When, Not If, Things Fall Apart

Some years ago, I spent 18 months working as a chaplain at hospital that is a Level 1 Trauma Center, meaning they treat the victims of the worst accidents of all sorts in a five county area. Every chaplain who works at a Level 1 hospital must take a turn at being on-call overnight and having the pager which calls him or her to the Trauma Emergency Room to pray for patients, be a calm presence to doctors, nurses, and staff, and to minister to the families of trauma patients.

As the on-call Chaplain, I witnessed people brought in who were injured in accidents involving cars, motorcycles, pools, kitchens, lawn mowers, farm equipment, ladders, electrical works, guns, knives, drugs, and head injuries.  Anyone who loses consciousness or loses a lot of blood goes to the Trauma Bay. There the utmost priority is stabilization – getting the patient’s heart rate, blood pressure, and pulmonary function stabilized. Sometimes a patient arrives with the EMT’s performing CPR and the Trauma Team takes over with intubation and chest compressions. They will do numerous compressions while administering chemical blood pressure boosters. They’ll pause to find a heartbeat. Sometimes, nothing, and they start the process over again. The compressions are hard; nurses and doctors take turns. They pause…a few heartbeats show up on the monitor then stop; more compressions.

      In the Trauma Bay once, I prayed with a mother and father as they stood at the end of their 19 year-old daughter’s gurney as the Trauma Team worked furiously for thirty minutes trying to get her heart to beat on its own. The doctors and nurses did not want to give up. The parents of course did not want to give up. But for whatever reason the young woman’s body would not respond to medical intervention. I was overwhelmed by witnessing the utter tragedy as her parents stood in shock hearing the pronouncement of their daughter’s death.

      Yet I could go on. In the Trauma Bay I witnessed a man dying from a gunshot wound to the stomach – apparently a bystander on the wrong street corner that night. And there was the four-year old Amish girl who fell into a grain elevator and suffocated before her frantic father could find her. She was brought to the hospital by helicopter for naught. She lay lifeless in the Trauma Bay her little bare feet still dirty from play – a heart-breaking sight. There was the truck driver injured and sobbing after running a stop sign on a country road killing three teenagers in an open Jeep. In addition were the parents of the fourth teen in the jeep. They could not be consoled as their daughter lay barely alive in the Intensive Care Unit.

      All of what I just described is something Jon Kabatt-Zinn calls Full Catastrophe Living. In the face of such catastrophes, how do medical workers keep their sanity? How do parents cope with losing their young children? How do chaplains keep from losing their religion?

      In his book Full Catastrophe Living, Kabatt-Zinn describes meditation and mindfulness as the key to coping with these catastrophic events. The meditation Kabatt-Zinn prescribes he does not call a Buddhist practice but that’s what it is; Kabatt-Zinn teaches mindfulness and meditation, he talks about the impermanence of things, about non-striving (the same as non-attachment) and he even instructs Yoga as a way of meditating. If there is any doubt what Kabat-Zinn is teaching is Buddhism, you need only look at the Preface of his book which is written with an economy of words by Thich Nhat Hanh. He says, “When the dharma is really taking care of the problems of life, it is true dharma.” (Kabat-Zinn, p xiii)

      The first step of the dharma or The Way or the practice is to accept that to be human is to suffer. Consider the oldest narrative the Western world has about suffering – the biblical story of Job. When God brags to the prosecutor of his heavenly court known as the Sah-tahn, God makes the claim that Job is such a righteous man. The Sah –tahn then replies, “Well that’s because you put a fence around him, you protect him from the vagaries of life.” And that’s when the heavenly wager is made: God would make Job suffer and if Job cursed God for his suffering then God would give Job over to the Sahtahn. So God set out to put every calamity on Job – his livestock was stolen, his servants killed, his children died when their house collapsed, and a pox was cast upon him. Every cause of human suffering: human evil, natural phenomenon, and disease. Job never cursed God but he did finally give himself over to his pain and suffering. Job stopped trying to figure out why God would punish a good man: Job faced the reality of his powerlessness and his suffering and sat down in ashes, grieving. From then on, it’s not IF something bad happens to good people but WHEN bad things happen to good people.

