More Lost Socks - A Next Step in the Journey

Dear Friends and Readers of One Lost Sock:

When I started this blog some three years ago, I was naming it for an experience we all have. Sure, we actually do lose socks. But their whereabouts, their seeming capacity to vanish in ways that defy the logic of the physical world is part of bigger set of experiences in life. Experiences that tune us into a universe of wonder. A place where just when we think we have life figured out and organized into tidy compartments, something happens that refuses to follow our expectations. 

Lost socks are vexing, because they leave us with one bare foot in a pool of the unknown and unexplained. 

At the same time the experience of a lost sock invites us into wonder. Yes, it may be irritating. If it happens regularly one might start to suspect a conspiracy, or feel as if the universe is plotting against you. But whether it’s relatively minor as with socks, or much bigger as with questions about fairness or justice in the world, we are a family of seven billion souls on this blue planet bound together by a mysterious existence. No matter how clever our science, there are things that lead us to mystery and wonder. Wonder and awe about the beauty of our universe, but also wonder and heartache at the evil and suffering. 

It is into this wonder and mystery that I’ve felt called to reflect and write. I still do. I hope that my public wondering and reflecting and thinking have somehow enriched your lives as readers. I can hardly tell you how transformational writing it has been for me. But recently my journey has begun to take a slightly different turn. 

When I started this blog, my “big” risk was being willing to let others see what I wrote and committing to write with some degree of regularity. What started as a readership of 5, has grown substantially. You all have been most kind to let me learn out loud and begin to hone the craft of writing. Today, while the call to wonder is still the same, the risk I’ve decided to take is a little different. I’m beginning to write with the intent of publishing as an author. This blog, One Lost Sock has never had my name attached to it. I wanted it that way so that I could be free to write openly without concern about how my online presence would affect how patients and other professionals thought of me. 

In my goal of working towards publishing a book, I need to develop an online presence that’s clearly associated with my own name. So as part of this step forward, I’m starting a second blog, one that clearly ties my name and my reputation to what I’m writing. The new blog is called “Deep in Wonder”, and it perhaps represents the natural evolution of One Lost Sock as a more direct invitation to wonder. While I have no intention of hiding my life of faith, the new blog will be less explicitly religious and geared toward a broader audience interested in psychology as it is applied to daily life. I’m not abandoning One Lost Sock. I intend to post here, a little less often perhaps, but to leave this space as my anonymous place to post about my wrestling with God and faith and church and maybe somethings that feel too personal to post in a more public venue. The difference between the blogs perhaps could be captured this way: there are places for telling and places for showing. Deep In Wonder (DIW) is a place in which very little telling of the Christian story will take place, but hopefully there will be a lot of showing. I think we need both formats. And for now, I feel I need to write both.

The new blog starts out with a piece on Wonder (hence the name of the blog), moves to confessional about myself as a not-so-super parent, and soon will begin a series of pieces on working with our difficult feelings in a slightly unusual but helpful way. Back here at OLS, I'm working on a piece about churches becoming more accessible to people with mental illness that should be out soon.

If you’ve enjoyed One Lost Sock, please do give my new blog a try and see if you are enriched by its contents. Many of you who have been faithful readers are also big supporters of me as a person. I deeply appreciate this. While I’m a little shy of self-promotion, if you feel like you’d like to support me in new ways, you can take one of few steps to help out:

1) Read and follow the new blog (www.deepinwonder.com). You can hit the “follow” button and when new posts are published you’ll get email notices…having more followers also raises the profile of the blog which effects search results and overall promotion on the internet. 

2) Tweet, repost on Facebook, or pass along by email posts you enjoy at the new site

3) Post comments on the new blog - feel free to give honest critique or share your reactions. These blogs are venues for me to try ideas out and get feedback as part of the overall moving towards publishing process. So getting your feedback is really valuable. If you really are to shy to post comments, please send me emails instead.

3) Tell your friends about the new blog.

4) Pray for me: I want these next ventures to take me wherever I can serve my fellow humans best as a writer, thinker, and public wonderer. 

5) You can follow me on twitter if you have an account (you'll see the link on the new page).

With heartfelt thanks,

David.

Voluntary Deprivation - A Costco Awakening

How do people without SUV’s shop at Costco? It staggers me that people with little cars would even bother to come. 

Today as I was visiting the Mecca of overabundance (Costco)  I caught myself thinking about how important it is to hoard things in order to avoid the dreaded circumstance of running out. 

You might think that I’m being dramatic to make a point, but my behaviour (500 garbage bags…really?) suggests that I’m actually a little afraid of running out of stuff. What if it’s morning and I don’t have enough cereal options to choose from? What if I’m hankering for a turkey burger but don’t have pineapple jalapeño sauce to top it off? I always have at least 4 jars of peanut butter - just in case Costco doesn’t carry their brand of it for a few months.

One day at check-out, I told the cashier that I was overjoyed that a product was back because they hadn’t carried it for months and I had almost had to go without because my stash was depleted. I reflected to her that this might be a part of the corporate strategy; a kind of intentional practice to induce fear of deprivation, which would increase my tendency to hoard (by which I mean: buying 4 kilograms of sun-dried tomatoes). She smiled at me, in a knowing kind of way. Not acknowledging the hidden liturgy of the church of Costco out loud, but affirming my moment of recognition, my realization that I had been formed by the practices of the corporation. 

So today as I was gunning down the aisle to see if they finally have the 18-pack of organic mac and cheese that’s been out for a little while, this hits me: I’m afraid of deprivation. Afraid, not quite in the same way that I’m fearful of my family being annihilated in a tragic car crash, but at least mildly anxious about the prospect of going without. And while I may not experience the emotion of anxiety, my behaviour tells the story. 

My next realization was that we tend to be anxious about things we aren’t exposed to. The key to treating most forms of anxiety is through exposure: your brain learns that the anticipated outcome either doesn’t happen or if it does, it isn’t as awful as you expected. But if you don’t have any exposure, you don’t learn that you can cope with that thing you’re anxious about….which is a round about way of coming to terms with the fact that I haven’t had to experience deprivation in any significant way in quite a while. 

While this absence of deprivation might seem to many like an achievement, or even the way things are supposed to be for white middle class professional men, to me it’s a recognition that power and privilege have begun to insulate me from the real world. 

My position in this society has allowed me to create an illusion that my independence and self sufficiency can create a personal version of the world in which being deprived is non-existent. The overabundance of my world, and its celebrations of excess, have shaped me into a person who fears losing things I don’t even need. 

