On Anxiety and Gratitude

I've been thinking and writing a lot about anxiety recently (offline for now...but today a little sneak peak).

Because anxiety is so unpleasant, we often wonder how to make it go away. And while I don't think that our primary focus should be on removing anxiety, I do think that we as humans can do things to reorient our relationship to the anxiety that is an essential feature in all of our lives.

One of the key ways to do this is cultivating the practice of gratitude.

I don't mean just being thankful, or communicating appreciation to others, or even summoning up a warm fuzzy feeling after binging on turkey.

Instead I'm talking about gratitude as an entire perspective, perhaps even a world-view, that recognizes that all that we have in our lives are gifts.

This computer to write on.... a gift.
These words and ideas to share with others... a gift.
This meal to enjoy and be nourished by... a gift.
This friend who calls to unburden themselves because life is hard... a gift.
This house to live in and create a space of hospitality... a gift.
This sinus cold that forces me to slow down... a gift.
This breath... a gift.

When we immerse ourselves in this way of thinking, it reminds us that our belief that we possess so much of what we cling to is an illusion. It shows us that these temporal things were given to us, and will be taken away at some point even if only by death. We can be grateful for their presence in our lives today, and in doing so we remember our correct place in relationship to the universe.

This practice alleviates anxiety because we no longer have to worry in the same way about losing things or people…or the uncertainty of losing them…because we recognize that they were never ours to begin with, and that they will certainly be taken from us at some point. In our anxious moments we often create a false sense of uncertainty...."what if someone I loves dies", or "what if I die?" But there is no real uncertainty here - people you love will die and someday you will die too - the only uncertainty is how and when. To cling to others and own lives is deeply human. It is engrained in the architecture of our biology. To seek self-preservation and deny the reality of death is also deeply human. But we are more than human animals, we are creatures with consciousness and the capacity to transcend our humanity. We can overcome our clinging and denying by recognizing and living the higher truths of the universe. In this case, the truth that all that we experience is passing, temporal, and limited, and that to cling to anything is futile.

My daughter found a wildflower at a park and was captured by its beauty. Naturally she wanted to continue enjoying its beauty, so she picked it in order to keep it. On the ensuing walk home, she realized that she might drop it and lose it, so she grasped it tightly in her hands. By the time we were home it was crushed, dry, and in pieces, no longer a thing of beauty...and she too was crushed with the sadness of losing something precious.

When we recognize and experience the futility of clinging, the desperate attempts to protect, hoard, and secure things that can’t be kept indefinitely, we can learn to stop clinging so hard. But because letting go is so counter-intuitive for us as humans we must have a higher principle and practice that can allow us to transcend our instinctive grasping. It is gratitude that reorients our perspective, diminishes the illusions of permanence, and allows us to begin again the process of not anxiously holding on to things that we can’t hold on to.

So we must cultivate gratitude, like a garden that we attend to each day. It is not enough to make a mad dash to be thankful once a year, because gratitude at its heartfelt level is a perspective that extends far beyond a feeling of thankfulness.

It is that perspective of being a receiver of gifts.

Some of the gifts we freely welcome – prosperity, health, children, happiness, strength, skills. Others seem less welcome or even unwelcome; suffering, sadness, anxiety, pain, limitations, difficult people, bad weather. But each of these, in spite of our desire to avoid them can be experienced as gifts if we do the hard mental work of recognizing their temporal nature and opportunity to be redeemed for something good.

And as it turns out those gifts we heartily welcome and pursue can bring with them their own share of suffering. As I've written about before, sometimes the things we desire end up enslaving us, and the things we avoid offer freedom.

In spite of our culture which teaches us that we are entitled to everything our heart desires, we can learn to refuse that deception and recognize our true identities as receivers of gifts. When we cultivate gratitude, we become increasingly able to view these things in our life for the gifts that they are, even those things which seem negative.

Try this. Ask yourself: 

What do I fear losing in life these days? 

How do I think losing that will affect me?

How did I get the thing I'm afraid of losing...did I really get it all by myself, or did certain things outside of my control occur first to bring it into my life?

Is it something I can actually hold on to forever?

What might happen if instead of clinging to it, I loosened my grip, gave thanks for it, and truly enjoyed what it brings to my life today?

