Doing the Right Thing vs Making the Right Thing Happen

Wayne Muller makes a distinction between “doing the right thing” and “making the right thing happen.” When I first heard Wayne make this distinction, it confused me. Those things are different? Yes. Yes, they are. And the distinction has everything to do with the issue of human power.

What do we really have control of? What do we really have the power to do?

Some people have a high internal locus of control, meaning, they believe they have a high capacity to personally impact the world around them. Some people have a high external locus of control, meaning, they believe they have a low capacity to impact the world around them. The former often feel like they can control everything; the latter often feel they are controlled by everything. And then there are those who fall in between these extremes, people who feel and know that they have some control over their lives but that they are also subject to the whims of the world around them for better and worse. It is my opinion that how we grow up–what kind of privileges and disadvantages we inherit, the systems of nurture and discipline that form us, and our exposure to various healthy and toxic environments/people–is ultimately responsible for where we fall on this spectrum of perceived control. Of course, we are capable of moving along this spectrum as we accumulate more wisdom through experience, but those early years make a huge difference in how we interpret our own agency throughout our lives.

For instance, for most of my upbringing I had a single mother who worked hard and always had relatively high paying jobs. She never depended on outside sources of income to support our family. As a result of that modeling, I’ve never even thought about depending on a spouse/lover/partner financially. I’ve been motivated to work hard and secure my own income. That’s what the women in my family do. I’ve been given a high internal locus of control when it comes to my finances because of what I inherited and saw modeled as a kid. I’ve met other women who are on the opposite side of the spectrum on this issue, women who expect to be taken care of financially by a spouse/lover/partner because that was the norm in their household. In their families, women took care of the house, cooked and raised babies; being in the work force was not an option or reality for them and so issues of finance belonged to someone else (usually, a husband). These women have a high external locus of control when it comes to finance because the decisions about and outcomes regarding money happen outside of them. I think I have all the power in the world when it comes to my financial situation. Others think they have no power when it comes to their financial situation. Both are probably skewed. Point being: what we inherit and have modeled for us as kids often has long standing impact upon our way of viewing the world and our understanding of how much power we do or don’t have.

For people who have a high internal locus of self control, it’s hard to keep the distinction between “doing the right thing” and “making the right thing happen” because we (yes, I identify with this crowd) think we have more power than we actually do. For people who have a high external locus of self control, it’s hard to keep the distinction between “doing the right thing” and “making the right thing happen” because they think they have less power than they actually do. And then there are those in the middle who appear to balance things out nicely, folks who walk adequately in their agency and surrender in necessary moments to their own limitations. I’ve always been jealous of them.

Truth is, we have the capacity to make our own choices and we have varying levels of influence over the lives of others. There are also things that will happen to us and around us that we cannot predict or control in any way. We humans are constantly negotiating both power and powerlessness.

And what of God, Pastor? Where does God fit into this?

Most conversations about God are strangely non-explicit about issues of power. And I will admit, I think this a dangerous thing, because people can go around saying things about God that have tremendous influence, things that may or may not be true or helpful. For instance, consider this relatively standard Thanksgiving prayer that could be and probably is uttered in countless homes and sanctuaries each November:

“Thank you God for the blessings you bestow upon us and our family. We know that not everyone in the world has food on the table or a roof over their heads and we thank you for what you have given us.”

There is an implicit claim of power in this prayer, specifically that God chooses to use God’s power to bless some people and to withhold and starve others. When you bring this implicit claim to people’s attention, they often get extremely mortified and deny any reference to God starving anyone, but that’s because their notions of God’s love don’t fit with what you’ve pointed out about their implicit notions of God’s power. The conflict has to do with our notions of who God is (character) and what God is capable of doing (agency). The conflict has to do with intersection of divine love and divine power.

Most of us have been taught classical theology through years of Sunday school, sermons and pop theology in a culture that loves to sound-byte about God. Most of us have been taught the three omni’s and agape, that God is omniscient (all knowing), omnipresent (always around/with us) omnipotent (all powerful), and all loving. Unfortunately the revelation of Jesus Christ is at odds with the classics of theology. The revelation of God made known in Jesus Christ is the incarnation, the gift of divine life made real in human flesh. In Genesis, in Jesus, in Pentecost we read of a God who again and again puts Itself into humanity for the sake of creating/interacting/sustaining the world according to the divine will. The interactivity between human and divine is the point, the meaning of life.

