Posts Tagged ‘thriving’

And a sword will pierce …

Posted: December 27, 2019 in becoming, difficulty
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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.

Jesus Said, “ Look!”

Posted: December 4, 2019 in beautiful, goodness
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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.

Who Are You?

Posted: November 25, 2019 in difficulty
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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
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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.

Strength To Be Content

Posted: November 18, 2019 in god, responsibilty
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I heard a fiery sermon this morning. The preacher was good. Made some excellent points. The crowd laughed, and clapped. At the end speaker shouting. I got a feeling people were duly impressed.

Me, I just felt guilt. The text was Philippians 4:12-13.

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Great text. I’ve memorized it. It’s in my most recent journal. The point of the message given by the pastor was that it if you aren’t content and full of joy in hard times, in the storm, then you’re not an authentic Christian. You’re a fair weather Christian. If you’re only content in good times, prosperous times, times when you have nice stuff, times when things are going well, then you aren’t for real.

He ended shouting “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!”

The whole thing made me feel somehow in adequate. I think it was because it felt like the pressure was all on me to do something to be more authentic. I know that in Corinthian’s Paul spoke of dispairing of “even life itself.” Nobody is up, positive, content all the time. That’s just not reality. 

I wanted to know more. I was left with questions?

I don’t tend to feel content in storms. How do I draw on that strength that comes from Jesus? Is there something I have to do? My efforts to be content in Jesus during storms don’t seem to work that well. On the other hand, I know I try to he authentic in my faith.

Thoughts: Looks like Paul’s strength was from Jesus, not from himself. Paul’s secret was that it was Christ strengthening him. Paul wasn’t strong. Jesus was. This distinction is important. Paul was quick to know his weakness in other places in Scripture. So what we make of all this?

Being content isn’t something we do, but something Christ does in us when he gives us strength. Paul learned that the strength wasn’t from him. He learned that we can’t make ourselves more content in hard times. Christ is the one who makes us content to suffer through the storm.

I suppose you could assert that we have to have the faith, but the Bible says even faith is a gift of God.

I think what helps me here is to see that this text is more about God being authentic than Paul or me. I’m pretty dodgy. Paul himself didn’t always have it together. But Jesus, he’s authentic, and he can do what we can’t do.

His strength that he brings to me by his initiative is what can get me through the storm.

So my, our, humble, broken Philippians 4 prayer might be, “God we seem to lack the power to do the very thing we want to do, be content with hardship. So it’s up to you. Christ be strength! Christ be the one who gives us even the faith that your strength is there for us. Jesus, it is you, not me, so be you in me.”

So in a sense I’m off the authentic making hook. Jesus is on the hook for me. He’s the one that is going to come through.

Thank God for that!

“I’m open. Christ be my contentment, Christ be strength in me.”

Your Body — Love It

Posted: November 16, 2019 in bodies
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Bodies — sometimes we are proud of them, say one aspect of them (hair, nails, muscles, teeth, arms), sometimes we are embarrassed by them, (shape, size, strength level, parts broken, parts in pain, areas sick or even missing), sometimes we are even shamed by them. This can happen when other people make comments, or we look in the mirror and criticize what we see.

And yet it is best to simply love our bodies.

Through it all our bodies are our gentle beasts, our friends, even when they are flawed, or when they change, tire, weaken, wear out. Many times they have served us well, carried us around, given us wonderful sensations, allowed us to experience and connect with our world and its many people.

We do well to love our bodies for what they have done for us.

Our eyes have shown us the colors, green trees, blue skies, yellow flowers, others’s bright eyes; our mouths have treated us to sweet chocolate ice cream and savory meats, delicate fruits and vegetables; our ears have heard the stream running over stones, the mockingbird bird chirping, our favorite classic or rock song. Our toes have mattered too; they have carried around our brains. Each part has counted.

Love your body’s parts. We do, and sometimes we don’t.

One of the difficulties that we all live with are the societal standards of what a perfect body should look like or be able to do. TV, movies, magazines, online images, advertisements don’t help. Here we see the freakishly beautiful, the perfectly toned, the carefully photoshopped. Thin, young, muscled and smooth-skinned is the dominant motif.

But we can have a different perspective. Many of us are working on this. Many of us understand that these pictures are not reality. Many of us are coming back to reality, to the value of self-acceptance.

Those TV images don’t reflect humanity well. No one is perfect. No one has the perfect body. And even if they approach that, it doesn’t last long. Norms and standards warp our perspectives, even lie to us. All age. All change. Work, mood, level of wealth, pregnancy, geography, genetics, weather, responsibilities, time, illness, aging, difficulty and more – all change the body.

