We all are trying so hard to cope.
Too many people don’t really care about things that don’t affect them directly.
The only healthy way forward now is through grief (more here).
Why do we so often feel compelled to cast other people in terms of evil?
Prior 3 Observations & A Question….
A peer at work sent me an email this week that she was leaving early to cry...because her brother had just died.
Among other things, I told her I would pray for her. I didn't then, but the next morning I did.
It is early in the morning and today my 84-year-old mother is having open heart surgery. I visit her knowing the possibility of the same fate as my co-worker's brother. So, I am praying for her this morning. Doing so, leads me to pray for my dad, too. Which brings my brother to mind and how he, too, is impacted by the situation. My prayers then wander to all of our collective children and their relationship with my mother.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch a presidential address to the nation the other night (normally, I force myself to do so, for what I used to think was the greater good of civic responsibility). And, I'm finding that one of my few remaining choices, regarding the anxiety I sometimes feel about the impacts of our current political system, is to pray.
I’m surprised at times how prayer can still feel like a last resort and yet while doing it, one of my best options.
As do many things, including my better desires, I’ve noticed more recently that prayers come more easily for me in the morning (perhaps, the two are not actually different things — one rather simply being the expression of the other). It seems the prayers of an early morning often pull me back out of the rabbit-holes of despair over the environment many days impose on my psyche.
Perhaps this is because our purest prayers help us articulate our desires (even when our desires are not all that good). Prayers can be one of the most raw and authentic things we can do, especially as we discover that their whole essence has very little to do with things like duty after all. Rather, they are the expression of yearning we have for what is good and the acknowledgment that significant portions of our ability to embody the goodness of those things (our desires) is dependent on additional resources beyond what we can provide for ourselves.
Prayers serve to remind us that our desires are not autonomous. There is a latent dependency in what we want. In other words, our desires involve other things, often other beings…like God, or people (or even animals). In both times of peace and calamity, our prayers acknowledge this dependency, our need, our desire for what is good in life. And, in that way, prayers migrate us from the simply transactional nature of asking for things that we want and toward the things that we all want — expanding our desire from self-satisfaction toward collective harmony.
Prayers can also be the catalyst to move us from our contemplation of what is good for ourselves (and others) to the actions that contribute to the realization of this goodness. Something must bridge what we think we want to what we do about it. There are likely many things that can serve this function.
In my experience, prayer is often one of those...particularly the prayers of an early morning.
Take care of the many who, for no fault of their own, get the short straws in life. They deserve better.
-- Warren Buffett, (from his annual shareholder letter on Saturday morning, including a not-entirely-indirect message for President Donald Trump and other elected leaders about his $26.8 billion record tax payment)I've noticed...I have to focus on how to promote what is good…not in theory, but in action.
Trying to keep up with what is wrong is, in the end, demoralizing and hopeless…it saps both my energy and strength. It is also easy. It is harder to direct my attention away from that and on to what I can actually do for the sake of someone else’s good.
I've also noticed that how I start my day affects my focus the rest of my day.
What you give your attention to fills your mind. And, what you fills your mind with impacts your whole being. Your being is where the action is because it is from your being that you love.
Knowing what is good is one thing; acting on it is another. It seems like I have to consciously focus and choose what I want to do about what I know...and act accordingly.
A healthy psyche lives within at least four containers of meaning. Imagine four nested domes. The first is called MY story, the second is OUR story, the third is OTHER stories, and the fourth is THE story. This is what I call the cosmic egg.
Biblical revelation is saying that the only way we dare move up to THE story and understand it with any depth is by moving through and taking responsibility for our personal story, our group story, and other stories.
True transcendence frees us from the tyranny of I AM, the idolatry of WE ARE, and the scapegoating of THEY ARE. When all four stories are taken seriously, as the Bible shows us very well, we have a full life — fully human and fully divine.
-- Richard Rohr
-- Eldridge Cleaver
