I can hardly imagine what's it like to have your neighborhood shelled.
I can hardly imagine what's it's like to have loved one's and neighbors killed by rockets.
I can hardly imagine what it's like to live under a persistent threat of violence and destruction.
I can hardly imagine what it's like to live in a place where neighbors are at war.
I can hardly imagine a solution to the whole bloody mess.
But,
I can imagine what it's like to be angry with a neighbor and wanting to take revenge.
The details of my incident really are unimportant. It's the common interior experience I'm interested in. As soon as we feel wronged, it's so easy for us to enter into the myopia of vengeance.
It's amazing how our minds can simmer and plot, coming up with all kinds of ways to hurt those we feel hurt by.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not comparing the the small kinds of first-world suffering I go through with my neighbor, or other people who have been outright jerks to me in the past, with the long historical acrimony and suffering of those in Gaza or Israel. But I can recognize that I am prone to that same condition of the heart that wants to settle a perceived injustice.
It's so easy to pick a side, decide who's wrong and who's right, and see one side's actions as justified. It's so tempting to see one group of people as evil and the other as good; to fit the world back in our simple categories.
It feels so natural, so right to get payback, and then to go a little further to make sure they won't mess with you ever again. It's the logic of escalating violence: we think we're defending ourselves.
But it's lie. Whenever we act in violence towards another, it doesn't defend us, it strips us of our humanity. For whatever gains we perceive ourselves to have made in our "protection" of our selves, our land, our people, our principles, - we have lost something much more. Jesus says "what does it profit a person if they gain the whole world but lose their soul?" I think we could extend it to say "what does it profit a person if they protect their whole world but in the process of trying to secure things lose their soul?"
I once heard the Dali Lama say that he felt a great sadness for the Chinese occupiers of Tibet because their actions had cost them much more than anything he had lost by being exiled. He explained that the occupiers, by clinging to violence, hatred, and oppression had harmed themselves far more than he himself could ever be harmed by having to live away from home.
So as I prayed this morning I was tempted to despair about Gaza. What can be done?
But as I write this I realize that the perhaps small but profound thing I can do is to forgive and not take vengeance on my neighbor, or anyone who does me wrong. If I give in to my urge to get payback, I am merely perpetuating the same conditions that lead to violence throughout our world.
I cannot with integrity pray for peace elsewhere, but hold hatred and vengeance in my own heart.
So I lament your losses Gaza and Israel. My heart is moved by your suffering and pain, and by the sheer terror that has come to dominate your lives.
But even more I lament the loss of your humanity as your powerful leaders unleash these atrocities in the name of self-defense.
I don't judge your actions, I lament them, because I know that I am equally capable of participating in such warfare given the state of my heart. And as I lament, I will try today not to add to the suffering of the world by seeking vengeance in my own life.
In the words of the old song, "let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me".
Friday, July 25, 2014
Monday, July 7, 2014
Rest - Part 2 - It takes work
The first thing I've come to discover about rest is counter-intuitive.
It takes work to rest.
Resting isn't just stopping activity.
At least, the kind of rest that actually restores (notice how the word restore has "rest" in it? Oddly I never had until recently) seems very often to involve some kind of practice or activity that engages us differently than our usual work does. If we think about rest as being a fundamental biological need, it logically follows that obtaining it will often require an effort on our part. To feed ourselves, to find and maintain adequate shelter, to stay close and sustained by our tribe, even to love and be loved; they all require effort or work on our part.
And maybe this is one of the reasons why so many of us crash, burn-out, or struggle so hard with resting: by the time we choose to rest, we're already too exhausted to engage in the kinds of things we need to do to rest.
It's a little like depression. Most people caught in a full depressive episode lack the energy to engage in the activities that will help them get out of the depression. That's often why they're stuck and need some kind of intervention beyond their own efforts and knowledge.
When I first started noticing this exhaustion I've been having, I knew I needed to get more physical exercise. But when you're trying to drag your tired butt off the couch to work out, you experience that counter-intuitive reality about rest and effort. It just seems so natural when you're tired to lay on the couch. The idea of intense effort seems so impossible that most us choose to wait until we have more energy to exercise....and hence we have a multi-billion dollar gym industry that makes its money off unused gym memberships.
So if rest takes work, and that's not only counter-intuitive, but requires us to act with energy we don't seem to have, how do overcome this hurdle?