How can I use this gift to make life better for others?

War in my head...

Tonight I left to go to work with a lot of anxiety. It was nothing to do with work itself, it was a deep sense of dread that nothing matters in life. It's hard to believe I could walk out the door from a wife and daughters I adore and cherish and still even question life's meaning. But I'm a complicated guy and my intellect and my work as a psychologist have led me to some dark spaces. I have a strong theology of suffering, but the hellish thing I heard this week...well...it reminds me of all the other torture stories I've heard in the past 10 years, and it sucks me into those powerful questions I have about human life being anything more a terrible mistake of evolution. Consciousness allows us to do some amazing things, but it's also an enormous burden.

And at the risk of sounding like I'm coming unglued, I think I heard a voice tonight.

I had a patient cancel at the last minute, and in the mean time I decided to confront my angst with silence.

In the silence I heard that voice I've so rarely heard - probably because I'm such a terrible fucking skeptic.

Oddly, it was a voice that reminded me of something my friend wrote about church.

My friend said that a church is a group of people trying together to learn to have their hearts beat like God's beats. That we learn the rhythm of God's heart, and try to have our hearts beat in time with His.

Beautiful.

If the spiritual metaphor is too vague, what I'm saying is that I think we have to learn to love the things that God loves, in the ways that God loves. That life's meaning is to be found in emulating Jesus...not by being religious...but by loving in those radical ways that overcome darkness and torture and death. We defy the horror of this life and that sick empty feeling that chases a lot of us whenever we slow down, by choosing to love extravagantly.

And as I tear myself away from my own internal battle long enough to realize that I am not the sole decision maker about whether my life is ultimately meaningful or worthwhile,  I'm captivated by the thought that those whom I'm bound to in life - my family, my community, the patients I serve, the God that I wrestle with - also have something to say about whether or not my life is meaningful. It makes me realize that I need other people - that any question about existence is not for me to work out as a private intellectual enterprise - but can only be resolved in the context of who I am in relationship to others. And hesitantly I acknowledge that for me this must include others who believe and doubt this story of Jesus.

But I have a lot bad feelings and thoughts about church. These days fewer of those thoughts are judgemental angry ones, and most are just despair because I can't find an enduring or satisfactory answers about who we are to be as a church.

Yet maybe it really is so simple (not easy, but simple) as learning to pattern our own hearts after God's, and learning to do this together in the context of community. As much as I struggle with Christians, I need them. I need to have them in my life to learn how to love...and they need me...with all my selfish, critical, over-thinking, brokenness. They aren't just the blue section on my Google calendar, they are a part in God's invitation for me to learn how love as God loves. They are God's invitation to a life saturated in meaningfulness, redemption, and hope.

If you thought December was bad...

I struggle with January.

The cold, the snow, the drudgery, the hours of darkness.

Last week when it was -25 (without the windchill) I felt claustrophobic...like the dangerous cold and darkness were keeping me closed up in my house.

I need more light.

It's rather ironic because we just came through a season that celebrates the arrival of the "Light of the world". So, I started listening to Christmas carols as a way of coping with January's darkness.

John Rutter, in his astoundingly beautiful "Angel's Carol" writes,

He is come in peace in the winter's stillness, like a snowfall in the gentle night. He is come in joy like the sun at morning, filling all the world with radiance and with light. He is come in love as the child of Mary. In a simple stable we have seen his birth. Gloria in excelsis Deo! Gloria in excelsis Deo! Hear the angels singing 'Peace on earth'.  
He will bring new light to a world in darkness, like a bright star shining in the skies above. He will bring new hope to the waiting nations. When he comes to reign in purity and love. Let the earth rejoice at the Saviour's coming. Let the heavens answer in the joyful morn: Gloria in excelsis Deo! Gloria in excelsis Deo!  Hear the angels singing, 'Christ is born'.

Now maybe you're like me, and don't find yourself rejoicing all that much in January. "Get through it", is more my thinking. But what if, for a moment today we dared to believe that this light that we just celebrated last month, has actually come to our darkness?

What if the physical darkness of January were a tremendous opportunity to experience the "Light of the world"? After all, we often appreciate light most when we're surrounded by darkness, not when there's already lots of light around us.