And when our bodies change, then is the time to be oh so gentle with them and to love them even more.

Girls who are happy with their genes rule girls airbrushed for our screens.

Men happy with themselves are happier with others.

Children who are told they are wonderful, who are honestly complimented for their features, who are given explanations about everyone being different, who are never criticized concerning their bodies will struggle less with body image.

A few other ideas may help.

All have bodies. All bodies are similar in many ways. All need sleep and food. All smell good, don’t smell good, tire, glow, pale, shrink, restrengthen, age, sag, expand.

Self hatred, self denial, self-punishment, self criticism, body shaming — none of this is healthy or helpful in changing us or our bodies.

When we speak with ourselves it may help us to think what we would tell someone else, a friend or family member if they confessed some unhappiness or shame over their changing body. We would probably say something very affirming. We can also do this for ourselves, being kind, being sensitive, being affirmative with ourselves.

And we can ground ourselves in reality. I’m working in this too.

There are no perfect bodies, only perfectly gentle responses them.

What We Can Learn from Progressive Young Adults

Posted: November 15, 2019 in Change
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This week I’ve been hanging around at home with a few grad students as they stay at my house.

It’s interesting! They’re fascinating as representatives of new perspectives on lots of things, coffee, float spas, Confucianism, pedagogy (the art of teaching), gender sensitivity, racism, children’s literature, body shaming, academic culture, LGBTQ issues, Christianity.

There’s been a cultural shift that they represent. Many of our young adults are disillusioned with institutions, hard-and-fast rules, black-and-white thinking, moralistic traditionalism, judgmentalism. Of course, I am friends with other young people who remain quite conservative, comfortable with the conceptual categories and ethics they’ve been taught, but I to gravitate toward these more open thinkers. I have made the journey with them.

Why? Why do I like the questioning, the openness, the desire to move beyond our past understanding.

Because I think they treck a wiser path, and I think Christians in particular should listen to them.

One of my young moderns told me recently she was doing yoga and that her Catholic friend told her it was from the devil. Of course that’s not true, and of course she found that offensive and ignorant. She also told me that she had been raised Catholic but she decided she didn’t want to hate gay people and so she left the church. Of course, not all Catholics hate gay people, nor does the pope, but she was describing a kind of intolerance that didn’t seem loving or wise to her.

Another of my young progressive friends told me recently that he was reading Confucianism. I’ve read Confucius. I like him. Some Christians categorically oppose all eastern religions and philosophies. But there is another way to look at this. There is an ethos in Confucius that aligns with the ethos of Jesus. Confucius emphasized respect in relationships, filial piety, righteousness, human heartedness, goodness, benevolence. These are good things, Jesus things; these create good relationships. Christians can honor these teachings without turning them into religion, without abandoning what Jesus taught.

And one other of my young friends can’t seem to find a church where women are equally respected with men in pastoral and leadership roles. She wants that. She won’t compromise. I respect her for that. There is good Biblical support for that, if you want to see it. But in her community, that’s not to be found. I suspect many modern young women feel the same.

It’s good to remember that Jesus is simple. He taught us to love our neighbor. He taught us to love God. He taught us to be friends to strangers, to include the alien. When Jesus told us to go into all the world to represent him, he didn’t mean to go out and beat people up with morals, systematic theology’s or our preferred culture. I can imagine Jesus, even Paul, having a respectful conversation and debate with friendships with people of our worlds many different traditions. Jesus was motivated by love, not hate and he wanted to have dialogues not just preach sermons.

I’m not at all suggesting that there isn’t ignorance and falsehood and misinterpretation and oppression in the many philosophies and religions of the world. We all error in our thinking and believing. Christianity itself has often been mistaught, warped beyond recognition. And I’m not suggesting we l don’t contend for what is valid, true, wisest the best we know.

But consider Paul. When Paul went to Athens he identified with some of the things the Athenians believed. He started out with the truth that in God we all live and move and have our being. He honored their thinking.

In approaching our faith communities, other lifestyles, in approaching people on the other side of a political line, Christians need to remember that the people in all other groups are created in the image of God, God sends his sunshine and rain and blessings on them too, they too live and move in God, aware of that or not. They too have truth.

Let’s not turn Christianity into a bunch of rules, a raft of intolerance, a bunch of propositions or judgements we write on slate and present as a systematic theology that all others must accept to be loved by God or to be spiritual. That’s not working. Many modern people are abandoning the church because of that very kind of thinking. Intolerance isn’t attractive. It isn’t the mission Jesus started. He himself said he didn’t come to condemn the world but to save it.

