Shifting World Views

It seems like the more I try to be a good person, the harder it becomes. It the very least (and I'm trying to be charitable with myself here!), the more I try, the more bad patterns I uncover that I want to shed. I was talking with a good friend last night about a couple of women he's seeing, and I felt the most ridiculous pang of jealousy. I've felt it before with him (and other male friends), and we've discussed it, and I know that I have no reason to feel insecure about our relationship, so the recurrence of this knot in my gut annoys me.

I thought a lot about it last night after we spoke, and it stayed with me this morning, so I took some time to meditate on why I feel threatened by people I don't know when I do know that my relationship with my friend is wonderful and we both delight in being in each other's lives.

As many of you know, I meditate on scripture, and this morning I read James. I stopped at two points, but I'll focus on the first one today. Here is what James is telling his audience of Jewish Christians in the diaspora (so the leader of the church in Jerusalem, a Jewish convert to Christianity, was instructing other Jewish Christians on how to reconcile their commitment to the Torah and their faith in Christ. It's a wonderful letter. If you have a few minutes, you can check it out on-line.):

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. -- James 4: 1-3

That's when it hit me -- that feeling in my stomach isn't insecurity; it's greed. Consumption and possession are so ingrained in who I am that I've even learned to relate to people as goods. I ask God for meaningful relationships, then I take the ones I have and commodify them. People become things I possess or don't possess, and once I look at them that way, I also look at them in terms of their utility. They're in my life because of what they do for me, rather than because of who they are as people. They become resources I mine for value. The implication of that, of course, is that when they stop yielding whatever it is I want from them, I no longer want them around. They've lost their utility.

That's a pretty horrible indictment of my personality, and I don't know that it's completely accurate, but it sure makes me squirmy. What makes me even more uncomfortable is that other than giving myself a stern "Knock that off!", I don't know how to change my pattern. I can only shed this way of relating to the world if I can find another way of relating. And it's not just how I relate to people, it's also my relationships with the material and natural worlds. In a true extreme, it may also be my relationship with the spiritual world. I may have adopted a utilitarian relationship with God. Ugh.

So I'll spend some time over the next week looking for different ways people relate to the world. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, but some way that allows the people I know to be in my life without their having to do anything for me. A way that allows me to know people as people, and not as possessions. A way that lets me honor the beauty in the people I know without subconsciously looking for anything in return.

I'll let you know what I find.

Love,

Becky

Letting Go

I went for Chinese last night with a couple of friends and as we read our fortune cookies (I will receive a visitor soon), my friend shared that her fortune told her to relinquish all controls over her life. A very Buddhist fortune to be sure, but my friend (and our other friend) was worried that if they relinquished any more control over their lives, they'd stay holed up in their apartments all the time.

So (not being one who has a hard time exerting control myself!), I proposed the following -- they spend the next week doing the opposite of the fortune: taking the initiative, being dominant, acting, and I will spend the week relinquishing all control.

Those who know me will appreciate how terribly difficult this will be for me! But it's nice to have some time to reflect on why I have this particular habit, the effect it has on my relationships, and other patterns for being in the world that don't require so much effort on my part (taking charge all the time can be pretty tiring).

The author of 1 John writes,

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1 John 5 16-21)

I think I probably take charge because I'm afraid things won't happen if I don't. Sometimes I do it because I want to help my friends and I think I'm taking care of them by offering assistance or advice. But a part of it comes from this fear John writes about. I'm not trying to instill fear in my friends or punish them for anything, but I think that sometimes I'm afraid. Afraid that things won't turn out the way I want (for myself or for them), afraid that I won't be good enough if I don't craft situations into ones I'm familiar and comfortable with.

But I'm going to try for a week. Rather than focusing on not controlling things (how do you make issues of behavioral change 100 times harder than they need to be? Turn it into a matter of willfully avoiding the exact thing you want. Totally self-defeating. You spend all your time thinking about the one thing you're trying to avoid so you can never really get away from it. Any dieter knows this!). Instead, I'm going to focus on how I can love the people I encounter this week. Rather than trying to do anything, I'm going to look for what opportunities they give me to love, then I'm just going to love them there. I won't pick the time, place, or manner. I'll let them tell me.

It's going to be freakishly hard for me, so you can bet I'll keep you updated!

Love,

Becky

A Time Apart

Hey there,

So it's been a little while since I've posted anything. Here are the quickest highlights -- the semester ended; I got incredibly sick (thank you body for staying well until after all my work was done!); I house sat for a friend for a month; spent a week in a hermitage at the Lama Foundation in New Mexico; started refinishing my kitchen cabinets; spent a week in Austin at a conference for the Fund for Theological Education, and have generally tried very hard to SLOW DOWN.

You know how endowments work? There's a big pot of money and the owner spends off the interest accrued by the big pot, but is never supposed to spend the principle (because then you have less money there to generate interest -- you have the cash in the present, but have a reduced capacity to generate cash in the future). I spent too much of my spiritual principle this spring and needed some time to build it back up so I could start living off the interest again. Don't know that I'm completely there yet, but every day is calmer than the one before.

It is lovely. I am happy. The best part is that slowing down has given me time to catch up with myself and I now have more to share. So stay tuned! Who knows what will come to me next, but right now I'm pondering Jesus' parable about pruning dead/unfruitful branches. I helped out at the farm where I get my veggies the other weekend and had the job of weeding the strawberries. At first I felt bad to be pulling up perfectly good plants simply because they weren't what farmer Allan wanted to grow, then I remembered a theme of the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh -- all of creation is part of a cycle of life (and that cycle is how we are all connected to one another).

To Nhat Hanh, the rose is the garbage is the rose. Roses decay, get nasty, and we throw them out. That nastiness is what then goes to fertilize future roses. So these 'weeds' that I was pulling weren't being wasted -- they were going back into the soil to fertilize the strawberries, which would also eventually die to go back into the soil to fertilize squash next year.

Scripture warns us about staying in the vine (those who don't produce fruit will be 'pruned' and thrown into the fire). That always made me uneasy before, but now I wonder whether there might be another way to look at it. A way in which the weeds actually live fully through their being pruned. That is how they return to the earth and generate new life.

I'll ponder and get back to ya!

Love,

Becky