Acquainted with the Night

My friend and colleague Rev. Dr. Kathy Hurt has recently published a moving memoir about her own personal struggles with depression and also the ways she has met with others who struggle through her ministry work. I welcome her thoughts here and hope you might find meaning for your own struggles through her work; The book is Acquainted with the Night and is available through Amazon kindle.

     Ever since I encountered the possibility of telling one’s life story in various ways as a first year seminary student, when I was frequently writing my life story as part of assignments and scholarship applications, and reading in the theological work John Dunne that life stories can be told as stories of deeds, of events, of choices, and of meanings, I have considered my own life as an unfolding story and wondered at what the meaning of this life might be.  At times, I have concluded my life was a story of tragedy, replete with failures, unwise choices, and suffering; at other times, I would believe my life story was an account of restoration and redemption; still other times, I might have insisted my life story told of blessings and remarkable moments of grace.  Ultimately, I believe all such perspectives were true, though only partially true.  A life story is being written until one draws a last breath.  To conclude before that last breath exactly what the story was, what it meant, is probably premature.

     Nonetheless, I recently published a life story, entitled Acquainted with the Night, the second time I have done so, that endeavors to discover meaning in the times I lived in despair.  I want to believe that our lives are not random, that we do not simply ping pong from event to relationship to action to experience in a way that has no purpose.  Yet I do not believe we live like trains running down a track that has already been laid down for us to follow, set by genes in us or by some master divinity who prescribes a plan for each person to live out or by some implacable force called fate.  Because it can be tempting to try to dismiss the darkness in life as the result of sin or stupidity or bad genes, I determined to write my life story with the intent of finding what sort of deeper currents were at work in the years I most wanted not to be living.  That effort of course is rooted in the assumption that the suffering we endure holds meaning for us provided we can be present to it and not too quick to try and make it go away or deny it.

     Our culture tells us constantly that if we are smart, if we try hard enough, we can have whatever life we desire (including a life amazingly devoid of struggle or pain).  That message may sometimes serve us well and motivate us to dig in and keep going.  But when nothing we do works, when suffering strikes, the same message is useless or even pernicious.  Ultimately, we have little control over what comes our way.  What we may be able to control is how we understand what comes our way—and even that understanding may not take us far given how much of our experience is simply a mystery.

     I make no claim to having reached some overarching understanding of the dark times of my life.  I also make no claim to never wishing those dark times had not happened, for suffering is never desirable or good.  What I hope to claim, however tentatively, is that my own suffering, the suffering any of us might have to endure, may bring its own insights that, in time, enrich our lives and deepen our capacity for compassion.  Like trees with trunks twisted into unusual shapes by storms, like rocks lined and smoothed after being tumbled in river currents and pressed by the forces of gravity, any of us may be shaped by suffering into persons who are in time unique, precious, and powerful.

Discernment

I wonder how often on any given day I make a judgement that gives rise to my own suffering…. The garbage truck is too noisy, that driver didn’t signal before turning, the lanes at the swimming pool are all taken, it's June and it should be warmer, the book I want at the library is not in, we are out of eggs, my friend has not answered my email, today my hair is bad.  Wow!  Lots to suffer over! And that was just a quick 2 minute review of my thoughts!!  I read somewhere that humans are somewhat hard-wired to notice what is WRONG, rather than what us RIGHT.  Makes sense in light of survival strategy.  It’s wise to see the lion and to miss the mouse, after all.  But, so few of us, writing and reading this post, need to worry about surviving. Luckily.

While the following poem is not exactly what I am addressing here, still it seems that the writer, Mark Nepo, is addressing how we can change our perspective and understand things differently.  We have choices about how we see the world! And over ways large and small that we can create suffering for ourselves.

DISCERNMENT

The trouble with the mind

Is that it sees like a bird

But walks like a (hu)man.

And things at the surface

Move fast, needing to be

Gathered.  While things

At center move slow,

Needing to be

perceived.

What I mean is

If you want to see the

Many birds, you can

Gather them in a cage

And wonder why

They won’t fly.

Or you can go to

The wetlands, birding

In silence before

The sun comes up.

It’s the same

With the things

We love or think.

We can frame them

In pretty cages or follow

Them into the wild meadow

Till they stun us with the

Spread of their magnificent

wings.

Start, Stop, Continue

My friend and neighbor, Christie Hardwick has recently released a book.  THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT. About how we move forward in this difficult time in our country and the world.  She basically asks the reader three questions;  What do you need to START doing?  What do you need to STOP doing?  What do you need to CONTINUE doing?

The challenge she poses to the reader is to assess in what ways you personally are contributing to the difficulties in the world.  It is easy to blame politicians, big money, big Pharma, the Republicans, the Democrats and on and on.  Her question is how to look within and challenge the ways that you personally hold some responsibility for contributing to or supporting what is happening in this world that you don’t like.

I find this empowering —- to look at the small ways that I might make changes that would help me to feel I was living the life I want to be living in the world I want to be living in.  So my responses to her questions are;

What do I want to STOP doing;  I want to get out of the echo chambers where we all moan about “Ain’t it awful”.  I just want to stop participating in those conversations.  I want to try to stop spending my money in places and businesses who have ethics that I don’t agree with.  For instance, I want to scale back my dependence on Amazon.  I want to quit buying coffee at Starbucks.  I want to look at where my money is invested and stop (to the degree that I can) investing in corporations who are exploiting their workers, the worlds resources etc.  I want to stop being hopeless. —- and there is much more - but those are some big ones to begin with!

What do I want to START doing?  The big one is I want to consume less.  I want to know more about and get more engaged in my local neighborhood and political scene.  I want to check my many assumptions about what is right and good and preferable.  I want to be more curious than judgmental about what others think

I want to continue caring about others, staying peaceful, finding joy.

I hope her questions are meaningfu to you too.