stressful times

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” Psalm 42

I covet prayer. I desire prayers said. Iris needs a covering of prayer as the situation at home comes to a very difficult point.

I'm so stressed that I left home leaving the front door open all afternoon Monday. I'm stretched caring deeply about a situation thousands of miles away. There I am the the cause or a key factor of so much pain. Here I'm stretched as Auntie Mary has the big C again and I'm called to make decisions about the future and her care. So where is my God?

All I can hold is simple hope. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

Clearing and Decluttering

I think I've cleared around a thousand books and I still cannot achieve the ten percent open space that this video suggests. But then again I've gotten rid of 4 book cases already.

Day 13 - 20/20 Home Cure - Fall 2010 from maxwell gillingham-ryan on Vimeo.

I need to reclaim space so that I can welcome Iris and have space for her and truly nurturing space for our life together.

Stress and Strain of feeding

Another week has gone by. Now I'm trying to squeeze a visit to the hospital each day. Aunt Mary is improving - sitting up in bed and feeding herself. But she is picky and not eating anywhere enough food. Tonight I asked the nursing station to order 2 puddings preferably chocolate. The trouble is no-one has enough time to note how much food she is actually eating. Half a cup of turnip perhaps a few small pieces of meat, 1 tablespoon of mashed potato some juice, and a pudding is not enough. The trouble is chewing and swallowing demands too much effort for her. But she also has no appetite except for good tasting food. So I had to mix margarine and black pepper with the turnip and she was more willing to eat a little more.

Somehow this applies to all aspects of the human person. Not just physical food. What is spiritual nutrition? There is meditative prayer which is a human actively engaged and which requires effort but as Teresa of Avila points out this requires great effort. I do believe we need to to really cultivate the "be still and know" type of prayer. Contemplative prayer requires active passivity and in many ways it is a receiving. Neuroscience has already noted that when we gain insight our brain chemistry changes and hormones are released. I think we could say that insights gained from sitting with God in contemplative prayer are the spices and flavourings which can encourage us to take care of our nutritional needs more fully.

Health and stress

Willingness implies a surrendering of one’s self-separateness, an entering into, an immersion in the deepest processes of life itself. It is a realization that one already is a part of some ultimate cosmic process and it is a commitment to participation in that process. In contrast, willfulness is the setting of oneself apart from the fundamental essence of life in an attempt to master, direct, control, or otherwise manipulate existence. More simply, willingness is saying yes to the mystery of being alive in each moment. Willfulness is saying no, or perhaps more commonly, ‘yes, but…’ Gerald May

The great stress researcher Hans Selye identified two type of stress good and bad. It was not on the external circumstances rather on our response. I've just finished Gerald May's The Dark Night of the Soul. It is a challenging book written both critically and personally. I could not help but remember that he was a cancer survivor and awaiting a heart transplant which never came. The importance of hope is something in the midst of stress can be trust with some reason or simply with no logical reason.

I'm in the midst of stress as Auntie Mary is back in hospital. I went to her place Sunday afternoon and there was no answer. I got a key to her place a few months ago for exactly this type of situation. Opening the door I had that fear of the unknown what was I going to find? The place was empty but odd! had she gone out? but without her cane or walker? Getting home I found a stack of phone message from all sorts of people and I rushed to Toronto East General to find her lying on a stretcher in the hallway. She's still in emergency 3 days later but at least in a room waiting for a bed upstairs. I'm glad she used her panic button to call for help but it was the third fall in 10 days. What was disturbing was her story of gypsies dancing nearby who woke her up and how beautiful the scene was. Fortunately the doctors think this is a by-product of an infection she is carrying. The stress is daily visiting and determining her future.

But Iris's father has just had a tumor removed from the bowel in a difficult operation. It seems to have gone well but more stress. The stress of not being together has made life difficult. The stress of my own wait for an appointment with an endocrinologist about a growth on one of my adrenal glands. This all adds up but the challenge is in how we respond to crisis and trouble and distress. I'm left with reflections again about the nature of hope as fierce faith in times of difficulty which is also fear's faith in these moment. Gerald May talks of a raw or naked hope in times of darkness when it is difficult to see anything clearly.

In the contemplative tradition the transition from meditation to contemplation is one from willfulness to willingness. This is an important movement as meditation is a personally active action where one applies the will to move oneself towards a state. Thus it is willful. But contemplation is personally passive action where one is willing and open without conditions and in fact freed of attachments to outcomes. Of course this is an ideal but only momentary at best. Yet when we pray in the Lord's Prayer Thy[your] will be done it is exactly this state we are desiring.

plastic problems

Ever since the growth was found on my adrenal glands and since trying to be more healthy and read The Story of Stuff I've been thinking about plastics.

