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.

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.
]]> http://inwardandoutward.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/enough-a-feminist-reflection/feed/ 3 rhizomejoye http://inwardandoutward.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-next-right-thing/ http://inwardandoutward.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-next-right-thing/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:54:22 +0000 tomjott http://inwardandoutward.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-next-right-thing/ Continue reading →]]> 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.

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.

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.

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?

So last night we kicked off our ten week focus with an Awestruck worship celebration focused on Part One of Wayne’s book, “The Forgotten Refuge of Enough.”  I have to admit that it felt more than a little weird extolling the virtues of “enough.”  It seemed a little like the speeches our coach use to give us in the locker room after loosing.  It felt conciliatory, like an acknowledgement of defeat, or a recognition of our failure to attain some goal we have been striving towards.  ”Enough” is not something I have ever aspired to before in my life.  It has a lot of negative stigma attached to it for me.  Enough is what I settle for when I fall short of the mark.  “More” is what I have always striven for: more success in my career as a pastor, more material wealth, more friends, more excitement, more activity…

And yet, at a deeper level, I know that “more” is unsustainable and ultimately un-fulfilling.  I remember taking the speedometer off my bike a few years ago because I was getting obsessed with “more.”  Each time I went out for a ride I felt as though I needed to go faster and further.  For a while it was exciting to see the numbers improving, but after I while I began to notice that I wasn’t enjoying bike riding any more.  It was exhausting!  I wasn’t talking with anyone, or taking in the scenery, or enjoying the sensation of my body in motion.  Mostly I was aware of the burning sensation in my leg muscles.  At 55, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to make the olympic cycling team or wear the yellow jersey of the Tour De France.  But I actually had to physically remove the speedometer from my bike before I could be comfortable riding ”enough.”

What I am realizing as I start out on this journey towards a life of being, having and doing enough is that I have speedometers attached to just about everything in my life.  It is going to take a lot of reprogramming for me to move “enough” out of the category of failure and into the category of faithfulness.  Instead of measuring “more,” I want to start recalibrating my speedometers for sufficiency.  “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9)