This Is Very Hard Work

I have done marriage counseling here and there. Couples come when they get stuck. They have usually been stuck for quite some time, but previously had not been motivated to do anything about it. Then something big happens and everything breaks apart and they call for an appointment.

When marriage therapy begins there is a lot of noise, replete with screamed accusations. There might even be hatred. Of course, hatred is not the opposite of love. You do not hate something unless you have a lot invested in it and care deeply about it. The opposite of love is not hate, it is apathy.  I am always concerned about the couples who have become apathetic. If condescension is also present in the counseling session, I know the marriage is in serious trouble. When condescension and apathy combine, you know Humpty Dumpty has had a great fall.

That is why I am surprised when, against all odds, some of these marriages make it. The healing happens slowly, almost imperceptibly. Mark Nepo says when things break apart, they do so loudly. When they come together, they do so slowly and quietly.  The changes usually begin when both spouses realize they have each allowed the relationship to become what it is. They have signed the contract allowing their dysfunction. The husband may be controlling, but the wife has not put her foot down and refused to be bossed around.

We all enter into these quirky contracts. That’s because we focus more on fitting in and less on belonging. We try to become what our spouse wants us to be, or worse yet, what our spouse’s family wants us to be. That might work for a year or two, but eventually you’d like to bring your entire self to the party. A marriage will not survive if one spouse is trying to fit in to the expectations of the other.

To belong is not the same as fitting in. To belong is to be accepted as your true self. No adjustments must be made. You are allowed to bring all of you into the relationship. No one is allowed to change you. You simply show up as you are. If you change, it is because you decided to change, not because someone forced it.

Once couples realize they have signed the “fitting in” contract, they gain the insight necessary to begin breaking old unhealthy patterns. They learn to live authentically, as a daily practice, in the presence of one another. Slowly and quietly things come together and hope is restored. If it sounds like hard work, it’s because it is. Breaking long-established patterns is hard. But divorce is harder.

A New Generation

Read the New York Times any Sunday and you will find a plethora of self-help books listed on the non-fiction bestseller list. Look at the titles and the definition of self-help narrows. The majority of the books are about finding financial and professional success. The assumption is that committing to the American capitalist spirit is the only meaningful route to a satisfying life.

I spend a lot of time in New York. It is not one city, but many. Head downtown on a weekday and all you will see are business suits and wingtips. Everyone is in a rush. There is money to be made, or lost, quickly, imminently, immediately.

Head a mile east and you are in Cobble Hill, or Carroll Gardens, and just a little southeast of that, Park Slope. These are Brooklyn neighborhoods. I once approved a single mom for adoption who had just purchased a brownstone in Park Slope for $90,000. It was 1983. It’s worth a couple of million dollars now. To say Brooklyn has become gentrified is a bit of an understatement. But the vide in Brooklyn is different from the feel of Manhattan. Boomers don’t live in Brooklyn. Millennials do. And they do not see success as an apartment on the trendy Upper West Side or exclusive Upper East Side. They want community, accessibility, friendship, and – well – a good life. They do not believe more is better. They believe better is better.

My son pastors a rapidly growing church in Brooklyn. It is externally focused, intent on reconciling the entire creation to the creator. The church serves the poor, teaches immigrant adults and children, counsels anyone in need, and fully participates in the life of the community. If you go to the tiny apartments of those who inhabit this church, you are not likely to find the latest treatise on “leaning in to work” or how to negotiate for success. You are likely to find the essays of Wendell Berry and the theology of Richard Rohr.

The generation inhabiting Brooklyn is growing, and it is a good thing too. They understand and appreciate the words of Parker Palmer: “There is no punishment worse than to conspire in our own diminishment.” This is a generation that watched their Boomer parents travel quickly from flower child to Wall Street tycoon. They sold out and it was ugly. These people do not want to do the same.

As I watched the Millennials migrate to Brooklyn, I questioned whether or not their generation would meet the same fate as their parents. I am pleased to observe they have not, at least not yet. They remain committed to family and community. They want to work hard, earn a fare wage, and participate in helping the world become a better place – really – they do. And that single mom whose brownstone is now worth a cool two million? Well, good for her. I have little doubt she will make good decisions about what to do with it.

