Musings

Getting a "Spiritual"

I went to the doctor this week and got a physical. It was the most thorough physical I’ve ever had. He asked me a lot of questions, poked and prodded all over. He thinks I’m healthy, which is reassuring.

Afterward I got to wondering. You know, we all understand the idea of getting a physical . We need to keep our bodies in working order, and we need a regular checkup as part of that effort. But do we do the same for our souls? When was the last time you had a spiritual?

I’ll bet you are overdue for one. So let's get started.

First of all, some basic questions. In a physical the doctor checks your age. So in our spiritual, we’ll start by asking how old your soul is. Are you a young soul, or an old soul? What do you think? Does it seem like the inner dimension of your being has been here on earth a lot longer than your body has been here? Do you ever have that sense of deja vu through something your body couldn’t have experienced before in your lifetime? - a wisdom beyond your years? Or do you think your soul is a fresh one – still wet behind the ears, wonderfully naive and child-like in its openness? Either way can be good. But it is interesting to explore – how does your soul relate to the world around you? as if it’s been around a long time, or a short time? It is a question that can give you insight into yourself. If you seem to have an old soul, you may need the help of young souls in staying loose and being creative. If you seem to have a young soul, you may need the help of old souls to make sure you don’t fall into traps that wiser souls can help you avoid.

Moving right along....to your weight. What are you carrying around, spiritually, that drags you down? Is there some heaviness in your heart that is affecting the health of your soul – and your body, too, for that matter? Is it an old grudge, a festering resentment? an unfulfilled or shattered expectation? Are you schlepping around bad memories, lingering frustrations, unfinished business with others? Is there a way for you to lose that weight, to give it to God to carry around for you instead of you feeling like you must carry it? Jesus said that his yoke was light, his burden wasn’t heavy – he told his disciples that God would carry their loads for them – they didn’t need to be burdened with worry and care. Maybe it is time for your soul to lighten up!

Your doctor checks your blood pressure, but in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus checked his followers’ spiritual pressure. He asked them to look at their own anxieties – and to let them go. Are you overly worried about tomorrow? Are you letting yourself become pressured by fear of failure or insecurity about how you appear to others? Have you become overly exercised about relatively trivial stuff? Make an inventory of your anxieties and consider whether most or even all of them might be good to release.

The doctor checked my eyes in my physical, to see how my retina looked. Kind of interesting, philosophically, isn’t it? One eye looking into another to evaluate it. Gotta be careful with that one. Lest, as Jesus says, you see a speck in somebody else’s eye but ignore the log in your own. All of which points to checking your eyes in your spiritual, as well as your physical. Your eyes may work, but can you see? Do you have insight into yourself and the people around you? Have you received any hints lately that might suggest that you have a speck, or maybe even a log, in your eye that prevents you from seeing something really important? When was the last time you saw deeper into something or someone, deeper than what met the physical eye? When was the last time you found beauty in something or someone that you might otherwise have found ugly, had you not seen with your soul?

And the same applies to checking the ears. They may function physically, more or less, but do they really hear? Is your soul receiving the messages it needs to hear? Or are you getting deaf to the needs of your own heart and the hearts of those around you? When was the last time you heard music in what you might otherwise have thought to be jangling sounds, the last time you heard good news in the midst of what have seemed otherwise, had you not heard with your soul?

The doctor palpated me during my physical. He checked my skin, but he also poked me to see how it felt under my skin. Does it hurt here? Does it hurt there? For your spiritual, it’s good to check your inner feelings. Just how are you feeling these days? Joy, sadness, grief, happiness, fear, anticipation, ecstasy, misery, or a jumble of different feelings? Now there is a time and place for full-blown emotional honesty, and it’s not always nor everywhere... but probably more times and places than we tend to think. And so often we need the presence and feedback of others in order fully to get in touch, to palpate, so to speak, our feelings. We can give each other ‘spirituals’ every time we ask each other how we are – and mean it when we ask!

The doctor asked all sorts of detailed questions about my lifestyle, as it pertains to my health. Likewise in this ‘spiritual’ it is good to look at the lifestyle of our souls. Do you have a tendency to be forbearing and patient, or do you tend to blame others quickly when things go wrong? When was the last time you forgave someone who wronged you? Do you have anybody to forgive, anything for which forgiveness is needed? It’s good to remember that forgiveness is more for your soul than for theirs. They may or may not be touched by your forgiving them. But forgiveness can liberate you from burdens that affect your spiritual and even your physical health.

