A Pause Before the Holidays
Rev. Cricket Potter
Follen Community Church
November 11, 2012
In our recent church newsletter, I wrote about the frenetic pace many of us experience in our lives and the exhaustion we can struggle with as we try to provide all that we hope for ourselves and our families.
I quoted from the poet David Whyte, “The antidote for exhaustion is not rest but wholeheartedness.”
To be wholehearted – as in bringing your whole heart, approaching life unconditionally,
being unreserved and enthusiastic in how you take life in and share life with others.
Living otherwise, the poet suggests, pushing ourselves and others to achieve or succeed more – and for what purpose? – makes life small and alienates us from life’s rich abundance.
I wrote about this topic because, quite honestly, I needed to explore it as much for myself as for all of you.
And I wanted to take that exploration one step further today, particularly as we look to the approaching holidays because they can indeed be challenging times full of high expectations and dicey family dynamics.
Let me share with you a little of what I wrestle with right now.
I am still adjusting to the needs and rhythms of my newly expanded family having brought home beautiful little Dagmawit from Ethiopia six months ago.
Sheila and I worked so long and hard to get to this point – of welcoming Dagmawit into our family and of having two precious daughters to raise.
And now, we are facing into the reality that everyone in our adoptive community told us about – of just how hard the adjustments can be, for all of us.
Dagmawit is adjusting to a very different world from her first five years of life.
She also has many losses to come to terms with over time.
My 12-year-old Haley is going through her own adjustments, entering the turbulent teens on top of learning how to cope with a boisterous and stubborn little sister.
Sheila and I – well, we can sometimes go into autopilot mode to cope.
Then we flop into bed at night hardly having taken the time to be affectionate with the girls or each other.
So, truth be told, it can get kind of messy around our household.
Some days and weeks can feel so difficult.
Life can definitely feel less than I had hoped.
I can feel myself hunkering down or pulling back as if holding out for better times.
It’s nothing that we haven’t all experienced in our own lives – times that you would rather pass by or forget.
Forget, that is, until there is some clarifying moment like the storm last week when we heard stories of so much loss and suffering.
A mother with two little children swept out of her arms as she tries to escape the flooding in New York.
Whole neighborhoods destroyed by flood and fire.
A poignant text message shared here in worship last Sunday from a parishioner’s brother working amidst the tragedy
He shared some of the trauma he was witnessing, and he asked us to pray for him that he would have the courage and strength to keep doing his work to help others.
Then we are reminded of life’s preciousness and of the gift we have in our loved ones, as challenging as they may seem to us at times and as imperfect as those relationships may be.
In those moments, we lay down our frustrations and our complaints about what we don’t have, and we embrace with gratitude all that we do have.
Yet, between those moments, we can lose our perspective.
We can get stingy of heart, judgmental in our thoughts.
We can forget to appreciate the sweet moments that offer joy if we could only receive it wholeheartedly or the connection that does sustain us if we could only open our hearts more fully to it.
“What is” is not good enough.
And so, the doors of our hearts can begin to close as we pull back from the people and things we do have in our lives because they don’t meet the ideal we have constructed for them.
As the poet David Whyte explains, “One of the greatest temptations… is to base your life on contingency.”
I will finally be happy when….
Or, when he/she changes, then I can….
I have felt this temptation myself a lot lately.
I was so overwhelmed with joy when our adoption finally came through after 2 ½ years of excruciating waiting and wondering “will this ever happen.”
The memory of the long trek to Ethiopia and meeting shy little Dagmawit there in the orphanage and hugging her for the first time.
Then over time, feeling her hug me back with all her strength as she came to trust that I was hers and she was now mine.
Life felt so full, and I was so grateful.
Now she is home with us, and like all families, we have our delightful days and our difficult days.
Truth be told, when we have had a long string of challenging days, I find myself becoming more critical and less compassionate, because what I have doesn’t feel like what I had hoped.
In my mounting frustration, I can find myself bargaining, playing that contingency game.
“Okay, when this improves or that goes away, then I can be happy.”
Then recently, I came across a piece from Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein, a seasoned parent, grandparent, and psychotherapist whom I’ve quoted from before.
Her simple story has touched and challenged me right where I need it.
She shared this:
(When I was growing up), my parents went off to work, so my grandmother did a great
deal of the mothering, and she was very solicitous, so that I remember her as bathing and washing and dressing me and making braids and preparing the foods that I liked. The only thing that she was pretty not moved to respond to was the coming and going of childhood bouts of “I’m not happy.” I’d say, “But I’m not happy.” And she’d say…”Where is it written that you’re supposed to be happy all the time?”
