You may earn more than I do and live in a nicer house – but our loneliness is probably the same. When it rips us apart it doesn’t really matter who has the most cash or the nicest home. Loneliness doesn’t care where we live or about our financial status. Invite me in – perhaps we can be friends and ease our common pain.
You may be more educated than I am and you may have graduated from a respected university – but I know that if you regard anyone, anywhere with contempt, your education has given you little worth knowing. I may not be very bright by your standards but I do know that truly educated people never use it as a weapon. Talk to me – I might be able to teach you a thing or two.
You may be more travelled than I am and can talk about places I have not heard of or could afford to visit in my wildest dreams – but if travel has made you contemptuous of your homeland and its peoples then travel has not done its finer work in you. Citizens of the world find beauty and wonder everywhere. Come to my house – my culture is as interesting as any you will find on any distant shore.
Your “spirituality” is not measured by how much you (or I) read the Holy Scriptures, sing hymns, pray, clap your hands, run around a sanctuary with a purple flag, dance to contemporary religious music or reject those who do.
It’s not determined by how much you visit your place of worship or how much money you donate to its causes.
It’s not affirmed by your title (if you have one) or the ornate design of your robe (if you wear one) or the position you hold in the hierarchy of your faith tradition (if you’re part of one).
But, it is affirmed by your willingness to take responsibility for your life, your choices, and the good use of your skills and talents.
A biopsy of the validity and integrity of our faith and spirituality is revealed in how we treat people, especially loved-ones and strangers; how we love our enemies, offer hospitality, respect, regard, love those who reject our beliefs.
Do you clean up after yourself? Are you wisely generous to a fault? Do you love those who are different from you, whose lives might be in direct conflict with what you believe? Do you love others by listening?
If you take full responsibility for yourself, become extraordinarily generous with what you have, embrace diversity, and love others by listening, you will fast-forward your “spiritual” growth. Actually, you will put it on supercharge.
It’s not your title, the reach of your authority, or the crowds who respect and adore you. Rather, it’s how you respect and love and respond to those who don’t.
I devised a list of how to participate in the healing of men and women who have been hurt:
Be willing to listen, even if what is being said is what you’d prefer to not hear. Try not to re-engineer (re-frame, recast) what you have heard so it is more fitting with what you’d really like to hear.
Resist understandable attempts to short-circuit growth by trying to ease necessary pain, by offering false affirmations, and by accepting empty excuses for irresponsible behavior. Pain is a very good motivator for change. Resist the urge to remove it when it appears to be helpful.
Offer your presence, not your answers. “I am with you” is more helpful than “let me help you fix it.”
Welcome silence. There are ways to communicate that do not include words. Resist the understandable urge to chase healing and learning away with the incessant use of words and stories.
Avoid minimizing (“it’s not so bad!”) or rationalizing (“What else did you expect?”) or normalizing (“Anyone would have done that!”) the issues that resulted in pain. Do not rob necessary pain of its usefulness.
Promote “future thinking.” Ask questions focused on future wellness and success.
Try to avoid searching for the genesis (the cause) of what has led to pain. Where something comes from is not nearly as important living your way out of it.
As well-intentioned as we may be in desiring to avoid conflict and “keep the peace,” we create more problems we must face later by running or playing hide and seek. Then, when we do face matters, we’re not the people we once were.
Avoidance is a quick-change artist! It changes us in ways we are likely to regret.
We cannot solve or improve what we will not face. Denial gets us no place worthy of the journey or the unintended, unwanted destination. Until we gather the courage to look difficult situations directly in the eye and expedite what is necessary to face the difficulties, conflicts will stay as they are and they’re likely to deteriorate.
What we avoid shapes us in ways we may never notice. We modify our habits in order to sustain our denial and avoidance. We change our friendships in order to sustain our patterns. We go out of our way to keep the peace but the new path is one to further avoidance. Our defensive habits defend us in unhealthy and unhelpful ways and make us into people we’d rather not be.
Avoidance of necessary battles creates unintended distance from others — even those we truly love.
There is no worthwhile substitute for early honest approaches to family or business conflicts.
Avoidance makes the heart grow harder.
Ours.
I enjoyed this side-walk art…… 49th and Penn in Meridian Kessler, Indianapolis
Finding the opportunity to seek forgiveness, participate in repair or restitution with people whom I have hurt may result in their expressing forgiveness. While hearing such comforting words warms me, self-forgiveness remains difficult.
Do you have similar battles?
I know this is a particular struggle because having known what is right, good, wholesome, I have not always done what is right and good and wholesome. I find this painful to admit and address. Knowing better was hardly helpful.
