(Part I here)

What if each of our bodies is a word, or a paragraph (maybe more?) of an ongoing, cosmic conversation?  This makes my love and acceptance of my body feel beside the point, and therefore strangely possible.  It makes me wonder what I’m being said in response to.  It makes me wonder who will be said in response to me.

Since writing that last post I’ve been thinking about grace.  I’m wondering whether grace is something we need in experience, but not in reality.  To explain…

All of us experience the feeling of being bad at some point, mean or self absorbed or vindictive.  Rebellious in an unhealthy way.  Hurtful.  Like the spiritual says of grace, "how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me."  Very few of us feel deserving all the time of kindness or gentleness or love.

And yet…isn’t life a pretty…how can I put it…difficult challenge for all of us?  Don’t we all carry our own loads of suffering, our own satchels of wounds and accompanying fears, histories that are ours, but also the inheritance of all who have gone before us…with their loads and satchels and fears?  So on a level maybe deeper than surfaces sometimes, don’t we all deserve kindness?  We did not ask to be here (so far as I’m aware).  We did not ask to be situated on our plots of history, or to be forced to cope with the nature and nurture and worlds in which we spin.

The dear girl who was homesick on her first night from home, did she need grace for her misery–undeserved kindness–or simply love?  Tenderness and reassurances that she was fine, and she wasn’t trying to hurt or innconvenience anyone, and it’s okay to learn slowly that sleep-overs can be fun?

I’m wondering whether this isn’t true of something far more expansive than innocent little girls, spilling even into hatred and awfulness and meanness of every kind.  Could it be that the worst of us, the worst in us, doesn’t need true grace, which is something undeserved, but rather love, which I think is?  That in fact the absence or unfeltness of such love, at crucial points, and when we most need it, is why we become "wretches" in the first place?

Maybe experiencing grace–what we percieve as undeserved kindness–is a necessary step toward recovering a sense of what’s actually true:  we deserve kindness.  We are, in fact, okay.  Deeply so.  And the more we come to know it, the more our wretchedness transforms.  The more it starts becoming itself a source of love, which, I think, is what all of us deserve in the first place.

Before his current season of studenthood, N (my husband) was a community organizer. Part of his job was to meet with people one on one in the neighborhoods where he worked to determine what people’s self interests were. Organizing around what people already want is way, way easier (I didn’t say easy; I said easier) than running yourself into the ground trying to rally support for things people couldn’t care less about.

During those years of organizing, N and I had many conversations about self interest, and the ways it seemed to knock heads with the altruism pushed in the religious environments in which we moved. In those environments, self interest was often equated with selfishness, and was therefore something to try to tame and eventually, ideally, get rid of altogether. The goal was to have God’s interests at the helm (or, I suppose, have these genuinely become your own). How to define God’s interests was and is and ever shall be a whole nother truckload of worms.

The more we talked, though, and the more we lived and observed ourselves and those around us, the more we came to see self interest as not only the air we humans breathe, but actually something, when gotten conscious about, that’s healthy. Something we actually trust more than altruism to keep “good deeds” truly good. If I can be honest that I’m giving money to a beggar because I want to feel less guilty for the wealth I enjoy, and not because I actually care about this person in front of me, I have more options for figuring out whether I’m comfortable with not caring, and if I don’t care, why that might be, and if I do, whether tossing a few coins is really how I want to express that. Self interested good deeds with an altruistic veneer on top are a wonderful recipe for dehumanizing people, I think, for using them harmingly, and not actually helping in ways that are needed.

So I guess my first point is that I think all of us are self interested, and all (most? all sounds so extreme) of our good deeds are at their roots attempts at meeting our own iterests (for feeling important, establishing ourselves as nice or generous, not being lonely, staying out of trouble, not pissing someone off), and not only do I think that isn’t bad, but I think it’s good, and that getting conscious of what we’re actually wanting is the best way to avoid hurting people, and even the best way to actually help people. If I know what my self interests are and try to understand what yours are, we can negotiate a mutual sort of playing field where we both benefit. Mutuality seems like the safest place to be–no matter who in a pair has the most age or money or positional power–the best space for humanizing and protecting and truly serving everyone involved, not the least of which (and I mean that) is you or me.

Trying to empty ourselves of self interest seems to me to be the best way to nourish blind spots, and the best way to push our truest needs and motivations underground where they have no choice but to express themselves subconsciously, which is to say in ways we aren’t choosing, which is to say in ways we can’t evaluate with our conscious minds and values. I’m guessing some of the darkest things in our world, some of the ugliest abuses, could have been avoided were people free to acknowledge their self interests (sexual, emotional, vocational, intellectual) and find conscious and healthy ways of meeting them in mutual sorts of exchange.

