What's Your Story?

Holocaust survivor and human rights activist Elie Wiesel included one of my favorite stories as a preface to his novel, The Gates of the Forest. “When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.

Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: "Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer," and again the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: "I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient." It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: "I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient." And it was sufficient.

God made human beings because God loves stories.”

We are indeed story loving people.  Our identity is formed and shared in and through stories.  Three times in the last few weeks I have met with friends I had not seen for quite a while.  How did we choose to reconnect?  We reconnected by sharing coffee and stories.  We shared stories about what we've been up to since we talked last.  We shared stories about what people we love have been up to as well.  “Tell me one more story” is not just the request of a child who doesn't want to go to sleep, it is the request we all make of one another when we get together.

If you need more evidence of the power of stories in our lives, be sure to watch the Academy Awards this Sunday night.  Movies, which are simply stories brought to life on the big screen, play a powerful role in our culture.  They inspire us and get us talking with one another.  They entertain us and distract us from the stresses of everyday life.  They bring couples, families, and friends together to create a shared experience not just in viewing the movie together, but in discussing and replaying the experience for hours and days after.

In our Living Compass 2013 Lenten Booklet, this week's entry talks about the Academy Awards (which take place this Sunday evening), movies, and our love of stories.  The entry appears below, and the entire booklet can be found at www.livingcompass.org/lent.iml

“The Stories and Scripts of Our Lives”

Religious truths are communicated primarily through stories, with the Bible being the most well known collection of religious stories.  The Bible contains hundreds of stories of Jesus, Paul, Moses, Sarah, Ruth, and countless others.  The stories are there to teach us and to show us how peoples' lives have been transformed by God.  Together, the stories create a narrative, which for we Christians, is the primary narrative that informs and guides our lives. All families, cultures, and religions tell stories to both entertain and to pass on essential truths.  In our modern culture, movies are a dominant form of story telling.  Tonight's annual Academy Awards extravaganza is a reminder of just how important movies are in our culture.  Like stories, movies come in every genre: comedy, historical, religious, drama, family, and mystery to name just a few.  Some movies are simply for entertainment, while others embody and teach important values about character, relationships, and meaning.  While a movie involves many different creative talents, the whole process starts with the writer. Without a writer, without a script, without a story, there would be no movie. While each of us has been formed by the stories of our families, culture, and faith, we have also each been given the freedom to be the scriptwriters of our own lives.  We get to write the stories that define our lives and our relationships.  We get to decide if the relationships between the lead actor or actress, ourselves, and the other cast members will be marked by compassion or conflict.  We get to decide what values and belief systems will influence the choices we make.  We get to create the story line this is our life. So how is the story/movie of your life going these days?  Are you excited or bored by it?  Are you content or frustrated?  Whatever you may be feeling, the good news is that the movie of your life is not finished yet!  The story/movie is still being written. Are you unhappy in an important relationship in your life?  Are you unhappy in your work?  Have you lost a sense of purpose or meaning in your life?  If so, there is time to expand and rewrite your script rather than continue to write a story you are not happy with or that is not fulfilling.  We cannot write a new beginning, but our Christian narrative promises us that we are free to begin writing a new ending today. Our freedom to write and rewrite the scripts and stories of our lives is one of the greatest gifts God has given us.  And remember that the greatest award for a well-written, and well-lived life, is not an Academy Award, but rather the peace and joy--the “right spirit within us”-- that comes to us and our loved ones when we dare to dream and create such a life.

Of Lent and Love

Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Christian season of Lent, and Valentine's Day will both be celebrated next week.  The calendar has them falling just a day apart this year with Ash Wednesday on Wednesday and Valentine's Day on Thursday.  While these two days stand for something quite different from one another, I would like to share a brief reflection that might actually help us to see what these two days have in common.Imagine a person buys a beautiful bouquet of flowers for his or her beloved for Valentine's day.  The person receiving the flowers is moved to tears and says, “Your expression of love means SO much to me.  Thank you so much.”  And then imagine the person giving the flowers responds by saying, “Well, it is Valentine's Day you know and I didn't want you to be mad at me if I didn't do something for you today.” Ouch!  The flowers in and of themselves would have been a wonderful gift.  But when the person says, “I just didn't want you to be mad at me,” all of the positive energy of the gift of the flowers disappears.  Why?  Because the giver of the flowers revealed that their giving of the flowers was motivated not by love, but fear.  Giving someone a gift because you are afraid they might be mad otherwise is very different than giving that gift to express genuine love. This is where Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day have something in common.  Our true motives in regard to how we approach each of these days makes all the difference.  Because organized religion has so often encouraged a fear-based approach to getting people to do the right thing, many people approach Ash Wednesday, the season of Lent, and many religious traditions in the  spirit of, “I better do something because I don't want God to be mad at me.”  In matters of love and spirituality, the “why” we do something is as important as the “what” we do.  Rather than approach Lent from a place of fear or guilt, why not approach it from this kind of mindset? “I choose to do certain things in this season of Lent in order to strengthen my connection with God because I am grateful and thankful for for God's love and for all that God has given me.” If you will be celebrating Ash Wednesday and Lent, and if you will be celebrating Valentine's Day next week, I encourage you to do so with a spirit of love and delight.  Give of yourself freely because you truly desire to do so and not because you are worried about what might happen if you do not. A portion of Psalm 51 which will be  read at Ash Wednesday services everywhere says,

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.  Give me the joy of your saving help again...” (Psalm 51:11,13).  

