Author Archive
Elisabeth offered some insightful questions on Facebook in response to my post “I Am Handicapped” She was responding to my comment “We all have handicaps, and we do well to recognize them. God not only gave us all strengths, but he deliberately created us with weaknesses as well. I think this was his way of making us interdependent, of tying us together in community. Our weaknesses are not “bad” things, they are just part of who we are and who we will always be. I may be able to improve or compensate for my weaknesses, but if I try to quash them or force them into conformity, I am being false to the way God created me.”
Elisabeth wrote, “I have been trying to think what it is that has been niggling at the back of my mind … Anyway, it is a feeling like the “That is just the way I am” statement if received with love and grace seems to be more like “That is out of my comfort zone” “God made me this way so just accept it even though it is inconveniencing or hurting you” … If the other person’s strength meshes with your weakness then that is great… although where I am weak is when I get to see God at work … “That’s just not me” is not off limits to God’s work and purpose. When both people say “That’s not the way I am made” then what happens. A friend told me that when your eyes are “going” (which mine are and I increasingly need reading glasses…smile) that as much as is possible to not use glasses so the eyes will continue to work…If you use the glasses all the time then your eyes just adjust to that. So if someone else “lovingly” steps in and is compensating for my weakness then I adjust to that and don’t trust Jesus to work on it. I am probably not making sense…I am just mulling things through so these are just thoughts on a journey not destination thoughts…”
Wow, she raises so many issues! Thank you, Elisabeth, I want this site to be interactive. It seems to me it would be so much more beneficial to all of us if it is a dialogue. I think this will take several posts to touch on so many things (just to barely touch on them!). I would like to share my personal journey regarding weaknesses, but the story is so long, I will put that on a separate page for those who have more time or patience or interest. Suffice it to say here that most of my life I faced personal weaknesses as obstacles that needed to be “gotten over,” to be overcome and replaced with strengths. I would compare my weaknesses with others’ strengths, setting that as my goal and mentally flagellating myself for falling short. This belief had multiple downsides within myself and my relationships.
A few of my many weaknesses include forgetfulness, accident proneness, disorganization, and procrastination. I do my best to compensate for these. For instance, I am more organized in my work than most folks, but it does not come naturally to me. Instead of being inherent and well-grounded, it is an entirely jerry-rigged contraption, like a fort built with scrap material by a little boy instead of one made from a manufactured kit by a skilled carpenter. I have developed multiple props of lists, systems, calendars and the like, but it goes very much against the grain for me to operate this way, so I have to drive myself to it with shame and fear.
Inevitably, in spite of all my efforts, my disorganization glares through, and I fail to do what I am “supposed” to do. Because my self expectations do not take into consideration my weaknesses, I feel ashamed for not meeting my own standards. In short, I can only be an acceptable, worthy person by changing into someone I was not designed to be. I don’t consider what method of work (and what choice of work) may be most fruitful for someone with my characteristics, but assuming that efficiency and productivity are the ultimate goals, I force myself into the system that will best meet these criteria, like David mistakenly trying to get into Saul’s armor to fight Goliath.
Weaknesses are often the alter-ego of our strengths. In contrast to organization and task orientation, I am more naturally spontaneous, creative, relationally oriented. By putting all my energy into becoming more organized around projects at work, I tend to stifle my strengths (which limit efficiency and organization). Of course, efficiency and organization can be quite important, but if I make these my primary, default objectives, I have to ignore and override my natural tendencies which are valuable in their own right and are my particular gift to offer the world. In contrast, I could use efficiency and organization as supports to my strengths (as needed) instead of a competition with them. Allowing me to be myself in this way will require those who are more organizationally minded to either be patient with the speed, neatness, and method with which things are done or step in to add their gift of organization (not to insist that this be the paramount value, but just another part of the mix). In this way we can learn to respect and value one another’s contributions.
Our Needs and Gifts Are Designed to Fit
Some of you may have balked at my last post. Putting myself first sounds downright unchristian. Yet for whose life do you have the greatest responsibility before God? Should you let your own spirituality slip because you are busy helping others with their spiritual journey? Whose physical health are you most responsible to maintain… are you more accountable for your children’s unhealthy food choices than your own? Is there someone more responsible for your mental health than you? Self care is about keeping oneself healthy in every way. I do not mean that I would never choose someone else’s benefit over my own in a given instance, but as a way of life, I believe I am most responsible for myself, and that the more healthy I am, the more a blessing I can be to others. I’d love to hear your responses!