A part of my poverty of excess, is the belief that I need to protect myself against the loss of inessentials. 

Hoarders aren’t just the folks who won’t throw anything away and can’t walk on the floors of their living spaces for all the junk that is in the way. We are a society of hoarders. We are constantly taking more than we need to protect ourselves against the fear of being without.

Am I the only one who has spiritual awakenings in the freezer section of Costco? 

So I started putting some stuff back. I started making a few specific choices to either risk deprivation (relax, there’s still two jars of peanut butter in the pantry) or actually enter into some small forms of deprivation right now. We have no almond bark, and we shall go without this week, even though it was on sale. 

And I started thinking about what else I might do to intentionally expose myself to this dreaded deprivation. What kind of practices might help me lean into this fear?

After the check-out, as I passed through the food court part of the store with it’s delicious and cheap soft-serve ice cream, I remembered that there’s a long standing practice from a variety of spiritual traditions that might just be designed to help me with this problem: fasting.

Fasting is a form of temporary voluntary deprivation.

It’s not the same deprivation that billions of people on the planet face each day, but it’s an experience that invites transformation. Fasting allows us to choose deprivation for the sake of allowing it to form us in all the positive ways it is able.

We tend to think of deprivation as entirely bad.  I realize that some might read this and see my exaltation of deprivation as proof of how privileged I am that I would dare consider it to have any merit. They might think that only people with too much would start to idealize being hungry. (A similar argument has been made about anorexia being an expression of Western decadence) But I think we can still engage in some voluntary deprivation without idealizing it, or forgetting that most others in the world are deprived without choice.

I'm not suggesting that we should all adopt a kind of asceticism that turns deprivation into something we use to prove to ourselves or others how "spiritual" we are. But in a culture of overabundance maybe there is real value to choosing some occasional deprivations, like fasting, as a form of counterconditioning from time to time.

I fasted once for non-medical reasons years ago. It was awful. I became obsessed with food. Instead of it being the beautiful spiritual experience I imagined it would be, it became a hyper-focus on my physical desire to feel full. But what I didn't grasp at the time was that embracing deprivation rather than becoming obsessed with escaping from it was crucial to the practice having real value.

Deprivation, when we aren’t frantic for escape, can form us in good ways.

It can reorient us to our interdependence on the planet, and on each other, while shifting us away from our illusions of self-sufficiency.

Deprivation can help us turn away from our endless preoccupations, and allow us an opportunity to be present again with ourselves and the world. What happens when people are “deprived” of their smart phones? It invites us to be here and actually with each other, although we may not always capitalize on the opportunity. 

And in my Costco awakening I realized that deprivation can expose us in small ways to the experience of lacking something, and in turn help us learn that we are able to cope. Many of us catastrophize the experience of hunger. I sure do. It's not really a rational fear, but our emotional reaction to the idea of being hungry, or being without is so overstated, and so untested, that we live lives dedicated to avoiding the possibility of going without. Fasting brings us into confrontation with those imagined catastrophes and lets us experience that going without is not a so terrible and even is something we can cope with.

Perhaps little cars, however “impractical” or inconvenient are an invitation to some forms of deprivation. Perhaps our commitments to ever increasing capacity is feeding our clinging to overabundance by supporting our avoidance of deprivation. Perhaps a little car at Costco is the safest way to go after all.

The Zebra is the Lens

I’ve discovered something remarkable about Zebras. 

Yes, aside from the fact that they make an annual migration of 1,800 miles - among the longest of any land animal.

Zebras are an excellent metaphor for reality…black and white stripes…anyone?

Okay let me explain myself. 

So I’m walking down the street, a couple of blocks from my house, listening on my iPod to Richard Rohr talk about having a non-dual view of the world. Most of us start out life thinking of things in binary terms: good vs bad, success vs failure, right vs wrong, us vs them, and so on. This tendency towards duality, or seeing things just in black or white is a problem. As we mature spiritually we began to appreciate that seeing things in black and white, just doesn’t really capture reality very well. Or at least, seeing the world through a lens of either/or isn’t a helpful or healthy way of thinking.  Non-dualistic thinking, in which we consider reality in “yes/and” ways, seems to make us more able to live inside the paradoxes and tensions of spiritual truth.

Now when I say something like, “50 shades of grey” it conjures up an entirely different set of meanings for a lot of people. But this greyness of the world, in a whole wide range of shades, is how I’ve been thinking for a while; at least since my old black and white ways of thinking about things kind of came apart at the seems a few years ago. Seeing things as grey, is both a badge of honour and a great problem for those of us who think of ourselves as progressive. Lots of us think that seeing things as grey is a sign of our progress, while our more conservative brothers and sisters see it as our fundamental weakness. Greyness, especially when it comes to moral ambiguity can be really great when it comes to being inclusive and accepting, but it does make holding convictions rather difficult. (Other than the conviction that everyone who doesn’t see things as greyish as you do is hopelessly backward and intolerant) 

Being open and loving others just seems like an easier thing to do inside of a framework of grey. But what about those times when loving people involves calling them out on their brokenness and mistakes? Problem: if everything is grey how and where do we hold ourselves or others to standards? What often ends up happening amongst us more left leaning folks is that we become inconsistent with our use of a “greyer” perspective. Admittedly, I can be pretty arbitrary about when I see the world as grey; choosing to do so when it suits me/lets me off the hook (like when it comes to saving for retirement by owning stocks in multinational corporations who do terrible things) and then switching back to black and white as a matter of convenience (like when other people do things I think are terrible, especially certain politicians).

So as I’m walking and listening to Father Rohr, I pass by a local bar which has it’s patio open and folks enjoying one of the first warm nights this frozen Canada has seen in a while. Now this particular bar has somewhat of a reputation, for a lot of things, but not least of which is the heavy presence of cougars. Not the large cats you might find in a jungle - I mean the other kind of cougars. And of course one of the staples in a cougar’s wardrobe is none other than zebra print. So I’m listening to my esteemed padre talk about how Jesus is constantly deconstructing the dualistic thinking of his day and replacing it with non-dualistic ideas. Even the idea of being both fully divine and fully human is a non-dualistic concept of who Jesus is. And out of the corner of my eye, at about 50 paces in the distance, I see a cougar wearing a zebra skin mini skirt, with matching heels.

Instead of appreciating this fine display of fashion prowess, my mind went a different direction. 

From a distance, zebras look kind of greyish. But as everyone knows, that grey is just a product of black and white merging as the distance of the object exceeds the acuity of your cornea. They have black and white stripes nonetheless, and what matters is the angle and distance and lighting that affects your perception. Apparently even insects have trouble with perceiving zebras, and it’s believed that one of the benefits of their stripes is that biting insects can’t make sense of the contrasts. 