Humility would suggest we go out into our world to learn, to listen more, to realize that truth is often a balance between two extremes, to realize we are the not the only ones who know stuff. How fascinating to explore, to better understand. How wise not to be threatened, to be willing to accept new interpretations, new perspectives, a different way of looking at the same old thing. How fascinating to be like Jesus. to love people.

Here is what we were taught to do.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:7-8

Let’s talk turkey!

Posted: October 26, 2019 in healing, the body
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Let’s talk turkey! Let’s talk about the real stuff. Let’s have a conversation about our bodies, our thoughts, our behaviors. Let’s be friends and talk openly.

Guilt, shame, regret, insecurity — over our bodies, over our thinking, over our behavior, over our eating — it’s a rough go

“I ate too much, I eat the wrong thing, I shouldn’t of said that, did that, thought that.”

Of course guilt over things actually done wrong and forgiveness for those are real and important, but so much of the negativity inside of us is not that — it’s just a crazy kind of insecurity, false-guilt and self-flagellation.

Our minds naturally go there, critique ourselves, and tend to be negative too much of the time.

I know. Lately I’ve been ill. I have needed to think differently about my body, about eating and about doing.

This happens to all of us at times. Life is not static. Our bodies and our circumstances and our success rates and our opportunities change over time. They change in pregnancy, they change in illness, they change as we age. They change with other people’s decisions. They change because the world changes.

Enough thinking that life is anything different than this. Enough thinking that we have to maintain some standard, some image in order to love ourselves and to be loved by others. Go to the grocery store. Watch the people. They come in all shapes and sizes, limping, running, with walkers, in their beautiful workout clothes, in their stained and old clothes, life rich, life weary and poor. You see it all. What should we think of it? How should we reflect on the change in circumstances of our lives and other’s lives? How do we navigate the vulnerability, changeability, the ephemeral nature of life?

Not by being self-negative.

God made us good! God built into us a sense of what to do. It’s called intuition. And he gave us a conscience. It knows right from wrong. And if we listen to scripture, the fact is that God is living within us, ready to guide and advise and encourage. He gives us who believe his Spirit.

Because of this I believe we often intuitively know what we need to do and not do, eat and not eat, think and not think, and instead of living by a pack of rules and a bunch of social judgments — a raft of diets, workouts, behavioral codes, and unrealistic expectations about body image, moral perfection and peer acceptability — we need to lighten up.

Seriously! Take it easy on yourself. Be kind to yourself. Trust yourself. Be intuitive. Live intuitively. Be an intuitive thinker, chooser, eater. Deeply care about yourself as a unique and special created being not like any other one.

Consider eating — it can be by the book, or by the hook and crook or by a simple sense of honoring the moment and your body.

We need freedom here! I need deliverance from old ways and old thinking here! We would do well to become intuitive eaters.

An intuitive eater has been defined as a person who, “makes food choices without experiencing guilt or an ethical dilemma, honors hunger, respects fullness and enjoys the pleasure of eating.”

Yea! I need that.

Freedom!

And intuitive lifestyle the same. Of course as you live apply the knowledge you have about health, about behavior consequences, about your limits and needs, and about morality, but live more by the Spirit, who gives you a built-in sense of what’s best for you.

Live intuitively by the idea that there is no “normal” when it comes to any part of us. Listen to your body and your heart and make the best decision given the unique circumstances you are in at the moment. Then be okay with yourself. Rest in what you’ve decided and don’t rethink it it

“Our life is what our thoughts make it,” said Marcus Aurelius.

If your thoughts are self-shaming they’re not from God. If you’re always trying to do what somebody else has done, you’ll only end up frustrated. If you don’t honor how God has made you or what he has allowed in you life that makes you who you are at any given moment, you will harm yourself.

Intuit the divine.

Intuit your life!

Be free my friends from law and from judgement — because you are!

For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-control.

2 Timothy 1:7

Hearing

Posted: October 19, 2019 in hearing
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This morning my wife corrected me, and she encouraged me to think differently. “Think less about yourself,” she said.

Perfectly fine.  She was correct. I’m too self-focused.

Yesterday on the phone my youngest daughter gave me some help by referring me to three good Ted’s talks. I listened to them and learned a lot.

Today I spent much of my day in silence. Not typical. It’s because I’m sick. It happens.

