All the Kings Horses

When Humpty Dumpty fell the first time, we found out that bad things happen to good people. That smart people do stupid things. Humpty Dumpty falls again, day after day, for someone. And all the king's horses and all the kings men can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But that old egg can do it himself.  He'll be cracked and crooked, vulnerable and leery of another tumble. But he'll get back up there. It may take him a while, and he may look entirely different from here on out. Bearing his injuries, climbing with a limp.
Will we laugh at him, ridicule him because he got caught out and we didn't (this time)? Will we say he got what he deserved? What intelligent egg would sit on a wall, anyway? Will we call him names like Monica Lewinsky or Pete Rose or Jim Baker or (insert the name of a President you love to ridicule, depending on your political party) to make ourselves feel superior?
The king's horses and the kings men will stand around, pretending to help but too self centered to actually lend aid. They are, after all, royal servants and not egg repair workers.
Mother Teresa isn't in the story. Or maybe she is, just off the page a little, offering encouraging words. Maybe she knows the drill so well that she can be a helper even from that position. Maybe she's seen enough eggs fall to know it happens to every single one who takes a breath to stay alive.
Most likely we are the kings men or Mother Teresa at different times. Hopefully we get more like the latter the older we grow. And forgive ourselves for our horsy smell when we sit idly by.
Today's metaphor is brought to you by life's great struggle.

Little Feathers: Realer and Realer...That's a Word, Right?

Little Feathers: Realer and Realer...That's a Word, Right?: I just finished a book by an incredible writer. The Migration of Animals, by Mary Helen Spect, is just a little beyond me. It's as if I&...

Realer and Realer...That's a Word, Right?

I just finished a book by an incredible writer. Migratory Animals, by Mary Helen Spect, is just a little beyond me. It's as if I'm standing in a group of artists (I know they are artists because they are all very cool looking, dressed in black with slightly messy hair) who are speaking a language I can't quite piece together. I know the individual words. I just can't quite get the gist. I'm standing on the outside of a book, wishing I was smarter. If I was smarter, I could tell stories like this writer. Oh, wait.  I'm doing that deadly comparison thing again. The one that makes me hesitate to put my own writing out there. Is that why I'm blogging? To keep from writing the books?

On Friday night my husband, Bob, and I went to a fancy seafood restaurant. We spend a bundle and got some fabulous food. When we got home, I was thinking about how fortunate we are, how my grandparents would never have gotten to eat at place like that. That got me thinking about my grandmothers' cooking. Both of them were wonderful cooks. Simple food made perfectly. My farm grandma made the best fried chicken (a bird who has never been in the refrigerator before it is cooked is a different animal from the supermarket chicken) and the best, flakiest, biscuits you can possibly imagine. Her vegetables were fresh from the garden or from mason jars where they were "put up" with love and care. The butter she made by shaking a large jar until the creamy solids came together. She cooked from a wheelchair from the time I was a young teen, pulling herself around her messy kitchen with one foot, putting food on the table that lives on in my memory. And she laughed so much and so often, it is a sound that I long to hear again.

You know where I am going with this. I think I do, too. If I were to eat a meal prepared by a famous chef, spent time to recover from it, and then ate my grandma's chicken and biscuits, which would be better?

If writers are charged with telling the truth, who is out there who knows the universal truth for all time? Who knew more about life and loss and victory and surrender than Pooh and Piglet? How long does it take to become real? The velvet gets rubbed off regardless of whether it is loved off or scraped off by happenstance.

We know when we read the truth. We know when we stand in front of a painting if the artist has put their honesty into it.  The hard part may be telling the truth as it has been revealed to us, without mimicking the voice (or the recipes, or the brush strokes) of an admired one just a little (or a lot) more educated than we are.

I'm grateful for writers like Dostoyevsky and Rilke, Stringfellow and Kierkegaard. They challenge my mind and make my blood richer. But where would we be without Charles Schultz, Erma Bombeck and A.A. Milne?

We're all getting the velvet rubbed off, and the stuffing knocked out of us. Hopefully it's making us realer and realer all the time, and not just cranky, limp copycats.

My daughter, Sally Nava, helped me with the music for this poem years ago. It was part of youth play at church. I really like the flute part. Thanks, Sally.

Little Feathers: Against the Grain, Counterintuitive, and Not Quit...

Little Feathers: Against the Grain, Counterintuitive, and Not Quit...: Our society, particularly in America, preaches the fulfillment of self will as the driving force in our lives. Try hard enough, you can do a...

Against the Grain, Counterintuitive, and Not Quite Figured Out

Our society, particularly in America, preaches the fulfillment of self will as the driving force in our lives. Try hard enough, you can do anything. Make it to the top in your career, achieve your goals in all areas, even prolong your life by living within the current nutrition-and-exercise wisdom.

