Money gets unexpectedly tight and I find myself feeling less generous. There’s a shooting nearby and I find myself becoming more leery of strangers. A fellow writer has above-average levels of success and jealousy creeps into my heart, making me feel cynical and on edge. A friend dies, and I find myself tempted to make my life all about me and my family, trying to hold on to what we have while we still can.
But holding tightly to things is not how we were created to live.
The wisdom of the world is the wisdom that says: “It is best to stand firm, to get a good grip on what’s yours here and now, and to hold your own against the rest who want to take it away from you; you’ve got to be on your guard against ambush. If you don’t carry a weapon, if you don’t make a fist, and if you don’t scramble to get what little you need – food and shelter – then you’re just asking to be threadbare and destitute…You open your hands and they pound in nails!”
Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands
Henri Nouwen tells a story of an elderly woman brought into a psychiatric ward. She was fighting desperately with the nurses, swinging wildly at anyone who came near. Why? Because in her clenched fist she held a coin, her last possession, and she refused to let it go.
“It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin.” But instead of letting go and entering a life of peace, she fought and clawed to keep it.
I look at my life and I wonder, what am I clinging to so desperately that it’s causing me to injure those around me? What am I so fearful of losing? What is inside my clenched fists?
In those moments when I can let go of concern for myself, in those moments when I can trust, I feel my hands opening, and in that release comes an immense sense of peace and love for others. When I can lay aside my feelings of self-preservation and jealousy and fear, my hands can now be used to find and administer healing.
What are we clutching to? What will it take for us to let go?
I walked into the early morning cold, locking the door of our rowhouse behind me. The city is empty on weekend mornings: quiet and still. A thin layer of frost glazed the sidewalks, already melting where the sunrise fell between the buildings.
I felt a bit nervous. The walk from my house to the Young Women’s Christian Association was about six blocks, and I had never volunteered there before.
I recently wrote some reflections over at The High Calling. This first one examines how even the smallest things we do are important. You can read the rest of the post HERE.
Here are excerpts from some of my favorite recent blog posts by other folks. Click on the links to read them in their entirety.
These are the days we’ll miss and these are the days that also feel like they won’t ever end. It can be both at the same time, I know that now. We get to hold the wonder and sleepiness, the boring and the magical at the same time, the work and the delight, the mundane repetition and the ferocious love altogether, it’s not one or the other.
On many occasions the worst has happened. I’ve faced all of these fears, and without a doubt they have left me devastated, sad, and despairing about the future.
If you could hang out with anyone living or dead, who would it be?
Interesting question, isn’t it? Of course, if you’re a Christian, there is the tiniest smidgen of guilt if you don’t immediately answer “Jesus,” right? Because what kind of a Christian wouldn’t choose to hang out with Jesus? That’s a lot of pressure.
But not tonight. Tonight I’ve got someone very specific in mind, living or dead, who I would choose to hang out with. Tonight, as I write this in a quiet house over a container of peanut butter and chocolate ice cream, there is one person I would like to spend time with more than any other person I can think of.
He hasn’t written any famous books or blog posts. He didn’t play professional sports or lead a nation or start a trendy non-profit. He didn’t possess the power or wealth that so quickly draws our attention these days.
His name is Gordie Miller. He was a real, flesh-and-blood saint, living right here among us, and he died on Tuesday.
* * * * *
I often stood at the back of our church in the early days of 2011. I was feeling spiritually restless, smack dab in the middle of some transformational experiences (in other words, hard times). I would take my kids to Sunday School and I’d try, I’d really try, to settle into the church service. But my insides felt twitchy and out-of-sorts, so just about every Sunday during that time I’d go to the back and stand there. I guess I could take my medicine standing better than I could sitting down.
Gordie, meanwhile, was about four or five years into his ALS diagnosis. When he was able to come to church, when he wasn’t battling pneumonia or trying to avoid getting the flu, he parked his wheelchair in the back, not too far from where I stood. He could barely talk anymore, though he’d try. He could still drive his own wheelchair back then. He’d smile when he saw me, though I suppose I shouldn’t read too much into that because he smiled at just about everyone. That’s just the kind of person he was.
I wrote the following about Gordie almost five years ago, after standing beside him at the back of the church one Sunday morning:
I want to be as courageous as Gordie. I want to have as much perseverance as he does. But sometimes I just feel scared and weak. Sometimes I want to hang out by the emergency exit doors in case I need to make a quick getaway…from faith, from community, from life.
But if there’s anything I’ve learned from Gordie, it’s that anyone can get through anything. I’ve learned the value of listening, of looking at everyone through kind eyes. Mostly I’ve learned that you don’t have to speak to change people’s lives.
When I grow up, I want to be like Gordie.
* * * * *
When Gordie was first diagnosed, I often wondered how long he could fight off that demonic disease. Along with everyone else, I prayed for a miracle while watching ALS steal one piece of him after another. It was a slow-motion death, as tedious and heart-breaking as they come.