The truth is: there is good and evil. There is light and dark. Not everything is morally ambiguous. Conservatives and liberals, you can both be right sometimes and even at the same time! (Ha! See what I did there? Non-dualistic thinking about the age old conservative vs liberal dichotomy) Things can be both black and white, and also grey at the same time, depending on your perspective and the viewing context.

Freedom of speech - a good a thing isn’t it? Well, for someone who has lived under oppression and not been allowed to speak their conscience freely it might seem like a black and white issue. But for some of us who have long taken for granted this freedom and witnessed it’s abuses in the form of hate crimes and the music of Michael Bolton, it seems rather more greyish. Then which is it?

Yes…and. It’s all of the above. It’s grey and black and white. 

It’s a zebra. 

Ethnic groups? Zebras

Religions? Zebras.

Governments? Zebras.

The internet and electronic media? Zebras.

The New York Yankees? Not zebras - just evil, and ruining baseball

(Actually, they too are zebras, and now that I recall that they wear pinstripes, I can never look at them with the same malice again….)

It depends on your level of analysis, your context, and it depends on what else you’ve been looking at.

I realize that my desire to sort the world into black and white is a vast misjudgement of how things really are so often. People are never all good or all bad. Individuals as a whole are always grey. Even some of the most infamous perpetrators of evil have been known to be capable of great love and kindness towards others. Our minds kind of blow up a little because we can’t compute or categorize a person who engages in genocide during the day but goes home and loves their family. We have such difficulty with the idea that they have stripes of good and evil in them….how even we have stripes of dark and light in us. We need a lens, a metaphorical construct to be able to hold in our minds the reality of any given person’s black and white and grey qualities - all at the same time. 

Zebras, you are magnificent. Not just to middle age single females for whom your skins provide fashion accessories in the search to attract a mate. But in your fine hides you effortlessly capture this beautiful essence of human reality: black and white, and grey, all at the same time. The Zebra is the lens. It gives us the metaphor for understanding that much of what we see is grey, likely because the vision of the human mind and heart is so limited. But viewed from a different perspective there are black and white realities where true good and evil live in the same lowly beast. 

Poverty of Excess Part 1 - The Good Life

Marla came to my practice recently, complaining of depression and anxiety that she simply could not explain. 

“My life is good!”, she reported. “I have everything a person could want. A good marriage. A home. A job. Financial security. Good health. Two well adjusted children. Annual family vacations….”

In her list, which follows the quintessential middle class North American script for living a “good” life, Marla was relaying to me that she had ticked all the boxes but still found life wanting. Even more impressively she had thus far escaped any significant tragedies that would wound or scar her life. 

So now, plagued by fears and sadness she could not explain, sleepless nights, difficulty leaving the house, and an abiding sense that she was headed towards losing her mind, Marla found herself overwhelmed, yet struggling to feel as if any of her suffering was legitimate.

 I’ve changed her name, but really, it could be any number of male of female patients from a variety of age groups and walks of life, that present for consultation with some similar version of a very similar set of problems. All of them in this particular boat describe themselves as unable to see why they should be suffering in this way without any sufficient reason to provide them with valid justification for needing attention from specialists. And it is precisely because of this apparently illegitimacy of their suffering that they struggle to be open with other people about their mounting psychological impairment. Most of them watch the news and observe the suffering taking place in other parts of the world, and wonder what it is that they have to be so sad about or afraid of. 

It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that when symptoms emerge, it’s a sign that there’s something wrong with our selves. But sometimes environments can be the source of dis-ease…not every problem is internal in its origin. It can be tempting to blame biology and overlook the role our culture has in creating illness. In fact, I think there’s some financial interests pretty deeply invested in having us believe that chemical imbalances are all the explanation we need for mental illness. There’s an entire economy at stake in helping us avoid the confrontation with this question: “what if the ‘good life’ as it’s been presented to us, isn’t so ‘good’ after all?”

Is it possible that this overabundance is actually creating problems within us? Could it be that we still lack something even in the midst of all this wealth?

There is, another kind of poverty. It’s the poverty of excess. It’s a poverty that exists in the midst of the kind overabundance so common to many people in the developed world. With so many resources it’s very difficult to regard our lives as deprived of anything. But the poverty of excess is not one we can solve by simply acquiring more of something because it is our acquisition driven lifestyles that are actually creating the poverty in the first place.

As I noted in my post, “First World Problems”, it can sometimes feel invalid to complain about the kind of suffering experienced by those who live in the top 10% of world incomes (which is most people in North America). But ignoring the spiritual illness brought on by individualism, consumerism, and following the middle class “script” may actually perpetuate the behaviors that we engage in that result in the oppression of the developing world.

In the midst of our poverty of excess, it can be difficult to put our finger on exactly what we lack, because we appear to have so much, too much even. So what does a poverty of excess look like?

I realize this is too large a topic to cover in one blog post. But I want to start first by drawing our attention to the mere existence of the poverty of excess or overabundance. 

It’s been said that if you want to know what water is like, don’t ask a fish. It’s hard to see the poverty we swim in in our culture. Traveling and living elsewhere can help so greatly with this - like swimming in a different pond for a while to gain perspective on your natural habitat. For the longer you’re immersed, the more difficult it can be to describe what it is you’re immersed in. 

People like Marla are sometimes unaware that there even is a culture they’re immersed in, let alone begin to know how to describe it.  I’m not sure that I do either. But let’s try. Let’s begin by recognizing that in the water of our culture there are messages like, “you can never have enough or be enough”. Let’s start to open our minds to the counter-intuitive reality that excess, or overabundance doesn’t create a sense of sufficiency, but actually creates anxiety about deprivation and a vague sense of needing more. 

Maybe we can even learn to recognize how some of our emotional struggles emerge in a context where comfort and security are presented as normative, and suffering is regarded as a failure to live up to the culturally ordained plan for the good life. 

Return Trip to Barcelona

He was loud, he was drunk, and although I could not understand him, his lack of respect for personal boundaries was making me nervous.

I checked the faces of my fellow train passengers, and they ranged from apathy to concern, but mostly they tried to ignore him. A few had moved away. He seemed more interested in the pretty girls, so I puffed up my physique a little, hoping to dissuade him from engaging my wife. He was yelling in Spanish, of which I spoke none, and which made him feel a little more menacing. I'd already been robbed on a subway train in Madrid a few days before, so fear was taking over and I was looking for an exit.

