The Hidden Life and Its Questions

If I were to tell you one more thing, it would be this: Do not believe that the one who seeks to comfort you lives without difficulty the simple and humble words that sometimes help you. His life contains much grief and sadness and he remains far behind you. Were it not so, he would not have found these words. – Rainer Maria Rilke

I was thinking about these words from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet in the shower this morning as I pondered this online life of mine and the hiddenness of the life that lies behind it. Online, you see what I show you and I try to show you what edifies, but I also try to be truthful, as much as is possible without causing harm.

For example, I posted a picture on my personal fb page yesterday, a picture of my cat and dog taken after eating lunch on our front porch, surrounded by sun and sky. It was a good picture and a lucky day (mid 70s!) to be eating lunch at home. It was the best part of my day and I shared it with friends online.

But I didn’t share waking up at 5 am and being unable to get back to sleep. I didn’t share how I curled up in bed at 7 pm while the boys were out with John. My daughter came to find me, and I told her, half-joking, “Come get me in twenty minutes, I think I might have depression, or maybe it’s just PMS.”

//

I resigned from my job as Associate Pastor at a local church just over a week ago. It was not a decision I was planning and was not easily made. It’s a choice that comes at a great cost to my family and me. It’s a choice I was privileged to make.

I am grieving. I am free. I am wandering through days suddenly empty, unpacking the contents from my office at the church into my office at home. I’m grateful all over again for the shelter of this place we call home, for the animals and children to tend, for the office and work of my own.

I am grateful. I am grieving. I am wandering. I am free. All of these statements are true.

But I’ve been careful in what I share.

//

Looking through Rilke’s letters, I find another line that rings true for this time: “Do not draw conclusions too quickly from that which is happening to you. Just allow it to happen.”

I’ve been thinking about the space between a thing and its naming; how mystery and possibility dwell there. The space before naming invites a posture of curiosity, which is open and probing, rather than judgement, which is closed. When we name a thing – an experience or person – we lose access to all the other names that might have been. Labeling an experience ‘good’ we deny the bad. Naming a person ‘evil’ we sign an unspoken pact to overlook any glimmers of goodness.

Think of the way naming the humble dandelion a “weed” blinds our eyes from the glory of this roadside yellow friend. There’s one even now (in March!) in my front flower bed, but I won’t celebrate its golden head with anything near the welcome I offer to the purple crocus nodding just two feet away.

There’s a space between a thing and its naming and I’m living there these days. It’s a space of mystery and possibility. It’s a space of occasional fear and dread. For the most part, I’m trying to lean toward Gerald May’s summation in The Dark Night of the Soul: “To be immersed in mystery can be very distressing at first, but over time I have found immense relief in it. It takes the pressure off.”

Few of us are very comfortable once the pressure’s off. Sure, it’s good for a day, or maybe a leisurely week or two. But most of us want to be quickly back at it, whatever it may be, if only by naming experience, cordoning it off, somehow checking a virtual box marked “done.”

Which brings me, finally, to another piece of Rilke's advice: 

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

"Live everything," Rilke says. This is the point. 

Do you see what he does there? So often we live for the answers, as though they were the point, not the living itself.

Live everything: Live the grief. Live the freedom. Live the gratitude. Live, also, the fear, when it comes. Live it all.

Even if it never quite all makes it onto your newsfeed. 

Enough (a poem)

Some days, I would
sell my own soul for thirty
pieces of silver, just
to hear the coins,
solid and real, clinking
in my pocket.

Some days, I too
would sell my birthright
for a steaming bowl of stew,
because hunger is here
and now.

I would throw myself
from the highest cliff;
I would light myself on fire,

if it were not for the voice
that whispers, “That
is not what I ask of you.”

 //

Some days, that voice
is enough.

- K. Chripczuk

* I've spent weeks thinking about whether and how to explain this poem, feeling it needed an explanation to soften it. For now, though, I'm letting it stand as is. I'm curious, what do you hear in it? How does it speak to you? Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing.

On Boundaries and the Necessary Magic of the Word, 'No!'

no

is a necessary magic

no

draws a circle around you

with chalk

and says

i have given enough

- boundaries

(anonymous)

//

I was walking down to the garden the other morning, when a line from Maurice Sendak’s, Where the Wild Things Are ran through my mind. A friend had texted, asking if I might bring flowers in to work. I had paused before replying – I didn’t know if we had flowers left in the garden or not.  More importantly, though, I didn’t know if I had it in me to bring flowers or not.

I texted back, “Lemme see . . .”

After the boys got on the bus, I did a quick internal scan. Did I have it in me to bring in flowers? Yes, I did. Plus, the act of walking through the early morning dew, scanning stems for suitable blossoms, and arranging them in a vase would be good for me.