I say that tongue in cheek… sort of. Many of us have so confused self-care with selfishness, that we think it is holy to mistreat ourselves in ways we would never think to treat another. I am one of those who feel I must neglect myself in order to help others, but at least for me, I am surprised by the opposite happening. As I found myself able to be kind to myself on my drive to D. C. yesterday, I spontaneously began feeling kind towards those around me.
A woman tailgated me for a while and then cut in front of me. Instead of thinking, “You jerk!” I thought, “I’ve been in big hurries before. I know how that feels. I hope you make it in time.” I had empathetic, even appreciative thoughts for slow drivers, confused drivers, and wacky pedestrians. I even had an open heart to the one person in Arlington that made my life miserable when I was pastoring there.
Who would have thought that taking care of myself, even putting my own needs first, would have such a positive impact on my outlook and behavior towards others? It seems I may help others most by taking care of myself first.
I am in the D.C. metropolis right now (Arlington, actually) to get a passport and visa to India. As you may have read in an earlier post, India was my spiritual Titanic, and preparing to return there has opened up some very deep gashes that I have tried hard to ignore for the last decade. I was already scheduled for an appointment at the DC office a month ago because I thought my passport was over 15 years old. The morning I was to leave for Washington, I discovered a newer passport in my “legal id” folder and cancelled my appointment, only to realize some time later that my unmarried name was in my current passport and had to be updated.
While I was still trying to deal with the stormy emotions rising out of my impending trip to Calcutta, I banged up our car and was handed a warrant of arrest for hit-and-run. For the last two weeks I’ve been trying to settle my quaking mind and heart. It really was a huge hit to my sense of vulnerability to a completely unpredictable world.
I left at 6:10 a.m. this morning to come here to the District for my noon appointment at the passport agency. I’ve barely left enough time to get the passport, Indian visa, and plane ticket and complete the trip to Kolkata before my library work starts in late August. As I drove this morning I thought about my stupidity in not realizing I had to change my name on the passport. I was tempted to berate myself for waiting so long to take the necessary steps in preparing. I know it will be hard for my Indian brothers if I can’t go until the winter school break. I was stupid, I was late, it was my fault, others might suffer… it was a prime circumstance for shaming myself, something that would, in the past, have consumed my whole trip to D.C. That practice of self-shaming often made me more careful and conscientious in the future, but in the process damaged my soul, pushing me away from grace into legalism.
freephoto.com
But this time I discovered with some pleasure and relief that I was not castigating myself for my stupidity and lateness, I was purposely seeing myself with as much compassion as I would feel for another in that situation. Yes, I am more scatterbrained than most. I easily miss or forget or misconstrue some pretty obvious things that most others would probably notice. That is who I am. I take steps to compensate, but when I fail anyway, it is not from malice or negligence. Being “stupid” in that way is one of my weaknesses, and it is going to trip me up more often than it will most others. My friends will need to exercise more patience towards me in this regard as I must exercise more patience for them in other regards.
Allowing myself the human right to work through my high-decibel emotions over the criminal charge was an important healthy direction for me. In the past I would have denied my own needs in favor of others, told my emotions to shut up, and marched forward with grit and determination. In my experience, peace and good do not spring from such a mindset. I gave myself the time I needed to settle down before facing another emotionally charged task here in D.C. My coming late here was a very positive step in my learning to rest in God’s grace for my weaknesses. Instead of shame, it is a joy to see myself moving further into the ocean of grace, and I trust God to care for what outcomes may follow.
