JUST MY LUCK!
August 27, 2006 The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
I have had a good life. I had two good parents who made sure I was safe, healthy and well-educated. When they saw that I had a talent for music, they made sure I had piano lessons. They supported my penchant for social activism – though Dad was a bit more reticent about that than Mom. And no matter how far-off track I wandered, I always knew they’d be by my side.
I have four wonderful siblings with whom I’m close. I had a good marriage, despite the fact that it ended in divorce. And through that marriage I produced two children – who despite some challenges along the way, have turned out pretty darn well! And they, in turn, have given me a couple of wonderful grandchildren.
I have always had good friends. And unlike many adults, I’ve been able to engage in work that I love, and even get paid for it. In the words of Joseph Campbell, I’ve been able to “follow my bliss.”
But recently, in the midst of a conversation with someone, I heard myself say, “It’ll be just my luck that such-and-such will happen!” And for the first time, I realized how often I use that phrase. “It’ll be just my luck that I’ll finish knitting the shawl and the whole thing will come unraveled!” “It’ll be just my luck that I’ll walk up to the pulpit and fall flat on my face!” “It’ll be just my luck that….” and so on and so on. The examples are always scenarios that, in fact, have never happened to me!
So why do I talk as if my life has been filled with catastrophes and just plain bad luck, when, if I seriously look at the history of my life, I have to acknowledge that it’s been mostly filled with delight – that I’ve been the beneficiary of innumerable instances of kindness and Grace. Even those events which seemed terrible at the time became openings for me into something new and life-affirming.
I read somewhere this past week about a very old monk who lay dying in a nursing home. The writer was invited by another monk to go and visit the dying one. The writer said she felt nervous about this, thinking that the old monk wouldn’t want to have his final hours intruded upon–that he was probably needing to have as much solitude as possible to prepare himself for death.
Yet as soon as the dying monk laid eyes on the author and her friend, he said, “Ah, life is sweet!” They visited for a little while, and when they said goodbye and turned to leave, the dying monk’s last words to them were again, “Life is so sweet!”
Yes, life is sweet. But how easy it is for us to forget to acknowledge that sweetness; how much easier it can be to lament its trials and curse its unfairness, particularly when we’re caught up in the busyness of our lives.
The Reverend Robert Corin Morris, in his book Wrestling with Grace, talks about his realization one day that his beginning of a curse – “GOD…!” – upon stubbing his toe was actually the beginning of a prayer – “groaning its way,” he writes, “from the heart of my hassled, pressured self.” So with his next breath, he breathed more deeply and repeated “in a somewhat more friendly groan, ‘O God!’” And on the third breath, he prayed, “O God…bless – bless my aching toe, bless my ruffled spirits, bless my frazzled body…bless me in my heedless rush…”
Morris found that when he could turn his cursing in any given situation into a prayer, he became more attentive to his surroundings – to the beauty of the world, the goodness of strangers, the abundance of gifts in his life. His prayers became not prayers of despair, but of blessing and gratitude.
Equally important, he found that by moving his curses into prayers, he could reach across the chasm between him and other human beings created by his anger or frustration, and utter a prayer for their well-being.
I’m reminded of a time several years ago when I was driving from my church in Solana Beach to some event in Los Angeles. That morning I’d delivered a sermon about Zen Buddhism, which of course I’d spent the previous week researching. After the service a parishioner loaned me a tape on the “Tao of Leadership,” which I began listening to while on the freeway to L.A.
I was feeling pretty mellow that afternoon. After all, I’d spent several days reading and writing about Buddhism and its various forms of meditation; and now I was listening to an extremely calm and gentle voice talk about how to bring meditation and the concepts of Eastern religions into my leadership role. I was envisioning a new me at Board meetings and elsewhere – wiser, calmer, more focused.
Suddenly another driver cut in front of me, just barely missing the front corner of my car. Without a moment’s hesitation I angrily laid on the horn, and yelled a long litany of ugly names and curses at the man – none of which, of course, he could hear! It did nothing to change his driving habits, and it certainly did nothing towards furthering my goal of enlightenment!
How much better it would have been for my spiritual health – and physical health as well! – had I been able to change my curses into prayers. What difference might it have made in myself had I been able to pray, “Dear Mother-Father God (or “Dear Spirit of Love,” or “Dear Creator,” or even “Dear Whatever”), bless that driver; help him to slow down and find serenity; keep him and all who are in his path safe.” Perhaps it would have opened my heart to him and others I encounter like him. Perhaps I’d be able to imagine his life – his challenges, his hurts, his longings for love and acceptance.
Perhaps praying for him would have opened to me a glimpse of the similarities between us, and my connection to him and to his life.
Cursing or grumbling about someone is simply another form of complaining about our life – of lamenting that this is “just my luck!” But moving out of that place into a place of gratitude opens us to see more of life’s abundance – to acknowledge that indeed, it is “a beautiful mornin’”, and to accept all of life as a blessing, even the parts we don’t like.
And I wonder if there is a correlation between how well we accept all life, and how well we accept ourselves? I rather suspect there is.