The second point I want to make is that I think it’s okay when we can’t meet others’ self interests. I’m thinking here about people we really care about, specifically. Because those are the ones we can get caught in cycles with, cycles of being so driven by our need to make them like us, or be happy with us, or prop up their egos so they don’t pout or get mad, that we lose sight of our other needs, which include honoring and listening to our own selves. It is a painful lesson to learn that people in our lives cannot be everything we want them to be (can’t meet all the needs we thought they could or should); it is a freeing lesson, though not always painless, to learn that when we can’t be what others want us to be, that doesn’t mean we’ve done anything wrong. (Can you tell this is a pep talk aimed at me?)

But what do you all think of self interest? Does true altruism exist? What are ways that religion/spirituality can free us toward humanizing involvement with the needs around us, and not something that only masquerades as such?

Since I’m sure you want an update on these mites, we think no new ones are coming into the house, so all we have to do is wait the 3-4 weeks it takes for the ones that already made it inside to die off. I only look like I have a mild case of chickenpocks this time, as opposed to severe, so I’m happy.

But enough on that topic!

Today I want to talk about being alive. I asked N the other day who the most alive person he knows is, and we ended up having a great conversation exploring what that means. Who is the most alive person you know? What makes you think of them that way?

It seems like there are different ways to understand alive. Maybe one is about the opposite of being numb. People who are always trying to be as present as they can be to what they experience, to what they feel, to who they are. Who don’t seem like they’re running from something. People who don’t want to ignore the daily news and are uncomfortable with the way it’s impossible not to sometimes. People who feel joy and sorrow and anger and fear and peace and worry and everything else. People who aren’t numb. People alive this way aren’t always having fun, but I think they’re not always tormented, either. They probably have the greatest capacity for joy.

Another way to think about alive could be people who have an enlivening hope. Something their bodies or minds or souls are yearning toward and working toward and feeling glad about. People connected with a sense of mission, a reason for being alive, a fire in their bellies, whether that be for connecting with another person, winning a medal, making some discovery, landing a dream job. Knowing God, even, or trying to make the world a better place. Aliveness in this sense is about the hope, rather than duty or the desire to avoid something negative. By and large, I think people alive in this way like to get up in the morning.

But what do you think? Are there other ways of looking at this? Like what does it look like for parents of collicy newborns to be alive? People with chronic pain? With significant losses? Is the greatest potential for aliveness somewhere inbetween the extremes of tranquility and suffering, or can it reach to these extremes, too?

here

I’m learning slowly this week (read: lifetime) about how to love people without bearing too much of their weight. I’m not sure how to get my mind around this one, though, because I believe we’re all interconnected, and that lives don’t have definite starting and stopping points so far as the space we each take up. We’re not paper dolls. We’re more like, maybe…universes.

So what do I do with the notion of “healthy boundaries” and the reality that though I’m interconnected with everything, and most particularly those I love, it doesn’t do anyone much good for me to stymie in other people’s mire? I’m a big believer in the power of solidarity, of standing with others in pain, and have experienced quite personally how this makes way for hope to break through. But there’s a certain quality of standing alongside, I think, that doesn’t multiply the yuck, that doesn’t make two people now feeling awful, but rather two people both feeling better. Or four or sixteen or a hundred, depending on who’s standing.

I want to find a way to be moved by the suffering around me, acknowledging that this movement is good and natural and part of living an interconnected life, while not being drawn by it into orbit. Standing alongside others cannot mean losing connection with my own sense of gravity, my own sun, with the struggles and tremendous joys it has of its own.

The intense pain I experienced this last week has me thinking on the topic of suffering.  I’m wondering, do you think suffering can be quantified? 

When I’m not thinking, I don’t.  I mean, when I’m just feeling my own suffering, I’m not comparing it with anything.  I’m just…suffering.  I’m crying out.  I’m feeling angry.  Afraid.  Helpless.  Wanting it to end.  Now.

But when I am thinking, when I do get some perspective and look at the world beyond my body or set of circumstances, I often feel ashamed.  Ashamed of the way I experience my suffering because when compared with so many other peoples’, it looks so small.  Like a splinter or a boil.  I feel embarrassed for complaining and like I’ve disrespected all whose suffering is greater than mine by acting like mine is enormous.

But I’m wondering now whether that kind of shame just isn’t very fair – to me or anyone else.  Now that I’m thinking about my thinking, I’m wondering whether it’s just not fair to any of us to compare how much we hurt.

I’m thick in the stage of infant-care these days, so my mind goes quickly to all the people I know whose suffering is around babies.  I have friends who have been trying to get pregnant forever and still can’t.  I have friends who tried conceiving for a year, joyously became pregnant…and then discovered months later that their dear child has a serious genetic defect.  She was born last week and has already had major heart surgery.  She’s struggling for life in the ICU.  And I have friends who have lost babies.  Our neighbors had a baby the same week we did, and she cries constantly and isn’t gaining weight.  So many stories of suffering.  So many tears and anguished prayers and all the fear and anger and disappointment and depression you could ever not wish for.