When Gordie was first diagnosed, I wondered how long he had. But then people died unexpectedly, people we loved, and it was like something woke up inside of us. Gordie had been given a death sentence, yet he was outliving people. How was this possible?
I don’t know that it ever occurred to me as clearly as it did in those days, watching Gordie unexpectedly outlive people. I realized Gordie wasn’t the only one dying. All of us were.
All of us are.
* * * * *
That doesn’t have to be a depressing thought. The unavoidable nature of our mortality doesn’t have to fill us with dread or worry. We will all die. We are, all of us, dying, passing away.
But our mortality should cause more than a few questions to rise up inside of us. Questions about eternity, questions about our life, here and now. Perhaps the main question we must all consider is this:
How will I live, now that I recognize I am dying?
The answer comes easy for me, thanks to a brave man who showed us all how to live. I’m talking about Gordie Miller. I want to live like Gordie. I want to see the world through those kind eyes. Should my world crumble around me, I want to go on smiling. I want to love my sons and daughters the way he loved his boys and his daughters-in-law. I want to love my wife well.
More than that: I want to embrace silence. I want to listen. I want to be present for those around me.
This is what Gordie showed me.
* * * * *
One of my favorite passages in scripture is Revelations 22:1-2.
Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
That’s why Gordie, of anyone who has ever lived, is the person I’d want to hang out with right now. I can picture him sitting there at the base of the tree of life, tuning his guitar, maybe nodding a hello and smiling to new arrivals as they walk past. It’s quiet and there’s a warm breeze. He stares at his hands and flexes his fingers, now working perfectly.
Amazing, he thinks to himself.
He takes a bite out of a piece of fruit from the tree of life, the one growing on both sides of the river. He is sitting on leaves that have drifted down from the tree, the leaves that are there to heal the nations.
He takes a deep breath and sings a few lines quietly, to himself, breaking in a voice he hasn’t used properly for years. He closes his eyes.
And the song he sings to himself, the notes he is playing? Right now? That’s what I want to hear. That’s where I want to be.
I must confess
when you creep down
the stairs (they creak under the late
hour), I sigh. But, sighs withstanding, I
follow you back up
to the third floor, and I tuck you in
for the second time
sing the same song with yet another
made-up verse,
pray an abbreviated prayer, then stumble
back to my own bed, weighed down
by weariness.
That old friend. Weariness will put his arms
around your shoulders and hug you down.
After that I can no longer sleep, so I think about how,
at some point in the near future,
I will have to tell you about the meanness
in the world, the people who will take advantage
of you, the people who will return
your innocent smile with a handful of
filth. I will have to tell you about the wars
and the shootings
and the hardness of it all. Yes, that’s it.
It’s the unbending nature of this world I will have to
warn you about.
But tonight I sigh and roll over in bed, and
the next time you come down, unable
to sleep, I tell you to bring
your pillow
and your blanket
and make a bed beside me, on the floor.
I watch through the door’s slant of light the beauty
of you, falling asleep,
and suddenly I remember the antidote
to the unyielding nature of this world:
This is Leo, peering into the New Year (metaphorically speaking).
We’re four days into the New Year, and it’s about the time when you can smell the burned-out rubble of New Year’s resolutions left to die along the highway. It reminds me of the way those little race cars smelled, the ones that zoomed around the plastic tracks until you gave it too much throttle and they flew off the curve.
That’s too many of us, I think, at this time of year, suddenly deciding to go full-throttle on this thing or that, running or weight loss, reading or who-knows-what-else, and before we know it, an unexpected curve in the road sends us vaulting over the side, our engines smelling like hot oil and burned-out tires.
* * * * *
“Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let’s not be afraid to receive each day’s surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy. It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity.” Henri Nouwen
* * * * *
Perhaps the greatest weakness in our resolutions or intentions or hopes for 2016 is that there’s no accounting for the s-word: SURPRISE. Even our most inspired intentions will often get plowed over by the surprises waiting for us: that new promotion, that unexpected diagnosis, that change in the market, that death in the family, that birth in the family, that inability to stay sober, or that surprising spell of freedom from that which has for so long enchained us.
I’m right there with you. I’ve already had some major surprises, many of which I’ll be writing about in the coming weeks. But here’s the thing. THE THING. I’m telling you:
We cannot let surprises derail our hope.
When the surprises come (and they will – perhaps they already have for you), we cannot give them the power to ruin us. Surprises, perhaps more than anything else, have the ability to knock the wind out of our sails, to render us motionless, to send us to the mat in despair.
We cannot let surprises derail our hope…but we also need to let them run their full course, because surprises, unlike resolutions or intentions, can completely transform us. We can become someone we never thought we could become, sometimes only by the power of that which surprises us. Grief can be surprising. So can joy, or good fortune, or change. Love or betrayal or moving from this place to that. So many surprises. So many transformations waiting to happen.
This is the fine line we must walk. When surprises come, can we let them transform us without letting them destroy us completely? If you can somehow do that, if you can, as Henri Nouwen so beautifully says, “allow surprises to open new places in your heart,” you will have a year no resolution or intention could ever have brought you.