If we have a God who is capable of interacting with the world–which we must in order to have a relationship with God at all, which we must in order to believe and hope that God has any impact on us personally, socially, ecologically, etc–we’ve got a problem with the classical teachings of theology, particularly the third omni, the notion that God is all powerful. God cannot interact with the world freely, nor the world interact with God freely unless both God and the world share power. If the interactivity between divine and human is the meaning of life, then in order to live meaningful lives, the divine and humans must share power.

Classical theology reflects God having a high internal locus of control. The highest, in fact. Perhaps this theology reflects more about the people who have been writing/teaching/spreading it than it reflects about who God is and what kind of power God has. In this sense, I think our ideas of God have suffered from the same mistaken notion that people with a high internal locus of control suffer from. We’ve assumed too much power in one place. And I think we’ve therefore heightened our ideas about God’s ability to “make the right thing happen” at the expense of focusing on and acknowledging when God does “the right thing.”

Even though I have a high internal locus of control, there are certain things I’ve never been able to make happen. Seventeen years ago I wasn’t able to make my father’s cancer go away; he died. Eleven years ago, I wasn’t able to kick a drinking habit by myself; I needed other recovering people to show me how. I’ve never been able stop people from treating each other badly in church no matter how much I preach about integrity and love; scandals still happen and shatter relationships within the Body of Christ. Again and again, other people’s lives and choices, their struggles and strengths have impacted me. Sometimes I’ve chosen the right thing and the right thing has happened because the actions of others assisted the process. Other times I’ve chosen the right thing and the right thing hasn’t happened because the action of others blocked the process. And then there have been times when interactions of shared power have completely deconstructed and reconstructed my idea/experience of what the right thing is in the first place.

What sets God apart from the variability I’ve just described above is God’s love. God’s power, though perfect, is not infinite. I bet God wanted to take my dad’s cancer away too. I bet God wants addicts to get clean too. I bet God wants people to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly, always. Of course God wants these things; this is the One who says “I have no desire for the death of them that die; turn therefore and live.” But again, power is shared and God is, in the freedom ethic God employs with us, subject to influence and the outcomes beyond God’s control. Given this, I bet God grieves as we grieve when our hopes and desires for the right thing to happen don’t work out.

Whatever power God can exert, we can be sure it is rooted in eternal love. Humans do not always choose the right thing. But we can always count on God to do the right thing because it is in the divine nature to do so. There still may be times when God can’t make the right thing happen, because God’s power is not unilateral, but we can have faith that when God acts with us, God is enacting the right thing right beside us. Whereas I cannot live with the idea of a God who has all power and chooses to do nothing for those who suffer, I can live with and partner with and give thanks for a God who does all She can with persuasive, passionate and resurrecting love. In fact, I am emboldened by such love to try and become more like it in character and action–that’s the power of its influence. Perhaps influence is, ultimately, eternally, more powerful than control.

Doing the right thing is the only way to ensure we will influence the right thing to happen. The right thing still may not come about, but it certainly won’t if we don’t take the right action. Our capacity to do the right thing is rooted in our ability to faithfully perceive and act at the intersection of our power/limitations and to trust that we are always sharing power and interacting with a God who is beside us acting right all along.

Distinguishing effort from outcome

“We cannot control what will happen to the seeds we sow, the words we speak, the actions we take.  We can only be has honorable, truthful, and compassionate as we are able.  The moment we try to control what does or does not happen, we are left in a lingering state of insufficiency, wondering what more we could, should, have done, to make it all turn out right.  Once we fall into self-judgment and doubt, we work harder and harder to become more and more perfect-and we feel less and less satisfied we have done enough.”  Wayne Muller, A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough.

Wayne’s words are particularly powerful to me to today as I prepare to celebrate Ash Wednesday.  Distinguishing between effort and outcome is not my strong suit.  I often convince myself that if I do the right thing, the right outcome will happen as a result.  And when it doesn’t, I feel responsible.  I tell myself that I need to work harder, or develop new skills, or new insights, or develop new strategies….  When I fail to distinguish between effort and outcome, I find it impossible to embody the life of being, having and doing enough.

