Right?

Spending time with family members this summer, I’ve been struck at how often our conversation turns to questions about what’s “right.” Is it “right” to have insurance, or should we trust God to provide in times of need? Is it “right” to put our family’s safety/comfort/happiness first, or should that be held in balance with calling, mission, ministry? Is it “right” to attend a church where we don’t agree on key theological points? Which points? Who is "right"? 

God gave me a strange gift when I was seventeen. At the time, I didn’t realize its value, and sometimes since then I’ve forgotten what I saw, but I’m brought back, sometimes painfully, sometimes with great amusement, to see again what I saw so clearly as a skinny high school senior.

I had planned, for years, where I was going to go to college. My grandmother didn’t like my plan, but from every other direction the endorsement was strong. Then, through what seemed like a clear word from God and some compelling circumstances, I found myself considering something very different.

The problem was, my first choice seemed like the "right" one. And when I started making lists of reason, weighing out the pros and cons, I found I could make the thing stack up either way. In fact, in talking to people around me, I found I could present either case so compellingly my listener would have to agree. You’re right!

But then, from the other side, You’re right!

Which is when God stepped in and gave me an interesting glimpse of my own tenacious mind, my own need to be right, and a simple, stunning truth: I could have all the reasons on my side, have it all lined up, be right on paper, right in logic, right in every way, and still be completely wrong.

One of my favorite poems at that point was Invictus, the well-known poem by little-known poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903). I was aware of its questionable theology ("I thank whatever gods there be"), but I liked the idea of standing up to the “bludgeonings of chance,” and I looked forward to somehow becoming “captain of my fate,” and “master of my soul.”

Choosing a college was my first chance to begin navigating my own course, but I remember sitting quietly and considering what I knew of people who had marched forward as captains of their fate. My family was full of smart people, smart in all the measurable ways, logical, persuasive, able to explain the rightness of their choices. But many of their choices, while logically right, had been painfully wrong, for them and those around them. In fact, as I sat looking down the path of the future, it occurred to me that “being right” could be a destructive thing, a license to ignore other people and their needs, a justification for doing great harm, a path into great danger.

College applications on the table before me, I made a decision, a decision that has stayed steady for over four decades now, despite occasional wavering and brief moments of amnesia. I decided I wanted to do what God called me to do, what He invited me to do, and to trust my decisions to Him, even if my own plans, ideas, opinions seemed better, more logical, more “right.”

I applied to just one college, the one I believe God called me to. And continue to thank God for the way He used that time in my life.

Does that mean God always tells us what choice to make? Not at all.

Should we wait until He does? Not necesssarily.

Are we wrong for having our own ideas, our own plans, our own agendas? No. 

It’s how we hold our plans – lightly, or tenaciously. With stubborn, prideful confidence our plans are right, or with a sense of humble, listening prayer: this is the way I’m going, Lord, unless you show me a better way.

Praying this week with family members considering some important decisions, I was reminded of our family’s move to Virginia, more than thirty years ago. We had been living in West Philly, in a neighborhood I’d grown to love. We had a two year old and a baby on the way. I wasn’t thrilled to be moving further south (I'm a native New Yorker), but I’d decided that it would be okay on one condition: we needed to buy a single family house, with a decent yard, preferably fenced, and room for a vegetable garden.

My plan made sense. Except we were losing money on our hundred-year-old twin in West Philly, couldn’t afford a single-family house anywhere near my husband’s new job, and he thought a townhouse in Reston, the planned community where he’d be working, would be a better choice.

I was sure I was right. So sure, I couldn’t even begin to see his point of view. Reston, on our first visit, was a hot, burned-over, weird, new place. The one townhouse I agreed to look at had tiny bedrooms, avocado and harvest gold bathroom fixtures, and bright orange, pink and green wallpaper throughout most of the first floor. No way.

He thought it was a great buy. I assembled compelling arguments against it. And then, in Truro Church the next day, John Howe, Truro’s rector at the time, preached a sermon about sin. 

I remember very clearly what he said: “Sin is wanting your own way more than God’s.”

Of course. I knew that. 

I’d seen it.

And I’d decided, years before: I wanted God’s way, not mine. 

