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As Christian fads go, “30 days of thanks” seems to have some potential for good. If you’ve missed it, it’s the practice of giving thanks for something each day of November (often posted on social media). Hopefully it makes us all happier. Gratitude is seen in church as well as in our society at large as a foundation stone of mental health. On a TED talk last week the positive psychology guru Shawn Achor listed thanksgiving as his first choice to improve life’s outlook: find 3 things daily for which to be grateful. On the surface, I think this is a good idea. On the surface. But like most things, the real story is under the surface.
My first question is about motivation, which can sour so many good practices. I remember as a child being ordered to write thank-you notes for gifts I hated. It did not improve my life’s outlook! Legislating gratitude spoils it. But following cultural norms, my parents shamed my “ungrateful attitude” as a child… and it seemed to fix my attitude, but it damaged my spirit. In compliance, I trained myself to “feel” grateful, not as a natural response of delight, but as a way to avoid shame. On the surface, it’s hard to tell the difference, but natural gratitude gives life and forced gratitude suffocates life and relationships. Based on how I react to ungrateful people, I’d say I need more of the natural kind. When I choose thanksgiving as a “discipline,” my spiritual growth may only be in pride or resentment.
But even if my motivation is healthy, I can still misuse thankfulness. Both pop psychology and pop Christianity suppose we can fix hard events and feelings with positive thinking (often labeled “faith”). On the surface, that might be a good idea. On the surface. That is to say, if the bad feelings are superficial, then I can easily “shake it off” with some uplifting thoughts. But for anything deeper, positive thinking will only mask the problem, like taking ibuprofen for a ruptured appendix. The real solution for difficult feelings is to recognize and accept them in a spirit of compassion, try to understand them and find a means to truly support the needs that my soul is expressing. Using thankfulness to resolve significant pain just minimizes and belittles our true feelings and fosters false lives and relationships.
If you are lonely, for instance, not just this particular evening, but in life generally, you cannot rectify it by reminding yourself of all the people who love you and so talk yourself into being okay. If you are hurt by rejection, by loss, by trauma, you cannot find healing by “counter-balancing” it with happy thoughts or smothering it with praise music. Massages are nice, but they don’t cure ear infections. Paul tells us in Romans to “weep with those who weep,” not “cheer up those who weep.” Some of us need to learn to weep for ourselves in compassion. I never use thanksgiving to shout down my feelings. Joy is most truly experienced when I genuinely embrace my sorrows. So any takers for “30 days of pain”?
Yeah, I know I haven’t been around for a while. I’m trying to figure life out… still. At least my own life. But there are no bread crumbs for me to follow. Why post about a meaningless life? Who does that help? My days have devolved into an endless round of getting up, walking the dog, reading, chatting up my wife, and going to work. I have nothing to share about truths I’m stretching into or dreams I’m sketching out or even struggles I am surviving. Life has dumped me in a DMV waiting room with no one behind the counter. I’ve been sitting here for a year now.
I no longer wake up miserable every morning, and there is something to be said for that, but can someone please remind me the point of waking up each morning? It is like Groundhog Day but with an endlessly repeating script. Didn’t we just do this yesterday… and the day before… and…. MacBeth mutters the truth:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
I’ve been missing here for a month, not from depression or busyness or low energy as in the past, but from fence sitting.
Not by choice. I’m too weak to jump out of the yard and do anything useful–I’ve glanced at projects countless times, even started some, only to realize they would drain my soul. in the other direction, the emotional gravity dragging me back down hasn’t found a grip as long as I’ve kept my shaky equilibrium. I’m in a holding pattern on a narrow platform, and I sense that it is my task to wait and gather strength.
This is not easy for me. My internal voices are always shouting for me to get busy, and ignoring them has always led me into a place of shame. They drove me into more and more Christian service until it broke me. When I discovered the potholes this pounded into my soul, I thought I had turned onto the road to recovery, but the voices just switched goals, whipping me towards personal development, “figure out NOW what is holding you back and FIX it!” I feel ashamed for not healing faster. Patience with myself is rarely an item in stock.