Now, if you are of a particular bent, add in the component of spiritual life. Seeking wisdom. Seeking what some would call the will of God. This is where the waters get murky. This is where the rubber of  rationalization meets the road of behavior. Many current spiritual leaders call for prayer, but prayer that seeks to bend the will of God to our own desires. This raises all kinds of questions. Chief among them is why some prayers are answered and some are not. I have asked this question a million times.

I recently re-read an article from 1960 by Catherine Marshall called The Prayer of Relinquishment. This prayer is the very thing that the 12 step program calls for. Giving up self will. In fact, the only good use of the will for an addict is to be willing to give up what the self wants, and seek to put in its place the thing that God wants. Catherine Marshall points out that God will never come between us and free will. So the only way God can actually work in us is if we empty out that space in the center of the universe where we normally put our own desires. 

That is simply against everything we are taught from the time we are tiny. Being our own advocate, trusting in our own intellect, our own hard work placed firmly on the altar of achievement...this is what makes sense. Concrete. Scientific. If you train harder, you run faster. Bootstraps, for heaven's sake.

How unnatural is it to actually trust God?  Why should we trust a being who lets bad things happen to good people? Catherine Marshall wrote that it is not some arbitrary original sin that separates us from God, but it is fear. Fear that we can't trust, should not trust, anyone but ourselves. Theologically, calling fear the wall between us and God is an old, old notion. It is fear that causes us to turn inward on ourselves, to stop looking up, to stop looking out. The whole inspecting-the-lint-in-our-spiritual-naval thing. Maybe it is semantics to replace "sin" with "fear". But to me, it makes sense. If I can't trust God with my life, with my loved ones, with my desires, then I have to pray that my own will be done. God, give me good health so I can live long and love my family more. What is wrong with that prayer? God, give me. God, give me. Me. Me. I know what is best for my life. Who is in the center of that picture? Well, I am American after all. It is me.

While I would love to think I've discovered some key to serenity that will never leave me, I know that my own human nature will fight back against this line of reasoning. Sometimes I am willful, sometimes I am just the lazy, acquiescing to habit. I'm in the habit of being self centered. It will take a lot of work to let go of that. Wait...is my surrender dependent on hard work? Am I the captain of that ship? Well, yes. This is where Americans are right. It is hard work that will let me surrender. It is very hard to give up thinking I know best for myself. The application of my will to give up my will. Someone will think I'm ready for the loony bin. 

I don't have it all figured out. I just know it goes against the grain of human achievement. And, I know it is something I long for. So, I'll keep working on it. Working on not working. You know what I mean. Right?

Little Feathers: Thank You, Stuart Scott

Little Feathers: Thank You, Stuart Scott: I keep thinking about Stuart Scott, the ESPN sportscaster who died of cancer at 49. He said, "When you die, it does not mean that you l...

Thank You, Stuart Scott

I keep thinking about Stuart Scott, the ESPN sportscaster who died of cancer at 49. He said, "When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live."

This morning I woke up to see the star over the tall evergreen that shines down at me on clear mornings before the sun comes up. It is the most encouraging star. When I am laying there in the bed working on getting my rise-and-shine juices flowing, that star seems like a connection to God. Like that old game of telephone that involves two tin cans a long string. I can imagine the creator of the cosmos way up there, light years away, giving me words of peace and love all the down the string into my heart.

This is the day we are given, and we have been given everything we need to wake up today. Sometimes that knowledge makes me worry that I am going to squander this day. That I need to do something important to show that I am grateful for my time on earth. The old notions of worthiness, of striving to be good enough to deserve the love of God play on in the mind. I guess they are just part of the human consciousness, even though they are false. They get it backward. I don't have to try hard enough to earn grace, because it is a free gift. Once I let that mantle of forgiveness and mercy settle about me, then I can respond. Then, I am free. If I am obsessed with myself and being productive, being smart enough or any of the other "enoughs", the self absorption that results is a stumbling block. I can't see the small miracles all around me.  Like walking through the woods with a mirror before my face, I can't see the beauty laid at my feet.

The wisest people I have known have found a way around the what-about-me part of the human condition. Not that they are perfect, either. But they have found the power in surrender of the will. Stuart Scott found the peace that comes with knowing we are not charge of life, even of our own life. Peace that allowed him to give hope to millions of people by his example of courage.

Work is one of the gifts that we are given. Being productive is as necessary to our search for meaning as education. Finding the work that fulfills us as people can be a life-long journey, and it can also change tremendously as we age. Raising kids was my heart-growing work, but that job ends earlier than some. Only when the kids were up and out did I find that writing is important to me. It is a gift to me. When I remember that I have that gift to unwrap every day, I understand that I am not earning my time on earth. I am given that time. Free and clear. One day at time. My most important work is still loving the people I have been given to love. That job is never-ending, and since I will never get it just right, I turn to that mantle of grace to deal with my failures. Finding the courage to work hard at writing, being willing to share my insides with total strangers, that is an ongoing project as well.

Stuart Scott, I am grateful for the grace you modeling in living, and in dying. You make me want to make the most of this day, and I understand that I begin that effort with gratitude. And gratitude is the middle. And gratitude is the end.