Finding Peace Once a week, I lead a spirituality group at a residential treatment program. The theme of the group is finding peace. We look at how spiritual practices, stillness, and a connection to something vast and sacred can bring us serenity. Sometimes I liken the idea of peace to that of being held. Regardless of what is going on around us, of how we feel, something tender and kind can carry us through each moment. Whether we’re angry, lonely, scared, sad, or hopeless, we can tap into a peaceful presence. We might call this equanimity. Of course, equanimity may be overrated. Not everyone considers inner peace to be a…
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Humility and Walking in Another’s Shoes
Walking in Each Other’s Shoes Early in my chaplaincy, when I worked on a detox unit where residents shared rooms, I helped a young, white man wrestle with his racism. Having been housed with a black man, he felt a mixture of disgust, anxiety, guilt, and a burgeoning respect. He discovered it is easy to hate someone you don’t know. Up close, hatred is a little harder. Our stories teach us about who we are. They also reveal who others are, both the stories they tell and the ones we tell about them. If we’re open to hearing another person’s story, we may find we identify with him in ways…
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Impermanence and the New Year
Change Is Inevitable As the new year approaches, we start to think about who we are and who we want to become. In the tradition of New Year’s Eve, we may make a resolution to consciously change something significant about ourselves. Maybe we want to improve our diet or exercise regularly, or we could focus on being more generous, tolerant, or organized. None of this seems too hard. After all, change is inevitable. They say, for instance, that every seven years, all the cells in our body get replaced. This has led the infamous “they” to make claims about seven year cycles and psychological transformation. We humans manage to interpret…
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Winter Solstice and the Return of the Light
The Longest Night of the Year As I write this, around 5 pm on the Winter Solstice, the sky has been dark for about half an hour. Here in the Pacific Northwest, clouds obscure the stars and the moon.If I lived in the country, I would see blackness cover the land. Even in the most isolated areas, though, houses are blessed with the electricity that keeps my own home bright and my computer humming. No matter how early the sun sets, if I want to, I can work well into the night. I need not gather around a fire, drinking mulled cider, and listening to stories, though I might be…
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Advent, Waiting, and Experiencing Life
Waiting for Advent and Beyond Advent, that month before Christmas comes, is about waiting. Mary and Joseph waited for Jesus to be born. Today, many of us wait for Christmas. Throughout the season and beyond, faithful Christians wait for the Messiah. This is not a bored or frustrated waiting, at least not for those who celebrate the holiday and revel in the coziness and closeness it symbolizes. Yet, this is not everyone’s religious story. Even if we do claim it as our own, the day can be filled with memories of loss or abandonment. Still, we can love the music, love the Christ, love the hearth. Then the waiting of…
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Honor, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11
Remembering Pearl Harbor Seventy-eight years ago, on December 7, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The strike destroyed ships, damaged airfields, and killed over 2,400 people. One thousand more were wounded. Called by President Roosevelt “a date which will live in infamy,” December 7, 1941 changed the course of history, bringing the United States into World War II. [1] Those who lived through it thought it would live in our memories forever. But time moves on. For most people alive today, Pearl Harbor is a blip in a history book or online article. Being closer to us in time, 9/11 feeds more anguish and anger in our country today than does the…
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What Is Hidden in the Parable of the Leaven
Myth as Self-Creation We invent ourselves with our stories. Not that we would cease to exist in body or form if we lost our memory, but we would not know who we are. Instead of being embedded in history and culture, we would be so caught up by the sweep of the present moment that we would lose hope, purpose, and intention. To be fully human, we need stories. Humans have always passed down stories through an oral tradition, whether among families or communities. These tales create us as individuals and give us an identity as a people. When communities put their stories on paper, though, something changes. In Nicole…
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Grateful for Everything
For Everything in Our Lives Lyricist Bruce Findlow, in his song, “For All that Is Our Life,” said that we should offer “thanks and praise” for everything that happens to us. Whether it’s sorrow, failure, fear, or other pain we experience, we should be grateful. [1] He’s not the only spiritual teacher who has proclaimed this. For instance, Rumi, in his poem “The Guest House,” tells us to “welcome” everything that comes to us, and not just welcome it, but also “entertain” it. Each experience is a guest whom we should treat with hospitality. No matter if that guest is a sadness so deep it takes from us all the…
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Free Will and Microbes Among Us
Not Captains of Our Souls The more we learn about the creatures who inhabit this planet with us, the more obvious it seems that, regardless of what William Ernst Henley believed, we are not the captain of our souls, nor can we master our fate. [1] Yes, to some degree we can choose how to respond to adversity, and this is really what his poem is about. Written when he lay ill with tuberculosis and feared he might lose a foot, which was especially worrisome because he’d already had one leg cut off when he was sixteen, Henley’s poem honors his courage and his “unconquerable soul.” His words have inspired…
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Choosing Redemption, Choosing Life
Choosing Redemption Last month, while talking about forgiveness and redemption at the Recovery Church circle, the question came up of whether or not we can be redeemed from God’s love. Hearing that phrase, I imagined a demon bargaining with God to gain control of some poor peasant’s soul, as if God were in the business of buying and selling. Originally, redemption meant to buy back what one had sold. In ancient Mesopotamia, as Robert C. Ellickson and Charles DiA Thorland point out, life was precarious. Families were vulnerable to “crop failures, illness, and attack by pillagers.” [1] Families often had to borrow money, then were unable to pay it back.…