Love in any form, from those on Earth or that of God, indeed renews the spirit within us and when we feel it we, cannot help but express in return that loving spirit with joy and delight.  The expression of heartfelt feelings of love in any form is only authentic and meaningful if the motivation itself is grounded in love, not fear.  When we are clear about the motivation, the “what” we do or give becomes less important and the true expression of gratitude and thanksgiving for that love takes care of itself, both on Valentine's Day and in observing Lent.

Falling Upward

One of the best books I have read in the last five years is Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr.  When I had a chance to be part of the FORMA Annual Conference this past week  in Albuquerque, NM at which Rohr was going to speak, I was naturally excited.  It's not always the case that an great author is also a great speaker, but I am delighted to report that Richard Rohr is both.Rohr is a priest in the Franciscan order who integrates wisdom from spirituality and depth psychology.  He has traveled the world the last forty-two years leading retreats and conferences on wholeness and wellness.  Falling Upward, published in 2011,is a book about the two halves of our lives.  The first half of life, according to Rohr, is characterized by external growth, expansion, and accomplishment.  It the time of life when people finish school, begin careers, begin relationships and families, and most things in one's life are on an upward trajectory.  Rohr talks about the first half of life as being primarily about building and solidifying one's identity and one's ego. In contrast, Rohr describes the second half of life as being primarily about deepening one's identity and about developing one's soul.  In the second half of life, things begin to get more complicated.  Loss becomes more prevalent.  Relationships end through separation or death.  Bad things happen to good people.  Dreams fall short and disappointments occur. We begin to face the finite limits of our lives in the second half of life.  Things begin to fall apart, but the point that Rohr makes is that we have a choice when we face an experience of things falling apart.  We can choose to fall down, or we can choose to fall upward--hence the name for his book. Rohr's book resonates completely with my own experience in life, both personally and professionally.  In my experience, all spiritual growth--all growth of the soul--occurs in response to working through some experience of loss, some experience of facing a problem that cannot be solved by simply working harder (the striving of the ego).  Another way to capture this is to quote one of my favorite sayings:  wisdom is simply healed pain.  Those who face and heal their pain as they move into and through the second half of life become wise.  They are the sages and elders of our lives whose wisdom and council we regularly seek.  Their souls are well developed.  They have a depth and a gravitas that is palpable.  Those who do not face and heal their pain in the second half of life, become constricted, bitter, and cynical.   Rohr captured this difference in his talk this week when he said, “we have a growing population of elderly in our country, but not necessarily a growing population of elders.” The field of personal growth literature is vast.  Much of it is geared toward the first half of life, toward what Rohr would call the growth of the ego.  Most of these books are some version of “Ten Steps To A Better You.”  There is of course nothing wrong with this kind of literature as far as it goes.  But if you are looking for a book that will nurture the growth of your soul, look no farther than Falling Upward by Richard Rohr.  You can read the book an a couple of days, but you will spend the rest of your life integrating and benefiting from its wisdom. Regular readers of this column know that one of my favorite sayings is, “Change is inevitable.  Growth is optional.”  Richard Rohr makes this more specific, by saying, “Falling is inevitable.  Falling upward is optional.”  Rohr says that when we fall upward, what we come to discover is that what is falling away as we get older is the false self, and that what is finally emerging is the true self.  He is clear though, that this is a choice that we have to make.  We make it one day at a time, in community with those we love and trust, and in community with a Higher Power who is always guiding us to discover our true selves.