So whose suffering is the worst?  Doesn’t the question sound wrong?  But…is it conceivably fair, in light of all of these stories, that I complain about my week of intense pain? – pain that antibiotics and few doctor visits took care of, and that came because I have a baby, a very healthy one, a mild-mannered one, actually, that took all of two months to conceive?

My suffering seems so stupid and small when put into broader perspective. 

And yet…  Couldn’t any of the people in these stories say the same thing of theirs, were they to compare their stories with ones that look more awful?  People slowly starving to death.  People living through decades of civil war.  Long-term, debilitating diseases.  I don’t know – any number of “worse sufferings” come to mind.

I don’t know how to think about this.  Or even feel.  I guess I’m wondering, though, whether the comparison game isn’t worth playing when it comes to this.  That maybe there are indeed varying degrees of suffering, but it’s just not good to try to identify them.  Could suffering just be suffering?  And maybe the way we experience it be just that – not good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, because of who we’re comparing ourselves to?

Thoughts, wisdom, ponderings all welcome.

So I’ve been sitting (read: nursing, burping, bouncing, bathing, changing, cooing, getting peed upon) with the question I asked myself in the last post – the question about whether there’s something I’m wanting to do that maybe I’m not doing because I’m afraid of getting dirty.  And I’ve come up with something.  But I don’t want to write about that yet.

I want to write about a question that helped me get there. 

Why try to do good in the world?  That’s it.  Why try to do good?  Simple enough, right?  Riiight…

I know this can be answered a hundred different ways, but as I’ve pondered some of them, I’ve realized I don’t like a lot of what’s available.

Guilt, for instance.  I know it can be a good catalyst in certain situations.  It isn’t all bad.  But to me it seems life-sucking as a primary motivator.  I think it poisons good with a kind of self-centeredness, an objectification of the people or environments in which the good is done.  Such things become tools, merely, for making the gooder (person doing good) feel better. 

I don’t know how to get completely away from guilt.  My life is privileged, so far as race and family and finances and education and a body that works well are concerned, and I’m well aware that there are lots of the opposites everywhere.  I didn’t ask for what I’ve got, and I’m pretty sure others didn’t either, and yet here we are.  Disparities galore. 

But here’s the rub: Maybe it’s this very thing – this very fact that no one asked for what they’ve got – that makes guilt not make much sense.  You think?

All of life’s disparities could lead to a kind of ethical motivation for doing good, then, I suppose:  good is just the right thing to do.  I, for example, am capable of doing good.  I’ve got a nice bundle of resources to work with (the privilege I talked about).  And let’s face it:  good is needed.  Everywhere.  Why not do it?

Something about this moves too much in the direction of guilt for my liking, though.  At least for now, as I continue detoxifying from the stuff.  It introduces obligation.  And not just obligation, but obligation with a ball and chain attached to it, shaped conspicuously much like an uptight judge.  He waits vigilantly for you to squander your life or talents or money or time, and even when he isn’t officially on your case for something, it feels like he is.  Because the “good” you do is always getting held up next to the million “bad” or selfish things you sometimes (regularly?) do instead.

No, “it’s the right thing to do” isn’t invitational or inspiring or soul-expanding at all for me.  It makes my soul shrink.  And my courage, too.

So I’ve thought a lot about the interconnectedness slant for doing good.  About how doing good for others is really a way of doing good for myself.  And for everyone.  Eastern thought has a lot of great things to say about this.  And physics, too.  And I’m filled with wonder as I consider how true it is, and how magical.  And how it makes me more patient and compassionate where I might not otherwise be.

But I have to admit that, here too, the idea falls flat for me.  Maybe if I spent more time meditating, and got myself more viscerally in touch with my connectedness with everything and everyone, I’d be spontaneously inspired toward positive action.  But until that happens, the idea gets stuck in the logical, unfeeling parts of myself, and doesn’t have the soulful steam of feeling to make my self go anywhere.  As interconnected with everything as I believe myself to be, I just don’t live in awareness of that very often, and the guy begging on the corner and the tree in the next complex over and the dog that yipped at my heals this morning don’t feel like parts of myself at all.  Caring for the earth or for the homeless or for animal rights or any other rights a person might care about because we’re all interconnected all consequently slip into that last category for me, the “because it’s the right thing to do (because we’re all interconnected)” category.  They’re less about genuine care and more about a concern that I’m trying to drum up because an abstract principle in my mind is telling me I really should do that kind of drumming.  Yesterday.  And you know how much I appreciate that kind of judge.

