Monday, March 15, 2010

One day my friend Charlotte Sullivan gave me a Leonard Cohen cd, and because what I admire her so much and value her opinion, I took the cd right home and put it on the cd player.  Frankly, I was surprised at Cohen's voice.  In fact, I didn't like his vioce at all at first.  How close-minded I was!

The night I heard k.d. lang sing with the Houston Symphony, I was absolutely brought to my feet with the rest of the crowd when she finished singing Cohen's "Hallelujah".  Her voice and that song sent chills up and down my spine, and I cheered and clapped for what seemed like forever with the crowd.  As soon as I got home, I tracked down that Cohen cd and by the next day I was hooked.  I got curiouser and curiouser, as they say, about this composer/singer named Leonard Cohen and then I began researching on the web about the mysterious words of that song.  I now have a complete collection of Cohen on cd and on my iPod. 

For the record, I love his voice now and I also love it that people who analyze his music can't quite figure out just exactly what it was Cohen was saying in that song!  It's the ambiguity and mystery that people can't quite squeeze into one small interpretation that I love.  No one person can say, "This is what that means" and capture Cohen's lyrics.

After k.d.lang's magnificent rendition of "Hallelujah" at the opening ceremony of this year's winter Olympics, I pulled her cd out of the cabinet to play again and again. It is one of the songs that has enriched and challenged me during this season of Lent.  So it is that Lang and Cohen and their music have helped me come to terms with ambiguity.

I didn't grow up observing Lent, and during the years that I have marked the season, I've never "kept a good Lent" as well as I have started out to do.  I start out with the best intentions about whatever spiritual discipline I've chosen for the season, but there's always something that I allow to interfere with my consistency and faithfulness to the discipline.   If anything, it is my understanding of what I've learned to call "the spiritualilty of imperfection" that helps me manage the guilt I feel about my flawed and feeble attempts to do Lent right.

Throughout these weeks of learning to keep a good Lent,  manage ambiguity and write these posts from Jim Hollis' book WHAT MATTERS MOST, three songs have kept me focused.  You won't find them in any hymnal, as far as I know, but they have communicated mercy and compassion to me day by day.

From Cohen's "Anthem", I remind myself that my offering doesn't have to be perfect:   "Ring the bells that still can ring; forget your perfect offering.  There's a crack, a crack in everything.....that's how the Light gets in....that's how the Light gets in...."

Indeed, it is not where I'm all polished up that the Light of grace can get in, but in those places where I'm broken, shattered or worn thin.  That gives me hope!

From "Hallelujah", I've claimed these words as words that are full of grace:  "Love is not a victory march, but a cold and broken hallelujah...."

And this year's Oscar-winning song "The Weary Kind" sort of gives me a kick in the backside:  "This ain't no place for the weary kind; this ain't no place to lose your mind; this ain't no place to fall behind.  Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try."

Ambiguity does sometimes make me feel a little crazy, disoriented and off-balanced.  Beset by my imperfections and attempting to live with ambiguity and ambivalence, I'm not taking any victory marches, but is that the point of life or Lent?

I still love imperfectly and often with selfish motivations, but even so,  I can still sing "halleljuah" -- and I think that perhaps that is keeping a good enough Lent.

So it is that I keep on keeping on, taking Lent one day at a time, letting go of the failures and flaws and letting God into those places where I'm weary and weak.  With St. Paul, I keep on running the race that is mine to run, and when I pass the statue of Jesus called "Divine Mercy" that presides over the intersection of Buffalo Speedway and Holcomb, going home, I remind myself that God's mercies are new every morning.  And every afternoon and evening.

And so it is that I can pick up my crazy heart one more time and give it -- life, love and laughter --  one more try.

How are you doing, keeping Lent?

Grace to you --

Jeanie

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The very idea expressed in Chapter Two of WHAT MATTERS MOST, Saving the appreances:  learning to tolerate ambuiguity, is unsettling to me.

I've spent an entire lifetime worried about how things appear to others, and the ambiguity I have in my own personal life has kept me scrambling to wear first one mask and then another, adopt one persona or another in order to manage my anxiety about what someone might think!

Thank you, Jim Hollis, for that day in class when you said, "What they are thinking about is themselves, not you!"

Thank you, Jim Hollis, for pointing out the utter absurdity of trying to control what others think -- those others that we don't even know, the others that we may not even like, the others to whom we have given power over our feelings of self-worth and self-validation.

Of course, we all do live and breathe and have our being in a culture in which there are image-shapers and perception-makers who make big bucks trying to get us to think what they want us to think about a product, process, propaganda or personality.  (The alliteration wasn't planned or purposeful; but it worked!)  I suppose we are so embedded in that culture that we've been conditioned and programmed to think about what other people think of us.

Years ago, I sat in a Yokefellow Growth Group and read the following words, words that began a lifelong process of coming to terms with the realities of my ambiguities within myself. The liberating truth is that when I can live at peace with the various complexities and conflicts within my own inner world, I can better live with the ambiguities in others.

I am neither good nor bad, but both, and because God is understanding of me, I will be understanding of myself.

I am neither selfish nor unselfish, but both, and because God is patient with me, I will be patient with myself.

I am neither forgiving nor unforgiving, but both, and because God forgives me, I will forgive myself.

I am neither wise nor foolish, but both, and because God accepts me, I will accept myself.

I am neither greedy or generous, but both, and because God gives to me, I will give to myself.

I am neither loving nor unloving, but both, and becausee God loves me, I will love myself.

I am so grateful for those grace-filled moments when I am relieved of the burden of either/or thinking about my own imperfect life. I am eternally indebted to the persons in my life who have helped me live in peace with the competing forces that carry on, jabbering and yammering, within my inner world.  I am so grateful for the tough and hard experiences I have had that showed me the curse of having to be right and perfect. 

Admittedly, sometimes it's a restless peace, this learning to tolerate ambiguity, and sometimes I retreat back from the freedom of both/and thinking into that prison of either/or thinking.  Sometimes I get nervous and edgy with the challenge of tolerating ambiguity.  It's not so easy to balance heaven and hell, is it?

The truth is that I'm neither perfect nor imperfect, but that's not the point of life, is it?

We are all flawed.  All of us fail and we all have our faults.  We are O.K. in some ways, and in other ways we are not-O.K.   And that is just fine.

The more I can live with compassion and patience with my own imperfections, the more I contribute to peace in my own life.

The more I can live with compassion and patience with others' imperfections, the more grace and mercy I contribute in the world.

In Romans 7:18-19 the Apostle Paul says, "For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do -- this I keep on doing."

In The Message, Eugene Peterson renders that verse in this way:  "What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise."

Bless our hearts.  We stumble.  We fall.  We start out wanting to do good, and before noon, we've blown it.

And yet -- We are made in the very image of God!

On my calendar is this quote:  Wisdom tells me that I am nothing; love tells me I am everything.  Between the two, my life flows.

Here's to the glory and splendor of life --with all of its imperfections.

Here's to ambiguity -- It makes life more interesting, doesn't it?

Grace to you --

Jeanie

 (This is the third in a four week series of reflections based on Chapter Two of the book WHAT MATTERS MOST:  LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED LIFE,  by James Hollis.    You can order Jim's books from here -- http://www.junghouston.org or from http://www.amazon.com.     You can also order CDs of his lecture from this course from the Jung Center in Houston.           Previous posts from this series can be found by clicking "What Matters" on the home page of this website.)