I'm realizing that Christmas is not a discrete celebration - an event to be put away with the decorations and remembered next year - but rather it is a life changing reality, intended to be at the forefront of our consciousness on an ongoing basis. God is with us! God is with us in the joyful celebrations of December, but also the icy darkness of Canadian winter. God is with us in all the seasons (not just weather) of our lives.

Light has come. New light that brings hope. Hope that warrants a celebration, even when everything else seems dark and frozen. Merry Christmas.

stuff white people like

A few months ago I ran into this blog / book / phenom called "Stuff White People Like".

Check it out and then read this if you still have time...

I realize I'm a little slow, apparently this peaked in its popularity a few years ago, but it bears mention nonetheless. And after being both brought to tears with laughter in reading its brilliant cultural critique, some of the ideas have stuck with me, kicking around in my head, and playing a somewhat prophetic role in looking at my life.

It turns out I'm not so original after all. That a lot of the things I value, pursue, believe in, and incorporate into my lifestyle are part of a cultural segment, whose defining characteristic is considering ourselves to be unique, free thinking, deep, cultured, special, progressive people. It may not actually have much to do with skin color, but there certainly is a segment of white skinned anglo Canadians who share the trait of thinking we're better than the other white folk. And the truth is in part, that I belong to that group.

I'm pretty proud of walking to work, and leaving our one and only car in the driveway most days.
I'm pretty proud of eating hummus, drinking local red wine, having fair trade coffee, and renovating a heritage house with a hip cafe down the street.
I'm pretty proud of having been to Europe and having pictures I took of it up on my walls at home.
I watch TED talks on a regular basis, listen to Bob Marley, and find myself strangely drawn to Prius' and Subarus.

>If you've checked out the website, or are already familiar with the "stuff white people like" books/blog, you'll start to see where I fit<

I'm pretty proud of my environmental consciousness, of composting extensively in the backyard, and growing some of our own food.
I'm pretty proud of the artsy, progressive neighborhood that I live in.
I went to graduate school, hate corporations, have a dog, treasure my friends from different cultures, and wish I made it to the farmer's market more often.

And none of these things are wrong in and of themselves...many of them are good. But what challenges me about "Stuff White People Like", is the idea that much of what I do is motivated not by genuine care about good things, but about generating an identity that allows me to be self-satisfied, special, and just a little better than other white middle class Canadians.

Is my composting motivated by true concern for the welfare of all living things, or is it motivated by feeling good about myself for being the kind of person who composts?

Likely the truth lies somewhere in the middle: I probably am motivated by both, to differing degrees at different times. And the reality that I have some less than beautiful motives for doing things should not be allowed to cause me to despair, of give up doing good things.

But I think it's an important reminder to me, perhaps to others, that even the good, the beautiful, the trendy, the socially appropriate in our lives can have a dark underside in the realm of motives. That very often we're doing things so that we can maintain a certain sense of identity, rather than doing them for entirely pure and good reasons. I may love the planet and fair trade coffee, but I also sort of love the image of myself that I'm trying to project, and sometimes I shape that image so that others will love that projection too. I feel better about myself believing that the coffee I buy costs more (a sign to myself of superiority perhaps) and wasn't as harmful to the people involved in growing it. But really I care more about how I feel as a buyer of fair trade coffee, than I do about the people involved in producing it.

As is often true of good humor, like this site, a certain amount of truth is contained, and while it's good to laugh at ourselves for being a certain kind of person - it's also painful to admit that to some degree we are not fully who we tell ourselves or others that we are. That below the surface there's a much more complex and messy person. A person who longs to be special, to mean something, to matter. But I remind myself that in my efforts to matter, I may perhaps be moving away from what really gives me value as a human being, and trading it for some stock cultural goods, attitudes, and behaviors that aren't the true source of my value as person.

The Joy of Getting

Today I'm thinking about the joy of getting.

Which seems strange, since we usually think it's better to give than to receive. And often we think that enjoying getting makes us prone to greed, selfishness, a lust for more, and ultimately an unsatisfying emptiness that can come with a life lived for self-gratification.

In reaction, many people, especially in certain faith traditions have grown up to live lives defined by giving of ourselves to other people.

