A Matter of Being There

Annie Lamott's wisdom about life and writing includes such nuggets as these: 

Life isn’t logical. It is actually brutal. Cain is still slaughtering Abel, and that is the reality. How do we bring the living water to a very, very, very thirsty, scared and cold world?


We don’t do it by appearing more powerful and more learned. We do it by showing up and pushing back our sleeves. It’s the loaves and the fish and slowly, slowly, slowly trusting that the more that we give away, the more will be shared and the more we’ll starve for the softening of our hearts.*

These are difficult words, and ones I would just as soon ignore.  Yet there is a truth here that stands in the streets calling to passers-by in the way, in the way Jesus described life in his day: "It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.'"

We, all of us at one time or another, prefer our made-up stories to the truth of a world in pain.  We would like to live in those novels and short stories that describe the lives of fictional characters rather than the real-life human beings who confront us on street corners with their signs begging for handouts.  We don't want to read of the realities of lost jobs, foreclosed homes, low-grade schools because of slaughtered budgets.  We listen to the arguments in Congress about the debt ceiling, and are oblivious to the woman ahead of us in the check-out line handing her food stamps to the clerk.  We hear with concern about billions of dollars of unpaid government debt and pretend to ignore the $1.52 the woman comes up short with.  We can personally do very little about the former but the latter is within our reach to remedy.  Will we hand her what is needed to make up the shortfall in her change purse? 

Annie Lamott's words ring loud and clear in the way we address the hardships of our day.  The more we are willing to give of ourselves to those around us, the more we become vulnerable to the needs we discover within our reach, and the more we respond.  And from that discovery we push back our sleeves and show up where we can make a difference.  We don't need to have access to millions of dollars.  Once upon a time, we are told,  a loaf of bread and five fish were enough to feed the hungry thousands.  Let's just do it.















*from "Leadership and Education; Duke Divinity School

Reflections

Yesterday I spent the long, lovely afternoon out back, listening to sounds: of birds in conversation, of scampering squirrels running along the fence and up tree branches, chattering as they scrambled, of neighbors in back yards with the slow talk of friends, of Katie our beagle-jackrussell barking at everything.  I sat out there with my portable word processor putting together a blog as I took in the sounds, the light and shadow combinations of trees and flowers, of thinking about the Rapture that didn't take place.

Today, as I prepared to transfer it to my computer, nothing was there.  Convinced I had saved it, I determinedly waited for it to write along the screen on Word.  Nothing.  Evidently I failed to complete the "save" process.  We have all, no doubt, had that sick feeling when the words we labored over are lost into thin air.  Don't you just hate it?   So now I will try to recall some of what I wrote:

I noted my sorrow for those who waited with great excitement to be swept up into Heaven.  I was relieved that the only earth tremors occurred as a volcano began erupting up north in one of those Scandinavian countries I think.  I wonder how some would allow one person to persuade them of the final days of the world.  What must have been their longing and hope, to have fallen for such strange predictions?  Experience and history tell us that the many, many predictions of the end of the world, of judgment day, of catastrophes all over the place, never ever happened.  So I am happily trying to spend these days left for me in awareness of the good earth, the beauty of nature, the glory of art in all its forms, and to find ways to share that with others. 

A wonderful resource for me along those lines recently is the new book by Joan Chittister, OSB, as she takes a look at the Rule of Benedict, and what caught my attention was this, from her chapter, "Sacred Art,"
in The Monastery of the Heart, p.99:

It is a love for human community

that puts the eye of the artist

in the service of truth.

Knowing the spiritual squalor

to which the pursuit of anything less than beauty

can lead us,

the artist lives

to stretch our senses

beyond the tendency

to settle for lesser things –

simplistic stories instead of great literature,

bland characters rather than great portraits,

tasteless decorations instead of artistic accessories,

plastic flowerpots instead of pottery.

 

We could do no better than that, I believe, to make the world around us brighter, more hopeful, and less dreary as we hear the direful news broadcasts of suffering, war, hunger, oppression, and all the ills of this time.  We cannot let our lives be unaware of such as that, but we must remember the beauty -- that is the gift we have all been given, whether we acknowledge it or not.

PAIN

This disabling phenomenon we call pain has been my companion for some months now.  The intensity increases each day and it now lives with me, uninvited, as a steady presence.  The culprits are a few degenerative discs in my lower spine, pinching the nerve in my right leg.  I am not alone in this sort of suffering, but knowing the number of sufferers is legion for such a condition does not decrease my own pain.

It began last October: slight discomfort in my back which gradually increased over the ensuing months, inflicting the greatest pain to my right leg.  I stopped walking the dog.  I spent a lot of time sitting.  Visits to the doctors and physical therapy followed.  Pain medicines were available.  Then a cane to assist my walking and relieve pressure on my leg.  No remedies were effective.  A change in my position could bring on a sharp blinding pain.