In The Company of Explainers

Years ago I began a long course of psychodynamic psychotherapy. You look closely at your early life and discern new meaning about the events that shaped you. Of course, finding new meaning and actually changing how you live are two entirely different things. If your therapist is good and you are willing to work hard, eventually the new understanding might lead to a new way of living, one that is healthy and whole.

Murray Bowen was the psychologist who developed Family Systems Theory. He described eight key markers of families. Virtually all the markers have unwieldy names. (Psychologists are not necessarily good wordsmiths.) One is “Multi-Generational Transmission Process.” In other words, if you really want to know why you save little tiny pieces of string and put them in bags marked “Strings Too Short To Save,” (I know of someone who actually did that…) you probably want to look deeper than your own idiosyncrasies. Just looking one generation back to your mom won’t get it done either. You need to look to her mother, and her mother before her. We are shaped by legions.

I come from a long line of explainers. Explaining is a well-developed art form in the world I inhabit, and in the generations preceding mine. We believe with Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living. So we examine. Boy, do we examine. When you examine, you talk. And when you talk, people get nervous. Which means you often have “a lot of explainin’ to do.”

Mark Nepo writes in Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, “There comes a time when you must shed your lifelong need to explain yourself and start to just be yourself.” The reasons you have chosen to be yourself exist. You know them. Nobody else needs to know them. They can watch you in your unfolding.

In the opening credits to his novel Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry writes this warning: “Persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise “understand” (this book) will be exiled to a desert island in the company only of other explainers.”

I lived on that island long enough – the island of explainers. I want to break the cycle of the “Multi-Generational Transmission Process” to become a family of people who do not live in fear because of what others might think. I want to have grandchildren who simply become who they are, instead of spending their lives explaining why they are not living the life someone else wants them to live.

It takes a lot to stop the momentum of the Multi-Generational Transmission Process. But I’ve got shoes with thick soles, and I’m diggin’ in.

Just Say Yes!

I was talking with my friend Jennifer. Somewhere during her 20s she decided her anxieties would not get in the way of living. So she started saying “Yes.” Life offered her some rather fascinating assignments. She brought her wisdom into my life.  Last year she gave me a pendant inscribed, “Move and the way will open.” I wear it most days.

I was looking at it one day when it occurred to me that somewhere I had read a quote from the great UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold in which he said pretty much the same thing. I found it in his book, Markings:

At some moment I did answer yes to Someone – or Something – and from that hour I was certain that existence was meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

The quote gives extra meaning to my favorite Hammarskjold quote, also from Markings:

For all that has been – Thanks! For all that shall be – Yes!

“Yes” becomes harder the older you become. Instead you want to say, “Later.”  But you know good and well the amount of “later” is rapidly diminishing. You’ve already built your kingdom. You’ve slain your dragons. Can’t you just sit back and relax? Well, maybe you can. Maybe you have been driven by the productivity demons, and your “Yes” means it’s time to stop and smell the salty air blowing off the bay. On the other hand, maybe you cannot sit back and relax. Maybe you have been called to say another kind of “Yes,” one that is going to keep you striving in a new direction, for a different cause.

Both of my mentors kept saying yes, one into his late 80s and the other to 99. The almost centenarian called each “Yes” a conversion. He said he had gone through five of them, all involving loss, but all involving a new beginning as well. The writer Mark Nepo says “Yes” is the bravest way to keep leaning into life.

If love makes the world go round, then “Yes” must be the energy that keeps it spinning. Yes, I believe it is.

And so it goes.

One More Piece of Flying Debris

In a recent speech, celebrated author Brene Brown said when we are going through times of trial, and fighting shame, we need someone who will steadfastly walk through the muck and mire with us. I have always identified those people as “Friends who stay all the way to morning.” Brown went on to say we wrongly assume several friends will be available to travel through the dark night with us. The truth is we will be lucky to have one or two good souls who will stay with us all the way to morning.

Ironically, we tend to take these one or two fellow travelers for granted, while we go off chasing the approval and love of those who will never have the inclination to be truly available to us.  I think of all the wonderful people who have shown care to me over the past several months. Many email me every couple of weeks. Others call regularly. Some have advice. Some just want to “check in.” But only one has been there with just the right words, day after day, night after night, whatever the time, whatever the season.