In my own life, I've begun to notice that I don't just prefer the joy of giving, I have a hard time getting from other people....maybe it's better to say I have a hard time "receiving" from others.

It violates my rigorous independence. It's fine for me to give, because it still allows me to keep on with my illusions of self-sufficiency. Rarely, is there joy for me in receiving, especially when it involves other people having to go out of their way for me.

Now I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone in this. And the problem is, I think, that in our attempts to avoid greed and selfishness, we've traded for a different kind of spiritual sickness, the kind that makes it hard to receive joyfully from other people.

And imagine the kind of problem this might be at Christmas time, a holiday whose primary spiritual significance is found in receiving the gift of God incarnate - of Jesus coming into our midst.

Sure, it's great to give gifts, but our culture has begun to depict gift giving as the primary ethos of "the holidays". I saw a store with the tagline "give better".  But even if we avoid the cultural norm of giving as an act of self-definition, we might still fall prey to the trap of only allowing ourselves to be joyful in the act of giving, and not also in receiving. And it may not be so important that we allow ourselves to be blessed by proverbial pair of socks from aunt Ethel, but what if we fail to allow ourselves to be joyful in the more important gifts of Christmas? What if our preoccupation with giving prevents us from first receiving God's gifts for us?

Our are hearts clinging to independence, perhaps even clinging to the role of giver (a position of power) at the expense of fully being joyful at this outlandish, extravagance? God has given himself to us. In our struggle to relate to truth on an intellectual level, God moves in among us and allows us to relate to truth in the form of another human. God limits him/herself and offers presence to humans in a way never before imagined.

So this Christmas I'm trying to cultivate a posture in my heart that is open to receiving. Open to the gifts of others (in that they are extensions of God's love for me), and open to this mind-blowing act of love in the incarnation. I fear I may not have been very open to accepting it in the past, and I wonder how my independence and self-sufficiency might have robbed me of the full experience of this gift. I'm going to try to en-joy getting and see what happens.

Dumb Requests

My kids ask for some pretty dumb things.

"I want to eat hot dogs every day and stay up all night without sleeping at all".

It's not because they're dumb - quite the contrary - they rather terrify me with their cleverness at a young age. They just allow their wishful thinking to dominate their requests in a way that places all other considerations as secondary.

They even ask for some things that would require a defiance of the laws of physics.

One of them: "I want you to make the sun go away!"
Me:  "I can give you sunglasses, or put up a shade, would you like that?"
One of them: "No, I want you to make the sun go away!"
Me: "I'm sorry, I can't do that. We'll just have to wait till it sets."
One of them: "Yes you can! Make it go away! You can!"

(Note how calm and patient I am in the dialogue - this clearly captures my typical response style and represents no scrubbing or embellishment on my part!)

Usually it's funny, but a little bothersome when I can't help them understand that what they want isn't possible and the resulting screaming that ensues (from them).

But it got me to thinking about my own requests, things I directly or indirectly ask God for.

I wonder if God thinks the things I ask for are dumb? Perhaps not, but I wouldn't be surprised if my requests and wishes are as unwise as the things my kids ask for. Maybe wishful thinking leads to some errors in my judgement, just like it does with my children.


In recent years, I've become more sophisticated, I've learned not to mention what I really want to God when I recognize how it might appear.

Funny that, as if I can really hide what's in my heart from God....but I try.

I try not to ask God to mistreat others in the same way they're mistreating me so that they can see the error of their ways.

I try not to ask God to intervene in the proceedings of the National Football League, specifically the outcomes of a particular team from Wisconsin and the cheating devils they play from other cities, who have clearly paid off every single referee in the league.

I try not to ask God to give me special treatment; to keep my kids from illnesses that other kids get, to save me from the tragedies of other people's lives, to spare me certain struggles....I try not to ask.

But deep in my heart the truth of the matter is that I want all of those things. Some of them I even expect and blame God for when they don't turn out. It really does no one any good for me to pretend. I'm not fooling God, the only one I'm fooling is myself, thinking that somehow I can pretend.

God knows my heart. God knows I want some terrible, impossible, and self-destructive things.

God knows I want the world to be unfair - but only in my favor, or the favor of those I care about. 