Once I stopped arguing, it was totally clear: that small brick townhouse was God’s answer to our prayer.

I can’t think of a better place for a family of young children than that townhouse community where we spent fifteen years. In fact, when we outgrew our first townhouse, we scoured northern Virginia for something better and finally bought a larger townhouse just down the street. After that move, our kids were sure they lived in the best house in the best neighborhood in the best town in the best state in the best country in the world. God used those two homes for great good in our lives, and in the lives of others we came to know.

When I was a camp counselor one summer, years before that, a friend made me a small gift, a rock with Proverbs 16:9 painted on it: "The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." 

I’ve saved that rock as a reminder that God's not counting on my wisdom. Instead, if I listen, He'll give me his own. It’s a reminder that it’s okay to plan, to make lists of pros and cons, to envision the future, to think about which way is best.

But to hold that lightly. 

Because God is the one who knows the future, knows me, knows the people I love, knows what’s best for us all. I want Him to be the one to direct my steps, and theirs, through the unseen dangers, the unexpected tests along the way.

The news, as usual, is full of people arguing about debt, taxes, guns, treaties. There are lots of reasons, lots of people sure they’re right. I confess I’ve done some arguing myself, and there are days when I’m not quite sure who’s right, but very sure about who’s wrong.

But being right isn’t the answer. Not in politics, not in personal decisions. Our only hope is in listening, carefully, to the One who is beyond our reasons, our logic, our pride in our own wisdom. If He directs our steps, we can't go wrong.

       The shepherds are senseless
           and do not inquire of the Lord;
       so they do not prosper
           and all their flock is scattered. 

       Listen! The report is coming—
           a great commotion from the land of the north!
       It will make the towns of Judah desolate,
           a haunt of jackals.

        Lord, I know that people’s lives are not their own;
           it is not for them to direct their steps. (Jeremiah 10)

[This summer I'm reworking some earlier posts, as travel and time outside limit my time for blogging. This blog appeared, in slightly different form, on July 31, 2011]

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Grateful

This fall I attended two day-long conferences on healing, forgiveness, and the work of reconciliation.

Scribbled in my notes: “Gratitude is the key to wholeness.”

Jesus Heals a Leper, Rembrandt, sketch, 1665

The text prompting that note: Luke 17:11-19. Jesus healed ten lepers; nine ran off rejoicing, and one, a Samaritan, returned to give thanks.

"Jesus asked, 'Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?'
"Then he said to him, 'Rise and go; your faith has made you well.'"

They had all been cured of their leprosy. But one, the one who returned with praise and gratitude, received a deeper healing: “Your faith has made you well.”

I've been puzzling over this idea of gratitude and deeper wholeness for several months now. A friend gave me Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, and I've been struck by how Voskamp's determination to be thankful led her from deep depression into a life of joy, and how gratitude gradually undid the damage of a childhood locked in silent grief.

I've experienced much of this myself. I grew up in a household beset with grievance: “If only” was a frequent refrain. I watched how “If only” can blossom into bitterness and resentment, rage, hatred, violence. Grievance feeds grievance, until every incident, every word, is part of a narrative of injustice and deprivation.

I've seen the same story play out in households I've been close to. Abandonment, resentment, jealousy, rage: once the dial is set to grievance, the story plays out toward a predictably disturbing end.

On a larger stage the story is the same. The language of this past week, for those expecting a different end to our national election, is full of blame, bitterness, anger, hints of retribution.

Is gratitude possible when the default mode is grievance? Is it possible to learn gratitude as a spiritual discipline that can reshape our hearts and open the way to emotional health?

It seems the first step toward gratitude is to let go: let go of our own ideas of how the story was to go, let go of the “If onlys”, the sense of blame, the certainty that our way would have been best, that we've been denied the only happy ending.

It occurs to me that repentance is the one way out. I’m reminded of a sermon years ago that cut through a sense of angry entitlement I was struggling with: "Sin is wanting my own way more than God's."

We were in the middle of a move, at an impasse about what kind of house to buy, and I was sure beyond doubt I was right. And furious that the solution I had in mind was out of reach.

