I am a wanderer. I would say that I am a seeker, but sometimes I have no idea what I might be seeking, so I will stick with wanderer. This blog is more a public journal than anything. I don't claim to have life figured out. I simply stumble from mystery to mystery, and share my reflections along the way. Sometimes I feel burdened, and trudge. Sometimes? Well sometimes grace breaks through, and its time to dance.
Thursday, May 14, 2020
seeking hope, in a different place
“Accomplish but do not boast, accomplish without show,
accomplish without arrogance, accomplish without grabbing, accomplish without
forcing.”
Lao
Tzu
By loving them for more than their abilities we show our
children that they are much more than the sum of their accomplishments.”
Eileen
Kennedy-Moore,
Because we are so quickly led to despair, most of us
cannot endure suffering for long without some sliver of hope or meaning.
However, it is worth asking ourselves about where our hope lies.
Richard
Rohr
___________________________________________
I was raised to be a good, functional, human doing
No one did that on purpose
It was just the way it was back in those days, those
golden 50’s
And rebellious 60’s
We were expected to accomplish
Expected to excel
Expected to do our best
And thus, taught inadvertently
that we are the sum of our accomplishments
It might not have been that way in every family
But it was certainly true in mine
Not just my immediate family
But in that larger network of “family” of Kliewers
Steeped in the American work ethic and good Mennonite
values
I was surrounded by aunts and uncle (and a few older
cousins too)
All of whom were ministers, and doctors, nurses,
missionaries and teachers
Serve your community, serve other people
Was a family commandment
And so my life has been filled with doing
My days filled with meetings led
Classes taught
Counseling sessions conducted
Events planned (and excecuted)
And has been mostly good
There has been a sense of accomplishment
One could count the numbers
The hours worked
The number of events on the calendar
The number of people in the pew
One could see the faces
Grab hold of the reactions
And now we have “this”
Everything has slowed
In some ways everything is more work
Setting up classes and counseling sessions takes more
time
In this world of Zoom and Google Hangouts
But in some ways everything is “unreal”
Dare I use the term “mystical”?
The world slowed to the speed of my rural Oregon
bandwidth
The world narrowed down to the small monitor on my XPS13
30mps
13 inches
And accomplishments are harder to count
For those of us used to counting
So here I sit, looking out the window at early spring
snow
And at the rays of brilliance as an early sun shine
through the trees
Learning
Learning to do things a different way
Learning to measure things a different way
Learning to slow down, and go deeper
Learning to focus in an unfocused world
It’s all a bit vague
And yes, mystical
There is something so common and gross about these times
And yet, something so spiritual as well
As if we are working on a different plane
Coming from a different place within ourselves
Seeking hope in a different place
in the midst of suffering
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