Dealing with the past

I'm doing a lot of logotherapy - reading to work on issues in my life. Counseling and spiritual direction have really helped to bring into the open my life history and events in the past which have sucked life out of me. This book out of the library turned out quite important.

The Secrets of the Bulletproof Spirit: How to Bounce Back from Life's Hardest Hits by Azim Khamisa

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book is difficult to categorize. It's definitely not theology but has a lot to say in the area of spirituality and even relevance to the Christian believer. It's not psychology but it speaks to a person's inner life and their response to emotional troubles. It's not philosophy but has a lot to say about the way we think and process life.

It's all about how can we be different so we can recover from life's tough blows. It is about resilience both emotional and spiritual.When we are hit by disappointments, losses, betrayals, and tragedies how can we bounce back afterwards or prepare for the next time. Hits in life are inevitable and we will feel them. The two authors Azim Khamisa and Jillian Quinn want to persuade us that there is deep inside each person a spirit, a spiritual core, our true self. We are not our thoughts, feelings, or emotions, nor our possessions, roles, nor abilities.

There is a lot of good and helpful stuff in the 30 supposed secrets, though I'd call them commonsense. Two key ideas caught me as spiritual commonsense but I needed to be reminded of them. First is the importance of spiritual hygiene, what I know as spiritual disciplines, which contribute to spiritual and emotional resilience. of course I looked at that in terms of spiritual growth but not in terms of resiliency the ability to recover more quickly. Another which seemed logical not to deny my desires but to accept them (when wholesome) and yet to be detached from whether they are in fact met or not. Profound, simple, and very logical but important when life disappoints and dreams don't happen.



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Achieving techno-literacy or being a good beginner

Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it. Kevin Kelly New York Times

This is probably the longest title for one of my blog entries. My boss told me today to clear the voice message box on my cell. Strangely I have no idea even how to access the box yet alone empty it. The trouble is most of the time we're surviving with tech toys because it is obsolete the moment we get it. But my argument here is he wants me to learn how to use something he wants to use but I don't want! Ignorance is bliss it is stress removing. Kevin Kelly author of an article in the New York Times has made me think more deeply about this.

We don’t need expertise with every invention; that is not only impossible, it’s not very useful. Rather, we need to be literate in the complexities of technology in general, as if it were a second nature.

It's not a matter of proficiency because we become slaves of the machine or we suffer loss because we operate how the technology wants us to use it. It is a matter of literacy so we can puzzle things out and how to do things the way we want to. The trouble is I'm late arrival on cell phones having been a user for less than 2 years. I'm happily ignorant. But ask me how to get something working or recover something that used to work and doesn't work now on one of my computers and generally I am pretty successful. Email is my preferred dimension of communication. Why because I am not oppressed by it. I can choose to deal with it or ignore it for a time. It does not control me. I like texting because it's the same but I'm slow because the multi buttons and intelligent or at least semi-intelligent input troubles me because it is counter intuitive.

Kevin Kelly writes further wisdom -

Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.

For me it is the cost is the tyranny of the urgent. The phone back home cost per call so no-one simply called for a time-wasting chat because every second cost money. But the phone and cell-phone put us in the urgent deal-with-me-now situation applying a lot of pressure.

Well how does this apply to the spiritual life? Internet addiction, crackberry habit, the desperate need to keep up with other so-called friends reveals something important. So how many Facebook friends do you have? Does that friend include God? How do I measure that friendship.

I believe, like media literacy, the development of techno literacy as critical thinking is important. We need to decide, make judgments as to what is really important. Sometimes I will use technology and devices in my devotional life, but more often than not I use paper books, pens and a nice paper journal to facilitate my time with God. Why? Because I remove the tyranny of the urgent by using slower tools and in that moment I gain freedom.

The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful. Kevin Kelly

clearness, clarity, and correcting cluttered thinking

Space or spaciousness seems to be a key part of spirituality. The European gothic cathedrals changed the worldview of those worshipping inside. Earlier the architecture was constrained by the limitations of building techniques simply they could not build upwards and outwards without incredibly thick walls and lots of pillars. But the development of the buttress and flying buttress brought height, width, and light. Windows as vast surfaces of glass through which light filled this space opened things up. At the same time it is claimed that humans in their literature became more self -aware and self-reflective.

In the post-rock era of music, I am noticing a significant parallel. Recently I came across Natural Snow Buildings, a french duo who produce huge ambient landscapes using large audio palettes of sound. Their The Dance of the Moon and the Sun, an earlier work, reveals much of their origins but their recent release The Centauri Agent is more electronic and processed. The interesting thing is they are not commercial. Their recent issue is free for download through their label Vulpiano Records. Much of their previous work has been through incredibly small releases. It is clear they are not trying to make money. They are not flooding the world with cd's and bits of plastic.

