrank them all!

I’m special! But then who isn’t eventually in precisely this fashion — well a few escape relatively unscathed by pain and panic. They are freaks of nature.

I had a friend who in his 70s simply tipped his patio chair back, fell over, hit his head and was gone. No serious sessions in the oncology office to scare the heck out of him, no tubes at the hospital, no IVs, no cameras where they shouldn’t go, no heroic measures at the end. Lucky guy! Must have totally pleased God. It was like he was translated at the end, gone over to the other side in his chariot-chair like Elijah the prophet. It was nigh unto Biblical!

My situation is different. The universe is playing yo-yo with my patio chair. I tip up, I tip down. I recover from something. I get something else. Much like most folk really.

I have had some unique experiences on this journey. I went to the hospital for the first time. I now have a new view of eggs. My breakfast egg — couldn’t recognize it. It came to the plate pulverized, blended and repacked into a small, wet dome. It was stolid, squat and grey-green. It looked like an army quonset hut, and it tasted faintly like it had spent time in the kitchen sink being washed.

Even the dietitian squirmed over it, picked it up, gagged and brought me back a proper omelette. It wasn’t half bad. I stayed another day by faking symptoms just for another cheesy omelette.

What to make of my poor health, my hospital visits, my situation, my eggs? All in all it is probably simplest to say the obvious, “Oh life! You always have been like this — no surprises here. You always have been up and down.”

But still, and yet, and furthermore and irresistibly sometime I try to add meaning to it all. The other day it occurred to me that I feel like I have been shoved into a chrysalis, melted into goop, or syrup, and God only knows what halting, deformed, half-flying, half-crawling woofer wonder will crawl out of this fresh hell.

Maybe this experience will be transformative.

Maybe I’ll turn into a kind of Christian Yoda! But taller. I’ll utter aphoristic witticisms using inverted syntax that leave my followers mystified for weeks but don’t really mean anything. Or I’ll transform into a kind of Dalai Lama, and write a wise book, and receive guests from all over the world.

Probably. That is probably what will happen.

Older Entries
Newer Entries