I'm Tired

We were trying to resuscitate an organization that existed in name only. I knew there was a need in my community, and I knew the mission of this organization filled the need, so I was hoping others would join me in bringing it back to life. My colleague Anne and I arranged a day-long retreat, and carefully planned a program that we hoped would support and inspire participants and begin to build the web of community we would need for the organization to continue.

The day was going pretty well- folks seemed to catch our vision, and we were enjoying being together. As we moved into the sleepy after-lunch time we were planning to talk about our vision for the future. We spread out a big sheet of empty paper for us to fill in our ideas. My esteemed colleague who was to lead that section gave a big sigh and said “I’m tired, I just don’t have the energy for this.” I was alarmed! We had worked so hard to fill this event with life and enthusiasm, to give folks a positive, rewarding experience so they would want to stay engaged with the organization. I was tired too, we were all tired, and clearly the only thing to do was power through the end of the program. What was she doing?

After a silence she said “Does anyone else have some energy for this?” Another colleague, Cari, said, “Actually, I have some thoughts about this.” She picked up the markers, and began filling in ideas on the big empty page as she talked. Other colleagues chimed in and soon the paper was full of colorful ideas. My co-facilitator just observed as the conversation unfolded. The day ended with energy and enthusiasm for the future, and a commitment to meet again.

Here’s what I learned that day; so often I assume that I am indispensable. I assume that if something needs to be done, I am the only one who can do it. Even if my body and spirit are asking for a break, I expect myself to power through. But if I power through, I am not leaving room for guidance of the spirit. Why wouldn’t guidance come through our bodies? What if a felt sense of “not this, not now” was an important truth? Anne spoke her truth that day, the truth of what she was feeling in the moment: her tiredness, of her lack of energy. This made space for my colleague Cari to speak her truth- that she was excited and ready to step in.

If you are a fixer, a problem solver, if you are always the first to say “I can help with that,” it’s a leap of faith not to rush in and do the thing that cries out to be done. It’s a leap of faith to be authentic and honest, rather than ignoring the messages of body and spirit saying “I’m tired” or “this doesn’t feel right” and powering through. It requires faith that we are not alone- faith that we are part of a web of community larger than ourselves. Can we have faith that if the spirit is truly calling us to do something, spirit will help make it happen like a stream helps the paper boats that children set on the water and release?

To admit that we are tired, that we are overwhelmed, that we are not quite sure what to do requires the humility to admit that not only do I have limits, but I am not the only one capable of contributing to the solution. If we have the faith and humility to admit our limits we make space for help to come from unexpected places, as Anne made space for our young colleague Cari to emerge with fresh energy and new ideas.

Am I doing this right?

At the end of a weekend-long retreat, we were invited to bring to mind a word or phrase arising out of our experience. I was surprised that this not-particularly- spiritual thought came to mind and felt like a hard-won piece of wisdom:

“Just because it doesn’t feel good, doesn’t mean I’m doing it wrong.”

Sometimes prayer and meditation does feel great. When I sit down for quiet meditation, I often rise with a greater sense of peace. When I pour my heart out in prayer, sometimes I feel lighter, or more connected to the divine. But at this particular retreat, I felt a lot of things, and most of them weren’t lovely. I felt grumpy, I felt stuck, I felt sad. What was I doing wrong?

My son in the midst of a particularly difficult teething period

As kids we are raised with rewards and punishments. If you get good grades you get praise, if you get detention you get frowns, or maybe you get grounded. At work you might get a raise or a promotion if you are productive, you might get fired if you don’t meet your quota. I used to think my cavity-free history at the dentist was due to my virtue, until my friend who meticulously brushed her teeth 3 times a day had her 3rd root canal- it turns out her soft teeth were just genetic. She wasn’t being punished for “doing it wrong”; she was doing the best she could at being a person with soft teeth.

As we mature in our spiritual practices, we’ll notice that there is not always a direct relationship between what we do and how good we feel. A practice that may give us great peace one day might be colored by irritability and distractions the next. I felt apologetic, and judged myself harshly on those occasions, but as my retreat came to a close, I was relieved to realize that grumpiness is not a sign that the spirit has deserted us, or that our practice is not good enough. It is simply that we are humans, and we are capable of a vast spectrum of feelings. The spirit is with us in both the moments of bliss, and the grumpy moments of distraction.