I was there when this friend struggled through a divorce almost 25 years ago. My friend has returned the loyalty. He flew out to Colorado on a moment’s notice. He calls every Monday evening, and again on the weekend. We often talk for hours. He is the soul mate who never lets go. His name is David.

David and I share Eastern Kentucky roots. We are both graduates of Kentucky Christian University. We both left the Appalachians for the Northeast. We both have known great joy and great suffering.

When we share a difficult story with the wrong person, Brene Brown says it “becomes one more piece of flying debris in a dangerous storm.” This is why we must be careful with whom we share our deepest selves. Some will not be able to hear the information because we have disappointed them by proving to be human. Some will be so disturbed by the cause of our shame that we must minister to them, instead of being comforted by them. Some will be quick to judge, with arrogant confidence.  You must be cautious when sharing a difficult story. You must share it with someone who has earned the right to hear it. You must ask, “With whom am I in a relationship that can bear the weight of this story?”

For me, it was David. I am grateful for all the good souls who have checked in on me. But in the middle of the night, I know who I am going to call.

Do you?

Authentic Living

My children are card-carrying members of Generation X, a group that has hung onto its desire for authentic living longer than most. We Baby Boomers had the 60s, with our Vietnam protests and flower child experiences and such, but it didn’t take long to turn into raw capitalists. After all, it was our generation that presided over the astronomical increase in CEO salaries, as the one percent got richer and everyone else started shopping at Wal-Mart.

Richard Rohr suggests that when we approach the second half of our lives, our hearts are drawn back toward the authenticity that enticed us during our college years. But I went to Bible College. Instead of following my heart to become a television newscaster, I devoted my college years to denying myself and taking up the cross. Unfortunately I had these pesky doubts. If I was going to be in the army of Jesus, I needed some proof. Night after night I placed empty Pepsi bottles outside my dorm window and prayed for God to fill them before morning. “Since I’m going to work for you, you’d better prove yourself,” I fervently demanded. But alas, morning came and the bottles were always empty. If I wanted more Pepsi, I was going to have to buy it like everyone else.

I missed the drive for authenticity the first time around. I was too busy being the obedient fundamentalist. Actually, you don’t have to be a fundamentalist to miss authenticity the first time around. During our formative years most of us trade authenticity for approval. Over the years, however, the desire for authenticity never goes away. It may go down into the basement and hide in the corner behind the furnace. It may wait a long time, but it never goes away.

There is a reason people avoid the pursuit of authenticity. It is not good for one’s retirement account, let alone reputation. There is a great line in the Wizard of Oz. “Hush, Dorothy whispered the tiger. You’ll ruin my reputation if you are not more discreet. It isn’t what we are, but what folks think we are, that counts in this world.” And so it is.

When you decide to live authentically, you not only change your own life, you bring a whole parcel of people with you. A number are kicking and screaming. Your authentic pursuit is their nightmare. I know of a man in Colorado whose wife decided to join the Peace Corps. They are both in their early 60s. He is a therapist who loves his practice and also loves his wife. Her search for a fulfilled life is his problem. He loves the Colorado mountains. He does not want to enter the Peace Corps. But he is closing down his practice and moving to Nicaragua. Maybe searching for authenticity would be better done before you get married.

But we do not know enough about authenticity when we are young and unmarried. We are unformed, amorphous. Through family and work and community and tribe we begin to discover both who we are and who we are not. Like learning to walk, this discovery process is always filled with scrapes and bruises. It is no wonder we are well into the second half of life before self-nurturing insights finally stream into our consciousness. Unfortunately, by then we are tired, very tired. It takes a lot of energy to keep up appearances. So we sometimes ignore those prompts, preferring instead the quiet lull of boredom and routine. After all, we are free creatures; we each get to decide who we will be.

I have decided to opt for authenticity.

No Safety Net

I hear the sound of water returning to itself.  It falls and swirls and sings its way over the cold hard stones.  The water is stuck in a never-ending cycle, falling downward only to be pushed back to its origins.  Like Sisyphus it rises and falls, going nowhere, signifying what?

I walk down to the river into unfamiliar places carved by a fall storm of biblical proportions.  The once familiar river, more a stream most seasons, now meanders through fields where Black Angus once grazed. The water makes its way into and out of its original bed, as per the fickle instructions of angry Mother Nature.