Mardi self portrait
Understanding and accepting that success has no actual value in itself, causes one to abandon the pursuit of success in achieving goals and instead to look for what other purpose God might intend for the activities and choices with which we fill our life. And I can come up with just one answer: Love. The only thing God wants us to spend our time, our effort, our knowledge on is love. Love is not concerned with results. If we are disappointed that our love is not returned then it is merely affection or goodwill, not love. Affection and goodwill are admirable pastimes. But love is not interested in results. Love is about abandonment of all interest in personal gain of any sort and has become enchanted with only one thought, the pleasure of the beloved
We cannot think that our own actions, efforts or knowledge actually achieve particular results. In any given instance, with any given project, goal or ambition, the results are not a product of our actions, efforts or knowledge. Results are given by God as a gift. Success in anything we attempt to do is not ours to achieve. It is not a result of anything we can do or know. It is not connected in any way to our abilities. It is a gift just as the rain is a gift and the sun is a gift and the families into which we are born (and to which we give birth) are a gift.
So if our efforts are not about getting results what are they about? Well they are gifts too, gifts to amuse us, to keep us busy, to exercise our minds. And if our purpose is not to achieve the goals we set then what is our purpose? Perhaps it is just to love. Perhaps the question we need to ask at each step is not “which choice will best work to help me reach this goal?” but rather “which choice is, in this moment, the one that expresses love, participates in love, opens the possibility of love flowing?” We become detached from trying to imagine and control the future results of our actions (which we cannot do anyway) and become invested instead in the present moment where God eternally exists in infinite love.
You notice that my theory has shifted from dealing with whole lives to consideration of individual events. It is concerned with success as the results of any goal we set and not merely as a general evaluation of life as a whole. Of course I still feel that each individual life is given a success ratio that is designed to teach each person unique and special lessons. But beyond that we can each look at every event in our life for which we are trying to manipulate a successful outcome and realize that success is not going to be a result of our actions and knowledge but will be a gift from God. It changes our perspective on what we do, how we do it and why we do it.
These assumptions have even permeated our religion and theology causing us to think and speak of our relationship with God in terms of cause and effect. We have developed the Protestant work ethic as if it were actually God’s plan for the world. We explain scripture as if it were a handbook of instructions for achieving the goal of union with God.
The problem is that both of these premises (the use of cause and effect to interpret life, and the belief that results are achieved through effort and knowledge) are based on incompletely understood material-based models and are incorrect and inadequate to the observed patterns of life. In fact the truth is that we cannot control even the smallest elements of our life. In life, as opposed to the material world, effects do not proceed from knowable causes. The correlation is only apparent and not actual. We keep trying to figure out how to make it work because we are terrified of the alternative option – recognizing and admitting that we are not in control of anything, nor can we ever get in control of anything. We are, in fact, totally, completely, helpless and dependent entirely on the grace, mercy and benevolence of God. Even people who purportedly love and trust God find this realization frightening. And people who don’t believe in God would be left with no hope at all.
Success in anything we attempt to do is not ours to achieve. It is not a result of anything we can do or know. It is not connected in any way to our abilities. It is a gift just as the rain is a gift and the sun is a gift and the families into which we are born (and to which we give birth) is a gift. We are responsible for doing our best with what we are given. But the results are not connected to what we can or cannot do. The results are given by God for his own inscrutable purposes. We can neither know nor understand his ways of granting his gifts. We cannot change or affect his choices and decisions. We can only accept everything that comes to us – as a gift.
And while our lives are all wrapped up in trying to achieve a success we will never attain, God is not in the least concerned or interested in success. For him success and non-success are equally unimportant. The only true purpose in life is love, not success. What he wants from us is our love. And he knows that all we really want is love in return. And for that we do not need to achieve anything.
Mardi: horse & baby
Yes, Mardi often writes very long letters and emails!
And as for my assertion that my life is essentially unsuccessful, you really do have to accept standard methods of measuring success. It has to be one or more of the following :
1) the quantity of people affected by your work or personality – the greater the number the greater the success
2) the quality of people impressed by your work or personality – the higher the level of expertise of the persons doing the evaluation the higher the success
3) the amount of money, recognition, or power achieved by your work or personality – the greater the financial, acknowledgement or power achievements, the greater the success.
4) the number of things which you attempt to do, which you actually do.
So you really can’t honestly place the achievements of my life anywhere near the top end of any of those measures of success. But if that isn’t a problem for me it shouldn’t be for anyone else. In fact you should be really grateful to the Lord that He has given you the privilege of having a member of your immediate family be given a non-successful life trajectory. There are things which can only be learned from that perspective, truly valuable and meaningful things which cannot be perceived from the perspective of the successful life trajectory. By being included in my life, there are things that you can learn that you could never learn from your success-intensive life style!
