I had 30 minutes to sit out in the sunshine this afternoon, and read another short piece of Falling Upward by Fr. Richard Rohr. I can only read this book in short segments because what the author has to say is so powerful, it’s a waste for me to read it in big chunks. (And for those of you who think I’m living some Zen life, I had gluten free bread in the breadmaker while I was reading, and it didn’t turn out, like I thought it wouldn’t, and it was very finicky to make, and that frustrated me. There’s black streaks across my kitchen floor from blueberries that smeared when I was sweeping up Jed’s crumbs LAST WEDNESDAY… and they’re still there. The ants are coming back… probably because I can’t keep the floors clean even though I sweep three times a day, and I really needed to be doing yoga, but instead I ate chocolate and sat down to read. I won’t mention the bathroom. And I told some colleagues I’d do some work today, but I just don’t feel like it).
The chapter I read today, “Stumbling Over the Stumbling Stone” is so illustrative of what has happened to me in recent years and weeks. Some people have told me they admire my strength through all this. Really, there is no strength. My hand has been forced by my Creator to lead me to something much, much deeper… a whole other level of life, almost as though another dimension has been added. I could try to put it into words, but Fr. Richard does it so well, I’ll make a long quote from him:
“Sooner or later, if you are on any classic ‘spiritual schedule’, some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter your life that you simply cannot deal with, using your present skill set, your acquired knowledge, or your strong willpower. Spiritually speaking, you will be, you must be, led to the edge of your own private resources… you will and you must ‘lose’ at something. This is the only way that Life-Fate-Grace-Mystery can get you to change, let go of your egocentric preoccupations, and go on the further, larger journey. I wish I could say this was not true, but it is darn near absolute in the spiritual literature of the world.
“ There is no practical or compelling reason to leave one’s present comfort zone in life. Why should you or would you? Frankly, none of us do unless and until we have to. The invitation probably has to be unexpected and unsought. If we seek spiritual heroism ourselves, the old ego is just back in control under a new name. There would not really be any change at all, but only disguise. Just bogus ‘self-improvement’ on our own terms.
“ Any attempt to engineer or plan your own enlightenment is doomed to failure because it will be ego driven. You will see only what you have already decided to look for, and you cannot see what you are not ready or told to look for. So failure and humiliation force you to look where you never would otherwise. What an enigma! Self-help courses of any type, including this one if it is one, will help you only if they teach you to pay attention to life itself. ‘God comes to you disguised as your life,’ as my friend Paula D’Arcy so wisely says.
So we must stumble and fall, I am sorry to say. And that does not mean reading about falling, as you are doing here. We must actually be out of the driver’s seat for a while, or we will never learn how to give up control to the Real Guide.” – pp 65-66 Falling Upward by Fr. Richard Rohr.
As I read the above passage, I looked up, and saw God loving me and interacting with me, intensely! In the air I breathed, in the warmth of the sun on my skin, in the caress of the breeze, in the buds of the trees, in the blue of the sky.
And then,in classic Karen style, I looked at the buds on the trees and thought, You’d better hurry up and take this in because September is only 5 months away, and those leaves will be crumbling and falling off with the last of the apples in only 5 months. And frankly, I felt a little panicked that it was going to disappear so soon. THIS IS EXACTLY HOW ANXIETY HAPPENS. Self- Compassion Researcher, Dr. Kristin Neff, says depression is caused by ruminating in the past. Anxiety is caused by ruminating in the future. Winter has broken early here in the Northwest, and is BARELY BROKEN, and I’m fretting about next winter!
TAKE IN THE GOOD.
NOW.
IN THIS MOMENT.
Your life is nothing but this very moment. If you don’t take it in, you miss your life.
Add to that, “God comes to you, disguised as your life,” and you have all you need.
Take it aaaallllllll in!
My bff, Beckie Lapointe, is a talented composer. She has also been ‘falling upward’ in the last few years with an unwanted journey of her own. She was fighting the gift that God was bringing her so hard, she actually stopped talking to me for a few weeks because I was making her look at reality. And then she finally broke. She thought she was leaving God, but in fact she was breaking up with the God her ego had contained. And all of the sudden she met a deep, mysterious, uncontrollable God who had a wild and gentle love that was a whole other dimension... a God that rescued her from the finite world her ego had created, and opened up a vast, deep sea of mystery that was far more thrilling and alive than the sick little world her ego had been fighting to contain. When Beckie moved from fighting God to receiving God, in all the parts of her life that He was coming to her in, she wrote this song:
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