So how about we propose a psychological angle.  What if I try to do good because I want to be a person who does good.  And if I don’t actually do good, then I feel a disconnect between who I am and who I want to be.  Dissonance.  And I don’t fit in very well with the gooders I really want as friends.  I don’t have good gooder stories to tell when I’m with them and I can’t even get on soap boxes or high horses with them, either, because lord knows I was sitting on my couch last night, too, and I’ve never even been tempted to write my congressperson for anything.  Sigh.

No, trying to get rid of dissonance or spin a character or reputation or set of friends to be proud of just don’t feel like compelling reasons for me to do good, either.

And here’s what really trips me up:  I’m not convinced you can clearly define good anyway.  Snap shots can make good and bad appear simplistically separate, simplistically clear, but really, aren’t the two more often mixed up?  Sometimes it’s the most awful things, the most ugly or evil or extraordinarily pathetic, that lead to positive action.  Don’t they? Like figuring out tough class or race-related things in Katrina’s aftermath.  Like wounded people turning into healers.  Some of history’s biggest embarrassments have been the reason why myriad smaller tragedies haven’t happened, or have actually gotten cared about. 

And sometimes it’s the most well-intentioned things ever – the ones dreamed up by people doggedly committed to making the world a better place – that really, really screw things up.  Think manifest destiny.  Think over-protective parenting. Think any number of technological “advances,” and the Hiroshimas and global warmings and massive oil spills pluming in their wakes.

So.  What does it mean for me to “try to do good”?  What do I presuppose in even asking such a question?

While I won’t try answering that, I will give my conclusion.  You ready?

I know that “good” and “bad” are difficult to separate sometimes, and that the “good” I try to do may actually harm someone, or mess up something better.  But I’m thinking that’s par for this messy life-course.  And I’m certainly not excited about doing nothing because I convince myself that no matter what I do (or don’t do, as the case may be) is part of life’s yin and yang.

So my conclusion?  I want to try to do good in the world because that’s what I like to do.  I like it. It makes me hopeful.  I like it better than doing nothing, and I like it better than knowingly doing bad.  And heck if I understand my complex mix of motives better than that.

I just like it.  [And I’m looking forward to diving into the fray so I won’t have time for this kind of reflection. :)]

But how about you?  Why do you do good?  I’m genuinely curious.

So here are some skeletal conclusions I take from the last conversation:

·        Nothing is perfectly clean – no movement, no institution, no set of relationships.  This is true of spicy and boring lives.  Why not choose spicy?

·        Process matters.  How we work for change is important, and has a lot to do with the kind of change that gets accomplished…and how long-lasting the change turns out to be.  But process isn’t all that matters.  Sometimes messy processes – ones that leave hands and hearts a little dirty for a while – are worth it.  Dark and light are sometimes inextricably mixed.

·        There are instances where a person needs to distance him/herself from a particular group or movement.  Distance can be an important part of a person’s personal growth or healing, but can also be necessary for broader goals to have any chance of getting met.  Gaining trust with a group of disgruntled teens, for example, may necessitate distancing relations with teachers, parents, or police…even when said relations might further some other kind of good.

·        Sometimes, as in the example above, reputation really matters.  It isn’t a gimme that it’s better, as a rule, to care not a lick for how we’re perceived.  Sometimes, though, reputation needs to matter little.  If everyone involved in civil or women’s or gay rights movements cared what society thought of them, important strides forward or up or out would never get made.  I’m guessing smaller-scale, personal examples could be found of this being true as well…maybe cases where no one would know if you chose your reputation over kindness or forgiveness.  Or over getting dirty, but in so doing, participating in something really worthwhile.

·        Life is complicated.  For me right now, what all of this boils down to is being mindful and thoughtful and as awake as I can be in specific instances, rather than abstracting like this forever.  My question to myself becomes:  Is there some specific action I want to take in my life right now where I’m concerned about my own or others’ “cleanliness” – in terms of reputation?  process?  otherwise?  This is a question I need to sit with today.  Or more realistically, this week (can anyone say, “I don’t get very much done in a day – intellectually or otherwise – while caring for an infant”?).

What do you all think of these things?  I’d love to hear examples, like the one Chandra gave, of stuff like this in action – times when it seems worth staying clean or protecting one’s principles or reputation, and times when messiness seems far more worth it.

A couple great "responses" to the issues raised in my last post:

‘"I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don’t make that mistake yourself. Life’s too damn short.’  Armistead Maupin said this, wishing that he had "come out" as gay earlier in his life. But the comment might apply just as easily to lots of us who conduct our lives in fear of what other people think. Life is short, and then you die. No rehearsals."

via Maggi Dawn and

"No one should abandon duties
because he sees defects in them.
Every action, every activity, is surrounded
by defects as a fire is surrounded by smoke."

(Bhagavad Gita, I8.47)

via Cindy Lawson.