Each person is given certain things in their life in order to learn some unique and individual aspect of the True Reality, not the perceived reality of our cultural environment. Learning that particular thing your life has been designed to teach is the purpose of every person’s individual life. And as each of us spends a life-time learning that one thing we have been given the advantages to learn, all of us – as a culture and as humanity – move forward toward our corporate goal.
Now you say, but what has all of that got to do with God’s plan for us. Well there is one overall general plan he has for everyone – to turn from ourselves and surrender to Him and to begin the journey with Him and for Him and to Him. However within the context of that universal plan there is a unique individual set of gifts given to each person. And those gifts include the disappointments, the pain and the difficulties of life as well as the blessings. Our weaknesses are as much a gift from the Lord as our strengths; our failures are as much a gift as our successes. And the purpose of all of it is to teach us something special and unique; and through us to bless the wider communities of which we are a part.
Success has no intrinsic value in itself as such. The experience of failure and success can both have value if you begin to learn from them. And by that I do not mean that we learn from our failures how to avoid failure in the future or from our successes how to increase them in the future. That whole business of putting a value on success as something to attain and a negative value on failure as something to avoid is totally illusory. Are you believing me yet? Failure has taught me the absolute illusion of the idea that success has value. It has freed me from the dominating tyranny of the need to succeed. So failure has a lot more value to me than success.
Why don’t you see what Buck Hatch [Christian psychology professor at my alma mater] thinks of this theory! I’ll bet he likes it! But you’ve got to present it as I have and not your personal bias on what I’ve said!
And as for my argument that art is a skill that anyone can learn. If you came to stay with me for one month and took lessons from me for 6 hours a day (2 three-hour sessions a day) and practiced in the hours remaining, I could have you drawing as well as me. I’m really not that good compared to the average working artist in America today. I’m at the low end of mediocre. That’s not a problem though. I was a bit discouraged when I first began to honestly appraise my work on a number of levels and had to admit this about it. But now that I’m inculcating my own philosophical perspective of the uselessness of success, I’m a lot more comfortable with honest appraisals of my work and my life that don’t turn out so attractively.
You can think about my theory and send me your rebuttal when you’ve got it all worked out. But you have to have a workable theory that pertains to anyone – like mine did. You can’t just say you don’t see my life in that light and try to prove how my life doesn’t fit that pattern. You’ve got to come up with an alternate theory of all of life that applies to anyone and addresses all those issues and resolves them with your theory!
Mardi’s letter to me continued:
I began to think of life as a school in which each person who is born is given a unique curriculum especially designed just for them. It includes many gifts that will give pleasure and gifts that will give pain. There will be things to strengthen and things to challenge. There will be things that seem to help and things that seem to block us. But the purpose of everything is not to become or to achieve or to acquire any of the things we end up using our lives to become, achieve and acquire. They are all given to us in order to teach us something more, greater, something of Real value.
People who are successful have been given a curriculum that includes success in the things they attempt. But the purpose is for them to learn something through the experiences of success. They cannot take credit for their success. It was given to them. What counts is whether they learn that thing of Real value that success was given to them to learn.
And non-success can be given to others for the same reason, to learn something Real that only the experience of non-success can teach. That thing is the real purpose of the experience – the real purpose of all the experiences of our life.
Everyone seems to think that success is not only a thing of great value, but it is perhaps the thing of greatest value in life. In fact it appears to be such an absolute necessity that everyone gets very upset when I assert that I am unsuccessful and they try to come up with a definition of successful that will allow me to be included. They don’t seem to understand when I try to explain that success really isn’t valuable. We don’t need it. We can live very happily without it!
But how does this relate to your pursuit of your own dreams. Well, when I came up with this theory I decided it wasn’t so important that I figure out how to overcome my non-success and achieve the great American dream of success. I thought perhaps it was more important to sit back and thoughtfully evaluate the experiences of my life so far. I think you need to be at least in your mid-30’s before you have enough life experiences to begin to recognize your individual pattern. It seemed clear that for whatever reasons, my life was being exemplified by large amounts of non-success. So instead of fighting a pointless battle to achieve a dubious goal, I decided to accept my gift of non-success and begin to try to explore it’s potential for leading me into an even deeper spiritual awareness.