While it is no excuse, I am aware that I am not too different from many.
When I am feeling down it feels as if my failures speak louder than any successes. Despite the knowledge that “people are more than their actions” shame seeps and runs deep and makes me feel vulnerable and fragile. It can be a physical sensation.
Again, I must ask, do you ever feel this way?
When I am at my best, I can humble myself, accept my imperfections and that I am a forgiven person.
Admitting I am flawed is key to my freedom which leads me to self forgiveness at which point freedom fills my soul.
The soul – enigmatic, yet so incredibly powerful – is what brings to life, and is the essence of life, feuling and energizing an inner-being. We may refer to a young person, even a toddler, as an old soul and we know the toddler is, as many toddlers are, or appears to be a deep thinker. We may say a spritely person of advanced age is a young soul and we ready ourselves for an elderly person with a spring in her step or a youthful inside. Soul is often packaged with a prefix: broken-, angry-, critical-, abandoned-, creative- and all reflect on an inner-condition.
The Soul is the Person housed in flesh and bones; pulsating immortal vitality ferried, decade upon decade, within the mortal corpus, while not limited to it or by it.
May I illustrate? As I write my soul is reaching out to your soul. Hopefully our souls are connecting right now as you read. I have no idea where you are but I assure you, my soul is firmly here with me while simultaneously seeking to reach you and be received and embraced by you.
I hope it does, and is.
It has happened before.
I know it occurred through the thousands of newspaper columns I have had the joy of writing and hearing in return from many readers.
The soul is the spark of light within that lights up the eyes – eyes which will cease to ignite (yours and mine) once the soul is freed from the body, a body that, for whatever reasons, can no longer house or contain it. On this side of life we have named this moment of release, rather unfortunately, death. Perhaps, rather, it’s a new beginning, a refreshing adventure of deeper love and deeper companionship than any of us has ever before known, and it’s not death at all.
That’s my belief.
Installed, divinely imputed and imparted, at the milli-moment of conception, itself also learning, the soul begins immediately, within the womb, to impart strength and resilience into the made-from-dust flesh-and-bone outer form. Soul-power sweeps into the body, bringing with it a life-time’s worth of the capacity for love, a life-time’s worth of the desire for survival, a life-time’s worth of joy in human connection. It imparts to the physical being, an enduring and innate urge for worship, and a compelling desire to impact the larger environment and leave behind a beautiful and substantial legacy.
You and I are not limited to our physical bodies and I do not mean some outer-body experience, well, not exactly. It is much much more than about my soul reaching out to yours.
When we write, paint, sculpt, love and rear (raise) our children, adore our grandchildren, and enjoy great-grandchildren; when we arrange flowers, build skyscrapers, plant vegetables, light birthday candles for 3-year-olds, leave fortunes to find cancer’s cure, we are gathering the best of our pasts and throwing our souls into the future.
Generations yet unborn will know our departed souls:
They will know who we are from the stories told by those whom we have loved.
They will know who we are from what we have written.
They will see what we have painted, sculpted.
Our handiwork and heartfelt work, our generous love and nurturing gentleness will live on, revealing the power of our souls long after the fuel of our inner-being has escaped our aging, dust-to-dust, ashes-to-ashes bodies, the whereabouts of our remains marked with a stone or a plaque, and our souls have returned to the Place from whence they came.
So? Write it (whatever it is). Record it (whatever it is). Say it in poetry, with colorful paints on paper or on canvas. Write a book, gather photographs, place them in an album. Dance it (whatever it is). Sing it. Declare it, while you can.
You’re seeking a soul-mate in a great-great-grandson yet unborn.
When he is old enough to understand what you have created for him – your name signed at the end of a love letter or your family name on a high-rise research hospital – he will appreciate it and you will be generational soul-mates.
You may have noticed a certain keenness and sharpness within your soul, a sharpness and keenness that may far outpace the keenness and strength of your body, even your intellect, mind, memory. Perhaps your soul is more aware than you may think and knows it is teetering on inevitable escape, in a year, or three, or more. This is why this is as good a time as any to dance, to sing, to declare, and to do so while you can, however you can, ……. when you can.
Your soul is intricately invested in beauty and in your life’s legacy.
Reach for the diary, the photograph album, the compendium of letters your grandparents or great uncle or favorite aunt left to you and allow those precious souls – now adventuring or resting paradise – to speak to you anew across generations, and then, via you, let them, too, continue to live in the generations yet to come.