Early this morning I took the pale, crisp, dried out palm leaves from last year’s Palm Sunday service and incinerated them in a tin can crematorium.  In a matter of minutes, the symbols of triumph that we waved in joyful victory as we remembered Jesus’ entrance into the holy city of Jerusalem were reduced to ash.  Tonight we will use them to anoint our heads with the symbol of martyrdom as we are reminded that we are “dust,” and to dust we shall return.  Efforts and outcomes…  Doing the right thing does not insure that the right result will occur.  On Ash Wednesday we remember how quickly shouts of “hosannah” can turn into cries of “crucify him.”

Our own dreams are often reduced to char in the crucible of life’s challenges.  Marriages fail, careers get derailed, dreams get sacrificed…our best efforts can not insure the desired outcomes.  

The answer is not to work harder, to make better plans, to develop more effective strategies.  The answer is to do what we can and then to release our best efforts to God, knowing that forces far greater than us will have their way with whatever we are able to do or say today.  That is what it means to live with faith.  The Apostle Paul said it beautifully in his letter to the Corinthians when he wrote, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. (1 Cor 3:6)”

Effort and outcome…as we move into the 40 day season of Lent, lets try to keep the distinction clear.

Enough: A Feminist Reflection

How many of us, as we quit our bed and place our feet on the earth to go about our good and necessary work, drink deep from some authentic feeling, beneath language, some cellular knowing, that we are, this moment, more than sufficient-that we are the light of the world? What if, as an experiment, if only for a day, we lived as if we believed that there lived in us some reliable strength, wisdom, and wholeness?  What if we were to pretend that, regardless our health or mood, our fortunes or circumstance, we would remain quietly wise, accurate, and trustworthy in our judgments and actions? How would we respond differently to the world during such a day? –Wayne Muller “A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough”

This business of sufficiency is in my (not so humble) opinion hardest for women. Therefore I’d like to offer this reflection as a woman to women. My hope is that men can gain insight and support for their own spiritual journey here, but my primary target audience is any/every woman who has ever rendered herself insufficient. I offer these words with fierce love for who you’ve been, who you are and who you are becoming– always enough.

My friend Kim and I were sitting at lunch one day during graduate school and she referenced an author she’d heard speak publicly the week before who said: “the entire economy would collapse if women loved themselves.” When Kim recalled this statement out loud at lunch, something reverberated in my bones. Something deep inside of me registered the truth of this claim in a physical and spiritual way. As a female bodied person myself, I knew well the pressures (and failures) of trying to swim in a market that relies on women feeling like they’re not enough. If we were enough why would we need all these products and processes to enhance our beauty, bodies, mothering, wifery, home-making, sex lives, etc? If we were enough why would we be bombarded every time we open our computers or drive down the street or watch television with internet, billboard and commercial images that tell us to lose weight with Jenny or Weight Watchers or the local gym, to get our vaginas tightened or our breasts maximized at the local plastic surgery clinic, to get our teeth whitened with the latest bleach-saturated dental gel, to get our hair straight or curly or extended or blonde or brown or red or pink? As a female bodied person myself, I knew my friend’s utterance to be true because the systems around me and my individual responses to conform to and break free from those systems confirmed every word.

When I feel insufficient as a woman because I am listening to the fairy-tale scripts about what it means to be a “good girl” or feeling insufficient as a woman because I can’t get ‘pretty’ enough to satisfy the internalized patriarchal gaze that would have me be a perpetual sex object or feeling insufficient as a woman because I have too many opinions and ideas in a world that renders me less intelligent and less worthy of having my voice–when I’m in these places of personal insufficiency I seem to need stuff to make me feel better. I reach for quick fixes sometimes, reach for the things that will dress me up or hide me better. I reach for things like clothes and make up and pedicures. Sometimes I eat less or eat more, because withholding or over-indulging have everything to do with sufficiency. When I cannot render myself enough, I tend to need stuff. Material stuff. Quick. Easy. Sometimes cheap and sometimes expensive. And when I reach for those things, which 100% of the time fail to satisfy if I’m using them from a place of low self-esteem, I reinforce the market conditions for production that fundamentally rely on and profit from woman-hatred.