So perhaps for you, you might want to take a look at your life and see what degree of success you can expect given your track record so far! I like to call it a success ratio. It’s a ratio of the percentage of our efforts that have been successful as compared to those that have not been. If you’re having only a moderate success ratio, or a low success ratio in the various areas of your life, then perhaps you won’t want to pursue the more elaborate and intense version of your dreams. You might want to scale down your expectations and re-think your dream in terms of what you might be able to achieve.
I don’t know if you like that idea. I can hear the high-power achievers calling it “defeatist”. But is it defeatist for a guy who is 5ft.2 to decide that maybe he should try to be a jockey instead of spending his life trying to get into the NBA? You could mention Muggsy Bouges. But in addition to being given a short body he was also given extraordinary skills, great speed, a consuming passion for the game of basketball and a high success ratio. In evaluating our potential in life we need to consider all our gifts, gifts of strength and gifts of weakness. If success is something that is given to us in order to learn something of greater value, isn’t it simply wisdom to accept our personal success ratio, learn how to live with it and learn from it.
Well, since we couldn’t finish our discussion on success ratio, I thought about it on the way home and polished up my argument a bit more. I realize that everyone is so uncomfortable with my ideas on success because our Reformation Protestant European work ethic perspectives have equated success with our personal value, our meaning in life and our fulfillment as persons. We think we must have success to have value, meaning and fulfillment. In fact none of these are actually connected to success and most other periods of history and other cultures understand this much better than the average American who has put them all in the same computer file.
So to say I am not successful – and probably never will be – does not mean that my life has no value. My life derives its value from the fact that I am made in the image of God. Every life has the same value. No life, however successful, has any more value than another, no matter how desperate a failure. The value of each life is, incredibly, as valuable to God as His own life! If I am feeling devalued or being treated as of no value by those who have misunderstood the nature of the value of life, I have only to meditate on the true value of my life. Value is not something you can be more or less successful at. It’s not in the same category as things which can be rated as successful or not.
Lack of success also does not mean that my life has no meaning. My life has been given meaning, a purpose and a goal by Jesus who came to show us God and to make a way for us to return to God who is our only true Love and only true Home. And he made himself the way, so that we have not just a sure pathway but a loving companion. That is all the meaning any life could need – to walk with God, through God, in God, to God. And once again that is not something I can be successful at, it is simply something that has been given to me and I enter into the gift.
And fulfillment in life cannot be attached to success either. That which produces fulfillment in life is love – giving love and receiving love. Love is something that comes out of your heart, it’s not an accomplishment which can be achieved in varying degrees of success. It is like your breathing – you breathe in the love of others and you breathe out love to others. And the ultimate source of all the love we have to receive and give is God from whom we come and to whom we are returning through Jesus.
Success not only does not produce value, meaning or fulfillment, it also cannot affect these things. They are totally independent of success. The imaginary value of success in our culture is purely illusory. It has no real value at all. And yet people assume it holds the very key to a valuable, meaningful, fulfilled life. This illusion is so pervasive that even Christians get uncomfortable when I assert that my life is essentially unsuccessful. They do not want to listen to my happy acceptance of this assessment.
I may be ready to share what has been tormenting me for the last two weeks. I don’t know. When I share my fears with others before I am ready, I increase my fears, but sharing my fears with others is also a big step toward releasing my fears. So I guess I will find out how posting this will affect me.
As I climbed from our car after our accident on the 4th, I was still in shock and not thinking too clearly, but I did consider whether I should stand the pylons back up which we knocked down. I decided that I didn’t know where they should be placed, so regretfully would let the owner put them back (it was a commercial lot, and no one was there). The next morning I called our insurance company and filled out a report online. Some hours later a cop came to my door asking about the damage to my car. I told him the story. He said, “You know you should have completed a police report?” I responded, “I thought that if the damage is under a certain amount, that was unnecessary.” “That may be the case,” he answered, “but whenever there is property damage, a report should be filed.” I said, “I didn’t think there was any property damage.” I called the property owner right away to apologize and called my insurance agency to report the additional claims of damage.