I found this liberating; I had done all the things I could do, and still felt irritable, but when I realized that “just because it doesn’t feel good doesn’t mean I’m doing it wrong” a weight lifted off my shoulders.

The other day my son was complaining of leg pain that we couldn’t explain. My husband remembered when he was a teenager he had mysterious growing pains. Growing is a good thing to do that doesn’t always feel good. Why do we feel horrible when we have the flu? Because our body is using so many resources to fight the virus. Healing is the right thing to do, but it doesn’t always feel good. Grieving is an incredibly important thing to do that doesn’t feel good. Standing up for yourself. Being present with someone who is suffering. Being open to unpleasant truth. All these things are really important parts of being alive, of being on the spiritual path. And none of them feel good.

Sometimes unpleasant feelings do call for a change in what we are doing. If you sat on your foot until it became numb, go ahead and move your foot. If you drank too much and have a hangover, you might make a note for the future. If you had words with someone and regret what you said, it’s probably time to seek reconciliation and forgiveness. But if you have opened your heart in meditation or prayer with honesty and integrity, if you have entered a spiritual practice where before there was always refreshing water and now it is dry, and you find yourself asking “what did I do wrong? Why don’t I feel comfort and solace?” I invite you to remember: “just because it feels bad doesn’t mean I’m doing it wrong. ”

Judgement and blame don’t tend to bring us closer to peace, closer to the divine. Instead they seem to shut us down. If, as Jesuit Theologian Walter Burghardt suggests, contemplation is “the long loving look at the real” we are encouraged to stay with the unpleasant as well as the pleasant, without judgement, without guilt, because all of it is real. When it doesn’t feel good, try a long loving look at the reality you feel in that moment. Wherever you are, the spirit is there too.

What do you Want?

What do you want? If I had a magic wand and could give you your heart’s desire, right now, what would it be? This is actually a hard question for most of us. Even if you are healthy, if you have food to eat and a warm safe place to sleep at night, there is still a sense of wanting, of a desire for something more that haunts us human beings. There is a hunger in our hearts asking us for…what?

When I began my training as a Spiritual Director some years back, I thought of Spiritual practice as something I SHOULD do. If it seemed dry and boring, that was only as I expected it should be. Imagine my surprise when our teachers suggested we set aside those “shoulds” and instead follow our desire. Now I was raised to believe that each of us has inner wisdom that we should follow. But as human beings living in community, we all get the message, probably many times a day, that we should set aside our desires in order to fulfill our obligations to one another. Remember when you were little and wanted to be a ballerina, a pilot, a professional baseball player, a fireman? (What did you want when you were a child?) We are taught from a young age that to be a responsible adult we must set those desires and dreams aside and do something practical.

When folks come to me for spiritual direction they often confess, perhaps with some guilt or defensiveness, that they don’t have a regular spiritual practice. Why not? Because it would be boring and dry and they don’t have time for it anyway. But most people do have something that makes them come alive, that restores them when they are drained: an afternoon sailing, or walking through he woods. An evening by the fire with family or just pausing to wonder at a beautiful bird. How would you feel if I suggested that following your desire in these ways is a spiritual practice?

What if we believed, with The Rev. Arvid Straube that: “Prayer is simply being in touch with the most honest, deepest, desires of the heart.” What if we believed that feeling of desire is an invitation … an invitation to move into deeper relationship with oneself and with the oneness of all that is? What if our deepest desires come from the divine, lead us back to the divine? Is this some new heresy? Actually, St. Augustine, early church theologian, bishop and church father, described this kind of desire: “restless is the heart until it rest in thee.” He believed that we long for a closer relationship with the divine, that we all have a kind of spiritual hunger built in, and that we feel restless all our lives as we try to move into closer and closer relationship with the Spirit. This holy desire is found in the words of Mystics of many faiths. For example the Sufi poet Rum writes: “I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know you all else melted away.”

To reacquaint ourselves with our own deepest desires, we have to first acknowledge that we are hungry. Sometimes admitting what we really desire is hard because getting it seems impossible. I want inner peace. I want justice for all people. I want to create something beautiful. I want to be part of something larger than myself. And most brazen of all… I want to experience my connection with the divine. When the world assures us that getting a new TV or a new car is a far more reasonable and realistic response to our hunger, one of the most important jobs of our spiritual practice is to “simply being in touch with the most honest, deepest, desires of the heart.”