      Pema Chodron, Buddhist nun, knows this well. In her book, When Things Fall Apart, she examines with frankness and tenderness the reality that life is messy and that if something can go wrong it will. Along with that reality comes fear, a natural fear of living in chaos. And because we have been taught to run from our fears, we never really face our living with calamity or even our discomfort at lesser problems of life. We tend to do anything to avoid being afraid: we run, we hide, we anesthetize, we distract ourselves, we tell ourselves stories to avoid the pain of fear. It’s natural that we do this; all creatures feel fear and most times they will retract or retreat from what they perceive as danger. But Chodron says that being aware of and staying with our fears in the face of the unknown is the only way to see through to the real world of impermanence. Yet we also discover the real world of compassion, wonder, and courage.

      Chodron says, “When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test for each of us is to stay on that brink….” (Chodron p 9) The Trauma Bay at Strong Hospital is a place that can test a person in that way every day. In the drama that unfolds as the Trauma Team fights to keep patients alive, no one in that bay knows what will happen next. As witness to this and as minister to loved ones of the patient, together we had to sit on that brink of the unknown. And I found if I tried to fill that groundlessness with small talk, platitudes, even prayer, my ministry felt wrong somehow. But now I realize my own discomfort in that place of the unknown caused me to try and allay the family’s fear for their loved one. Now I read Chodron and realize my chatter was not helping anyone. Indeed, my best ministry came when I stayed with the family on that brink as a silent witness to their pain, a calm presence in the midst of chaos. Still, it was no easy task.

      Chodron goes on to say, “The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell. In fact, that way of looking at things is what keeps us miserable. Thinking we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in Buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly.” (Chodron p 9) The Job narrative confirms the idea that one can’t live life without pain and suffering. Once we accept that reality, once we accept our powerlessness in some situations, we can begin to work on how to be present to it and learn something about living our lives with clarity. We see that Stuff Happens. Even if human constructs of evil were eradicated we would still live in a hazardous universe where disease and accident beset us. We see that we must live with this knowledge and abide the physical and emotional pain which come in the aftermath of Stuff Happening.

      How do we do this?

      We take some cues from Pema Chodron. The thing I like about her is she teaches one of the oldest forms of Buddhism and she’s gained expertise in a way few Westerners do. And I find her accessible as American born and having lived a similar lifestyle before entering a Buddhist nunnery. In fact, she tells the story of her failed marriage. Her husband had come home one day and out of the blue told her he was having an affair and wanted a divorce. She says when she heard this everything stopped and for a moment she stood in silent stillness. Then she said, “I regrouped and picked up a stone and threw it at him.” (Chodron p10)

      She goes on to say that she began her practice of Buddhism because she was not able to return to her secure world of dependence on her husband. With mindfulness and meditation, she was able to stay with her “shakiness – to stay with her broken heart with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge – that is the path of true awakening,” she says. “Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic – this is the spiritual path,” says Chodron (p 10)

      In her book, When Things Fall Apart, Chodron teaches the Eight Worldly Dharmas. Dharma is a difficult word to translate into English and it has multiple meanings between Hinduism and Buddhism. But with the Eight Worldly Dharmas, dharma means phenomena or the playing out of things which keep us on the wheel of samsara or suffering. They are akin to the 7 deadly sins. The Eight Worldly Dharmas are described:
Pleasure and our pursuit of it while avoiding Pain
       We are attached to Praise and try to avoid criticism and blame
       We are attached to Fame and try to avoid Disgrace
       We are attached to Gain, to getting what we want and don’t like to lose (Loss) what we have

Now think for a moment about these pairs: Pleasure and Pain, Praise and Blame, Fame and Disgrace, Gain and Loss. I’m sure we all have been in these loops at some time in our lives. I struggle with Praise and Blame. I’ve been conditioned by my family of origin to be a pleaser. I knew when I started this path of ministry this would be something I would have to work on. It took a long time to recognize what situations triggered that pleasing behavior but I have since become more mindful of those triggers. This doesn’t mean my over-functioning never occurs but being aware of it and knowing there is nothing that requires my pleasing behaviors, I can gently extract myself from that pattern. What about you? Do you recognize yourself in any of these patterns?