The upshot of it was that the trooper not only gave me a traffic ticket, but charged me with hit and run, a criminal offense (though it is a misdemeanor rather than a felony). I never could have imagined something like this happening to me. I’m a criminal. And in my current tenuous job situation I find myself, that is a pretty big mark against me if I need to find a job in the future, especially in the helping field. I have a hearing July 28, and the trial will probably be set for September. It has sent me for a huge tailspin emotionally.
Every time I hear a car door close or footsteps outside the house, every time my phone rings, every time I get in the car, my heart jumps with the fear, “The cops are after me!” I want to catch my breath or run and hide or curl into a protective ball. This fear of impending doom is constantly twanging its chaotic tune around each daily event, and though I can soothe myself into a surface calm by focusing on the truth of God’s compassion and care, I know the least prick will bring it back full force.
The fear is much bigger than just the potential for the trial’s outcome. Now that my life has crossed the line of the inconceivable, all future disastrous possibilities have opened before me. It is a fear that I might at any moment, without warning, be hit by some major loss, something that tears a deep gash in my sense of worth because it was my fault… I could be fired, I could lose my house, with the best intentions I could step on a hundred legal landmines, and my apparent innocence would be meaningless. I have this constant feeling, “What am I doing wrong? What might happen next?” Now that the unthinkable has happened, every catastrophe seems possible, and I have no way of protecting myself. I know the fear will decrease with time, as it has a bit already. But that doesn’t change my experience of today and tomorrow.
My sister Mardi is a visual artist in multiple media as well as a poet. I love her work. And she thinks deeply like I do. This is the first part of a letter she sent to me while I was struggling with my own sense of failure in India.
What is success, really? And why do we value it? Does it have any actual value in itself? It can have many meanings for many different people, it could have to do with how much money a person or project earns, how much recognition it receives, how many people it influences. In simpler terms, for those of us who have a vision, a dream, a goal we are trying to achieve, success could mean simply achieving that. But in our economically driven society there is another aspect of it: that we would like our dream to support itself (at least) and also support us (if that’s possible).
We have the dream, we plan a strategy for reaching it and we begin investing our life in it’s accomplishment. We give our time, our thought, our energy, our money. And the dream grows and expands and becomes more complex and elaborate. But how do we measure the success? By the first criteria – achieving the dream, or by the second – supporting itself and us? What if we can be successful with the first and not the second? What if, for all our efforts we can be successful with neither?
My life has been an experience in non-success. I am intimately familiar with all the various ways to be unsuccessful in all its nuances. So I have learned a number of ways of dealing with this without giving up the dream. And I have developed a philosophy about the nature and purpose of success itself.
When we are trying to achieve our dream one of the first things we can do is recognize when it seems that the original plan is not working. We try to re-evaluate the situation. Adjust our goals. Modify our expectations to something that seems perhaps more achievable given our resources and limitations.
Mardi Woodblock Print: Seagull
In my life, after years of trying to sell my work, promote my work, create work that would be popular, I realized I was not going to get a large response to my work. But there were people who loved it and always responded enthusiastically to anything I created. They were few enough and poor enough that they couldn’t have supported me for a week if they all got together! But the spiritual support and encouragement they gave me was invaluable. So I began to create just for this limited audience, with hopes that eventually my work would achieve a wider success. Since these people couldn’t afford to buy work, I give it away as Christmas gifts. Occasionally some one who has contacts loves my work and I have a brief experience of selling. But even in very good years I’ve never made $1000 and when you take out the expenses for materials I’ve always lost money. Some years, with great effort, I just lost less. By any standard you’d like to use I am unsuccessful.
I began thinking in recent years about the whole nature of success. Some people think that success is the result of hard work, skills in some area or a combination of the two. But I knew many people who worked very hard and could never reach that place where they could be considered successful. I also knew people with great talent, skill and ability, people with magnificent vision and insight. Yet they were completely unsuccessful. At the same time there were those who were neither hard working, skilled, nor wise who were achieving success in numerous ways: receiving recognition and honors, making money, achieving the goals they set for themselves, doing the things they loved, enjoying the things they did.