What do you want? What do you REALLY want? And what would it feel like to honor and follow the part of you that knows?

What do we expect of this new year?

It is our tradition, as the year turns, to look back at the year we have completed, and to look forward to the year ahead. If we do this prayerfully, this can be a helpful perspective-taking, making sure that our life is in line with our ethics and values and passions. Perhaps we notice during our reflection the sense of fulfillment we experience spending time with family, and create an intention in the New Year to make room for that in our lives. If we notice our body needs more caring attention, and resolve to do the things our body is asking us for, that kind of clarity can be very helpful to bringing our lives into harmony and alignment.

The shadow side of this practice is that if we measure our lives against what “should have been” or what “should be” we may actually be creating more suffering. Our intentions, our expectations can be a great “north star” to guide our actions, but we must not lose touch with what is real in the present moment.

Imagine two meandering paths running alongside one another: sometimes parallel, sometimes crossing, and sometimes diverging widely. One is the story we are telling ourselves about how our life should go. The other line is our actual lived reality. I often don’t even notice how much I have my eyes glued to the path that represents my expectations; I am so invested in that path that when reality diverges, I will cling with all my might to the path of expectation, waiting for reality to meet my expectations, striving to bend reality back into union with my expectations.

Do you have some “what if” stories of where your life diverted from your expectations? “I always thought I’d own my own home?” or “I expected that my marriage would last forever” or “I never got that promotion I expected to get.” I confess that most of my life is not what I expected it to be, but I’ve found that the key is not to be fooled into thinking that the life I expected to be living is my real life that someday I will get back to. If I can’t commit myself to the life I am really living, I will miss many opportunities in the life I actually have.

Part of a prayerful new year’s practice can involve letting go of some of those “alternate paths” that never came to be. Sometimes this involves real grief as I let go of the opportunity I never took, the relationship that ended unexpectedly. But if I let go of the hope that the past will somehow change to meet my expectations, I can finally be available for the present I am really living, joining reality where it is.

Please don’t confuse reality with what I used to call “realism.” After being disappointed so many times, I cynically decided that I would always expect the worst, and then I could be presently surprised. This is just another kind of expectation. If we always expect the worst, we may be less disappointed by unpleasant experiences, but we may close ourselves off to what our heart really wants. Something beautiful and unexpected might happen, but our magic shell of expectations keeps us from being open to the experience.

What are your expectations in the New Year? Allow whatever pictures and feelings come to mind to arise, and just notice those expectations, give them a smile. Probably you are right about a lot of that, but inevitably reality will also contain something unexpected. As we enter the New Year, consider asking “what expectations do I have to let go of to make room for the self I really am, for the year I want to create for myself?” If we create an intention or resolution for the New Year, how do we keep that from becoming yet another new path to cling to?

As you move through this new year, I invite you to notice, with a non-judgmental compassionate awareness, when expectations and reality diverge. Each day we must start from the reality of our life and choose which path to take in every moment. Let us hold our expectations loosely where we are able, and look for opportunities to be present with reality as it is unfolding, because that is where life is.

How the Holidays Feel

During the holiday season we are surrounded by images of cheerful people shopping and enjoying their loved ones in their perfectly decorated homes. The reality is much more complicated. If you have recently lost a job, or a loved one, if you are far away from family, or struggle with depression, it can feel like the whole world is celebrating without you. There’s a growing body of research showing that all those cheerful images (which are designed to make us want to shop, remember) can actually increase our stress, grief, depression or loneliness.

But I believe if we go back to the spiritual roots of these holidays, I think there is room for our difficult emotions. Consider the Christmas Story- Mary and Joseph alone and far from home. Consider how terrifying it is to be a couple expecting the birth of your first child. Or consider the Hanukkah story- survivors of war trying to restore their temple, with resources so scarce it seemed they couldn’t even light the temple lights for more than 1 night. The winter solstice specifically marks the longest night, and is celebrated as a time to journey inside ourselves and see what we find there. These holidays celebrate light in the darkness, they celebrate the unexpected presence of the divine.