//

I am someone who grows and cuts flowers to bring into the office. I am someone who spreads poetry in the world, who writes, who tells jokes, and listens, and gives, and gives, and gives.

Most of the time, people like this about me. “We appreciate you,” they say. “You bring something we need.”

Most of the time, I like being liked.

Maybe you do too?

//

Liking being liked can be a problem.

Needing to be liked can be a more serious problem still.

It can lead to a giving that depletes so completely that the giver is left with an empty shell of self.

//

“. . . we’ll eat you up – we love you so!”

This the line I recalled from Sendak’s book. It’s what the wild things say to Max when he’s feeling lonely and longing for “someone who loves him best of all.”

I thought of that line and recognized something in it about the way church work can be; about the way parenting or teaching or any other form of service that involves deep self-giving and sacrifice can be. Caring for young children, tending a sick loved one, feeding a hungry church – all of these have the potential to eat us up, especially if we're looking to them to replace "someone who loves us best of all."

//

I went back and re-read Where the Wild Things Are a few days later.  I read how it’s Max’s realization of his loneliness and need for love that causes him to give up his position as “king” of where the wild things are. Aware of his own needs, Max prepares to leave. This is when the wild things cry, “Oh please don’t go – we’ll eat you up – we love you so!”

Then, a wonderful, magical thing happens in the story: Max says, ‘No!’

Of course, the wild things don’t like this one bit. In response, they “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.

But Max stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye . . .”

//

I hope you know the power of the word ‘no.’

I hope you see how every ‘no’ is also a ‘yes’ and that choosing self care is sometimes the best gift you can give to the wild things who love you so.

I hope you don’t give in to the “terrible roars” and “gnashing teeth” and “terrible claws;” I hope you have the wisdom to see they love you so and they're just afraid you won’t return.

Go ahead, step into your boat and sail away, “in and out of weeks and through a day” and find yourself home, again, in “your own room” where Someone who loves you best can care for you for a while.

Don’t worry. We know you’ll be back. We know you’ll bring flowers and, probably, a poem or two. We know. Because that’s who you are. 

But that's only part of why we love you so. We love you also for your ability to say, and to help us to learn to say, that magic word, 'no.' 

On Feeling Afraid and Finding the Edge

"Come to the edge," life said.

"We can't, we're afraid!" they replied.

"Come to the edge," life said.

"We can't, we'll fall!" they replied.

"Come to the edge," life said.

So they came,

and life pushed them,

and they flew.

- Guillaume Apollinaire

***

"Do you ever realize how often you feel afraid?"

//

This is what I asked my husband the other day as I swept up spilled cat food in our bedroom and he sat on the bed, watching. We'd gone upstairs to talk about knocking out a wall.

I’d gotten the urge that morning. Stepping out of the shower, I'd thought, Let's just knock out that wall.

The wall in question - which divides our bedroom into a small room main room and a pointless hallway - has been slated for demolition for some time now. But it's taken a back seat again and again to more pressing projects, like making a standing shower and putting in a dishwasher.

Recently, adding a shower to our make-shift downstairs bathroom has been at the top of the to-do list, but progress has been stalled by indecision and the awkward limits of several poorly placed windows and cast-iron radiators in the room to be remodeled. Neither of us can think of a layout that makes good use of the space and doesn't leave us feeling unsettled. In short, we're afraid to move ahead.

Which, looking back, is probably why I jumped to the more immediate option of knocking out that dang wall. Knocking out a wall feels so clear, so simple, so satisfying.

Of course, knocking out that wall will force us to deal with the fact that the ceiling in one part of our bedroom is lower than the other, as is the floor. And there’ll be radiators and some wiring to work around. No project in a 100+ year old house is ever simple.

But when you're feeling afraid, I've found, sometimes you need to just find the nearest edge and jump.

//

"Do you ever realize how often you feel afraid?" I asked.

"Sometimes," I continued, "it's like I'm afraid almost all the time."

//

Our conversation moved on to other territory, but here I am, still thinking about fear and its subtle sway.

I'm not talking about heart-pounding, fight-or-flight fear. But rather the dull constraint of corners cut out of safety's concern. The fear of failure, even on the smallest scale. The fear of even naming the fear that drives us for fear that this too will be seen as weakness unendurable. A fear so subtle it's easy to rationalize, easy to miss.

When I notice this fear in myself, I try to balance it by asking, "What would love say?" Love and fear have patently different voices, markedly different concerns. Sometimes, this question alone, is enough to shake the dark cobwebs and return me to the life-giving freedom bought by Christ.

Other times, forward motion helps. Knocking down the closest wall, diving off the nearest edge, and finding, in the falling, the momentum needed to soar.