I have lived all my life on the principle that rest must be earned. After all, God worked six days and rested on the seventh. I thought the Sabbath was simply a concession to our weaknesses: “Okay, you’ve worked hard enough, so now you get to rest.” In fact, there was no command to work six days… that was simply a necessity for survival and advancement. The duty, the order, the commandment (one of the Big Ten), was not to stay busy, but to stop busy. The Sabbath is not a reward for working all week. The reward for working all week is the material benefits we reap. The Sabbath was certainly a blessing, but it was a command, not a reward. It had its own justification and importance quite independent of the other six.
The Fourth Commandment was also not a prohibition (“thou shalt not work”) but a prescription: “Remember the Sabbath to keep it Holy.” It offered positive power and creative purpose for our lives, the one day to focus care on our spirits instead of our bodies (for food, shelter, etc.). If anything, it was not the work week that justified the Sabbath, but the Sabbath that justified and gave meaning to the work week. I was raised on the “Protestant Work Ethic,” but what I really need is a strong dose of the “Protestant Rest Ethic.” The first has often pulled me from faith in God to dependence on myself, but the second forces me back to faith… and though it is shaky and insecure, it is a faith I am committed to.
Today was a mildly good day emotionally, and I thought it should be noted since I haven’t been on the positive side of the ledger in a long time. It was not exciting or fulfilling or memorable, but pleasant in a blue-hazy way. In the past I tried desperately to decode the secret of a day like this–what did I do right or avoid doing wrong? How can I keep this going? Like a capsize-victim scrambling to straddle a rolling barrel, I soon tipped over again, even more tired and discouraged from all my scraping and clawing.
Now I have a better appreciation for the staid Buddhists who let the feelings pass through like vapors across a room. If God or the universe or my beleaguered soul is sending a message, it needs to be less cryptic. I keep my eyes open, but when fog settles in, patience is the better part of wisdom. Insight often takes the slow train, and pacing the platform doesn’t get it here any faster. As Erwin Schrodinger says, “In an honest search for knowledge, you quite often have to abide by ignorance for an indefinite period” (a quantum physicist validating my confusion!). I have learned to enjoy the good while it lingers, not weighing it down with questions or trying to finagle an extension. It is what it is for as long as it is, and when it smiles, I am grateful.
I wonder what it’s like to be normal, to feel the weight of life’s stresses and hardships balanced out by its joys and pleasures. I wonder what it’s like not to fight against deep misery every day. not feel crushed by the brokenness of the world. I expect that when the bumps in the road seem small, the catch phrase verses and bumper sticker encouragements have enough lift to clear your axle. For the average guy, commonsense advice for tackling problems probably works.
My Facebook friends cheer one another on with links to meditations and quotes that inspire them, and I hear one more rousing verse of Kumbaya as their bus pulls away from the stop where I am left standing. Unfortunately, I can’t even force myself to see my world from this positive perspective. I cannot “choose” to be happy. I’ve tried. I would have to live in denial of my actual emotional experiences, and I seem constitutionally incapable of that. I can choose to follow God, to trust Him as best I can, and I do, each day in the face of emotional riptides, but it has led to only tidbits and crumbs of peace and joy.
What is it like to feel life is good, expectations and hopes are often satisfied, and goals motivate rather than burden? What is it like to have all that extra energy, to have room for creativity and exploration and a wide range of possibilities? I wonder how it changes a person’s perspective, spirituality, approach to the day’s happenings, understanding of others. Do those folks use that big supply of emotional resources to understand and face into their fears? At the expense of their own comfort, do they embrace those who are different and disagree. Do they strip back their layers of self-protection and dig deep into who they really are? I wonder.
I have been encouraged a great deal in reading one of my favorite 17th century theologians, Thomas Traherne, and want to give you a taste of his thoughts on friendship, especially regarding friendship with God. (I’ve modernized spelling and a couple words)
[Friendship is] kindness of behavior, a thorough and clear communication of souls, a secure reliance upon each others fidelity, a perfect discovery of all our thoughts, intentions, and [feelings], an ardent willingness to impart lives and estate for the benefit of our friend, the reposing of all our secrets in each others bosoms, to do all services, and suffer all afflictions, for each others sakes, to prefer the concerns of our friend upon all occasions above our own….
The greatest secret in its nature is, the mutual agreement of souls and spirits, the delight which either takes in the other, the honor and esteem they give and receive, the approbation and love of each others dispositions, the sense and admiration of each others virtues, the continual desire of being always together, peculiar ecstasy, which the beauty of either occasions in the other, when of all other treasures in the world their persons are the greatest to one another. Either is the proper element and [consolation] of the others soul. Their bosoms are the mutual receptacles and temples of each others accomplishments, whereinto they are received in all their desert, and have justice done to every degree and perfection in their nature; their hearts are thrones where they are exalted, and magnified, and live at ease, are honored [and extolled].
