Three Essential Skills     

Life is essentially unworkable. Impossible stuff happens. No matter how smart or how wise or how lucky you are, things will not always go your way. Failure, loss and suffering are inevitable. Clarity of purpose will come and go. Confusion, anxiety and despair will be occasional or frequent companions. Important things like relationships, plans and your body are guaranteed to break down.

None of this is a problem that can be solved, it’s just how life is.   Like my friend, an Episcopal priest, once said: sin (missing the mark/imperfection/forgetting) is not an issue to be fixed, it’s just a condition to work with. So how do we meet this life (and ourselves) that cannot be fully fixed?  What skills are helpful in the face of the full catastrophe of life? Here are three fairly durable skills that I have found useful in the face of it all:

#1 Staying – In difficult situations, most of us want to fix, ignore or get away from whatever it is. None of us like to be uncomfortable for very long. When things and situations can be fixed or straightened out or clarified, I’m all for it. Fix it if you can and move on. Likewise, ignoring difficulty is a terrific skill to have. Sometimes avoidance is simply the best option available—at least for a time. And there are some situations that are so toxic, or violent, or dangerous that leaving is the appropriate, compassionate and wise thing to do.

But when none of these three strategies work—when it’s important not to leave and you can’t fix it and can’t ignore it—STAYING is a powerful strategy. Staying means choosing to remain in the middle of the impossibility of the situation without a plan. This is not the same as physically remaining present while you escape to distant regions in your mind. Staying is the practice of choosing to be present even after all your good plans and strategies have crumbled to the ground. Staying means being alive to your own feelings, thoughts and sensations as well as to the presence, thoughts and words of the others who are there with you (either in person or in your heart).

#2 Doing Nothing – This is a subset of Staying. Doing nothing is a good option only after you have tried everything else. Many daily problems can be resolved by improved communication, working together and being reasonable. But the big ones that appear in our lives often don’t yield to these common-sense strategies. The only way to know what kind of a problem you are dealing with is to do your best to work it out using the rational skills at your disposal. When these don’t work (and I guarantee there will be times when they don’t) your next best option is to Stay and Do Nothing.

This doing nothing is not the same as spacing out and is not to be confused with not caring. Doing Nothing is an active intention to be present without manipulation. Not running away, not fixing. Being alive and aware, but giving up the delusion that it’s all up to you. You become an interested and intimate participant in something that is happening through you and everyone involved in the situation. You give up your pretense of control and stay to learn and be transformed.

#3 Following – Following is a shift from trying to lead a situation in the direction you think it should go, to a willingness to stay with what is unfolding moment by moment. True following usually is only possible when we have given up our delusion that our perspective and our solution are the best way. True following comes only after the failure of all our usual success strategies—after we have been as wise and clear and strong and direct as we can and it has not worked.

Following then means to turn our attention to the unworkable situation itself, not to fix it or even to move it forward, but rather to notice and be present with what is already going on. Following means being curious about what is here in this impossible place. We begin to listen for what we have not yet heard and look for what we have not yet seen. Then we practice going along with whatever is arising.

These three seemingly simple skills can be useful reminders in almost any situation. If you’re interested, you might want to try practicing these skills today. In the next even slightly uncomfortable situation you notice, see what happens is you simply stay, do nothing and follow what is unfolding. It might be quite interesting.

Frozen In Place

A light winter rain falls from the night sky as a thin sheet of ice ominously thickens here below. Not flat like a lake, but ice shaped to every sidewalk and tree and leaf. Perfectly encasing every fence, car and house. Life sheathed in ice.

We once sat a Zen retreat through an ice storm. The rain fell through the night as we sat. We lost power and sat in the dark with candles and blankets. The next morning the temperature dropped and a brilliant sun sparkled on the nearby forest of thickly iced trees. Our quiet meditation that winter morning was punctuated by an occasional ferocious crashing. Huge branches and whole trees gave way under the terrible weight of their transparent burdens. Tree limbs and ice gave way together, shattering our silence momentarily and then quickly finding their new tangled and broken rest.