In the afternoon I sat in my backyard and listened with my eyes to the sun, then the trees and then I saw a hummingbird eat. A blur, a hard stop, a hover, a sip — gone!

I also spent some time silencing my mind. That seldom happens.

The following thoughts come to mind.

Which one speaks to you?

………..

To the watching ear the sun speaks of consistency; the trees speak of provisionality; the birds speak of dependency.

We need other’s ears to help us understand what we ourselves are saying.

We have trouble hearing because we won’t stop whispering — in our own ear.

We can hear without ears and speak without a tongue.

God gave us a powerful inner ear of empathy, and he gave us a powerful way to use it —  compassion.

The brain keeps hearing after the body stops speaking.

Silence heals the listening eye.

Nerves have loud voices; they need to shut up!

Nobody can keep a secret; what isn’t said is spoken by eyes, signed by muscles, articulated by hands.

Mindfulness has a gentle ear.

Being

Posted: September 22, 2019 in friends, identity, wonders
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The bullseye of life — want to hit it? Don’t aim at me!

The bullseye is us! Shoot us!

“That they may all be one!” the wise one, Jesus, prayed, so there you go. He set up the goal of life, the ultimate movement and goal of history. The target is oneness!

My daughter called me this morning when I was still in bed. Her voice traveled out of the holes in the bottom of my mobile phone, hit the sheet, and bumped over my pillow to me: “How are you, dad?” — my ear said to me — from her.

What is precious in a life,  despite the fact that we have overused the word precious?

The small, microphone voice of my daughter in my ears is precious because it is her, her being connected to me, us there for each other, neither one alone.

The exact, perfect center point of all existence lies within us being together.

Exquisite — those not-doing moments, those being-moments — someone else’s existence allowed to come within ours. It has been said by a wise one, Paul “In him [God] we live and move and have our being.” Therefore, there really is no being alone! It’s impossible. Life is inside of another. All life moves within God!

My life isn’t me, or you. It’s us. Your life isn’t you, it’s us. Being is always plural. We go along together or not at all. If you could somehow get out of the divine presence and be alone, you wouldn’t exist.

I have long lived like the crux of my consciousness and my experience was me as an individual, my eyes, my actions, my choices, what makes me stand up and stand out. Silly! It was always all of us. Essential being is a pile of us. We were made to live like kittens drooped and draped and sprawled on each other sleeping and playing and eating together. Consciousness, being, life — it’s a pile of kittens; it’s a pile of presences.

I texted a friend yesterday and asked, “How are you doing?”

She texted back that she has been struggling with her sense of “worth on a deep emotional level.”

“Let’s call and talk on the phone tomorrow,” I said, “We can talk about our it.” So we arranged for the divine moment. And when we talked — bam — we came aware that we live in God for each other, two presences bonded in him with the glue of shared struggle, as it was always meant to be.

Being an individual is good. I love autonomy. My doing is good, but you’ll notice every doing hinges on being, and being requires beings, and good requires being present to each other. If I linger near you, and you listen to me, if I absorb bits of you, and you breath in what I feel, the mystery of our separated being crosses time and space and merges. It’s magic, the fusion. It’s supreme, matchless, nonpareil — when we apprehend the quintessential us and we!

It’s the “when two or more are gathered in my name I’m there.” Two creates a magnetic, drawing spiritual gathering, and three can conjure a whole community of oneness. This is the virtuosic movement of history that was always meant to be — a unified us.

Last night in the same room with my wife, I was writing, she was reading, breathing the same air. It was perfect being!

I “liked” a friend’s picture yesterday on Facebook. A “like” is a validation of existence. The social scientists say social media may raise our anxiety levels, looking for likes, addiction to likes, superficial social media likes, jarring hits of pseudo affirmation, or not, but this popular activity tells us a bit about who we are. We are ones with the need to be liked, to be known, loved, to have another person validate our being, to connect. That why 2 billion people use Facebook.

We always have and always will need each other’s validation of being in some form in order to be more aware that we are a presence.

I stopped on my walk last night to talk to a neighbor. This is better than Facebook. We did some lingering, listening, absorbing, merging. He talked about losing his wife last year, a tragic accident, how he has struggled to go on. We hugged three times before we left each other — and I wouldn’t say that before this we were close — but standing on his driveway in the dark we bonded over shared pain.

A moment together, a call, a text, a like, a love, a hand up to greet, a hand on a shoulder, a hand out to help — that is being. You and I can do nothing better with the time and space we have on this huge, distance-making planet than to be safely and warmly present to each other.

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