And where are you on the spectrum of selfishness to generosity of spirit? I saw a sign on a church in Hollywood a few weeks ago that said “If you are all wrapped up in yourself you are overdressed!” Are you too wrapped up in selfish concerns and conceits? Or are you open-hearted and open-handed, looking for ways to serve the people you meet and to serve the needs of the wider society? This week I re-discovered a wonderful question that is perfect for taking a spiritual – a wise question asked by Buckminster Fuller, the inventor and thinker: “If the success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be? What would I do?” How do I vote, how do I participate as a citizen, how do I work and serve, how do I consume the planet’s resources, how do I relate to others?

The doctor wanted to know what kind of exercise I get on a regular basis. For our spiritual exam, we can ask the same question. Are we working out our souls? We can use St. Paul ’s list from Galatians 5: How much love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are we exercising? You know, a certain amount of physical exercise is natural. Even a couch potato walks between the television and the fridge now and again. Likewise, the spiritual virtues are natural to us as human beings. I don’t think we are born as hopeless sinners. On the contrary, there is a goodness, and a propensity toward goodness, in all of us. But more is asked of us than just our natural goodness. We are called to work out our souls with disciplined effort.

Just as the doc listens to your arteries to see if there are any blockages, it’s also time to inventory the blockages in your soul. What have you walled off from yourself – and from others? What defenses have you built around your heart? What would happen if you did to those walls what the Germans did to their Berlin Wall? Would it be a bad thing to go over the wall and give up your stubbornness, your willful ignorance, your hardness of heart? This is something I’m working on right now, by the way – I need to dismantle a blockage in my life.....

Your doctor looks at the watch and takes your pulse. What’s the rhythm of your soul? ? Do you take the time to look within yourself, to pray, to meditate, to write in your journal, talk at depth with a friend, or recharge your spirit through other means? Or is your mind pounding so hard and so fast that you don’t have time for your inner life to express itself and discover itself? Sometimes we are moving so fast that we literally miss our lives. You can get so involved in your activities, work, sports, projects, distractions, entertainments – you can get so busy that your life happens but you don’t live it. The doctor is hoping you’ll have a slow, steady heart rate.... not too slow, definitely not too fast. For your spiritual, we’re hoping you have a life rate that is slow enough for you to experience your life consciously and reflectively – so you can really enjoy it, and fully appreciate this gift of your existence.

Till your next "spiritual", be well! -- body and soul....

Panhandling Pigeons

Panhandling Pigeons
5-19-04

The Spirit has arrived at Sausalito Presbyterian Church! The Bible says that the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus “like a dove” at his baptism at the River Jordan. In our case, the Spirit has descended in a more prosaic form as a family of pigeons who are now nested inside the sanctuary, high up near the windows under the steeple. During Wednesday evening meditation, our prayers were sweetened with the high peeps of the babies and the low murmurs of the mother, coming from above us. We let their wordless sounds speak for the Spirit as we kept silence.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught us to be like the birds and give up our anxieties. The birds, he said, don’t worry about what they will eat tomorrow. They don’t store up grain in barns. (I sure hope they don’t store up food in churches, either!) Birds gather up what they need to eat, day by day. Today’s troubles are enough for today – that’s the lesson Jesus drew from observing birds.

When I was working with homeless people, many of our regulars at the Urban Ministry Drop In Center were panhandlers. One day one of them was feeding bread crumbs to the pigeons at our center. The bakeries gave us leftover bread to feed to the homeless, and what the homeless folks didn’t eat, they sometimes fed to the birds. The panhandler turned to me and said, “Jim, ever notice that you never see baby pigeons?” I answered him, “You know, you are right. I have never seen a baby pigeon. Why is that, do you suppose?” He answered, “It’s because pigeons send their babies to panhandling school until they are adults.”

We have something to learn from pigeons and panhandlers, even if we do store up in barns, even if we have more productive and socially-acceptable means of making a living. We could use a short course at panhandling school – and learn how to get by in life without so much anxiety. We would do well to learn how to let our spirits soar today, instead of getting over-wrought about tomorrow.

“Holy habits” are the cause of a lot of anxiety. These are patterns that don’t really serve us any more, if they ever did at all. Ways of doing everyday life, or ways of running organizations that clutter and complicate matters. They are unhelpful or wasteful habits, but their very habitual nature makes them too “holy” to change. “Holy habits” burn us out with excessive processes and misplaced priorities. That’s when it’s time for a visit by the Holy Spirit, who comes in on a wing and a prayer and reminds us to lighten up and let go of every unholy thing to which we cling.

The pigeons, unfortunately, must go! We’re trying to find a humane (dare I say divine?) way to persuade them to find another home. But in the meantime, perhaps we can follow Jesus’ advice and find in their cooing and fluttering a metaphor for keeping life simple, and keeping anxiety to a minimum.