Chodron says the irony is the Eight Worldly Dharmas have no basis in reality – they are all constructs of our experience in life, the stories we’ve been told about ourselves, the stories we tell about ourselves. Yet we don’t have to necessarily rid ourselves of these perceptions but befriend them, let them teach us about how and why they hook us. We need to see how the Eight Worldly Dharmas color our perception of reality, how they aren’t all that solid, Chodron says (p 46).

The practice of mindfulness and meditation will enhance our ability to deconstruct the self-perceptions which hurt us. The practice of meditation is not a vacation from reality but a venture into it – where there’s no escape from the truth of yourself. Remember the Spider in the Meditation Room story? The young acolyte tells his teacher he is finally getting the hang of meditation. The only problem is every time he enters a heightened state of awareness, a big ugly spider suddenly appears in front of him, dangling from his thread. The student wants to take a knife into the next session and get rid of it. But the wise teacher suggests that he instead take a piece of chalk and simply put an X on the spider’s belly. The next day, the student runs to his teacher and says, I did it! I marked the spider’s belly! Good work says the teacher as he reaches over and lifts the student’s shirt to show a large X on his own belly. Good work, the teacher says.

This is the challenging part of meditation practice – coming to terms with yourself and all your fears. If you are thinking of taking up a practice, it might be good to have a teacher or a mentor to whom you can discuss your experiences.

If we all could find a way to be more aware, more compassionate, more loving to ourselves and others, we can remove those roadblocks at which we tend to get stuck and put out into the world our hope for peace and our practice of non-aggression. May it be so.

Grace Happens

    Waking up yesterday morning, I sleepily picked up my phone to have a look at my messages. Several notifications appeared on the screen. One of them was from Facebook reminding me: “Today is Carl Winkler’s Birthday.” I was taken aback for a moment, saying inanely, out loud to my phone, “Carl Winkler is dead. He died six years ago.”

    Carl Winkler was a member of my home congregation in Marietta, Georgia. I worked with him as a lay leader and I remember him fondly – he had a very dry wit and I appreciated his no-nonsense approach to life. Carl was a stay-at-home dad to his pre-teen son, Alex. His wife, Masako traveled frequently as a Japanese interpreter; she was in high demand by businesses in the Atlanta area. Life was good for the Winkler’s until 2009, when Carl was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer – a cancer that has little to no symptoms until, as they say, it’s too late. Carl fought valiantly and it was clear that he did not want to leave his beloved wife and son. The last time I saw Carl was just before my family and I moved to Webster. He died shortly thereafter. Through the following year, I kept getting Facebook messages like “Carl Winkler hasn’t added any friends. Help Carl find new friends.” And then came the inevitable birthday notice. No one had taken Carl off Facebook. Sad. I missed him and I missed keeping in touch with Masako.

    After the first couple of years, I stopped getting those Facebook notices. But here it is now six years later and I get Carl’s birthday notice out of the blue. I sighed and had a moment of remembrance and then continued on with my day.

   Later in the afternoon, it occurred to me that I needed some quotes from a book I wanted to include in today’s sermon. I grabbed the book from my study and began flipping through it and out falls a picture – a picture of Carl and Masako Winkler.

    The picture was taken at my house in Georgia. The occasion was a mystery dinner party I hosted as a fundraiser. The mystery had a Hawaiian theme and the guests each played a role. In the picture Carl is wearing a crazy straw hat and a loud Hawaiian shirt. Masako looks very Polynesian in her hibiscus crown, lei, and grass skirt. The two of them are colorful and joyful against the lush green of my back yard. At this point, I could have dismissed finding the picture as a coincidence and gone on with my day. Instead I paused and asked myself, “What is the universe trying to tell me?”