–though I often fall short, I want to dedicate these aspirations to Kimberly
Matthew 1:5 and Obed fathered Jesse
Obed is to me a sign of hope when hope has breathed its last, CPR hope. For some of us, like Naomi, life seems like a ragged march of crippled dreams, and we wish for it all to be over. After Naomi and her family were driven to destitution by a famine, they fled as refugees to a foreign country where her husband and both sons died. She returned in old age to her homeland with a widowed and childless daughter-in-law Ruth, and they survived as beggars. Naomi was not only at the end of her own fruitless life, but with no offspring, she was at the end of her whole family’s history. She began life full of promise–Naomi means pleasant–but all those hopes were dashed along the way, and she was tottering towards a pauper’s grave. She told everyone to stop calling her Pleasant and instead to call her “Bitter.” Her hope had burned out. Then hope lit up her darkness. In the last extreme something happened, something unexpected and outrageous–a wholesale redemption. Ruth married Boaz and gave birth to Obed.
According to Old Testament law, Obed, the son born to her daughter-in-law, was Naomi’s own grandson. In one moment her life was transformed from penniless, meaningless, and future-less into the bloodline of the Son of God. Her friends called Obed her “redeemer, restorer of life and sustainer of your old age” (Ruth 4:14,15). Grace, even last minute grace, rewrites our whole history. It does not simply counterbalance the negative, but transforms it into something great and good. That is the meaning of redemption. Take all the zeros of our life strung together, and add this one element of grace and it changes 000000 into 1,000,000. However empty and broken our lives seem, the message of Obed is that grace sweeps us into the grand scheme of God’s redemptive purposes. “Why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope thou in God.” (Ps. 42:11)
I have never called someone the ‘N’ word or turned someone down for a job interview because they’re black. I would happily sit under a black pastor or live next to a black family, in fact I would welcome it. I am open to being friends with someone of any skin color. I don’t think I am better in anyway from someone simply because of the tint of their pigment. So how can I be racist? In fact, I don’t think I could be friends with a real racist, someone who sticks a confederate flag on the back window of their pickup and tells Little Sambo jokes. If you called me a racist, I’d fight you. I hate racism! So how can I be a racist?
When I paint racism in its bold colors, it’s easy to exonerate myself. Every sin has its blatant face–a conscious, intentional, flagrant show. Pride has braggarts, anger has shouters and name-callers, impatience has shovers and elbowers. Compared to those folks, I am a saint of humility and gentleness and patience. Pride has a thousand faces, and most of them are so well-hidden that I don’t even see my own, but failing to recognize it does not make it small or harmless. If anything it is more dangerous.
Like other sins, racism comes in two types: open and hidden, conscious and unconscious, and the unconscious variety is no less dangerous. The racism I hate I find in myself when I look closely enough. I don’t want to be, I don’t intend to be, and I’m usually blind to it, but I am a racist. Racism means to privilege my own perspective with reference to race, a cultural narcissism or self-centeredness, whether consciously or unconsciously done, and I fail regularly. There are many ways of privileging my own view, and the most common is simply a lack of initiative or interest to understand and make room for the other’s view. I have also discovered in myself racial paternalism, elitism, stereotyping, disinterest, criticism, pride, antagonism, disregard, suspicion, disrespect. I have been defensive to their criticisms, dismissive of their difficulties, arrogant about my own (racially advantaged) progress, unaware of their pain and powerlessness. Forgive me. I have sinned against you my brothers and sisters.
I have come a long way in growing out of this racism, but I still have a long way to go. To be a better brother to the African American community, here are some things I would like to develop. Learn to listen more carefully and humbly to what they say, especially when I have an instinctive reaction against it. Understand their perspective more deeply and fully within its historical context. Accept their criticism of my race, taking every occasion as an opportunity for serious self-reflection and evaluation. Sensitize myself to their issues, concerns, struggles, perspectives, and values and let these inform my daily choices. Identify and appreciate their unique contributions to our world.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” C. S. Lewis
Janathan Grace Reflections 