And then, in church the morning the decision needed to be made, the rector of Truro Church, John Howe, said "Sin is wanting my own way more than God's," and I saw my anger and bitter determination for what it was: sin. Wanting my way. Inability to listen to any voice outside my own.

Repentance was the turning point, as it has been many times since then. I set aside the single family house I had in mind, the fenced back yard, the garden, and agreed to the brick townhouse in the planned community, just miles from my husband's new job. I didn't know then what I found out quickly: it was a community with a strong network of caring families, with lots of kids, a babysitting co-op, acres of open space for kids to play, paths and fields and pools and playgrounds in greater abundance than anywhere else I've ever seen. Provision far beyond expectation, a lasting blessing in my  life and in the lives of our three children.

Christ in Gethsemane, Michael D. O'brien, Canada

My repentance allowed me to hear more clearly what Jesus said in the garden of Gethsemane: “Not my will, but yours, be done.”

That repentance led the way to gratitude. The first step was giving up my own narrow view of what would be best, but gratitude takes more than giving up of grievance, more than repenting for holding so fiercely to having things my way.

It takes awareness, attention, grateful acceptance of what's been given.

I wrote several weeks ago about the Ignatian prayer of examen. One of the steps in that daily practice is looking back on the day and giving thanks for where God's hand has been visible.

But what would happen if that kind of attention became part of the ongoing focus of each day? Not just for a few minutes before bed, or a few minutes over coffee the next morning, but throughout the day.

Voskamp's Thousand Gifts moves in that direction:

"I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep." 

G. K, Chesteron, a master of the art of gratitude, wrote in an early notebook:

"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

How do we learn that kind of gratitude? How do we teach it?

Is gratitude a gift? A habit of the heart?

When our children were small, we’d talk at bedtime about the day:

What did you learn today?
What was a thing of beauty?
What are you thankful for?

Then we’d sing a simple song my grandmother taught me:

"Father, we thank thee, for the night
And for the blessed morning light,
For health and strength, and tender care,
And all that makes the day so fair.”

Simple stuff.

But pausing to say thank you can refocus the heart. A 2008 study by Jeffrey Froh, assistant professor of psychology at Hofstra University in New York, found that middle school students asked to list up to five things they were grateful for every day for two weeks “experienced a jump in optimism and overall well-being . . .  Furthermore, they were more satisfied with school even three weeks later  

Ann Voskamp found that keeping a notebook of “gifts” forced her to pay atention, to see things she would not have seen.

“I am a hunter of beauty and I move slow and I keep the eyes wide, every fiber of every muscle sensing all wonder and this is the thrill of the hunt and I could be an expert on the life full, the beauty meat that lurks in every moment.
I hunger to taste life.
God.” 

Northern Harrier in Flight, Dan Pancamo,
Wikimedia Commons, 2010

 A hunter of beauty . . . What a great idea.

I think of that as I prowl the fields by Church Farm pond, watching for the northern harrier low across the dry, brown corn stubble, listening to the sweet call of the white-throated sparrow hidden in the overgrown thickets that edge the wetland pond.

I think of it again as I watch my granddaughter greeting wolf cubs at the Upper Schuykill Valley Park. “I’m telling you, I love this farm!” And I agree: the farm, the wolf pups, the red foxes watching, ears alert, the red-tail hawk spiraling overhead, the lively little face, the firm little hand, the exuberant declaration.

But beauty takes lots of forms:

Jim and friends at the Pottstown recycling center, engaging my two pre-teen assistants in loading the foam crusher, in sorting batteries, in pointing us toward the peacock strutting its stuff on the office roof.

A new acquaintance, over guacamole and flautas de puerco, sharing the story of God’s miraculous grace flowing through her life.

In another notebook, Chesterton wrote: “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

I think I would agree.

And one more Chesterton quote:

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?

This post is part of the November Synchroblog: The Spiritual Practice of Gratitude.  Other posts: 

• Jeremy Myers – 5 Things to be Unthankful For
• Glenn Hager – Gr-atitude
• Amy Martin – Gratitude in a Culture of Economy 
• Leah at Desert Spirit Fire - Living Thanks 
• Kathy Escobar - turning our ingrown eyeballs up & out

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments.