Compensatory maladjustments

Had a good discussion the other night with Fr. Ron Lengwin on Radio KDKA in Pittsburgh. We talked about The Power of Pause. And a good deal about setting down our sack.

Whenever I write or lecture or do an interview about The Power of Pause, I get the inevitable question; "how do I do this. . .this pausing thing?" Fair enough. Isn't it interesting that we are wired to "produce" even when we are not producing. (Just look at me, in my previous blog bemoaning the fact that I didn't blog all of last week. All that "wasted" time. . .)

We are most assuredly beguiled by the power part of the pause. As if the goal is to be skilled at this art. So. . .

We pause for productivity. ("Did you get a lot accomplished on your day off?")

We become efficient pausers. ("Did you have a beneficial Sabbath?")

We are competent pausers. ("Were you able to pause without distractions?")

My next book is going to be the The Competitor's Guide to Power of Pause. Or maybe, Surefire Tips on Multi-tasking and Pausing for Greater Efficiency.

To be sure, Pausing asks of us to make choices. (If we don't say no to something in our life, no will be said by default, and we will end up saying no to the people we love the most.)

But there is no "correct" way to practice this art. . .of pausing.

Yes, we practice paying attention.

We practice being centered.

We practice living with our senses, what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell.

We practice listening.

We practice saying yes to the moment and no to urgency.

We practice taking ownership and responsibility for (to embrace) our uniqueness (including the beauty, the inimitable, the tidied-up, the unattractive, the muddled, the unpleasant and the transgressions).

Trouble brews when we are tempted by (what John Dewey called) compensatory maladjustments. It means trying to make something right by overdoing or over exerting.

For example: Stop and smell the roses, turns into hanging an Antique Rose air freshener on our rear view mirror, with the windows rolled up, racing down the highway.

Simone Weil gives this illustration: If one says to one’s pupils: Now you must pay attention, one sees them contracting their brows, holding their breath, stiffening their muscles. If after two minutes they are asked what whey have been paying attention to, they cannot reply. They have been concentrating on nothing. They have not been paying attention. They have been contracting their muscles.

More information does not necessarily lead to better decisions. [One] study ... gave horse-racing handicappers varying amounts of information when ranking horses. The more information they received, the more confident they became about their answers. But the success of their predictions was actually worse when given 40 pieces of information, than when given five. (The Economist)

Lay down your weary tune

No, I haven't posted this week.

Yes, I said I was going to post "almost" daily.

No, once a week is not almost daily.

It's not that I didn't have anything to say.

It's just that, well, I didn't have anything to say.

Which is not exactly true. I was tired.

Sometimes life stretches us and we are, quite literally, depleted. Not necessarily from busyness or occupation of time (although that doesn't help), but from the way we give great value (weight or honor) to fear or anxiety.

Here's the deal: I hate it when I get so stretched. I feel weak (or is it needy?). And I don't like being needy.

When Jesus observed, "Consider the lily. It neither toils nor spins," I don't think he meant that there was no work or creation or energy. I think that toil is about all the activity or commotion or bustle or buzz or distraction--that we sustain, and which, in the end, keeps up disconnected from ourselves and from the day.

In The Power of Pause I wrote about a traveler who carried a sack.

What's in your sack? the traveler, stooped from the heaviness, is asked.

My Mother.
Isn't she heavy?
She sure is.
Why don't you put her down?
I can't.
Well, why can't you stop carrying her?
I don't know. I've always carried her.

I know this: I, too, carry a sack, and am reluctant to set it down.

Lay down your weary tune, lay down,

Lay down the song you strum,

And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings

No voice can hope to hum. Bob Dylan

What is in the sack is not the primary issue.

Our sacks can carry a whole lot of things.
The anxiety of the day,
past grievances,
woundedness,
an unfair life,
a preoccupation with busyness,
our desire for perfection,
self-righteousness,
our need to impress

or fear (anxiety) about impending events.

Whatever it is, we find reassurance in the weight. Whatever it is, every single one prevents us from accepting life as a gift today.

I meant to consider the lilies, but we're a few months away. . .so I considered the daffodils instead. And listened to Mary Black sing Dylan's "Lay Down Your Weary Tune." It is medicine for the soul. I can't honestly say that I put my sack "all the way" down. But I'm close.

If you are dealing with fears and insecurities from old head programs, have compassion for yourself. Just love your insecurities, fears and resentments. Release and forgive them as they come up. Judging, beating or repressing insecurities just gives them power. Then you have a pattern that never gets resolved. Recognize that your real security is built from your relationship with your own heart. Sara Paddison, The Hidden Power of the Heart

Pause

The Power of Pause

I ran into a friend yesterday. He told me, "I'm on my way to buy your book."