I find peace in the river, even in its altered state.  In spite of the new twists and turns the river still knows where it’s going.  It has begun its long journey from the majestic rockies to the sea. I sit on one of the few boulders I recognize, aspen leaves floating by. The river is moving. The river, she is not stuck.

I am.  Stuck, that is.  I’ve been through my own storm of biblical proportions and I feel more like the water feature in my backyard, cascading down and artificially pumped back to where I began. Anger and frustration intertwined.

The poet Mark Nepo knew a woodsman who said the reason people get lost in the forest is because they do not go far enough. They stop just before the way would have become clear, trying instead to return on a path no longer visible. “If we could only lean forward by what little light we are given,” Nepo says.  He is allowed such confidence, having beaten cancer twice. He asks, “Can you endure your uncertainty until it shows you another deeper way?”

For all of my adult life I traveled with a safety net.  I left home without it about six months ago.  I stuffed the net in an old trunk.  I was confident. But then the wind swirled around the tightrope I was walking, and the ground fell away beneath me. I straddled the wire and held on, swaying over the yawning abyss.  Go back? Go forward?  Both seemed impossible.

In March I visited friends in New England. The full moon cast its scattered shadow on fresh-fallen snow.  The husband was not feeling well.  His wife and I nestled by the fire.  She looked at the stuck me and said matter-of-fact, “You can’t go back.  You know that. You cannot go back. You have to let go.” She is a prophet. She tells the truth you do not want to hear, but must.  You hear it because you know you are loved.  All the way home I pondered her prophetic words.

I have to fill up the water feature every seven days.  The water, weary of its circular journey, just evaporates.  The babbling brook is not self-sustaining. It requires outside energy – electricity to run the pump and someone to fill the basin with unsuspecting fresh water, knowing nothing of the maddening journey on which it is about to embark.

The water feature has to be handled. The river does not have to be handled. In fact, if you have noticed, every time the Army Corps of Engineers tries to handle any river, it just makes things worse.  Rivers cannot be handled. They must be trusted. Raging floodwaters or meandering stream, the river simply flows.  It trusts its own flow.

I must trust the flow. I must let go of the rope, stand upright, and move forward through the swirling currents of air, one step at a time. I have no idea how I am going to stay upright.

It Means The Presence of God

In so many ways I have lived a charmed life. I was voted “Most Likely To Succeed” in my high school class, and although I have no idea how other classmates have done, I have mostly known success.

Planting churches in New York was not easy. It took over a decade to experience what others considered success.  Raising funds was rarely fun or easy, and there were lots of serious trials.  It wasn’t particularly fun having the buck stopped with me.  But still, I would not consider my years with the Orchard Group to have been years spent in the desert. Our four decades working in New York were rich and rewarding.

The front range of Colorado, the Denver area, is a high desert.  It rarely rains from October through March.  Summers can be brutal, with dry thunderstorms that bring lots of lightning but precious little rain.  Until you get into the mountains the predominant color is brown, not the green I love so well in the verdant east.  I suppose it is fitting then that as a resident of the high desert, I have had my first desert experience.

Desert experiences have been the stuff of spiritual writing for eons.  Most of the world’s abiding religions are desert religions, where scarcity, thirst, and hunger are common terms.

As I have written over the past several months, these times are a desert season for Cathy and me. We have had to remind ourselves of what Carlo Carretto writes in The Desert In The City: “And remember: the desert does not mean the absence of men, it means the presence of God.”

We lead busy lives. Work, school, children, grandchildren, counseling – all of these surround our desert experience. They are intertwined in it. We try to steal moments to go into a closet and pray.  We have only furtive opportunities to shed tears, or rail at God.  But we are discovering God is present even in the midst of our busy desert – a phone call here, a random visit there, a chance meeting with an old friend. God makes her presence known.

My spiritual director suggested I am in a period in which my ego is being defeated so my spirit might emerge. My sense of entitlement is being challenged so God might have access to the interior corners of my life, those hiding places previously known only by the carefully choreographed work of my ego.

In the midst of the craziness, God invites me to speak. “What do you ask of me?” I cry. And I listen for the still small whisper of the God who knows suffering, and who knows when it is time to speak.