The Eyes of Our Children Are Upon Us

The best parenting advice my wife and I ever received was not to be so concerned about whether our children were listening to us or not, but to be more concerned with the fact that they were always watching us.  This wisdom is not just for parents; it is for all adults--grandparents, aunts and uncles, neighbors, youth leaders, teachers, coaches, clergy, and all of us who have children in our lives who are watching us.  I was reminded of the wisdom of this advice when I watched the televised confession that Lance Armstrong made to Oprah Winfrey and the world last week. Being an avid biker, as well as an avid student of the human psyche, I was very interested in watching the entire two and a half hours of Armstrong's interview last weekend.  In case you missed the interview, I want to highlight one moment that illustrated so clearly the wisdom I have already mentioned that was shared with us so long ago.  It was two hours into the interview before Lance Armstrong showed vulnerability and emotion.  This occurred when he began to talk about how his lying and deception had begun to affect his thirteen year old son.  It was not the loss of his friends, team mates, or sponsors that caused him to break down in the interview.  Instead, it was when he talked about overhearing his son telling his friends from school that the media was all wrong and that his dad was innocent and had never cheated in any way.  After all of those years of lying it was when he heard his lies being imitated by his son that the seriousness of what he was doing finally became real to him.  He knew then that he needed to tell the truth to his son, and that eventually he would need to do the same with his four other younger children. Armstrong's son was simply doing what all young people do.  They watch the important adults in their lives and believe what they say and do without question.  There are few things more humbling for a parent or any adult than when they see or hear one of their own bad habits being imitated by a child.  For Lance Armstrong, it appears that it was his child that humbled him and did something that all the powerful adults in his life could not do.  It was a child that got him to tell the truth. Children need us to tell the truth.  Children need us to live the truth.  This is their greatest blessing to us and it is our greatest challenge. In their innocence and dependence on us children ask us to align our lives with what we say we believe so they have something to hold onto as they learn to how to live in this complex world.   They unknowingly ask us as well to align our lives with our ideals and core values so they will have a compass to guide them.  They ask us to walk the talk.  And when we get off track and make mistakes--which we inevitably all do at times--they simply ask us to tell the truth, acknowledge our mistakes, and move forward in a renewed way.  This is hopefully what Lance Armstrong is doing, and it is hopefully what all of us who are blessed to have children watching us, are doing on a regular basis.

Many Kinds of Help

My colleague, Edith Braeger, and I were recently co-facilitating a Living Compass Parent Wellness group at nearby church.  Our group of eleven met for six weeks and as always happens in a Living Compass group, there was a great deal of honest and heartfelt sharing about the full range of joys and concerns that life and parenting brings.As Edith and I were there as the facilitators of the group, we started each session with a short lesson related to parenting wellness. and opened things up for a group discussion.  With this group, as with every Living Compass group, we found ourselves over time speaking less and the group members talking more.  Each week, as trust began to build in the group, the parents turned more and more to each other for help.  One mother risked sharing with the group that she yells at her kids way too much.  She ventured to ask the group if others also had struggled with that.  Another parent immediately responded,  “All I know is that when I lose it with my kids, that's more about me than about my kids.  It means I'm stressed out and not doing well myself.”  Apparently that honest reply was just what this mother needed to hear as she immediately stopped talking about how poorly behaved kids were and, shifting focus, spent the next few minutes talking about how stressed she was at work because  she hated her boss  and yet  she couldn't afford to quit her job.  The group listened with compassion and then offered some advice on how to mange her boss.  She was greatly relieved and thanked the group for their support. Living Compass groups are not therapy groups.  They are made up of people just like you and me who get stressed and out of balance sometimes.  While all the groups have trained facilitators, most of the best advice in these groups comes from the wisdom of the other participants..  It always seems that some other person has just the right piece of wisdom, based on their own life experience, that is just what the other person needs to hear at that moment  There is a collective wisdom in the group that each person takes turns benefitting from. I was thinking about all of this when I learned that Pauline Phillips, better known by her pen name Abigail Van Buren, died this week at the age of ninety-four.  Her column,    Dear Abby, with a regualr readership of over 110 million begun in 1956 and  ran for over 40 years.  She regularly dispensed advice about parenting, marriage, difficult relatives, and the problems of everyday life.  Like the parents in the Living Compass group that I mentioned above that were providing compassionate, helpful support to one another, Abigail Van Buren had no professional training.  What she had was a warm, caring heart, and a collection of wisdom that simply came from life experience. The term “professional help” is often used when a person is struggling with a life issue, as in “maybe it's time to seek professional help.”   As a licensed therapist who has been honored to offer such help to people for over thirty years, I of course, am a strong proponent of seeking professional help when needed and believe that there should be no shame or stigma in seeking such help.  Yet, in the spirit of what I see in Living Compass groups, and in the help provided through the Dear Abby column, I am reminded that most of the help that we provide to one another is of the “unprofessional” kind.   This is the sharing of the kind of empathy, wisdom and life lessons that friends, neighbors, family members, colleagues, 12-step groups, etc. offer to each other every day. The world has changed a great deal since Abigail Van Buren started writing her Dear Abby column in 1956.  Our world has become more technical, more professional, and more complex.   In honor of Abigail Van Buren's passing away, it's good for all of us to pause and remember though, that wise words spoken with compassion and humor never go out of style. In honor of “Dear Abby” we can all strive to be better listeners to others concerns and, if asked, share empathic advise based on our own life lessons and wisdom. I close with some compassionate and humorous words, taken from a Swedish toast,  that Van Buren said were important for guiding her life. May these words be her parting wisdom to us all. "Fear less; hope more. Eat less; chew more. 

Talk less; say more. Hate less; love more."