Seeds of Listening

Seeds of Listening
5-7-04

Jesus tells a parable (Matthew 13: 1-9) about seeds cast on different kinds of ground. Some grew, some didn’t, some that grew did well, and others did not, depending on the ground upon which they fell. Jesus then says, listen -- if you have ears to hear.

His story is about seeds. And the story is a seed. Because Jesus is casting the story on his listeners, to see if it takes. Some will hear the words, but the words won’t take root. Their ears work, but they really aren’t listening. Others have ears, too, and hear the words, but not only do they hear, they also listen. The story goes down deep and takes root in their souls.

When I’m writing at my computer at home, and my wife tells me something while I’m typing, I say, “Yes, honey, sure.” And an hour later, when she asks me why I didn’t do what I agreed to do, I have no idea what she is talking about. My ears worked, I went through the motions, I gave her feedback, but I wasn’t really listening. She cast the seed on me, but it didn’t take root, because I was preoccupied. I was writing, paying attention to my own inner world, hearing her but not listening. She cast her seed on me, it sprouted, but its roots were shallow and it dried up quickly and blew away.

Seeds are mysterious, no matter how much you know about biology. Open up a seed and inside, at its center, is yet another “seed” – a little dot called the apical meristem, which consists of stem cells. How do all the different structures of a plant emerge from the identical cells of the apical meristem? Which part of the apical meristem corresponds to which part of the mature flower or grain stalk or tree? Answer: it doesn’t work that way. Each of the stem cells has the potential to multiply into all sorts of different kinds of cells in the mature plant, and the kind into which one particular cell multiplies depends on timing and triggers outside of itself. All this can be explained by biologists, at least up to a point. But it is still a true miracle that a tiny mustard seed, looking nothing like a mustard plant, can expand into all its mature shapes and structures.

Likewise there is a mystery about listening. You listen to somebody’s story with your full attention, you let it go deep, you let it take root. You remember what you were told. But the result of your listening is often a surprise. It has one shape as it goes into you, it has quite another when it sprouts. You listen, but your interpretation of what you heard may amaze you both. You might find something in the other person’s story that they didn’t hear when they heard themselves telling it. You share what sprouts out of you, and the person may find insight in it. Or the person may find no ring of truth in what you feed back to them. If you really are listening, you take this seriously and ask the person to plant more of seeds in your soul, until they sprout and bear fruit for you both.

Sometimes we plant seeds we don’t recognize. I’ve done that before – found a sack of seeds in my garage and didn’t know what they were. Are those seeds of purple hollyhocks, or white ones, or carmine ones? Let’s just put ‘em in the ground and find out. So it is with people who truly listen to each other. They help each other find out what is going on inside of them. They plant seeds in each other and see what sprouts and help each other identify what is growing within them. Often, we need the listening ears of others in order to understand ourselves.

I was serving as co-director of a high school-age church camp for a week last summer, and I found myself with a group of kids at the waterfall one hot afternoon. One of them, a girl, started telling me about how the scene reminded her of a camping trip with her family. She went into great detail about the trip, on and on, and for a moment I was getting bored, but then I gave it a little more effort and realized, this is some kind of moment, and if I listen longer and better, something really interesting might happen. I started to enjoy her story more and she kept going, but after a while the nature of her story began to change. I realized she was telling this story because it helped her understand herself. She said that the incidents in her camping trip with her family had revealed to her what kind of person she was, and what kind of person she was not. That she was a sort of tomboy, not interested in typical girly stuff. That she was a gregarious person – somebody who found it easy to get along with others. That she wasn’t competitive. That she loved reading novels, loved writing stories and poems. That she had no interest in being rich or famous or otherwise notorious, but really just wanted to grow up and have a family and go on wilderness camping trips with her husband and kids. All this self-discovery happened with hardly any of my intervention or direction. All I did was listen.

As the apical meristem of the seed has no agenda but growth itself – its cells can take any form in the mature plant – so we are called to abandon our agendas when we serve others by listening. Somebody is sick, and you go to visit them. You want to give them advice about how to handle the problem – what cures to seek, what strategies they can use to keep up their spirits, what words you think they ought to hear from you in order to feel comforted. But it’s very likely that they need none of this from you. It’s much more likely that they need your willingness to listen, without a scripted reply, to what they say.

Listening is what happens when the words of others go deep enough into our souls to take root. Like soil must be broken and tilled to be ready for seeds, our souls must be broken open in order to make way for what others need to tell us.