But our wider culture is not comfortable with the difficult emotions. Perhaps you have experienced a loss or heartbreak and people around you tried to cheer you up with platitudes which imply that they would really like you to hurry up and finish grieving as quickly as possible? Psychologists agree that grief is an important process for healing loss. If we refuse to feel our feelings they don’t disappear, they creep into our bodies and into our relationships. The real need of our spirits to process our experience slams up against our cultural fear of having strong emotions. My whole life I have prided myself on being cheerful and positive. But eventually I realized that I was shutting myself off from parts of my own experience so that I could stay cheerful.

Recently I learned a form of meditation that I have started practicing whenever the opportunity arises to change those old patterns. When I notice an emotion I take a moment to just feel it- not to judge it or analyze it or think about it but to just feel the sensations of that emotion. Then I make a conscious choice to welcome it- even if it’s despair. Even if it’s anger. I just say inside myself “welcome.” I greet it with compassion and curiosity. And after I have gone back and forth between those first two steps for as long as I need, I let the feeling go.

Consider making this your holiday prayer: when that commercial or Christmas carol stirs difficult emotions in you, I invite you to take a moment to feel your feelings and be present with them. The spiritual path does not always stay on the surface where everything is sparkly and cheerful, the spiritual path travels to deep places of memory and feeling, of uncertainty and meaning, of connection and solitude. When you notice that your holiday experience is different from the superficial images of cheer, could you explore that contrast as an invitation from the spirit to choose a journey of the heart and spirit?

Whatever is arising for you this holiday season, what would it feel like to integrate that into your holiday celebration? Your observance doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. You could curl up alone under a blanket and read a book that comforted you in childhood. You could take a walk outside on a day that matches your mood. You could bring chicken soup to a friend who is struggling, and feel that connection. You could invite some friends or family who would understand to just sit in the dark with you enjoying the flicker of candle light or fire light.

However your holidays unfold for you this year, know that you are never separate from the spirit. Welcome the festive and the difficult alike with an open heart, because the spirit is in all these things.

Imperfection

Pretty much everyone agrees that humans aren’t perfect. We know this, but still it drives us nuts. Let me speak for myself- I hate not being perfect. I hate that as I sat drinking my morning coffee and thinking back over a meeting I attended last night it occurs to me that I was probably brusque, opinionated and even a little demanding. I have this idea that as a minister I should always be kind, and patient and more interested in other people’s opinions than my own, but as I think back, I fell short of that mark last night. The perfectionist in me has gotten hold of these shortcomings and kept poking at me all morning like a bully on a playground. Finally I faced my inner perfectionist and said “hold it mister, It’s not like I was mean, or rude, or even off topic. I showed up, just as I am, and contributed what I was able to contribute.”

The perfectionist in me imagines a perfect self, holds the real me up in comparison, and usually finds the real me wanting. It’s almost like that imaginary me is more important than the real one. Shouldn’t someone committed to the spiritual journey be perfectly compassionate, patient and giving? Actually, no. No matter how hard we strive, we are still going to be human. Though we may have moments that come close to our vision of how we want to be, mostly we will fall short. If we get too attached to that vision, it keeps us from seeing ourselves as we truly are. We say things like “I wasn’t myself last night” or “that wasn’t me.” Which is funny because there I was, mind body and spirit. Once I give in to the reality of my human imperfection, I can shoot a note off to the chair apologizing for my impatience. Once I really feel the discomfort of that distance between who I am and who I want to be I can sit with that discomfort in prayer, see where it is leading me, change the things I am able to change, and then move on.

One of the lessons I learn over and over -- one of the hardest things to believe on this spiritual journey -- is that God loves me now, as I am, even when I’m impatient. Some part of me believes that really God’s love has to do with that imaginary vision of myself, but the great religious teachers tell us that actually God loves us right now, in this moment, just as we are. That is where the human and the divine meet- in this present moment. God knows we are human. God knows humans aren’t perfect. So the spiritual journey is not about trying to be perfect and failing, the journey is about allowing God’s love into our hearts as often as we are able. When I open my heart to love, I am better able to embody that love in the world. When I am trapped in judgmental perfectionism, that is what I tend to embody in the world. The Journey is about opening ourselves to the spirit not just in the beautiful times when all seems right with the world, but especially in the messy, embarrassing, judgmental, imperfect, human moments of our lives when we need God the most. And when we forget, when we noticing that our inner perfectionist is shutting us down, closing off God’s love, closing off the spirit, that’s okay too. We’re human after all, and humans aren’t perfect. That love is always there when we are ready.