Some of the things he said were clearly disgusting the locals, for that set of reactions seems universal.   It was a mixed group of what seemed like commuters and tourists. Some dressed in the comfort-oriented clothes cherished by tourists. Others, more fashionably dressed and non-plussed by the theatrics I assumed were perhaps inhabitants of the area. I could only imagine what he was saying as he made his way down the train car closer to our seats. I didn't know this particular person, but I felt I'd seen enough in my life to "know" the basic situation. Contempt for him began to saturate my thoughts.

I was riding a train to Barcelona in the first place, because we had been visiting the legendary Monestario de Montserrat. This is a cathedral and religious community built 900 meters up in a mountain in the 12th century. Legend has it the holy grail was kept here for a period. But it's more recently famous for it's statue known as the "Black Madonna". Visitors can file by and touch the foot of the statue, with the hopes that it will bring some kind of blessing to them for having made the pilgrimage to the sacred site. There are claims of miracles over the centuries in this hallowed place.

After visiting the statue, I felt nothing, except perhaps a sense of confirmed skepticism. Relics like this have never much inspired me. And I even felt somewhat alienated from other religious people who seem to find connection with these sites so meaningful and even mystically gratifying.

Perhaps it was because we took the cable car to the top of the mountain instead of making the hike of several miles up the mountain on foot.

Perhaps I carried with me an unrealistic notion that God would be hanging out in European cathedrals because they're really old and beautiful and somehow more apt to capture the presence of a deity than the newly minted "auditoriums" of evangelical Christian churches.

Perhaps it was my skepticism going in to the whole experience, that caused me to miss whatever it was I was supposed to experience.

And while I felt a certain awe for the devotion of monks who laboured so tirelessly for this place, as well as for those who have preserved it for the centuries since, I couldn't completely quell the uneasy feeling that God seemed so distant in a place we expect her to inhabit.

Such abstract reflections quickly vanished when the intoxicated gentleman on the train ride back made eye contact with me, before taking up residence in the seat across the aisle. Now I could smell the mix of alcohol and filth, and virtually taste the distress of his existence. He sat down next to an elderly lady and began to wax eloquent.

Unlike the other passengers she made eye contact. She listened. There was a softness in her face and demeanour towards him. After several minutes of earnest listening, she asked him a question. I couldn't tell what it was, but it stopped him cold in his tracks. For the first time in thirty minutes of train ride he was silent. We all began to watch as the quiet transpired.

"Abrazo" he said, with tears forming in his eyes.

Somehow I knew what he was asking. Perhaps it's because "abrazo" sounds so similar to the English "embrace", that I knew he was asking her for hug. The eyes of the train focused on the drama unfolding in front of us. But without hesitation this humble fellow passenger rose to her feet and opened her arms to him. She held him in her abrazo for as long as he needed. I don't remember how long it actually occurred. I think those of us witnessing this act of love and compassion soon averted our gaze as if to hold sacred by granting privacy the intimacy that was taking place in our midst.

I feel fairly certain I encountered God on the train to Barcelona.

I'd been disappointed to find God missing in the cathedrals and relics, but found him instead in the love and compassion of an old lady toward what seemed to me someone pathetic and frightening. No matter what cynicism was perverting my mind at the time, I could not miss the meeting of heaven and earth when when one when human gave generously of her love to another human that most of us were despising. At the end of my train ride I started another journey; one of looking for and finding God out amongst his creation and especially among his people.

Like all journeys it's had highlights and it's had forgettable moments. Times of boredom and despair, and times of wondering if I'm on the right track, or if there even is such a thing as a spiritual journey. But God keeps showing up in the most unexpected places. Or as Nadia Bolz-Weber calls them, "all the wrong people". God shows up in the saints and the sinners, the self-proclaimed faithful and the self-proclaimed atheists, and sometimes I get the strange sense that she shows up in me.

Recently I've even found God showing up in church buildings, in congregations, and in the lives of religious people of both great faith and great doubts. After meeting God on the train, I often assumed that God had abandoned the religious and was only showing up in weird and unexpected places. Sometimes when we've been hurt by people and institutions we can start to assume he can't be there in the midst of those places or those people.

But as fans of the film The Big Lebowski will recall, "The dude abides"

Wherever love is shown and wherever love is needed, "the dude" abides.

And sometimes "the dude" converts hearts of ordinary religious folk like me. Giving us a new story to live, and shaping us into the kind of people that somewhat resemble the old lady on the train to Barcelona. Helping us to become people who are not so afraid that we might embrace the world and its brokenness.

You might not recognize him at first...

If you have trouble recognizing the risen Christ....

Take heart, it seems that just about no one who was actually there did either. After reading the four gospel accounts this morning I notice that while the accounts are fairly varied on their details, they all seem to emphasize the difficulty people had recognizing Jesus.

The eyes of expectation make it difficult to see sometimes.

We think we're seeing the world "realistically" and in the process miss important things. It seems that none of the visitors to empty tomb expected him to be alive. Dead bodies just don't do that, and I suspect that we scientifically minded folk would find the idea of resurrection even more impossible than the people in the scripture stories. But it happened that day, and people who knew him and loved him couldn't, "see for looking" as the old phrase goes.

Despair does that to us.

It tells us what is and isn't possible. Despair shapes our perception so strongly that we have trouble seeing things any other way. Despair tells us that the promises made to us are too good to be true. Despair tells us that we are seeing the world for how it really is. Despair makes it hard to believe a story about a resurrected Messiah, and leads us to wonder if just maybe the wishful thinking of ancient Hebrews got them telling a story about Jesus that gives hope but couldn't have actually happened.

Despair causes us to miss the signs of resurrection in our own lives.

I don't know much about physical resurrection of dead bodies. But I do know this - people come back to life emotionally and spiritually on a regular basis. Ordinary folks have the most extraordinary stories of coming back to life from loss, addiction, suffering, trauma, and personal brokenness. When we consent to it, God changes us.

I live in Southern Ontario - where Easter mostly happens during cold and dreary days of a spring that promises to come but hasn't yet shown up. When we use the rebirth of natural life as a metaphor for resurrection at Easter, it can be rather unconvincing for us as we scrape frost from the windshield and put on warm winter clothes. But where eyes cannot see, a reality is occurring beyond vision. And the despair of a bleak and chilly Easter morning is quelled only when we remember that resurrection is the unstoppable promise of a God who is difficult to recognize at times.