When i feel comfortable in my own skin, when I am able to see myself as a unique incarnation of God’s body that is whole and wholesome, one beautiful woman among all the other beautiful humans, when I am able to see myself in a balanced way, as a woman capable of great love and great harm, when I am able to surface my own vulnerability and strength and see both as necessary components for a life well lived, when I get in touch with all the sweet and serious and sad moments of this “one wild and precious life”–when I’m in these places of personal sufficiency I don’t need a thing. Don’t need to buy anything or reach very far. In fact, when I can feel my own sufficiency, I’m much more likely to feel the sufficiency of those around me, particularly the sufficiency of my earthly sisters who are so often stripped of their dignity. That completely changes the breadth and depth of what I rely on. Feeling our own sufficiency doesn’t mean we wont’ rely on things outside of us; it just means that our reliance will come from a place of strength and wisdom instead of low self-esteem attempting to quick-fix. Feeling my own sufficiency enables me to reach out for people, particularly other women. And that doesn’t cost a thing. It also disrupts the market forces that fundamentally rely on and profit from woman hatred.

You know why the life of enough is so scary? Particularly for us women? Because if we were living it practically everything around us would collapse. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing. Particularly if what emerged from the rubble resembled what God intended for all of us all along: a people who recognized their own divine likeness and treated themselves and one another accordingly.

The Next Right Thing

For a significant part of my life, I use to wish I could magically peer into the future and see where I would be and what I would be doing ten or twenty years ahead.  The choices I had to make every day felt so ambiguous and I was so unsure of myself that I often prayed for God to give me a glimpse of how things were going to turn out.  I thought that it would reduce my anxiety and bring some much desired clarity to the decision I had to make.  I suspect that at some point in our lives we all find ourselves saying, “If I only knew….”

Maybe it is a function of age (peering into the future isn’t as pretty once you enter “the third third of your life”), but I’ve noticed that I’ve stopped pining for glimpses of the future.  There is no less ambiguity about the choices I am faced with today, but I feel less anxious about making the right choices.  What I’ve realized is that I don’t need to know how things are going to turn out in order to feel good about the choices I make.  All I need is the assurance that the choices I make are congruent with my deepest values and convictions.  I can’t tell in advance that making the right decision will lead to the desired outcome.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  But what I have learned is that I can tell when I’ve made a choice that feels incongruent with what I intuitively know to be right and true.  And I have learned that when I trust that inner knowing, I make better decisions.

In part two of his book, A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough, Wayne Muller writes about following the thread of our lives.  We never have the assurance of knowing in advance how things will turn out, but Muller says, “If we can trust that we are good and whole, if we trust that our hearts, minds, and bodies know how to find and recognize life, always life, how can we possibly doubt that there still remains in our hand at this moment the very same thread that guided us safely here? (p. 33)”

In my best moments, I allow myself to let go of desire to know in advance that the decision I am making today will produce the desired outcome.  It is enough for me to listen to my inner knowing in the decisions that are mine to make and entrust the future to God.

Enough & Jesus’ 3-fold Model of Discernment

Wayne Muller asserts that the good life is the life of enough. A life of enough is a life where we aren’t wanting and grasping all the time, aren’t perpetually parched and dissatisfied, aren’t running around wrecked by our own impossible schedules. The good life, the life of enough, as opposed to the frenetic, never-enough life, is one where we breathe easy, one that includes moments of relaxation and recognition of beauty around us.  A life of enough is one where we say “agh, this is it, I am content, all is well” and don’t feel guilty about our own sense of sufficiency. A life of enough is one of rhythmic harmony, of shalom.

I’ve never met anyone on this Earth who seems to live the life of enough all the time. But I have known pilgrims upon the planet who seem to get it most of the time, a majority of the time, or perhaps just when it matters most. And what I notice about all of them is their capacity to make wise decisions. On page 27 of his “A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough” Wayne writes these words:

We make only one choice. Throughout our lives, we do only one thing-again and again, moment by moment, year after year. It is how we live our days, and it how we shape our lives. The choice is this: What is the next right thing for us to do?

The people I know who do “enough” well are people who have a knack for wisely deciding the next right thing. That is, they are people who discern well. I think discernment is the key variable in the life of enough. So, you might ask: what makes for good discernment? Glad you asked…

I think Jesus gives us the ultimate model of holy discernment. Jesus spent time in solitude, in quiet contemplation. Jesus spent time in community, surrounded by people who would engage with him (both people like him and those who took issue with his ministry). And Jesus kept close to nature. I think all of us need these three unique portals for discernment in our lives. We need time alone, time to think and read sacred text, time to pray and silence ourselves. We need time and sharing with other humans who have distinct experience of their own that can shine a light, pose a challenge and strengthen our own understandings/options. And we need to spend time surrounded by what poet Wendell Berry calls “the peace of wild things.”