I wanted to hug him. Or at least buy him a beer.

Then he told me about the circumstances in his life. And the end of a long relationship and the disorientation that goes with murky transitions. (And in my heart, I knew exactly what he was talking about.)

"I need the power of pause more than ever," he told me. "Right now, I am going 110 miles per hour. And I don't know where I'm headed. I think I need to pause."

I can't argue with that.

And I wish him well.

But I can tell you from personal experience that the pause may not "set everything right."

He that lacks the time to mourn, lacks the time to mend. Shakespeare

Sometimes, the pause is not just for "slowing down," but for mourning. It may be, that in our pausing, there are no "answers." Which is kind of a bum deal in a culture that is bent on bumper sticker advice. And closure. Like four-year old children, five minutes out of the driveway, "Are we there yet?"

Mourning our loss. . .our requirement for closure and tidiness and perfection.

Maybe, pausing is not for "fixing" things, but for creating a space to just be.

There's a time for departure, even when there's no certain place to go.

Tennessee Williams

Perhaps the power is in that space, where we are not itching for answers, or impatient with conundrums, or undone by life's vagaries.

The bench in the photo hasn't been used in awhile. But, even so, it's a good reminder. For more garden sanctuaries, check out my collection on zenfolio. I don't know where you go, but Theo Pelletier's description is spot on.

Home is a place where you can catch a dream and ride it to the end of the line and back. Where you can watch shadow and light doing a tight little tango on a wooden floor or an intoxicated moon rising through an empty window. Home is a place to become yourself. It’s the right spot, the bright spot, or just the spot where you can land on your feet or recline in a tub or sparkling brew if you’re so inclined. It’s a place of silence where harmony and chaos are shuffled like a deck of cards and it’s your draw. It’s somewhere you can close a door and open your heart. Where the Heart Is

This Life

On my garden path, February 2010

This Life

Perhaps it will be on your walk

to the mail box

on a grey morning

when the sky is a tarp, synched down

at the corners.

Or perhaps

savoring your first sip of coffee

as you look out into the forest

at the weeping boughs of hemlock,

reassuring and languid.

Or perhaps

it is when you drive toward work

on a rainy morning, negotiating traffic

trapped in the tributary of unbounded and glistening

ruby annulets.

Or perhaps

it is when you watch

in the evening lamplight

your son reading, captivated

by worlds that are still in his dreams.

Or is it

when you sit fretful at your desk

balancing your checkbook

--just one more time--

praying for a better outcome.

Or perhaps

it is when you walk, so briskly

on the way to something

assuredly essential,

that you see, out of the corner of your eye

a splash of sunshine against the backdrop

of an aged and mossy stump

where the 'tete-a-tete' narcissus

shine, delighted and undaunted.

Perhaps. It is on a day

just like this very ordinary day,

when you realize, with a start,

that this. . .

this is life.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

Marital Art and other mysteries

We say or write what we think we mean.

But Freudian slips are, well, a lot more entertaining. And perhaps, more accurate.

To the point.

In my Sabbath Moment, Endurance, I wrote:

"Endurance is hardly an inspiring word. (It brings to mind the moral fiber necessary for two root canals in Guatemala.) When I think of how my life should be, endurance is not what I had in mind.

I have an agenda.
I have a time-line.
And it is irritating when life interferes.
Even so, we try our best to tie up loose ends, or handle our impasse with the tricks of the trade. I like Tim Farrington's take, We fast, we pray, we take up a marital art. We spice our diet with ginseng and eat only vegetables grown in Zen-monastery gardens. If we have been meditating one hour a day, we mediate two. We hang the appropriate crystals and buy new furniture to address the nagging issue of feng shui. We see a past-life therapist. But none of it is any fun. The fountain that bubbled within us has gone dry, and we re just going through the dusty motions now.
There is something about our need to see a payoff for our efforts, isn't there? As if we can overcome this awkward part of our life.
But here s the deal: Awkward or inconvenient or downright intolerable, we are offered an invitation. What Heideger called dasein, or being in the world. This not a reference to existence, but to our capacity to enter fully into the day.
This day."

If you missed the "misspelled" word, so did I. But Sabbath Moment reader Carol (a spiritual director living in Michigan -- check out her blog -- prayerplaypolitics) pointed it out to me, no doubt, stifling her laughter.

The sentence should read, We fast, we pray, we take up a martial art. Not, as I wrote, a marital art. But that made me think how similar they are. Or not. On second thought, I believe that taking up a martial art would be much easier. And less complicated.

There is a skill set.

There is a measurement.

There is the satisfaction of achievement.

Marital art, on the other hand. . .well. . .do you know the Cathy comic strip?