In my own life I was exhibiting in local and regional art exhibits with hundreds of other artists. But because I was in the category of printmaking I was actually competing against only 2 or three other people usually. The odds for me winning awards should have been very good. Yet year after year I never won any awards, even when I created very complex, very large works. I felt my work was much better than many of the pieces that won – but then what artist doesn’t feel that!?
What struck me however was that it was repeated year after year with all sorts of different judges and different shows, and different other artists. The sheer volume of the rejection was becoming compelling. It seemed that the ones who won the awards were also people who seemed to be successful in many other areas of their life as well, financially, career achievements and all that.
So I began to think that perhaps success was not something that we achieved at all, either by effort or by skill or by insight. What if success is simply something that has been given to us, one of the criteria of our life, like our family, our intelligence, our size, etc. What if it is not an end or a goal at all but merely one of the many things through which we can learn those things that have Real value?
I began to think of life as a school in which each person who is born is given a unique curriculum especially designed just for them. It includes many gifts that will give pleasure and gifts that will give pain. There will be things to strengthen and things to challenge. There will be things that seem to help and things that seem to block us. But the purpose of everything is not to become or to achieve or to acquire any of the things we end up using our lives to become, achieve and acquire. They are all given to us in order to teach us something more, greater, something of Real value.
Mardi Woodblock Print: Butterfly
Our accident brought some of my handicaps into the spotlight. First of all, I am not a multitasker in any sense of the word. I do very well concentrating on one task, but if a second is added, one of them will get seriously neglected. Furthermore, I get trapped in the mazes of my own brain. If I am reflecting deeply (which is mostly the only kind I do), I better be engaged in a physical task that can be accomplished on auto-pilot. My problem is not drinking and driving, but thinking and driving. I’m being quite serious.
I can’t turn off my brain unless the activity I am involved in requires my complete mental attention (such as taking a test). I have often come close to stuttering to the roadside on empty because I can only force myself to think, “Stop for gas!” for about 30 seconds before I am off in some other world. On the way to the lake last week, my wife suddenly asked me if I had taken the right exit… I couldn’t remember.
I guess this has been a problem for some time, since Kimberly tells me that when we first met, I drove straight through a red light without realizing it… I don’t remember. The one area where it has come out most prominently in my driving is failing to notice things ahead that require me to slow down or stop. I do fairly well on my own, though it regularly calls for an uncomfortably quick stop, but when I get further engrossed by conversing with Kimberly, I am downright dangerous. Many times Kimberly has had to warn me of things up ahead which I am approaching too quickly.
The accident forced me to realize that it is not enough for me to try harder to concentrate on driving, but I really have to take a serious action step. I haven’t talked to Kimberly about it yet, but I think when we are driving in traffic together, she needs to be behind the wheel. I usually drive because she prefers not to. Also, as I told her on the way back from our accident, “I’m only 50, but I’m going to have to start driving like a geezer.”
A second serious handicap of mine is that I don’t notice the need for a change (in practical matters) unless I am forced to see it. I will be semi-conscious of a problem, but will keep performing the same old routines without ever consciously making a decision to do so. It niggles somewhere on the outskirts of my mind, and may take a very long time, sometimes too long, to burrow up to the level of conscious deliberation. I “should” have realized this driving issue as a real problem and looked for a solution long ago. We knew it was a problem, but it never occurred to me to make a significant change… I just kept trying to do better using the failing system.
I’m not beating up on myself. I put “should” in quotation marks because I don’t really think it was negligence on my part; it is part of who I am. We all have handicaps, and we do well to recognize them. God not only gave us all strengths, but he deliberately created us with weaknesses as well. I think this was his way of making us interdependent, of tying us together in community. Our weaknesses are not “bad” things, they are just part of who we are and who we will always be. I may be able to improve or compensate for my weaknesses, but if I try to quash them or force them into conformity, I am being false to the way God created me. I have believed this very late in life and have suffered a great deal for not recognizing it earlier, but that must wait for another post. As L’Arche says, the world is not divided into those with handicaps and those without; we are all disabled and badly in need of the gifts of others.
Janathan Grace Reflections 