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(*This recording has popping sounds from a fire in the background, and the occasional tummy grumble :))
Observing is hard. Watching the nuances and complexities unfolding on the global stage is more than a challenge. We sit in pews, lined to the back of the room, watching as suffering paints its many shades over the crowd. Fretfully hoping we are not next to be smeared by the broad sweeping brushstroke. It seems something has orchestrated we be brought into one room to witness the degrees of shadow and anguish present.
We are observing now, what we have been running from since the moment our minds could comprehend the vastness of suffering we were born into. We have never been skilled at confronting pain, collective or individual. No one taught us how to sit still and observe the stitch in our gut or the cyclical fear in our minds, the sunken plot of our lingering depressions. No one spoke to quelling our impulses of unkindness and violence, the twisted faces of our hurt. It is time we resolve this. After all, we are standing shoulder to shoulder in a room together with nowhere to hide any longer. Denial will only plow us underground. The stage begs us not to look away, begs we admit there is new humanity asking to be born. Rabbi and scholar Lawrence Kushner stated this idea powerfully and bluntly: "God does not have hands, we do. Our hands are God's. It is up to us what God will see and hear, up to us, what God will do. Humanity is the organ of consciousness of the universe…without our eyes, the Holy One of being would be blind."
But what do we, the helpless bunch of flawed humans, do with all we are seeing? Do we stand haplessly at the outskirts like exposed nerves? Or do we reach, one hand at a time, to grope for the invisible rope that will lead us to another mountain peak?
Observing moves us to feeling and admitting.
Feeling and admitting move us into sobriety.
Sobriety moves us into wakefulness and courage.
Courage moves us into expansion and awakening.
Awakening moves us into humility.
Humility moves us into surrender.
Surrender moves us into right action and grace.
My eldest has been struggling with moving past his perceived limitations. He feels the crushing gravity of nature pushing him into a bigger, more able self, and he wants to fall onto the ground helplessly and roll over on his side. I won't leave him there, believing he can't move forward, so I drew him a picture of a mountain range. Each peak was higher than the previous one, and at the crest of each one, he stood a little taller and more significant than the last version of him.
I explained that he was now standing at the top of the most miniature mountain and had reached his limit. You know you are at a limit, I explained, when the voices inside your mind are screaming, "You can't do it. You can't go on. This is too much." To move past these voices, you must throw out a piece of rope to the larger version of yourself standing on the next peak, and bravely move forward, acting as if something is holding you.
How do we do this? He wondered. We start saying, "I can." This effort and energy of "I can" will begin carrying us up the steep slope to our next peak. I told him this cycle would continue for his life and that if wise, he could maneuver through his mountain range with excellent acuity if he accepted the challenge. He was receptive and shifted gears immediately. Now that he knew the path, he had the map and was willing to pave new roads within his brain and heart to seek out and find who he is capable of becoming.
If we are willing, there is a map, a path, and a method. There is a self-waiting for each of us, even calling out to us from the distant peak.
If you are like me, witnessing all that we are, you are pilloried by the voices of fear and overwhelm. The limit has been reached, and we must oppose the voices spitting stones and find our courage. Daily I act in a way that acknowledges the screaming voices of my deluge and yet quietly relinquishes them at the altar of my sober seeing. I will look until looking, brings me no fear. I proclaim that I trust the goodness of myself and this world and I move forward the best I can, in kindness and sensitivity. These actions sound easy enough, but a fire burns out each of our windows, so every gesture I make to approach the pain means I too, am singed. I tow a fine line between sanity and insanity these days, and I am not ashamed to admit that, for I know truth lives on this shaky ground. Anyone walking in this place is moving against an incredible tide of resistance and fear, they are walking to their next mountain peak. Surrendered to the task's difficulty, we move into the current of grace. We build our faith with each step and act in the name of the love beating inside each of our hearts, and in honor of the pain surfacing to help lift us beyond.
Life will continue unfolding, crying it cries, painting the path before us with broad crimson-colored strokes of suffering, but if on our breath you can hear us whispering, "I can hold this. I can see this. I can endure this. I can heal this. I can be with this, I have medicine to offer this, " the hue of our paths will change. We will meet one another, not defeated, not lost in worrisome worlds, but with courage in our eyes and on our breath, seeking to find a new view together. We will meet emboldened at the top, held by grace through it all because we did not roll over on our sides- we embraced the process, the gravity pushing us forward. Grace will cradle us because we dared to feel the fear and hold it, to name the wound and attend to it, to see the pain and love it. Grace will encircle us because when we met our limit, we did as we needed to embark on the road that would lead us to higher ground.
"The spirit of evil is the negation of the life force by fear. Only boldness can deliver us from fear. If the risk is not taken, the meaning of this life is violated." – Carl Jung.
May we look without turning away, without rolling over on our side. May we fight the sleep wanting to lull us from taking a risk. May we teach ourselves how to stand upright in the face of all the screaming voices, with love inside our hearts. May we challenge our limits and whisper “I can” as many times as it takes for us to believe it. May we stop trying to skip this step, and embrace the pressure of nature. May we accept the summons, and step forward in boldness.
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