This morning, may you recognize the signs of resurrection. Whether it be joyful music or a gentle stillness that reminds you - death is not the final answer. The parts of you that seem as dead as the trees and grass are waiting to burst forth with life! Don't allow your expectations about how the world "works" to cause you to miss the miraculous unfolding of hearts and minds and lives that are being brought back to life.  This victory over death is so much bigger than a physical resurrection. It is the promise that new life is possible in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Walls, Uncertainty, Vulnerability, and Donald Trump

Remember when God was simple, clear, definable, predictable?

Remember when God fit into the neat and tidy packages of our dogma and theology?

Mostly I'm glad to have left that behind. But some days I miss it. 

I miss the God I could wrap my head around because John Piper and John MacArthur had distilled him into a nice systematic, consumable product with all the proof texts to boot. I miss the domesticated Jesus who took care of my sin problem and was my convenient friend. I miss being able to draw up the world into good guys and bad guys and believe that if only the right politician were elected they would set things right. 

I think I understand why people would love Donald Trump. For a passing moment, I even wish that I could squeeze my consciousness back into that little box and believe that the Donald really could fix everything. I find myself less judgemental and more compassionate to him and his followers when I realize the fantasy they embrace is so utterly human in the face of so much uncertainty.

Grey is such a hard color to live in. Black and white might be a stark reality, but at least you know what's what. And walls...whether they be the physical ones Trump wants to build, or the psychological ones we all find so attractive when we categorize the world into us and them, or good and bad...well it's not so hard to see why people might be willing to swallow what he says. 

Just like the all those people voting in the republican primaries, I miss the security of living behind walls of false certainty. 

The world is so uncertain. And as I've grown up and discovered that God defies my categories and concepts, I've felt liberated and yet...I also find this mysterious Divine presence doesn't give me the certainty I long for. 

A mysterious world, and an even more mysterious God, bring with them enormous vulnerability. 

In captivity for speaking out against the communist state, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said this:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” 

It's easy to look at the primaries with a streak of righteous indignation and see ourselves as above falling for the same tricks. But the hard truth is that followers of the Donald are not so because they are stupid, bigoted, or ignorant Americans. We would love such an explanation to be true! They are followers because they are so deeply human, just like us. They are reacting to a message that promises solutions to the things they fear. Donald Trump's resonance is the false certainty he offers. That he is never required to support or justify his certainty is further proof of how desperate people are for it. All he has to do is shout it and seem credible, and at least some of the populace will believe, no matter what contradictions it may otherwise stir up. Yet it's easy for us who think of ourselves as smarter than all of that to construct our own false certainties behind our walls of progressivism. 

But what if Solzhenitsyn is correct? What if the line of good and evil runs through our hearts? What if no wall can protect us from what lives within us? What if walls only serve to obscure the reality of evil inside of us? What if false certainties, like a kind of psychological wall, can never protect us from ourselves and never rescue us from the terrifying truth that life and God are uncertain?

Faith - this belief in things not perceived - is hard, and not always a comfort. False certainty feels more comfortable so long as it's the one we find appealing. But embracing uncertainty, which is what I now think faith is, is not so much a quick bit of reassurance or comfort. Instead, it offers us a challenge. We can demand that the world be as we see it - in black in white or simple terms. Or, we can dare to believe that this uncomfortable, disquieting, mysterious, uncertain, grey way of seeing the world is a better reflection of how God and her creation really are.

Donald Trump and his followers are not people of any kind of faith. They may be religious yes, but theirs (and so often mine) is a world view that replaces faith with its direct opposite: false certainty. 

But in them I see a sisterhood and brotherhood of humanity as we all attempt to grapple with the deep vulnerability we are confronted with as we live in the mysterious and uncertain nature of God and his universe. We cannot hate them, because we find kinship with them in those same utterly human mistakes we all make when faced with vulnerability.

It seems so simple that it may sound trite, but there is only one way I trust to respond to the swell of support for this candidate. We must meet the fear and vulnerability that comes with uncertainty, with love. We must find new ways each day to love each other generously. For only love can drive out fear. We must look at the line that Solzhenitsyn says "runs through our hearts" and choose love instead of evil. We must choose to tear down walls of self protection and risk love, even for those who seem to be our political enemies. It is only in loving that we will find ourselves free from false certainties and the fear that attracts us to them. And it is in loving like this, that we encounter, but do not solve the mystery of an uncertain God. 

In praise of mindlessness

Warning: this is a weird post. I don't really believe what I'm writing, but the truth is, it's quite often the story I'm living. So while I'd like to tell you it's a witty tongue-in-cheek indictment of popular culture, I'm painfully aware of how often my actions suggest I believe this stuff more that I want to. All right, you've been warned. Gloves are off. Welcome to my mixed up world.


Mindfulness is all the rage these days. It seems everywhere you turn you'll hear about it.

I've tried being mindful, and I admit there are perks. But I think we need to stop being so hard on mindlessness, it has its benefits too. Being mostly unaware and not paying attention to what's going on around you can really pay off. Besides, it's just too much work to be mindful. How can anything good require that much practice or dedication?

And maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but....

I like being distracted.

I like not being present.

The past and the future can be such pleasant escapes from the terrible present moment.

Maybe I don't want to be here, in this moment okay? Maybe this moment sucks compared to what happened two weeks ago when I was on vacation, or next week when I bite into a juicy steak. Is it really so bad if I escape the boredom of everyday life by checking out, and playing a mindless game on my cell phone instead?

Now some of you might be taking me for a fool - but think about this - when you try to be fully present what happens? Exactly, you find your mind wandering off to someplace else. Maybe it's because this moment really isn't so grand after all? Why don't we just give our minds what they want: permission to wander wherever they see fit rather than always trying to bring our attention back to stupid things like breathing and body sensations and the eternal "now".

Instead of getting so caught up in the gifts of the present, let's think just for a moment about all the bounty that comes with being mindless.

So here are the gifts of not being present. With a little fanfare I now present to you: "the gifts of mindlessness".