Kindness and Holiness 

Over the past 30 years I have flown over two million miles with one airline.  As you might imagine, things have changed.  In my early days of flying it was not unusual for me to exchange addresses with a seatmate, or share a cab into town.  I regularly wrote letters to the airline extolling the exemplary service of this or that employee.  Back then people were, in a word, kind.

Frederick Buehner said kindness is not the same as holiness, but it is awfully close.  My father is an extraordinarily kind man.  Throughout my life I have heard others refer to him as a gentleman. Gentleness and kindness go hand in hand.

I was blessed to have two mentors, both of whom have moved on to the other side, where I imagine kindness is in abundance. I am confident they are at home there. Both were brilliant, both with doctorates in philosophy.  One was a Roman Catholic priest.  When a mutual friend, also a priest, told me my mentor had been considered for the role of bishop, but passed over, I asked why.  He said, “Because Jim isn’t mean enough.  He is far too kind.”

When I was younger I was a bit of an idealist.  Idealism can be dangerous. It can lead to a shortage of kindness. You become convinced that wrongs must be righted and justice must be done, no matter the cost. Eventually you learn that determining what is wrong and what is just are not nearly as easy to discern as you once imagined.

When I was in my late 30s I had to tell an older gentleman that his position no longer existed and we would have to let him go from the non-profit I directed.  As he walked out of the room he said, “Be nice Paul, be nice.” I had adopted a posture of clinical coolness as I informed him of his termination.  I did not want to “lose it.”  I wanted to “be a professional.”  Years later, when I had to let 21 people go in a single day, I cried with just about every one.  I did not care whether or not I was “professional.”

I do not have to tell you that the flying experience is no longer what it once was.  Civility is barely maintained.  A couple months ago I had to protect an airline employee from a verbal assault by a passenger.  I said, “Buddy, leave her alone.  A mechanical delay is hardly a gate agent’s fault.”  He started to push me and then thought better of it.  The gate agent was in tears.  When I returned to the airport the next week she said, “I am so glad you were there.  No one else would have protected me.”

Kindness is awfully close to holiness. I am grateful for my father’s example. I do not have much hope that the flying public will suddenly become kind, but I can still hope, right?

And so it goes.

The Value of Wise Mentors

I have found two groups enjoyable to be around until the subject turns to religion.  That is when both groups have a tendency to become overly confident, if not strident.  They are quite sure they are right and everyone else is wrong, especially me.  Ironically, these groups come from two different ends of the spectrum.

I once developed friendships with a two professors from a secular university.  One was a specialist in the history of 16th century India, while the other was an expert on the philosopher Richard Rorty.  Both were quick to tell me how utterly ridiculous it was that I should be a Christian.  Of course, it was New York, where Christians do not grow in abundance.  I took their criticisms in stride.

These friends were kind and generous and enjoyable to be around when the subject was not religion.  They were curious, open and thoughtful.  But when the subject turned to Christianity, they were intractable.  They were right.  I was wrong.

Because of my work with this magazine and Christian churches around the country, I also come in contact with church leaders who are equally convinced my religious beliefs are misguided.  If I encounter these folks in a restaurant or at a convention, our conversations are enjoyable, sometimes even delightful.  But when the subject is a matter of faith on which we hold different opinions, their rhetoric can condescending or patronizing.

Both groups make me think of Dr. Byron Lambert, my mentor in the faith.  Dr. Lambert was firing more neurons in his sleep than I do on my best days.  A student of philosophy, theology, ethics, and a plethora of other subjects, Byron was a walking encyclopedia.  He was also one of the most wise and humble men I have ever known.

When Byron disagreed with me, I never heard about it in public.  He waited until he had time to consider what I might have intended with my misguided thoughts.  Eventually he would kindly say, “I found your perspective interesting.”  Then Byron would gently and rightly direct me toward a new way of thinking.

Byron never questioned my intent.  He always treated my position with respect, even when he suspected I might have derived it from a bubble gum wrapper.  He taught me how to be gracious, as he graciously corrected me time and again.  In the process I became a better thinker.  I also learned to realize that an open mind is very close to a Godly mind.

I miss Byron a lot.  I wish more of my generation were like him.  I will never have his knowledge or wisdom, but I would love to have his spirit.