    I looked at the picture and let it speak to me: The memory of Carl, the memory of the occasion gripped me with warm feelings of fun and camaraderie. The smiles on Carl’s and Masako’s faces in the picture made me smile wide; then the tears came as the words “treasure every moment” came to me. I also sensed the irony that their costumes had given them a chance to be relaxed and fully themselves – they were able to let their hair down. Their social identities and the roles they play in everyday life had been cast off. I remember how Carl doted on Masako that night. I remember how Masako, usually quiet and reserved, became the life of the party. It was time out of time for Carl and Masako, and time out of time for the rest of us that night. It was a grace for us all then. As I stood looking at the picture, I realized it as a grace for me now to relive that special occasion and to have that special memory of a friend whom I will never see again.

Was the universe trying to tell me something? Did all the stars align and did a chaotic universe come together just to send me a special message? Not likely. But I do know this: if you pay attention you can build meaning out of these little moments of grace which can sustain you in a world full of hurt and bad news. Grace happens. Grace is needed in our lives, even in our Unitarian Universalist lives. The grace I’m talking about isn’t only about sin and salvation but also about knowing that life is just as full of joy as it is sorrow; it is knowing your life is a gift; it is knowing that to find the small graces which await you every day, you must wake up to them.

    This is what one of my colleagues has to say about the experience of Grace:
“On a recent Saturday, I was dressed and showered unusually early, [my husband] was out, and the doors and windows were open, ceiling fan on. Both dogs were happily snoozing nearby, and I was sitting on the bed reading when a moment of utter contentment hit: Life is good. That was grace for me, that instant of mundane bliss.”

    To find bliss in the mundane – that’s what Grace is. Here’s another framing:

    On the arts and humanities website, “Humans of New York,” a middle-aged man is pictured sitting on a park bench on summer day;, his shirt opened bearing his largish belly. He looks kind of tough, like he’s worked hard for a living. He looks straight into the camera with bushy eyebrows knit together and is quoted as saying the most amazing thing:
“God sends me little moments all day long to say: ‘You’re not alone, brother.’ Just a little while ago, an old hunched-over Chinese lady smiled at me with the greatest warmth in her eyes.”
“And you think that was a message from God?” says the interviewer.
“I think that was God,” says the man.
(From Humans of New York on Facebook 5/13/15)

    A different theology from ours, perhaps - but yeah, grace is like that.

    Cheryl Richardson, who wrote the book, The Unmistakable Touch of Grace, says this:
“Grace comes from the Latin word gratia, meaning favor, charm, or thanks. Spiritual traditions from around the world each share a similar understanding of this word. For example, in Sanskrit, grace is akin to the word grnati, which means He praises, and to call or invoke. In Christian terms, grace is defined as the infinite love, mercy, favor, and goodwill shown by God to humankind. In Judaism, the concept of grace is expressed by the Hebrew word hesed, meaning mercy, or loving-kindness. Grace is seen as a creative force — an act of exceptional kindness and goodness. And my friend, Lama Surya Das…a leading Buddhist teacher, says, ‘Grace is the isness of life. It’s the recognition that everything is connected and sacred. The more in touch we are with this natural abundance of life, the less we need.’”
 http://www.cherylrichardson.com/store/the-unmistakable-touch-of-grace-intro/

    When we are reminded of this abundance of life, the less we need to fulfill ourselves with material possessions and instant gratification. We become quickly bored with these externalities. If all we have to reach for in hard times are distractions – food, inebriants, shiny new things, and shallow relationships – then we will never be satisfied; we will never be filled up by these empty substitutions for the heart-nourishing experiences of grace – of the complete and utter gratuitousness of life. We cannot give ourselves the gift of life; we cannot give ourselves the gift of grace; only our deep connectedness to life can open us to grace.

I quoted Brother David Stendl-Rast in a past sermon on gratitude. Grace is the reason to be grateful. Grace is gratis – unexpected, unearned, given freely. Stendl-Rast says when we cultivate a full awareness of life as gratuitous our world comes alive.
Steindl-Rast gives us a little poem by Piet Hein to illustrate:

The universe may
Be as great as they say.
But it wouldn’t be missed
        If it didn’t exist.

