Tag: joyful heretic

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Reclaiming Joy through Breezes & Bare Feet

The final lesson my smashed little toe taught me was that there is more to reclaiming joy than accepting our feelings and rewriting our story. Once that goofy toe stopped throbbing, I limped to the beach. I had less than a block to go since the resort I worked at that summer was on the shore of Lake Michigan.  When I arrived, I plopped down onto the warm, dry sand, leaned back, bracing myself on my hands, and breathed in the view.

If you’ve never been to the shore of a Great Lake, don’t underestimate the scene that greeted me. The water of this sweetwater sea looked like it stretched forever. The horizon was an endless straight line where the cobalt blue of deepwater met the light blue of sky. The wind off the lake was cool and sweet. A Great Lake smells different than an ocean. To me it’s the smell of home — fresh and clean. I filled up with it, and with the coolness of wind on my cheeks, and the warmth of sand under my palms.

No thought. No words in mind. Just feeling. Just being. Utter joy.

No matter where we stand in the great debate about the nature of humanity (Are we spiritual beings having a material experience, or merely meat?), most of us would admit that the life of the flesh matters. And isn’t it wonderful that it does? It’s the material, the solid sweetness of digging our bare feet into sand or feeling the wind on our faces that ground and center us even in the worst times.

Our task, then, is to stop, look and feel. Open our eyes, ears, noses, and skin to the reality of the space we inhabit at the moment. If we can’t get out to nature, we can look up at the sky. We all know the joy of a blue sky, but even clouds can be beautiful in their delicious variations of white and gray. If we can’t see the sky, then we can look down. Is there beauty in the rocks, or an unexpected sparkle? Is there soil we can touch and explore? Or we can look around us? Can we find fascination in the feel of the wood of a desk or a chair? The sharp coolness of the metal around us? Is the aroma of the air unexpectedly delightful? Is that a bird singing or a person?

Stand or sit. See what’s in front, below, or around you. Or close your eyes and listen, sniff and feel. Come into the moment and rest.

This image of Lake Michigan is from tmannis via pixabay. Thanks!

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Reclaiming Joy by Rewriting Your Story

We live by our stories. We die by our stories. If we think kindly of ourselves and create positive narratives out of the events of our lives, then the sun shines on us no matter what’s happening in the sky. Some of us grew up with families that bestowed happy stories on us. Some of us, not so much. As we grew, we adopted our family stories, thinking that whatever our family told us about ourselves and life in general had to be true, but we don’t have to hold onto those stories. And we can learn that Mom and Dad actually didn’t know diddly squat. Whether we’re 15 years old, 25, 35, 65 or 105, we can literally rewrite our lives by changing the way we think about them.

Sometimes it’s hard to accept that. We can feel as if we’re imprisoned by an impenetrable wall of emotion. My experience, though, is that such walls are surprisingly thin and brittle. When I sit with my feelings instead of running from them, those things that looked like walls fall to dust.

So here’s my prescription for those moments when it feels like life punches us in the stomach: Rewrite the story about what happened. Every novelist is the god of her own world, deciding what happens and what it means. I recommend that we realize that we are all the writers of our own lives. We can always rewrite the narrative and change the meaning.

For example, when I smashed my little toe into that half-buried brick back in Michigan so many years ago the outcome depended on the story I told myself about it. I could have grabbed my foot, cursing and yelling in pain, and shouted at myself for being clumsy. “I’m always clumsy,” I could have said. “Why am I so stupid? Why don’t I ever pay attention?” Or, I could have grabbed my foot, cursing and yelling in pain, and said, “Ow, that hurt! I’ve gotta get ice on that!”

In the first instance, the story makes the pain worse. A simple misstep becomes an indictment of me as a human being and what started as a painful toe turns into one more piece of evidence about how I’m inadequate. In the second instance, the story is neutral when it acknowledges pain and empowering when it notes that I can make the toe feel better by icing it.

What story did I actually tell myself? I chose the neutral and empowering story. At the time I was 20 and had not yet heard about the power of reframing. But I naturally chose the positive story because I had never thought of myself as clumsy. I was blessed with a mother who liked the idea that I wanted to be an athlete. I even had the role model in my grandmother who climbed trees into her 40s.

In almost all other matters, though, I struggled. I remember telling a therapist once that my life was like a road map where every road led to the same destination: the idea that I was a horrible soul. In the past, I viewed every event in my life as proof of my awfulness. In other words, today I talk about the importance of rewriting our stories because it’s what I’ve had to learn to do. And I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

May this be the beginning of a new day for you. May you discover your inner novels. May you write the life you want.

IMAGE: Joshua Earle via Unsplash.

 

 

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Reclaiming Joy

When I was 20 and working at a resort on Lake Michigan, I happily strode along a path one perfect summer morning under a bright blue sky. The sound of waves caressed me. The cool, soft breeze ruffled my hair. I lived and breathed joy. And then from one instant to the next, joy was the furthest thing from my mind. I wore sandals that offered no protection for the outside of my foot and had forgotten the half-buried bricks lining the path. From one step to the next, I slammed my little toe into a brick. I was in the middle of a full, vigorous stride when I hit that brick. The brick didn’t give, but my toe did.

To this day I don’t know if I broke my toe. I never went to a doctor, but the outer half of my foot turned amazing shades of blue, purple and charcoal gray. Immediately after smashing that poor little toe, I hopped up and down, screaming the most incredible variety of curses I’ve ever produced. Did I say it hurt? OMG it hurt.

In the moments after toe met brick, all I knew was pain. It wasn’t like I had much choice except to feel it. I had to gut it out. In the moments after our lives meet unexpected bricks, it’s natural to feel pain. We might have lost a job, been diagnosed with the one thing we never wanted to get, seen a great love affair end, or learned about the death of a loved one. We might have flicked on our favorite device and seen images that scare us.

It makes no more sense to deny this kind of pain than it would have for me to deny my agonizing toe. Sometimes, though, we get the idea that in order to be happy we must be happy every moment of every day. Those of us seeking a spiritual path may be more likely than most folks to punish ourselves for acknowledging our pain. Aren’t we supposed to be above it all? If we believe in the Law of Attraction, we might also fear that acknowledging pain attracts more pain to us.

I don’t buy that idea, and I don’t agree that spirituality means never having to hurt. The first trick to reclaiming joy is not to numb out pain, but to move through it. For me reclaiming joy starts with surrender — surrendering to pain, fear, anger, whatever. Every time I surrender the most amazing thing happens. I’m not going to lie; it can feel awful, but if I stay with the feelings, if I let tears-curses-fear-fury flow, the storm passes, my head and heart clear, and I’m at peace.

That smashed toe taught me a lot about reclaiming joy. In the next few posts, I’m going to talk about what I know about the spirituality of joy with a little help from that toe. Join me.

IMAGE: Kazuend via Unsplash.

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Fred Phelps and the Golden Rule

Living by the Golden Rule is a pain sometimes. There are days when I wonder what the heck I was imbibing when I decided this was a good idea, but here it is, my first spiritual principle:

I seek to live by the Golden Rule, treating all beings as I want to be treated. I will give the respect and consideration to a stranger that I would give to a loved one.

How does this translate into action? It means I seek to treat everyone with respect whether that’s a child who is irritating, a woman who confuses me, or a man who thinks I don’t have the right to draw another breath.

Honestly, I blame my embrace of the Golden Rule on the Unitarian Universalists, and of course, Fred Phelps. About 20 years ago, I attended a UU fellowship in Lawrence, Kan. I loved the place, the people, and the UUs seven principles, particularly the first one where they endorse:

The inherent worth and dignity of every person

I remember the moment when I walked out of the Fellowship into a bright Kansas morning, and my mouth dropped open because a thought had just hit me upside the head: If I truly did support the inherent worth and dignity of every person that meant I had to support EVERY person, which included Fred Phelps.

Oh my.

That’s the anti-gay Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church fame. For people who lived where I did, about 30 miles from Phelps and his church, their nasty protests were an everyday in-our-face reality. I hated him. I was supposed to believe that this guy I hated had inherent worth and dignity? Noooooooooo!

And yet, it didn’t seem that there was an escape clause in that first principle — no believing in the inherent worth and dignity of this person but not that person. What the heck was I supposed to do? After much thought and gnashing of teeth I came to a few conclusions, which may or may not be of help to you. Let me know what you think.

#1. I’m doing this for me, not Phelps.

I met Phelps a couple of times before he died. The first meeting came only weeks after I moved to Kansas 30 years ago to take a job as a reporter in the Statehouse. One morning a tall, craggy faced man with cropped, graying hair, maybe 50 years old, and wearing skin-tight bike shorts and a skin-tight, short-sleeved bike jersey appeared at my office door. He thrust a press release at me.

I will never forget how he looked that day. I don’t know whether he was mentally ill. I don’t have the knowledge to diagnose. But I do know the man I met was being consumed by something. As I read the release, he loomed over me, watching with hunched shoulders and quivering with barely repressed energy. He was the most uncomfortable person I have ever seen in my life. He looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin.

When I think back to that moment, which ended politely, I finally got it: Whatever Phelps worth might have been, I didn’t want to be him. I didn’t want to be the hate-obsessed soul who quivered and shook in anticipation or fear. If I wasn’t going to be consumed by hate, I was going to have to let go of hate, and that meant letting go of my hatred of Phelps.

#2. Like everyone else, Phelps was once innocent.

Once upon a time, he was someone’s baby with chubby arms and legs waving happily in the air. I bet if you had reached close enough, he would have grabbed your finger, curling his tiny fingers around you in trust. I don’t know what happened to turn that infant into the man we knew, but I do know I can believe in the inherent worth and dignity of that child.

#3. I can see the infant’s worth and dignity without endorsing the beliefs and actions of the adult.

I can look at Phelps with compassion, and I can feel the tragedy of his life without agreeing with him. Compassion means understanding; it has nothing to do with agreement or capitulation. I have marched, organized and spoken out against Phelps and his church and will continue to do so when the need arises. Compassion didn’t change my actions, but I did notice that it changed the way I spoke about him.

Phelps Bashing is an Olympic sport where I live. With every rise in his church’s notoriety, we’d ratchet up the rhetoric. We used every nasty name you could devise to describe Westboro and Phelps, some I can’t mention in print. At the very least, we labeled him the embodiment of evil, and then we hooted at the Westboro folks like bullying 13-year-olds.

Over time, I began to feel like I didn’t want to do that anymore. The man who came to my office was in pain. Yes, he inflicted pain, but he was also in pain. The protests he led at funerals, the pornographic signs, the nasty words shouted at mourners piled outrage on top of tragedy, but I think the tragedy of Phelps’ life was far more painful that what he and his family did at funerals.

The mourners could be free of Phelps once the funeral was over, while Phelps, his children, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren and their spouses had to live inside a maelstrom of hate.

When Phelps died of natural causes in March 2014, his family did not have a funeral. I hope and pray that if there had been a funeral, no one would have picketed it. No one deserves that. If nothing else, Phelps taught us that there are some lines you never cross.

That’s how the UUs and Fred Phelps taught me the importance of the Golden Rule.

A NOTE ON THE PHOTO: This one’s mine. It was taken on Sapelo Island, Georgia.

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Belief vs. Faith

Google the word “belief” and you’ll get this definition: Belief is “acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.” Many people think that religion is only about belief. Do you believe in God or don’t you? But I disagree. I think it’s about faith. Google the word “faith,” and you’ll get this definition: Faith is “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.”

Faith doesn’t need a supernatural being like God, but faith does require the complete trust and confidence that something that seems impossible is possible. I love sociologist Brene Brown’s definition of faith. In The Gifts of Imperfection, she writes:

Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.

For some folks that place of mystery is their belief in a divine being. For others like me, it is faith that I can let go of my fear of uncertainty and that I can let go of the idea that love is lost, prosperity impossible, and peace on Earth and justice for all just pipe dreams. It is the faith that our best human impulses can be achieved, and that I can have the strength, courage and wisdom to be the kind of person this world needs.

 

A NOTE ON THE PHOTO: This marvelous image was harvested from http://publicdomainarchive.com/. A thousand thanks to them for their fine taste and their generosity.