I think the truth is we must establish rhythms in our life that draw us into the kinds of activity we need for restoration. I've know this be true from a few sources:
1) The most successful way of helping people out of depression is by developing routines of activity that push them over the hurdle of low energy and motivation.
2) The people I know who are the most rested, calm, purposeful, and present in their lives all have established routines and rhythms that they stick to. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I started looking at people's lives who emulate restfulness.
3) The great wisdom traditions all teach and have elaborate rituals (rhythmic practices) to assist disciples in their path of learning and transformation.
4) There is an overwhelming importance placed on rhythms, particularly Sabbath rest, in God's instructions to His people in the Hebrew scriptures. Some of the endless detail of the rituals and rhythms is what makes the Torah such a difficult read at times. (I'll get back to Sabbath in future posts)
5) Our biology is rhythmic. From sleep-wake cycles, to heart beats, and the variety of homeostatic mechanisms that establish balance in our bodies, there are rhythms that seem crucial to human flourishing.
The thing is, all this talk about routines and rhythm and ritual, about practices woven into the fabric of lives is a pretty counter-cultural way of thinking. It's not that our culture doesn't have rituals or rhythms, or even sort of liturgies. But most of them are based on the activities of consumption and production. Holidays are about shopping and eating. Sometimes we add obligatory closeness with family, although even this is mostly a nostalgic experience to be consumed. Our leisure activities, which our culture confuses with resting, are expressions of the dominant modes of consumption and production. (much more on this in later posts)
But what if you or I made it a regularly scheduled practice to engage in the kinds of activities that bring about restoration?
What are the practices that bring about restoration? Are they are certain set of things laid out for all time and people? Or, are the practices fundamentally about the mind-set (or heart-set) that we have when entering those practices?
And while establishing practices, routines and rhythms also requires work I suspect that once established they become less strenuous and helps enter into restorative activity with less dependency on personal willpower or discipline. Even if it requires us to swim upstream in current of our culture, perhaps theses routines will offer us the venue to be practiced in art of resting, and eventually require less effort in our attempts to rest.
It takes work to rest.
Resting isn't just stopping activity.
At least, the kind of rest that actually restores (notice how the word restore has "rest" in it? Oddly I never had until recently) seems very often to involve some kind of practice or activity that engages us differently than our usual work does. If we think about rest as being a fundamental biological need, it logically follows that obtaining it will often require an effort on our part. To feed ourselves, to find and maintain adequate shelter, to stay close and sustained by our tribe, even to love and be loved; they all require effort or work on our part.
And maybe this is one of the reasons why so many of us crash, burn-out, or struggle so hard with resting: by the time we choose to rest, we're already too exhausted to engage in the kinds of things we need to do to rest.
It's a little like depression. Most people caught in a full depressive episode lack the energy to engage in the activities that will help them get out of the depression. That's often why they're stuck and need some kind of intervention beyond their own efforts and knowledge.
When I first started noticing this exhaustion I've been having, I knew I needed to get more physical exercise. But when you're trying to drag your tired butt off the couch to work out, you experience that counter-intuitive reality about rest and effort. It just seems so natural when you're tired to lay on the couch. The idea of intense effort seems so impossible that most us choose to wait until we have more energy to exercise....and hence we have a multi-billion dollar gym industry that makes its money off unused gym memberships.
So if rest takes work, and that's not only counter-intuitive, but requires us to act with energy we don't seem to have, how do overcome this hurdle?
I think the truth is we must establish rhythms in our life that draw us into the kinds of activity we need for restoration. I've know this be true from a few sources:
1) The most successful way of helping people out of depression is by developing routines of activity that push them over the hurdle of low energy and motivation.
2) The people I know who are the most rested, calm, purposeful, and present in their lives all have established routines and rhythms that they stick to. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I started looking at people's lives who emulate restfulness.
3) The great wisdom traditions all teach and have elaborate rituals (rhythmic practices) to assist disciples in their path of learning and transformation.
4) There is an overwhelming importance placed on rhythms, particularly Sabbath rest, in God's instructions to His people in the Hebrew scriptures. Some of the endless detail of the rituals and rhythms is what makes the Torah such a difficult read at times. (I'll get back to Sabbath in future posts)
5) Our biology is rhythmic. From sleep-wake cycles, to heart beats, and the variety of homeostatic mechanisms that establish balance in our bodies, there are rhythms that seem crucial to human flourishing.