1. Being mindless allows me to consume more. Have you ever tried eating slowly and paying attention to your food? Yikes, I can only eat half of what I normally stuff down my gut. How am I supposed to make it to dessert if I'm too full from the entree because I was too busy savouring the bites in my mouth? As Lenin once said, "quantity has a quality all it's own". Or, as the glorious chefs at Hungry Man TV dinners claim, "it's good to be full".  I appreciate that some prefer small bits that are savoured, but let's not forget how pleasant and powerful gluttony can feel. If I was just eating to survive, or even just for the pleasure of the food itself, I can see how mindfulness would be helpful. But I'm a North American, and lots of my choices are expressions of my power and privilege. I eat and I waste to prove to myself and others just how rich and powerful I am. Gluttony is an affirmation of my superiority and dominance over the poor and disenfranchised. If I want to drive a Hummer to show everyone that excessive burning of fossil fuels is my privilege, than so be it. Someday when you have access to more credit than is good for you, you can choose to be wasteful too. Remember what our world leaders said when the economies crashed in 2008? Go shopping. Consume. Spend money. We have a culture based on consumption and waste. If we start paying attention and valuing what we have, bad things are going to happen. It's just not patriotic to think too much about this kind of thing. And all this talk of paying attention is a big barrier to my thoughtless exploitation of the world's resources and people.

2.  Mindlessness gives us the ability to multitask. If I have to be fully present with this moment, I can't be checking my phone, watching tv, eating, and parenting all at the same time. Look, I'm sure present moment awareness is amazing, but who can tolerate its inefficiency? Meditation and retreats are a beautiful luxury for hipsters and artsies, but the rest of us don't have time for that! If I'm not doing at least two things at once, there's going to need to be at least two of me in the world to squeeze all my productivity into one 24hr day. Has anybody thought through the economic implications of being single focused?. And how could I possibly consume the media content I enjoy if I'm only doing one thing at a time? Right now as I write this, I have five tabs open on my browser. One tab is playing music from YouTube (I'm really digging Billy Joel's classical music) Two tabs are still open from some shopping I'm doing in between sentences. One tab has my email open. And of course my cell phone will likely go off soon with calls from patients. I am a lean mean multitasking machine because Lord Steve Jobs has created such a wonderful tool. Think of all the limits on production and consumption we would place on ourselves if we stopped doing so many things at once. I don't want to do less. The world needs more of me and I of it. And multitasking is the venue to make that happen. So what if it raises my blood pressure? Isn't being hyper-vigilant worth it?

3. But of all the greatness of mindlessness, the benefit I favour most is the ability it gives me to check-out. If I don't want to be here, I'm really good at being somewhere else. The other day I was watching a YouTube video and one of those ads came on - you know, the one's they don't allow you to skip. It was about orphans in Africa. Truly upsetting, the kind of images that stick in your head and pop back up when you're trying to sleep. But sweet mindlessness came to my rescue. Rather than getting sucked into that super downer ad, I just went somewhere else in my head. Normally I could just check who's endorsed me this week on LinkedIn, but my phone wasn't on the couch and getting up was going to be too much effort. Last week mindlessness let me go on a charity walk to raise money for homeless people without even thinking about homelessness, or noticing the homeless people we probably passed on the walk. Instead I got to tell people about the swanky beach we visited recently.

But I don't just want to check out from boredom, I have bigger things to avoid. So here's my problem with being mindful. It's just too painful. If I'm going to really pay attention to the world around me, I'm going notice that our civilization is a bit of a train wreck. I live in the comfortable part of the world so it's not nearly as messy as the reality some people would have to be present with. But my inner world isn't necessarily a walk on the beach either. If you've read this blog, you might get a sense of how gross and selfish I can be in my heart and mind. Who wants to be present with that? Let's just move along and not spend too much time naval gazing to notice all the dark bits of me that hide out or are unobserved.

And the sadness I feel from listening to people's suffering all day long? No thanks. I'm not going to stick around with that any more than I have to. Give me the sweet distractions of being preoccupied with the super important things like trying to figure out whether the Packers should draft a linebacker or a tight end in the draft next month. There's a reason why people immerse themselves in the awesome worlds of Angry Birds, Bejewelled, Tetris, Minesweeper, and the like - because nobody wants to think about the heavy shit of reality after working all day and being a parent. If I want to feel something, I'll let Netflix take care of it thank you very much. They let me pick what I'm going to feel or not feel. And if I'm going to be disturbed by something like House of Cards (so dark, yet so enticing), Netflix allows me to keep it all in the land of make belief where it's not real. I can even turn it off or switch to something drole if it starts to feel a little too much.

Mindfulness, you're a nice hobby. I'll keep you in my back pocket with Yoga and prayer for when things get tough and I need a tool to help me get through.

Mindlessness, you're still my go-to gal. We make a great team in living the life everyone tells me I'm supposed to live. You keep me multitasking and distracted in a world of pain and chaos. You help me be the kind of producer and consumer that keeps the economy ticking along. Besides, after all these years together, how could I leave you now? A mindless life is so normal, so comfortable, so familiar. Yeah there are big problems in world, but why would I think I'm so important that I should try to do anything about them? There are lots of other more talented people who can take care of it. Me, I'll just keep my nose down, my iPod on, and multiple tabs open on my browser. It's easier that way. Don't fight it. Just go with the sweet mindless flow.

Mercy toward the unmerciful

I have a neighbor I've shown mercy on several occasions over the past 3 years. Actually, I should say "we", because it's a family effort.

Her forms of brokenness don't take very long to discover when you talk to her. I could give you the labels, but I think it's enough to tell you she has some long standing problems that have caused some destruction in her life and others.

So very often the compassion we feel toward her makes it easy to extend mercy, even when she destroyed some of property of ours. Other neighbours have been equally or even more kind toward her, being generous toward her and expecting nothing in return.

But I find mercy a much bigger struggle when I see this neighbour who has received mercy from lots of us on the street, turn around and fail to be merciful, fail to even be kind to the rest of the neighbourhood. She's the very first to call the police when someone does something she doesn't like. She picks fights. She goes looking for trouble with the very people who have been kind to her.

She's the kind of person that makes Calvinism start to have a kind of resonance with me. Jonathan Edwards' "sinners in the hand of an angry God" has some appeal to me when I'm trying to wrap my head around people's failure to respond to grace and mercy. At some point I want mercy to stop and people to get what I think they deserve. At some point I think people have had their share of mercy and don't seem to be getting it, so maybe a little hellfire and brimstone will get the message through their thick skulls.

It makes me think of that story in Matthew 18, sometimes titled "the unmerciful servant":

23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold[h] was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.[i] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

I kind of like this little story - I bristle at the unmerciful servant - I have the same feeling of anger for my unmerciful neighbour...and I take a little hope in the idea that God will stop being mister nice guy and bring out the hammer on people like this.

But there's just one little problem. 

My neighbour isn't the only one who fails to show mercy even after being shown mercy herself. Sometimes even people who blog and write many words about mercy end up being shamefully unmerciful in their daily life! I've been given all this inspiration about mercy, and have come to appreciate the experience of it in my own life...but just like her, I so often fail to extend it to others. 