Steindle-Rast says. “Hein lays bare the gratuitousness of absolutely everything. The universe is gratis. It cannot be earned, nor need it be earned. From this simple fact of experience springs grateful living, grace-filled living. Gratefulness is the heart’s full response to the gratuitousness of all that exists. And gratefulness makes us graceful in a double sense. In gratefulness we open ourselves to this freely-given universe and so we become fully graced with it.” (p 201)

Steindl-Rast says that sometimes people resist the notion of receiving a gift they didn’t ask for because it denotes a dependence on the giver. He says this is a problem of individualism wherein one wants to remain in control as in “I didn’t ask for this, I don’t want it.” This is a problem of independence which is an illusion – no one has control over being born into this life nor do we live in a vacuum once we’re here.

      On the other hand, if one is over-dependent on being the receiver, one becomes enmeshed, enslaved if you will to the giver. I am reminded in this instance of the person who couches everything that happens to them in terms of God’s will: “I was meant to be here today. It was God’s will that I found my car keys this morning.” The thing, Steindle-Rast says, that makes receiving a gift an inter-dependent event is to simply be grateful for the gift given gratuitously. He explains:
“The interdependence of gratefulness is truly mutual. The receiver of the gift depends on the giver….But the circle of gratefulness is incomplete until the giver of the gift becomes the receiver: a receiver of thanks….The greatest gift one can give is thanksgiving. In giving gifts, we give what we can spare, but in giving thanks, we give ourselves. One who says ‘Thank you’ to another really says, ‘We belong together.’” (p 17)

      In the least, I ask this of you: whether we are talking about the gift of life or a birthday present, always be grateful, always say thank you, and never look a gift-horse in the mouth; by that I mean avoid being critical of a gift if it is given with sincerity. And as for those nonmaterial gifts, life’s gifts like that stunning sunset over the hills that made you weak in the knees, say thank you – to God, to the Universe, to Mother Nature, to Astrophysics – say, “I’m grateful.” This will connect you to the giver - whoever, whatever that is - and the circle will be complete. William Blake said if the only prayer you ever say is thank you, it is enough.

      I’ve shared with you how I got religion. It was when my first daughter, Allison was born 21 years ago. She came 8 weeks early and after a dramatic 72 hours from water breaking to the delivery room, she was born – perfect; ten fingers, ten toes, a miniature version of a newborn. She was breathing well on her own. She was going to be okay. It was at that point I realized I had no way to acknowledge my powerlessness in the situation and no way to express my deep gratitude for my beautiful baby girl. Not a prayer, song, poem, or dance. In that moment I recognized the void in my life. That in itself turned out to be a grace.

      What about you? Have you had an experience of Grace? Has something occurred in your life that gave you a jolt, a new perspective, a sudden inspiration?  Steindl-Rast relates his story of being a child in Nazi-occupied Austria during World War II. Once during a bombing raid, he was unable to get to a bomb shelter. Instead he ducked into a nearby church and scrambled under a pew. As the ground shook and he heard the explosions, he was sure the roof would collapse upon him. But in minutes it was over and he emerged from the church surrounded by smoke, rubble, and ruin, with the exception of one patch of untouched grass. He said it was the greenest green he’d ever seen before or since. Often the exquisite sweetness of life comes after a near death. What is your story?

      Have you ever been surprised and delighted by the intense red of the male cardinal in spring? Have you ever woken in the middle of the night to moonlight as bright and intense as a neon light outside your window? Have you ever seen the look of unbridled joy on a child’s face as she chases lightening bugs in the cool of a summer evening? Have you ever had a moment of undeniable synchronicity when you and your best friend picked up the phone and dialed each other at the same time? Has the person in front of you in the drive-thru of Dunkin Donuts ever paid for your coffee?

    Life is rarely idyllic. We all have known and will continue to know pain and suffering. Sometimes gentle rains turn into hailstorms. But it is so important to accept all there is in this life and to remain grateful for its sweetness because grace happens. Unlike pain and suffering, grace can go unnoticed. Cultivate your taste for the sweetness in life and never take it for granted. Always be grateful for it – it’s the only way grace will stick. May it be so.