I ran across a comment in a book review this morning in Christian Century by Janet Potter that struck me:  referring to Kevin Brockmeier's book The Illumination: A Novel,  she notes "His quiet novel suggests that any person, in no matter how much pain, possesses a remarkable capacity to bear it given even the smallest token of hope." (CC, May 3, '11, p. 53).  Characters in the novel discover that their wounds and pains emit a strange silvery glow that illuminates the site. It seems other-worldly.   Hope follows, which then becomes the balm for pain, a token of love from Somewhere.

That small hope for relief comes to me in the appointment I will have soon with a pain management center.  None of the hoped for remedies and resolutions so far have contributed more than temporary relief.  Pain medications, both non-prescription and prescription, proved impotent.  Rearranging my physical position allows for only temporary surcease of the worst pain, and the severest pain comes when I get up during the night.

All these descriptions are not listed to engage sympathy for my discomfort, but a way of defining what goes on with me these days.  That sudden reminder of mortality by way of physical pain can waken one remarkably to the present moment.  It focuses one upon the Now.  Reinhold Niebuhr once noted that pain or illness causes one to be self-absorbed so that whatever else is going on becomes secondary.  I now understand how such a condition is possible.  As someone who has always had great difficulty in directing my attention to the present moment, this experience teaches me something I had not learned very well before.  A second learning experience is what the depths of pain can be like -- the pain that is more than a momentary shock but rather one that is constantly present.  I have witnessed this pain in others, particularly when I served as a chaplain and counselor:  emotional pain as someone grieved the loss of a loved one, and physical pain  in the suffering from a debilitating illness. 

My own pain has been a Teacher as well as an unwanted companion.  Hope lurks in the shadows of a sometimes horrid pain, waiting to be realized in the form of relief and resolution.  I now am able to comprehend what goes on in others who struggle with daily physical and emotional pain even though I do not know fully the details of that suffering.  Perhaps one reason we experience pain, other than to serve as our warning system, is to show our relationship and connection to created life of all sorts, human and all creatures.

The suffering of victims of war, of natural and unnatural catastrophes, of hunger and disease, is a universal phenomenon from which none is spared.  When an animal is abused, there is suffering.  When a prisoner is tortured by a cruel system, there is suffering. When any experience injustice or inequality, there is suffering.  When life seems to offer no respite or hope, there is suffering.

So we share this common bond that assures us no living creature is free from pain and suffering.  What distinguishes us as human beings is how we deal with those situations.  Compassion trumps neglect.  We are here for our brief time on a tiny speck in the universe, yet our very self is part of what is greater than even our imaginations.  Understanding that may not lessen my momentary pain but it speaks of the larger perspective, and offers another hope.

Good Friday poem

This will probably offend some folks, but I wrote this after recalling a statement made at a Holocaust Remembrance Service some years ago, based on the line from the Psalm, "by his stripes we are healed."  The speaker commented:  "by their stripes we are healed,"  referring to the victims of the Holocaust.  So years later I came up with this poem, which is in my collection, Field Water, available at www.lulu.com:

by our wounds

from his high perch he watches us, the ones

normal as shoe leather and sandal straps

who go about the dailiness of life while

the world in madness destroys itself                                     

for gain or for food it doesn’t matter

the wounds he bears center in

barely breathing now, air scarcely

helpful, the pain numbed by mercy

he was wounded for our transgressions

            and by his bruises we are healed

                                                                                   

in a distant place children wander

in search of lost parents who may

lie hurt or dead in the streets

of the city ruled by hate –

out of sight now we wander aimlessly          

toward the shadows accomplishing little

but passing by the terrors of night and war

the suffering ones cry out despair splits air

carried in waves to the crossbar beam           

overlooking agonies we never saw

each sorrow or hurt or dying or death

appear to serve as balm on his skin

peeled from the overbearing sun and

blows with instruments of battle

those soldiers lying in heaps from the small

explosions pounding them beyond necessity

bring their pain to soothe the thirst their blood

to staunch the flow from his brow where sweat

mingles with the covenant of redeeming love

the child whose belly holds nothing but gas

to fill the empty body takes one last look at him

upon the high beam before death comes

and offers another solace to the pain-stricken figure

by this small sacrifice to the gods of war

each sorrowed death each tortured frame

comes to this hill this place this one

who watches and receives and finds healing

one wound at a time one stripe from the lash

of the whip one piercing one piece of torn flesh

and the nails loosen from heavy wood one slight bit

at a time as the cries of victims bring release

           

            by our bruises he is healed

            crushed by our iniquities

            upon us is the punishment

            that makes him whole                                                 

            there is balm in Gilead

            there is balm in the land

upon the high beam he leaves our infirmities             

upon the high beam he lays our diseases

makes them all disappear he leaves . . .

what is left is not him not the one not not not him

there is no one there the high beam the heavy wood

is empty nail holes remain but with nothing to hold

it is a freedom statement a shalom word a peace

we have liberated him through our pain        

through our deaths and wounds and sorrows                        

by our stripes by our bruises by our love redeemed

empty timbers on a hill where he stands free

                       

            it is accomplished

                 

Excerpt from My Book

Here is a piece from Rachel's Children: Surviving the Second World War,  published by All Things That Matter Press in September, 2010.  Perhaps this will pique interest in reading more:

A seven-year-old girl living in Honolulu at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor retained memories “of fear and horror as a war began without warning just a few miles from our family’s home.”  Later, living in Oregon, she and her family returned for visits.  “Now, we take our children and grandchildren back to Hawaii to see the Arizona, still visible just beneath the surface of the water.  There is little else to remind us of that Sunday morning when bombs fell from the sky and children awakened to learn that their world was no longer secure.”⁴⁰

               we cannot live forever in that time

               life refuses to indulge our

               memories yet we know and we remember

               so that grandchildren will be witnesses

               to our stories.