The thing is, all this talk about routines and rhythm and ritual, about practices woven into the fabric of lives is a pretty counter-cultural way of thinking. It's not that our culture doesn't have rituals or rhythms, or even sort of liturgies. But most of them are based on the activities of consumption and production. Holidays are about shopping and eating. Sometimes we add obligatory closeness with family, although even this is mostly a nostalgic experience to be consumed. Our leisure activities, which our culture confuses with resting, are expressions of the dominant modes of consumption and production. (much more on this in later posts)
But what if you or I made it a regularly scheduled practice to engage in the kinds of activities that bring about restoration?
What are the practices that bring about restoration? Are they are certain set of things laid out for all time and people? Or, are the practices fundamentally about the mind-set (or heart-set) that we have when entering those practices?
And while establishing practices, routines and rhythms also requires work I suspect that once established they become less strenuous and helps enter into restorative activity with less dependency on personal willpower or discipline. Even if it requires us to swim upstream in current of our culture, perhaps theses routines will offer us the venue to be practiced in art of resting, and eventually require less effort in our attempts to rest.
Friday, July 4, 2014
Rest - Part 1 - I don't know how
Does anyone out there know how to rest?
A few months ago I realized that I don't...or at least I don't know very much about resting.
I came back from a vacation and realized just how exhausted I was, and ever since one of my preoccupations has been with trying to understand and practice resting.
The next few posts on this blog will be my current journey into learning to rest - but it's something I'm still very much in the middle of. If anyone reading this has anything to add or teach me about it
please tell me, maybe even add to the comments section so we can all learn.
So, I've been trying to slow down...which is hard...and it only seems to make a little difference.
I tried Googling it, I tried Amazoning it, and I'm really surprised that there isn't much out there (at least in the standard ways we access information these days) about rest and resting.
Perhaps it's a sign of the times.
Perhaps we've been busy and tired for so long that we've forgotten what rest even looks like. If you look at a lot of the advice that's out there about resting - it tends to focus on engaging in certain practices mostly for purpose of being able to squeeze more out of life and be more productive.
I haven't been entirely sure how to even define "rest".
Before this, I assumed resting was just cessation of activity, but I'm learning that's not quite right, or at least, it fails to capture the complexity of tiredness and rest. There isn't just one kind of fatigue, so it probably makes sense that there isn't just one kind of rest.
I'm starting to think that rest isn't just about activity levels, it actually has something to do with the demands we experience in our inner and outer worlds. That rest and fatigue depend heavily on how much we or others are requiring ourselves to do and be responsible for.
But more on this later.
For now, I invite you who read this blog to journey with me. To search and hopefully find rest in our lives. To find the kind of "rest" that "rest-ores" us.
Now back to work :P
A few months ago I realized that I don't...or at least I don't know very much about resting.
I came back from a vacation and realized just how exhausted I was, and ever since one of my preoccupations has been with trying to understand and practice resting.
The next few posts on this blog will be my current journey into learning to rest - but it's something I'm still very much in the middle of. If anyone reading this has anything to add or teach me about it
please tell me, maybe even add to the comments section so we can all learn.
So, I've been trying to slow down...which is hard...and it only seems to make a little difference.
I tried Googling it, I tried Amazoning it, and I'm really surprised that there isn't much out there (at least in the standard ways we access information these days) about rest and resting.
Perhaps it's a sign of the times.
Perhaps we've been busy and tired for so long that we've forgotten what rest even looks like. If you look at a lot of the advice that's out there about resting - it tends to focus on engaging in certain practices mostly for purpose of being able to squeeze more out of life and be more productive.
I haven't been entirely sure how to even define "rest".
Before this, I assumed resting was just cessation of activity, but I'm learning that's not quite right, or at least, it fails to capture the complexity of tiredness and rest. There isn't just one kind of fatigue, so it probably makes sense that there isn't just one kind of rest.
I'm starting to think that rest isn't just about activity levels, it actually has something to do with the demands we experience in our inner and outer worlds. That rest and fatigue depend heavily on how much we or others are requiring ourselves to do and be responsible for.
But more on this later.
For now, I invite you who read this blog to journey with me. To search and hopefully find rest in our lives. To find the kind of "rest" that "rest-ores" us.
Now back to work :P
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