We are holding hands, not across a mere oceans, not across mere time zones, but with the generations, past and future, and so, let’s Do Like David did – DLDD – and let everything that has breath (life, soul, energy) Praise the Lord (Psalm 150:6).
One of my favorite paintings — I keep it illuminated 24/7/365 to remind me ever of the women who made me a dad — and sent my soul soaring.
“What parenting advice could you offer my wife and me,” said the delighted dad, “my son is 16 months young.”
Above all, love your wife with joy, freedom and courage. This will reduce and deflect loads of the anxiety that naturally tries to derail all childhoods.
Lavish your baby, then young child, then pre-teen and teenager with affirmation and affection. No matter what you and your wife face, when you come home from work, or he returns after time away, or when he wakes in the morning or in the middle of the night — baby or teenager — be glad to see him, and, say so. Verbally express the joys your son brings you, to each other, and to him.
Teach him to talk Joy.
Regard the ages 5, 8, 12, 14 and 16 as transition ages. At these times discuss with him your parental plans (your mutually agreed upon plans you’ve made as parents) to do less and less for him, while expecting more and more from him. Yes, even at 5 — point out that he can make his own, age-appropriate decisions. Include him in planning and establishing his growing independence. Plan your parenting so that by his eighteenth year your parenting roles are accomplished and he has all it takes to be an interdependent young adult.
Hold in high regard the beautiful idea that you parent (the verb) for his sake and not yours.
Our new painting will go up in my home-office this week….. from Friday this week, both of my adult sons are launched and living independently of me. Oh the joy; oh the niggling pain. #graceupongrace
“I hate being in the middle. My son tells me stuff about his wife’s family. My neighbor tells me things about the people over the road (also our friends but she doesn’t know we are friends) and even my grandchild tells me things going on in his family that I have to keep quiet about. I feel like I am living on egg-shells every time I meet people who are close to me.”
If you hate being in the middle then get out of it.
You’re only there because you have cooperated with the gossip that has flowed your way. All you had to say to your neighbor is “you do know you are talking about people who are my friends.”
Quietly declare to people who speak to you about those not present that such talk is not something you choose to do.
Yes, you can even tell your grandchild you’d prefer he talk with his parents about what is going on in his family.
If you do this with your grandchild (unless he is in an intolerable circumstance or something illegal is occurring) you will be teaching him the valuable art of going to the source or addressing his issues with those empowered to do something about the circumstances.
Gossip never forms “special bonds” – it is always unhealthy for all involved.
Within milliseconds the drawbridge – we each have one – may go down with a hearty welcome or remain up and sealed shut.
There may be Immediate comfort or discomfort, or levels of both.
Suspicions may be endorsed or deleted.
Information and misinformation transmission occurs at a speedy rate.
We read and misread and read and misread each other constantly – all within the backdrop of our unique experiences and training, our hurts, pains, goals, and desires – known and unknown.
The accent (if one party is not from “here”) is loaded with meaning. Clothes (anything unusual); laid-back or dominant stance; voice tone, volume, intonations; levels of energy or lack thereof, are cumulatively processed.
Triggers can be triggered. Stereotypes ignited. Warmth flows, or doesn’t.
The wave, the handshake, the hug, smile or frown, degrees of sincerity or insincerity are downloaded by the “who-are-you” antenna and the “can I trust you” antenna issued to all at birth to be processed with the morass of stored history, experience, memories, good and bad.
Every encounter is a miracle.
And, yes, with all that, we — you and I – are called to be neighbors and to love one another.
The “outside world” can be a dangerous place for children.
Another exceedingly dangerous environment for children can also be their own homes. While medicine cabinets, cleaning materials and unlocked swimming pool gates are a legitimate threat to the child-safety, the unguarded mouth of an angry adult can inflict grievous harm to a child.
A vigilant parent might install childproof locks yet leave a totally exposed web of anger in every room of the house. Unresolved anger in a parent, expressed through unpredictable displays of frustration and annoyance or rage, can quite effectively sabotage a childhood and even pass a baton of anxiety and rage to unborn generations. It is in their own homes that children might be at most in danger. At home they learn about trust, and exercise the most trust. It is at home they will learn, or fail to learn, by watching and experiencing, almost everything they will ever know about love.
It is at home they will make the most mistakes and receive the most affirmation and correction. It is at home that children will learn about fear and hurt and rejection and empathy and love and acceptance.
Children are constantly seeing, feeling, learning, trying, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, watching, waiting and taking it all in.
Monitoring diets is a crucial aspect of childhood health. Another “diet” is the calm, security, predictability and warmth healthy parents can provide.
If you have the opportunity to see “The King of Broken Things” run at it.
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