It turns out that the major difference between my neighbour and I, is that her unmerciful behaviour is more visible. That is, because she's openly causing problems in the neighbourhood, her lack of mercy is on display for us all to see. I, on the other hand, am a much more subtle and diplomatic fellow. I keep my failed mercy well covered under the veneer of civility. Sometimes my lack of mercy is only in my heart, hidden from the world.

Which is why the last bit of this Matthew passage stings me a little. Jesus says I have to forgive from my heart - he knows me well enough to apprehend my polished outward appearances and remind me that I'm not off the hook because I'm covert about my lack of mercy. My heart must actually forgive and be merciful - not because she deserves it, but because I've been given it. 

Her offences against the neighborhood are so small compared to depth and breadth of forgiveness and mercy that God has shown me. So when I think about it, I don't actually want God to get frustrated and implement a statute of limitations on mercy...because I will no doubt run out chances, if I haven't already. 

I don't know exactly how to reconcile Jesus' words at the end of the passage with the rest of his words about the endless and boundless quality of his love. I know that literal interpretation of parables is a little problematic. 

But what I learn about myself is that my attraction to the God of judgement, anger, punishment, and people getting what they deserve is always at its highest when I'm feeling self righteous. And my attraction to this kind of iron-fisted deity seems to evaporate pretty quickly when I'm seeing myself more humbly (realistically). 

Maybe there is a point at which God can no longer tolerate people being unmerciful because they are too destructive, too harmful to others. But I pray that I am not there yet. I hope that my heart never becomes so hardened that I fail to recognize the much bigger mercies I've received. I sense the need to constantly fight my self-righteous tendencies. I sense that I am swimming against the tide of culture telling me that I get what I deserve. Because I don't deserve any of the really important things in life - they are all gifts. And so I'm beginning to see how mercy and gratitude are interrelated. Perhaps to be a people of mercy, we must also cultivate gratitude, and allow ourselves to be reminded of our own cancelled debts, and the mysterious depth of mercy we have been given.

Mercy and Humiliation

God, out of his infinite mercy, made himself equal to us in the incarnation by identifying with the human condition. God makes us equal to him by transforming us into his own unconditional love.

-Fr. Thomas Keating 

Somehow I knew I wasn't done with blogging about mercy. It's following me around apparently.

Keating seems to be suggesting that one way in which God expresses mercy is by making himself equal with us. I suspect some will read that and consider it blasphemy. The idea of God lowering herself to the status of created humans is understandably insulting, and is likely one reason why other religions and sects have rejected this Christian doctrine. But if you think about it, the incarnation is sort of a blasphemous idea if we try to wrap our heads around the idea of Jesus being fully human and fully divine. Even if we consider it a part of our orthodox Christian faith, I think it's still an idea that we resist. 

But if we can tolerate the perceived blasphemy of a God who becomes equal with his own creation, there is perhaps a deeper understanding of mercy to be found. If one way God expresses mercy is by becoming equal with us, perhaps we too must express mercy by becoming equal with others. Maybe one of the biggest barriers we face in extending true mercy (not condescending "help" or pity), is that elevation of our selves above others. Maybe we can distinguish mercy from pity, in recognizing that in mercy we become equals rather than superiors who are nobly refraining from executing our version of justice.

I think I was stumbling around with this idea earlier in blog posts when I was bringing out Father Greg Boyle's idea of embracing kinship. In kinship we are reminding ourselves that not only do we belong to each other, but that we are equals in the human family. 

So mercy requires us to humble ourselves. It requires a certain "humiliation" of our egos if you will. 

Developing this concept, Fr. Keating says:

"The most productive effort is to accept the endless humiliations of the false self. The spiritual journey is not a career, but a succession of “diminutions of self,” as Teilhard de Chardin put it. This has nothing to do with the neurosis of a low self-image. It is simply the fact that we are completely dependent on the love of God. We are always in the arms of the beloved, whatever we may feel or think." (Contemplative Outreach, December 2015)

It seems to me that unlike God we don't become equals, we actually just learn to recognize that we already are equals with the rest of humanity. After our false and elevated selves have been broken down, we recognize ourselves as being just like everyone else - completely dependent on the love of God. 

So today I'm confronted with this profound mystery that God, and the people I look down on, and the people I think are better than me, are all in some respect equal to me through our shared humanity. I'm not suggesting the equality means we are all identical or even the same. I recognize that God maintains a superiority over me in some certain aspects because she is also divine. And just because I'm equal in my dependence on God's love doesn't mean I'm the exact same as ISIS or Desmond Tutu. But in so far as I am equal to all of these, I become more capable of mercy. 

As a person in a helping role this seems rather crucial to me. Professional health care can easily take on a dynamic of the helper being elevated and/or looking down on those seeking help. But as we tap into the flow of mercy we are changed into people who care for others out of equality rather than  responding to weakness from a place of superiority. 

God, help us all to see who we really are. Give us the courage to consent to having our false selves stripped away so we can recognize our equality with you and all humanity. Help us to receive your mercy and be changed by it so that we can extend mercy to others. 

Clinging to fragile things

Life is fragile.

This is both its tragedy and beauty at the same time.

Life seems like a hibiscus flower to me. Unfolding with astonishing beauty for only a day or two before it withers. It's delicate features so easy damaged by a harsh touch or damaging winds. And it happens so quickly that we can easily miss it - preoccupied as we so often are by unimportant things. But the fact that it is so quickly passing is also what makes it so precious. That it lives only briefly, is part of what makes it so beautiful to begin with. The cold and dismal landscape outside as I write this, makes me appreciate all the more the fleeting exquisiteness of June.

Months back I wrote about my obsession with pictures - with my foolhardy attempts to capture the past and keep it from...well, passing. Since then I've been trying to use photos instead as something to help me reorient myself to the present moment. Rather than yearn for what's passed when I look at them, I remind myself of what's still here in this moment.

That 5 year-old with the electric smile, whose picture is on my desktop reminding me of a happy time at San Diego's famed sunset cliffs. Now she's closer to 6, a lover of school, 3 inches taller, and a little more sassy. But her love, her joy, her laughter are still with me tonight. I can revel in them anytime I choose. Pictures have become something that point me towards revelling in the present moment.

It's so easy when we are confronted with the fragility of life to want to grasp hold, to cling to things so tightly because we fear losing them. That same 5-year old has a tendency to pick up flowers that have fallen and want to bring them home with her. Often in the process of clinging to her treasure she accidentally ruins them. Her attempt to protect and preserve by holding it tight in her hands, leads to crushed and wilted flowers. It's understandable - I cling to things in my own life - and in my attempts to preserve what is beautiful or precious I end up I clinging too tight just like her.