There was nothing we could do. We kept on sitting. I still remember.

Now I wonder at how each of us can become encased in the transparent shell of our selves. The accretion of who we are and what we do, under certain circumstances, grows so thick we strain to move under the weight and restriction of it all. Frozen in familiar positions of defensive complaint, we may suddenly discover nothing else is possible. Suddenly immobile when the temperature drops, we await our still fate. Will we break before the warmth comes back? Some fall around us, broken by the weight of life or suffocated still in place. Will we loose limbs and survive disfigured or fall entirely? Or nothing at all?

The cold rain falls darkly and the clock ticks for all of us. Sometimes it is like this, these trials, these frozen sentences. Without choice, we hold still and await the outcome. No one is to blame. Sometimes it is just like this.

Trackless

frozen flat

lake white

snow walking

nowhere footprints

only lead here

Without Justification (v.2)

Rather than diagnosing
this morning and
heartfully prescribing
in pragmatic prose,

a way through
the current crisis,
I sip tea and
practice being
irresponsible.

The dark masters
gather and grumble
at my indolence,
but I courageously
resist their muttered
insults and seductions.

I have grown weary
in steadfast pursuit
of their fickle approval—
as if freedom could happen
at some other time.

Every action creates
the life I lead—
a continued quest
for self-earned grace or
some wilder enterprise
of unknown provenance.

So again this morning
I practice resistance
to the ancient gods
of Self accomplishment
and vow to leap
wholeheartedly into
just this one life
without justification.

Looking For The Truth

The impeachment trial of our former President is going in the Senate chamber of the Capital building. A little over a month ago, these same halls were filled with angry insurrectionist doing their best to prevent Congress from carrying out its democratic duty. Mike Pence was being hurried down back stairs while armed individuals were calling for his death by hanging just a few hundred yards away. Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress were hiding in fear before they too were ushered to safety just before the doors to the chamber were breached. Now the Senate is deliberating to determine whether the former President should be convicted of inciting this insurrection.

Given the past unwillingness of the Republican Senators to challenge Trump, the final outcome of the trial will most likely be acquittal. But history is being written through the exposure of email and video footage of the events leading up to and including the armed assault on the Capital building. We, as a people, are trying to get to the truth of what happened.

The Senate is being asked to look at the events that happened from several different perspectives. The Democratic House Managers of the impeachment are presenting many perspectives showing Trump in the worst possible light. Then his lawyers will have the opportunity to present the same evidence in the best possible light.

This is a time-honored practice in societies that value truth and justice. It sounds like it should be simple and that after looking at all the evidence from a variety of angles, the ‘truth’ should be obvious. But ‘reality’ is not as straightforward as it seems. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable and many a trial ends with doubt and continuing differences of opinion.

Polls are showing that most Democrats think Trump is guilty of the charges and that most Republicans think that he was just exercising his right to be inflammatory and politically incorrect. But lives were lost and the government of the United States was directly attacked, with nearly catastrophic outcomes. This is not a small matter and the issues of how much was planned and who was involved in that planning are of central importance.

One of the key issues of this impeachment trial is the degree to which someone, in this case a sitting President, can be held accountable for their words. While our country takes great pride in our ‘so-called’ freedom of speech, in fact, we have always recognized that some speech should not and cannot be allowed. You can be sent to prison for being involved in plotting a crime. You can be fined thousands or millions of dollars for willfully telling lies that damage another person’s reputation or income.

News outlets and public figures have always been liable for the impact of false words they may speak. Part of the way out of our current state of polarization may be to begin to hold virtual platforms accountable to some modicum of truthfulness as well. The righteous anger of the insurrectionists was clearly fueled by lies that were told and repeated leading up to January 6. That you can be held accountable for the truthfulness of your statements and for inciting others to violence seems a fairly reasonable position.

The stories we tell about how we got where we are are part of how we create the future we move into. I hope that the Senate proceedings may allow us all to see more clearly into the events leading to the storming of the Capital and might allow us to recognize the value of a shared truth and the power of our words.