Not too long ago I was talking to a friend about ongoing frustrations I was feeling about myself: After all these years I still wasn’t organizing myself well enough; I wasn’t doing all the reading I wanted to do; I wasn’t being as present for my congregation or my family as I wanted to be; I wasn’t doing enough to change the world. The list went on and on. (Ever have one of those days?)
Finally my friend suggested that perhaps I simply needed to accept myself the way I am, with all those so-called “failings” unresolved; and that’s when I realized that I’d been living my life as if I had plenty of time to become that person I wanted to become: A model of efficiency, incredibly wise, on the front lines fighting for justice, meeting every pastoral need of my congregants, and still being present for every need of my family. But at my age, I probably have no choice but to accept the person I am. It was pretty depressing!
But in fact, none of us, no matter our age, can assume that we have time to transform ourselves into something other than who we are. Since we never really know how long life will last, we would do well to accept ourselves now, in all our incompleteness.
In the Talmud – the great Jewish book of wisdom – it is said that, “We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.” In other words, if we don’t accept and love ourselves, we will see life through the same glasses of non-acceptance and disappointment, never engaging it fully and joyfully as it is meant to be engaged.
Physician and author Rachel Naomi Remen says that in her childhood, her family always had a huge jigsaw puzzle on a table for people to work on together. When she was only about four years old, Dr. Remen would watch her family putting together the puzzle, but of course she had no idea the rules of the game.
One day she was looking at all the tiny puzzle pieces laid out on the table. There were some that were scary to her, and so she began taking them and hiding them under the sofa cushions. Each day when no one else was in the room, Dr. Remen would find more of these puzzle pieces that she didn’t like, and retire them to her hiding place.
The members of her family who were working on the puzzle became more and more frustrated at their inability to finish it. One day her mother finally counted the pieces, and discovered that there were over 100 of them missing! She asked little Rachel if she knew anything about the missing pieces, and the child led her mother to the couch and showed her the stash of hidden pieces.
“I was astounded,” Remer writes; “I hadn’t known there would be a picture – a quite beautiful one, in fact. Without the pieces I’d hidden, the game made no sense.”
Life is like that. We can try to reject or avoid the pieces of it that we don’t like; but until we accept the ugly or frightening pieces of life along with the beautiful and inviting ones, we will not be fully engaging life, and it will make no sense.
Says Remer: “We must be willing to show up for whatever life offers.” The same is true for our own selves.
And that is our luck! That is our blessing! It is why the “stars sing alleluia!”
Now, I must acknowledge here that this is in some ways an easy sermon for me to deliver, because my life has never been confronted with some of the tragedies that confront others. This week we will be re-visiting the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, particularly the floods that resulted from it, and the lives lost or severely damaged, in large part because of the shameful incompetence and lack of caring by our government.
Yet still, there are stories of hope and redemption that come out of this tragedy – some of which you will hear in our service next Sunday. It doesn’t mean that what happened shouldn’t be grieved and remembered; but those who survived have lives that are more than that event, and those lives need to be engaged fully, with hope and with gratitude.
Most of us here have not – and probably will not – experience losses of such magnitude. But many of you have suffered deep personal tragedies that must have made you question the goodness – even the value – of life. And yet you kept going, trusting that somewhere, somehow, you would experience life’s blessings again. You have learned of the power of human love; of the goodness not only of friends, but even of strangers. And you have learned of your own inner strength, and your insistence on life.
When we accept ourselves as we are, and embrace life with all its disappointments, we become freer and more generous. As we allow ourselves to take with joy all that life offers, we find ourselves also more able – indeed, eager – to give ourselves away. We become better stewards of the earth, and healers of the world. And so in closing, I offer you this story sent to me by Sandy Ginsberg quite some time ago:
It is apparently an eye-witness account from New York City on a cold day in December. A little boy, perhaps about 10-years-old, was standing before a shoe store, barefoot, peering through the window and shivering with cold. A woman approached the boy and said, “My, you’re in such deep thought staring in that window!”
“I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes,” replied the child. The lady took him by the hand, went into the shoe store, and asked the clerk to get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked for a basin of water and a towel. When the clerk brought the water and towel to her, she took the child to the back of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt down, and washed and dried his little feet.
By this time the clerk had returned with the socks. After placing a pair of the socks upon the boy’s feet, the woman then purchased him a pair of shoes. She tied up the remaining pairs of socks and gave them to him. Patting him on the head, the woman said to the boy, “No doubt, you will be more comfortable now.”
As she turned to go, the astonished child caught her by the hand. Looking up into her face, with tears in his eyes, he asked her, “Are you God’s wife?”
We all have the capacity to be “God’s wife” – the co-creators of happiness and meaning here on earth. It happens when we learn to love ourselves as we are. It happens when we embrace life as it is. It happens when we turn our curses into prayers of compassion. It happens when we can say loudly and clearly: “This is my luck; this is my blessing; this is my life…and it is sweet!”
And for that, let us give thanks, and let us sing Alleluia; Amen.
© 2006 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