What strikes me now and again is my human tendency to want to cling to, and even worship the created things of this world instead of the Creator. I want to save the short-lived splendour of a flower, which is of course impossible. But that splendour points to something deeper, something eternal and omnipresent. I cannot keep the flower. I cannot preserve my precious and innocent 5 year-old. (Attempts to keep her a permanent 5 year-old would no doubt destroy her) But beauty and joy are experiences that point to the presence of the divine. And God, woven into the fabric of the universe, is not something I need to grasp or cling to, because God is always there. The same God that brings joy and delight through flowers or the blessing of a daughter, is always around me.

If God is love, than whenever I experience love, I also experience God.

There is no need then to grasp onto love from a particular person or in a particular experience, because love can be found wherever and whenever we have "eyes" for it.

Life is fragile and passing, but love is eternal. While the finite and temporal qualities of human existence are both tragic and beautiful, they are only passing reflections of the more eternal and omnipresent qualities of the divine. I want to cling less to God's reflection, and delight more in God herself. Maybe this is the "eternal" life Jesus offer us - that we can experience the eternal reality now if we connect with the presence of God in all the various forms it takes in our lives.

I've been looking for ways to preserve my photos to protect them from the passage of time and decay. And while this is a perfectly fine thing to do, what I realize is that attempts to preserve temporary things is no substitute for regularly bringing my heart and mind back to the eternal life I can encounter in the present moment.

May we all have eyes and ears and hearts that experience God's presence in the forms of love, joy, mercy, grace, beauty....and all the other ways we can experience him.

First World Problems

Over Christmas I was grumbling to myself about not having enough space in my fridge for all the food we had. As I honed my Tetris skills trying to find places for all of it to go and still be able to shut the door without food falling out, I realized I needed a much bigger fridge. Ironically, I have also complained at times that the fridge is too big - we are prone to losing things in it and finding them months later having evolved into life forms too awful to talk about.

Sometimes it's helpful to say these things out loud, so you can hear how ridiculous you're being.

"my fridge is too big" or "I have too much food".

Try saying these things out loud while watching a news report about people fleeing their country and living in refugee camps.

When I'm actually paying attention to the absurdity of my complaints, I'm convicted by how ungrateful I am and how entitled I seem about my life.

Sometimes we use the label "first-world problems" to describe the kinds of ridiculous things many of us get upset about.

Rohinton Mistry, in his astounding tale of life and suffering in India entitled, A Fine Balance, captures it well in this little dialogue:

“I've done lots of jobs. Right now, I'm a hair collector."
"That's good", said Ishvar tentatively. "What do you have to do as a hair-collector?"
"Collect hair."
"And there is money in that?"
"Oh very big business. There is a great demand for hair in foreign countries."
"What do they do with it? Asked Om skeptical." 
"Many different things. Mostly they wear it. Sometimes they paint it in different colors - red, yellow, brown, blue. Foreign women enjoy wearing other people's hair. Men also, especially if they are bald.  
In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things.” 

Fearing baldness - a "first-world problem" indeed.

It's rare that a line I read in a book sticks with me for years, but that idea about us being so rich we can afford to fear silly things has stayed with me, perhaps one could even say haunted me.

So let me continue to own this (although I know I'm not alone): at times I complain about things of insignificance and even believe I am truly suffering over them.

I close my eyes to the images in the news, and block out my memories of what I saw in the developing world so that I can ignore the kinds of suffering that go on for two-thirds of the world's inhabitants. To be perfectly honest, sometimes I don't really want perspective on my problems - I'd rather complain and feel justified in doing it. I don't think many of us want to perceive ourselves as privileged or even unfairly blessed.

But as I recognize my kinship with all of humanity I'm forced to consider the fact that I might be like Cinderella's older step-sisters - complaining about my dress to wear to the ball while someone else in my family is doing hard labour.

A friend of mine forbids her kids to use the phrase "I'm starving" because she feels it disrespects the suffering of people who are actually starving around the world. It's probably the least we can do.

But here's the other side of the coin with "first world problems"....

...sometimes they do represent true suffering, and we are foolish to quickly dismiss them merely because they do not appear to have the gravity of physical deprivation that much of the world suffers.  I would even argue that when we ignore those true instances of suffering by labeling them as insignificant first world problems, we do a harm not only to ourselves, but to those in developing countries.

Is baldness truly a form of suffering? Obviously not. But it's not just about hair is it? Many people fear baldness because they fear being isolated, rejected, even being unloveable. Our vanity in wealthy nations is so often a product of deeper fears: symbolic, rather than literal dangers. As Mistry points out in this passage, wealth means we can afford to be afraid of silly things.

However, our wealth also creates some of the conditions that make us vulnerable to these symbolic fears in the first place.

We fear abandonment and isolation based on loss of sex appeal because social bonds are weak in countries like ours where individualism has become a dominant ideology. Where families and tribes are no longer the chief organizing principle of social arrangements, connection is now based on the ability to attract social bonds, rather than on the basis of birth into a particular group.

I have no interest in defending my absurd complaints about having too much food in my house. But my contradictory complaints (fridge too small and too big) are a symptom of bigger problems - problems that shouldn't be ignored but rather magnified and addressed. And when we minimize the cultural sickness of living in North American society, we overlook the brokenness of our cultures and remain wounded in ways that I think actually perpetuates our mistreatment of the developing world. If we constantly de-legitimize the problems of loneliness, consumerism, individualism, and lives controlled by technology, because they don't seem as devastating as human-trafficking or lack of access to clean water, we run the risk of missing how wealth and overabundance create their own forms of suffering and brokenness.

I appreciate that we must be careful not to enter into pity for ourselves and equate our suffering with many of those in the developing world. The truth is, suffering cannot be compared. But to write off the problems associated with over-abundance entirely because they're not devastating to human life in the same ways, is also a problem. I think it's a mistake to focus exclusively on the starvation of some in our human family, while ignoring the spiritual illness of our own gluttony.

I do think it's high time we looked carefully at how our overabundance is shaping us and harming us. Not so that we can ignore the problems of those in poverty or make ourselves feel less guilty about our participation in their repression, but so that we can pursue our own healing and restoration for the good of the world. Sometimes we have to fix what's broken in ourselves before we can offer help to others. But before we can fix it, we have to acknowledge that the values and systems we participate in that cause such inequality, are also harming ourselves.