Irving: I don't get it Cathy, one day you are independent and aloof. The next day you won't let me out of your sight. The next day you demand a commitment. The next day you won't let me near you. What are you trying to do to me Cathy?!?!?

Cathy: I am eliminating your need to go out with a lot of different women.

On March 19 at the Religious Education Congress in Anaheim, CA, I will be lecturing on: Living without Fear: The truth about intimacy, love, passion and sexuality. Now, I'm rethinking all of that. I believe that I'm going to talk about martial arts instead. So, if you have always wanted to learn the secrets about karate or Tai-Chi, I'll see you in Anaheim.

The soul is always complicated. Most of its thoughts and emotions could never be expressed in plain language. You could have the patience of Job and still never understand your partner, because the soul by nature doesn't lend itself to understanding or to clarity of expression. We may have to enter the confusion of another's soul, with no hope of ever finding clarity, without demanding that the other be clear in expressing her feelings, and without the hope that one day this person will finally grow up or get better or express herself more plainly. Thomas Moore, Soul Mates

Medicine Pouches and Spring

In January, I wrote a Sabbath Moment about Medicine Pouches. Here is an excerpt: When the Shawnee and Chippewa (and other early people) went on hunts or vision quests or long journeys, each traveler would carry in a small rawhide pouch various tokens of spiritual power--perhaps a feather, a bit of fur, a claw, a carved root, a pinch of tobacco, a pebble or a shell. These were not simply magical charms; they were reminders of the energies that sustain all of life. By gathering these talismans into a medicine pouch, the hunter, traveler, or visionary seeker was recollecting the sources of healing and bounty and beauty.(Adapted from Scott Russell Sanders, Hunting for Hope)

Two weeks ago, my friend gifted me with a Medicine Pouch.

It's the real deal.

She's part Apache (and another tribe I don't recall) and knows about these things.

I do know that I am honored.

In it are talismans--small articles from things or places or people that keep me grounded and centered. . .and remind me:

We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. God manifests Himself everywhere, in everything--in people and in things and in nature and in events. The only things is we don't see it. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.Thomas Merton

We need our medicine pouches more than ever. Because it is not easy to see God shining through; because we are bombarded, overwhelmed, and exhausted. Or as a friend put it, succinctly, we find ourselves "stretched" like never before.

Our knee-jerk is to ask, "So what do we do?" In other words, what is the solution?

Maybe one of the talisman's in our medicine pouch is the permission to pause, and live into this moment.

Who knows what "gate of heaven" we may see?

A poor life this if, full of care, we have not time to stand and stare.

William Henry Davies

So I walked the garden this morning. We have spring early here in the Pacific Northwest. Our temperatures almost 10 degrees above normal. People mowing their lawn in February is not a Seattle tradition. We prefer to come out of our funk and get up off our couch sometime in April.

Our bulbs are up early, our chorale of frogs are now in the pond, their rehearsals a few weeks ahead of schedule. And the warm weather--and extra sunlight--has put some of the birds (like Juncos and Chickadees) on the fast track toward romance. Apparently, when the weather is warm and food is abundant, bird hormones rage. Who would have guessed? But, it makes perfect sense to me.

I do know this: away from my desk, which is piled with obligations and assignments (yes, they are late) and notes about calamities that need to be resolved, I give myself the permission to be in a "medicine pouch" mood. And buried in the debris of old perennials, I see spring Crocuses, doing their best imitation of a gate of heaven.

PS. To listen to a chapter from the new audio book, The Power of Pause, go to the website and click the link in the bottom right corner under "What's New."

Power of Pause Audio Book

It's here!

You know, the moment we've all been waiting for.

Who, I wonder, first uttered that delightful phrase?

I do know that most of the time, we are hoping for a moment (other than the one we are in right now) to rescue us or bail us out or cheer us up or Lord knows what.

And I also know that an Audio Book doesn't qualify as the "real" moment we've been waiting for. Unless you are my Mother, who has been waiting awhile.

I can tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed recording The Power of Pause.

I read all 52 chapters, in a friend's studio.

He is also the friend who created original music for the CD. Check him out: Mark Wells.

I can tell you that each chapter is an audio sanctuary. . .each one with a little story to help us pause.

There are 6 CDs. And if you want, or have a very long commute, or your in-laws are spending the weekend with you, it takes about 6 hours to listen to the whole thing.

It will be on Amazon soon, and in Barnes & Noble. In the meantime, if you buy it now on my site, it's only $19.95 (including shipping).

By this weekend, there will be a free chapter to download. I will keep you posted.

Go to the site to order: Power of Pause Audio Book

I'm back home on my island, where the sun is shining, and the daffodils are starting their full spring-stage-extravaganza.