And this crap I try to hide, even from myself, that I'm not really a jerk like the rest of you, it does me no good, and probably ends up hurting others.

But the thing is, I kind of want my kids to keep asking, even if it is for dumb stuff.

I love that they feel secure enough in our relationship to tell me exactly what they want without fear of my answer.

I love to watch them learn to ask for better things.

So for now, my simple prayer is this:

God, help me to be honest with myself and You. 

I want some pretty bad things, and I'm tempted to just give up on asking You for things because some of the stuff I want is probably not good for me or other people. Help me to keep asking, to ask for better things, and to be transformed in the process of asking You and learning from your answers. Rescue me and others from my selfishness...or at least help me change, and help me to learn to love what's truly good, 

And if you wouldn't mind healing Aaron Rodgers' fractured clavicle, so that the team of green and gold would again take their divinely appointed place as league champions, that would be great!

(oops, sorry! Forget that last bit!)

Amen.

The Storms >CAN< Save Us

Usually we fear storms...not just the weather event kind of storms, but those painful, destructive, chaotic, overwhelming times in our lives when, as an old hymn writer put it, "sorrows like sea-billows roll".

A friend of mine reminded me the other day about a peculiar thing that happens in the story of Jonah: Jonah tries to run from God, but on his sea voyage is thrown overboard into the stormy sea so that other sailors won't drown too, and is swallowed by a great fish. In the belly of this fish (whale?) he calls out to God - but not for help! Instead he quotes Psalms of thanksgiving.

Now maybe I'm wrong, but this seems an unusual reaction for a human, in the face of grave danger, to be thankful. I remember as a kid someone tried to reconcile this for me by telling me Jonah thought the fish was going to save him from drowning....but I don't really buy this anymore....I think in the belly of a fish you pretty much assume you've found one path to death that just smells worse than drowning. Granted, it's probably true that Jonah is more of a parable than a historical account (like Job), where the truth of what it means is more the point, rather than the plausibility of the story details. Whether or not we accept the physics of being swallowed by a fish doesn't so much matter - the story is true in what it teaches us about life and God, and in this case storms and suffering.

Some of you know that I help people whose lives have been devastated by car accidents, workplace injuries, and the like. My office is full of human tragedy and often folks come to me in the midst of the worst storms of their lives. Now that I have a few years behind me of doing this work, and I've learned to look at my own life differently, I've come to observe an interesting pattern...

....the storms can save us.

Even when we think they are bringing our destruction and we need to be rescued from them, it is often the storm that is rescuing us from something.

Like the three people I've seen in two years that had car accidents, which led to MRI's, which in turn led to the perfectly timed discovery of previously undiagnosed tumors that were removed and spared their lives for many years afterward.

Or the folks I've seen that tell me they never lived for anything important until they lost all of the unimportant things in an accident.

Or the second-career people who thought that being downsized was the end of the world, until they discovered their old job wasn't actually good for them or their family.

Or the competent professional who found that being vulnerable and relying on others for help after a family tragedy brought new friendships he could never have imagined.

Or the marriages that were never truly intimate until one partner had to learn to depend on the other because their body wouldn't permit radical independence anymore.

The storms can save us. They often do. We may not see what they are or what they have saved us from, but so long as we remain open to being changed and taught and transformed, the storms can take us from a hell we may not have imagined or seen.

So, perhaps Jonah gives thanks when he realizes that he cannot run from the presence of God. That even in the belly of a fish, he cannot flee. Perhaps he recognizes that the storm has saved him, and that's why he doesn't call out for help to be rescued. Maybe he sees that running from God can bring a life worse than death.

Now I appreciate the objections this will raise. I specifically am saying that storms "can" save us, because I don't want to ascribe all human suffering to being an intentional act of God to fix people. I think suffering is fundamentally a mystery, and I don't have the hubris to write a blog post that claims to resolve it. And I also realize that telling people in the midst of a storm that what they're going through could save them....isn't very helpful. Storms are painful and destructive, and our biology predisposes us to pursue perceived safety. But it does seem that at the right time we humans can look at our dark times in life and find something meaningful, helpful, and even life saving.

And maybe part of growing is learning to trust that not all storms are something to be saved from or avoided, but that storms can save us, even when we think running is the safest thing to do.