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Wayne Muller is right: the good life is a life of enough. And he’s right that the life of enough comes about through constant decision making, comes through days and moments of choosing the next right thing. My sense is that we have a lot better shot at making wise decisions and choices if we follow Jesus’ 3-fold model of discernment, a model that keeps solitude, community and nature at the rhythmic center of our lives.

Enough for Today

In his chapter, “Enough for Today,” Wayne Muller names something that our FCCBC mission teams have experienced in our trips to work with native Mayan families in the central highlands of Guatemala.  Muller observes that  even when people who are living in poverty “… feel and know they have enough food, enough shelter, enough water, enough medicine-then, in the most impossibly, ridiculously true next moment-(they) will, more than likely, become instantly generous with whatever small portion of anything they may have left over.”

Every time we go to Guatemala, we are moved by the generosity of the people we go to serve.  They live in single room mud walled huts, survive on diets of 500 calories  a day, and own next to nothing, but inevitably they offer to share some expression of hospitality when we show up to help them install cook stoves in their homes.

I certainly don’t want to romanticize poverty.  It is debilitating and soul crushing.  The average life expectancy of native Mayans is 44 years and the infant mortality rate is 150 deaths per 1000 life births.  But what I have learned from our mission trips is that there is only thing necessary for living a generous life:  the realization that we have enough for today.  It is our anxiety about tomorrow that leads to miserly living.  Enough doesn’t come from a certain level of income or a storehouse of surplus food.  It is a spiritual quality.  It comes from trusting that we have everything we need for today.

Learning to Exhale: Breathing as an Act of Surrender

Confession:  When it comes to Sabbath practices, I am so bad at this!

This was most recently evidenced by the fact that, for the umpteenth time, I stayed up too late last night.

It wasn’t the first time this year, or even this week.  It was just the latest iteration of what for me has become an undesirable and frequent pattern:  I get stressed out by day, then stay up late worrying by night.  This, of course, becomes a vicious cycle: I’m stressed, so I stay up late, so I get less sleep, so I’m tired the next day, so I’m less efficient, so I feel more overwhelmed, which stresses me out, so I stay up late…

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now that the coffee has kicked in and I’ve had a little time to reflect, here’s part of what I think is going on for me:  refusal to exhale.

Our scripture this week is very timely:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.  (Genesis 2:1-3)

On page 5 of Wayne Muller’s amazing A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough, Wayne notes that in the original Hebrew, the word for this rest can be read as “And God exhaled.”  And Wayne goes on to pose the question:  When do we exhale?

When I’m stressed out, when I feel like I’m holding a lot of stuff, I feel physically tight.  The muscles in my neck and shoulders become tense.  I feel emotionally tight as well.  My mind races from one thing to another, as if I’d drop all the things if I spent too much time thinking about any one of them.  And I feel spiritually tight – it’s hard work trying to maintain all this control, you know?  Who has time for spiritual renewal when I’ve got so many things to worry about??  I hardly have time to breathe!

…And that’s what I mean by refusal to exhale: physically, emotionally, and spiritually refusing to breathe…

or open

or widen

or relinquish

or release.

I gain something out of refusing to exhale: the illusion that I ultimately have control over all these things I’m worrying about.  But the utterly terrifying – and liberating – truth is, I actually don’t have control over the things that give me the most stress.  And so for me, stress management isn’t about somehow seizing more control, but rather the opposite: letting go of my desire to control those things.  In spiritual language, this is the discipline of surrender.

A curious thing happens when we breathe deeply:  our bodies relax.  Our heart rates slow down.  Our thoughts become clearer.  We become more attentive to the things around us.  We gain the ability to sustain our focus on one thing at a time.  Viewed in this light, breathing itself is an embodied act of surrender:  Inhale: allow the oxygen into my body, and hold it there… Exhale: …then surrender it back out.

In the coming days, as we explore the practices of physical, emotional, and spiritual Sabbath together, let’s please be sure to take time to breathe… and relax… and let go of that which we cannot control.  Let’s try to do this not only in our designated “Sabbath times,” but when the stress is at its highest points.  I’ll keep you posted about how that works out on my end…

Breathe with me?