Memories for children in the European war theater were strongly laced with fear and terror.  The remembered siren sounds, the air-raid shelters with crying babies and frightened adults, the overpowering dank smell of the earth surrounding them, remains for a lifetime.  The conviction that such events must never again take place is also a result of these experiences.  Never again a war.  Yet our histories since that time show that these determinations have been disappointed many times over, as each war in turn makes way for the next one.

             Reminders of earth stenched by human use survive

             in nostrils depriving memory of moist soil

             rich with smells of life blooming to fullness.

            Forever lingers the shrill song of the sirens of death.

            We learn that never is what happens despite our hope

             in every moment.  Yet we cannot forgive the stink of war

             on earth, our good earth, earth of home.  Never again,

             we swear, never again, never must the raven of death

             dare cover itself in false purity.

             Never again must children remember

             forever what dirt smells like underground

             what hunger tastes like what fear feels like

             never should they ever know this for the rest

             of life and afterward in the dark earth.

---

Overwhelmed

I have trouble understanding why I can't hold to my resolve about pulling back from all the activities I once participated in, issues advocated for, causes I wrote about.  Just as soon as I do that, another compelling issue comes to my attention, and there I go again.

Well, I may be coming to some understanding of how this obsessive compulsion seems to be the case: the internet media.  Each morning I open up my email site and there sit at least half a dozen stories about dire situations in need of my healing touch, my money, my presence, my attention.  Not one of these deserves to be ignored.  The guilt begins when I hit the "delete" key for any of them. 

About two years ago, I think it was, I made a promise to myself: my attention would now turn to matters of writing: poetry, non-fiction, perhaps some fiction . . .  and to do so would mean I would let go of most of the activities which took up my time -- usefully, but all the same, took my energy.  My life's calling began to peep into my psyche like some small Easter chick, insisting upon my attention.  And I was successful to some degree.  Had a book published by a small independent press, unlike my previous self-publications.   Became active in writing groups, mainly those having to do with poetry.  Started attending more readings and studying books about writing good poetry.  Then when my book about children of World War II came out, began concentrating on readings and marketing.  Joined Twitter.  Posted on Face Book.

One problem, however: I was receiving more and more messages, more pleas for help from needy organizations,  more guilt layered on my barely liberated spirit.  But once again, I am vowing to cut back:  the only non-literary endeavors will be my participation with the NC Council of Churches, my responsibilities as a Benedictine Oblate, and perhaps filling a pulpit or two on occasion, in addition to the church choir.  My energies will still address the compelling issues of the day, the needs of the poor and dis-enfranchised, the least of these, but now through the written word rather than my body on a street corner holding a candle or a poster.  All of these groups do important work and I want to support them, from human rights to animal rights, but it will be through what I write.  There's is a definite sense of liberation in doing so.  Now to hold to what I have resolved.

PAIN

About 6 months ago, something happened in my lower spine.  I have learned that the official title for that event is "spinal stenosis."  Or: pinched nerve, sciatic nerve problem . . .  whatever.  It was difficult to ignore the pain that would appear without warning, but manageable.  Since then I have gone through months of pain and finally some treatment that resulted in physical therapy exercises. 

To experience pain that has a life of its own, comes unpredictably, lingers for hours, has given a new way for me to understand the "dailiness of life, " a phrase borrowed from the poet Randal Jarrell.   The constant presence of discomfort is to say the least, distracting.  I learn for this time in my life what ongoing pain does to one's psyche, one's body.  There have been many times of experiencing pain, but only for the short term.  This is big time, all time pain.  And I go through feelings of anger, frustration, self-pity, helplessness, despair . . . and wonder what tomorrow brings.  The one positive effect on me, however, makes up for the down sides of this time: hope.  I know, or I hope, that the next day will be better, less pain, and the next day less, and so on until I no longer have this constant companion, uninvited.  

What has made the difference for me, above all other efforts to deal with pain: writing.  Poems.  Blogs. Articles.  Reading: books, books, books.  Words lined up one after another, each one removing a piece of the pain.  Each one taking my spirits to what matters.  In all this is faith.  In all this is a redemptive element to pain, which becomes the awareness of what pain is like for others.  For others.  Those outside myself.

Determination to overcome and to find the remedy.  Determination to be able to stand for longer than 10 minutes.  Ability to walk for 45 minutes with Katie, as she studies the scents laid down in this meantime in those woods.  It is waiting for the time ahead.  For now, may I learn what this time has to teach me.