Point taken.
Boorstein said that this kernel of wisdom from her grandmother was the beginning of her own spiritual practice.
She came to understand that our lives were never meant to be free of pain or hardships.
And no religion is about teaching us to sail above the challenges.
Rather, spiritual practice is about seeing and responding to life in a way that makes it feel full and abundant even through the inevitable challenges of life.
As she reminds us, a central tenet of Buddhism is that we bring about our own suffering.
We suffer because we cling to an unrealistic image of life and can’t be content with what we have – warts, bumps, and all.
We can be like that little girl blurting out, “But I’m not happy” because things aren’t enough or feel good enough.
In this way, we diminish the people and the life that we have been blessed with.
I am reminded of a reflection my friend and colleague Rev. Leaf Seligman shared with me.
It is about the word “dayenu,” a Hebrew word that is often translated to mean “enough” or “sufficient.”
There is a song called “Dayenu” that our Jewish brothers and sisters sing during Passover when they celebrate the exodus of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt.
An important thing to remember is that the Hebrews escaped the hardship of slavery, but their exodus led them into other many hardships as they wandered in the wilderness for forty years.
Yet, despite this fact, the song “Dayenu” is a song of gratitude.
It lists the many things God did to help the Hebrews during the exodus, and the refrain after each is, “It would have been enough.”
Here are a few verses from that song:
Had God brought us out of Egypt and not divided the sea for us,
It would have been enough.
Had God divided the sea and not permitted us to cross
on dry land,
It would have been enough.
Had God permitted us to cross the sea on dry land
and not sustained us for forty years in the desert,
It would have been enough.
So, in spite of the hardships, there is gratitude for what was given to them.
The point being that even amidst difficult times there are gifts of grace.
The gift may not be happiness, as in a Hollywood version of happiness, but it can be about communion, presence, connection, sustenance, beauty, peace, love, and even joy.
My friend Leaf comes from the Jewish tradition, and she has developed her own sense of dayenu which speaks to me so beautifully.
She translates dayenu to mean not just “enough”
but “abundantly enough.”
As she shared with me in a recent conversation, “I like the idea of the abundance within enough, that we need look no further than sufficiency to find plenty.”
The abundance within enough.
This kind of sufficiency I hear Leaf talking about is one that brings color and light to life even amidst the shadows.
It’s the great “in spite of” that our faith calls us to – the full sense of life we can feel even when things might seem otherwise.
For me, it has meant rethinking what I expect of my family.
I am trying to be more accepting.
I am trying to pass on judgment or any sense of entitlement that I am meant to be happy all the time.
I am trying to develop my own practice of dayenu, my own sense of gratitude for the abundance within enough.
So, I will say to myself when things feel hard:
It is enough that Dagmawit is with us now,
that she is healthy
and brings us moments of great delight.
It is enough that Haley is growing up to be a lovely young lady
even if she pushes us away at times in her efforts
to explore her place in the world.
It is enough that we four are family
and that we have one another to come home to.
It is enough that we are safe with a home
when so many others are suffering right now.
It is enough that we are held in a community
that loves us and sustains us.
It is abundantly enough.
Yet, I know that a sense of gratitude is not always possible.
I would never want you to deny the deep pain and suffering that can, at times, make it utterly impossible to feel grateful.
There are times when we hurt too much to be able to say, “It is abundantly enough.”
In those times of deep loss and sadness, we need each other most – to be present to our struggle and to shine a light of love in the darkness.
In time, when we can finally begin to see through the pain or hurt, then we can find strength and healing in part by establishing a practice of gratitude.
For us now, as we face into the gauntlet we call the holidays, gratitude can be our guide.
Rarely are our lives like that holiday myth of family gatherings, all sugar-coated and wrapped up neatly with a bow.
So, let’s not be like that little girl, who I imagine with a pout as she complains, “But I’m not happy.”
Let’s work on our own spiritual practice of acceptance and gratitude.
This morning and in the days ahead, let’s take the time to reflect upon what we expect of our life and our family, holidays and otherwise, where perhaps we might need to open our hearts more to all that is abundantly enough.
Imagine your own “Dayenu” song.
Even share it.
Let your loved ones hear your gratitude for all that they bring to your life and encourage them to imagine their own version of dayenu.
Don’t hold out for contingencies.
In closing, I return to the words we shared in our responsive reading:
Mark the time.
Let nothing living slip between the fingers of the mind,
For all of these are holy things we will not, cannot, find again.
So may it be.
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