In that collision of ideas I'm currently reading The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard, which is a detailed taking apart of our worldview of the need to acquire more and more stuff. She says "I'm not against stuff", "I'm not romanticizing poverty", "I'm not bashing the United States." But everything is connected in fact interconnected and the current global problems are linked to stuff. In this respect we need to understand our stuff i.e. how we got our stuff and where it came from, in terms of extraction, production, distribution consumption, and disposal. She paraphrases Einstein, saying "problems cannot be solved within the same paradigm in which they were created."

Last night in our Bible study we discussed what made you famous for more than 15 minutes. One person in my group said by changing the way people think. I think there's a little more than that, by changing the way people think by correcting cluttered thinking the world can be changed. We have at least to suspend thinking from within our current worldview.

Fierce Faith

We desire to be totally influenced by Jesus Christ and concerned with the personhood of others rather than with their talents or other gifts. John English Spiritual Freedom

Tonight is a difficult night in Korea and wish I were there, or she were here. The feelings of powerlessness are very real in me yet I am not in despair rather a desire for God's glory to be revealed. There are many tough lessons in life to be learned and fears to be confronted for me and I learned this week a saying from Richard Rohr that "Hope is fear's faith." I misheard it the first time and thought "Hope is fierce faith." But both are equally strong and insightful. In the face of the pain I feel she has, I have to, I must hope and find strength for her that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Rm 8:28)

I've been reading John English for a month now and he wrote about the love relationship with God describing 3 modes of humility illustrated by the love relationship of marriage. The first is
illustrated by a commitment to the love relationship in being faithful. The second goes deeper being sensitive to situations of conflict which damage the relationship and seeking to make amends. Finally the third is that suffering with the spouse who is suffering. ..."the acid test of humility and sharing with one another will be found in suffering. ... In love's paradoxical view, a couple might even desire this situation if only to show their love by staying together in time of insults and disregard."

This is a tough time and perhaps I feel further away than I want to be, but I'm reminded of Bruce Cockburn's song Waiting for a Miracle. I'm really praying for the miracle.

You rub your palm
On the grimy pane
In the hope that you can see
You stand up proud
You pretend you're strong
In the hope that you can be
Like the ones who've cried
Like the ones who've died
Trying to set the angel in us free
While they're waiting for a miracle

Recycle and simplicity

I was reading an article on Lifehacker and one respondent claimed

A cd/dvd is considered a class 7 recyclable plastic. To manufacture a pound of plastic (30 CDs per pound), it requires 300 cubic feet of natural gas, 2 cups of crude oil and 24 gallons of water. It is estimated that AOL alone has distributed more than 2 billion CDs. That is the natural gas equivalent of heating 200,000 homes for 1 year. It is estimated that it will take over 1 million years for a CD to completely decompose in a landfill.

I'm so glad I no longer back my data up onto CD and DVD roms. But the issues remain about the nature of our garbage. The clutter I've been hanging onto is crazy, but perhaps the music industry's hanging onto CD's and the movie industries to DVD's is worse. I'm currently reading Henry David Thoreau's Walden. A very interesting book written in the first half of 19th century. It's a fascinating read not just because Thoreau is a Transcendentalist - a pre-industrialization proto- ecologist but because he challenges unbridled acquisition. In order to research and write, he built a little house by Walden Pond and farmed a few acres and claimed that "I found that ... it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one." He grew his own food and built his own shelter and sold a little excess to cover his costs. He lived at Walden for 2 years 2 months and 2 days. The fascinating thing is I've been reading this on an iPod touch which has been gifted me by grace as a pass-me-on. It isn't, for me, a hand-me-down because it has raised me up. What if I had bought a book?

It occurs to me that it might possible to live your life more simply where technology is used especially where distribution is digital and virtual. Thoreau seems to be for me at the moment a 19th century hippie, jailed for refusing to pay his taxes in protest over the Mexican War. There is no doubt of his intellectual ability and insightfulness. (A graduate of Harvard.) I'm interested in where these thoughts go in the collision of ideas between Thoreau's and the distribution of digital media through the internet as possibly a lighter carbon footprint .

How does this relate to spirituality and faith? I believe we tend to simply accept cultural trends and marketing. We buy into an unbridled consumption model. if we do this it is extremely difficult not to end up with cluttered lives, physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. We need enough space to think and to think critically. I'm about to read yet another book about decluttering. I am amazed not that I reading another one but that I can find yet another one. This one published 2008!

ways of asserting

Caring for my Auntie Mary is a strain at times. At 93 she remains strongly independent but sadly not to the extent of looking after herself properly. She is not eating enough and yet wants to live alone. It's tough as she wants to assert her independence but I need to help her do it in the right way.

I am glad that we can have 1 hour a day assisted living with a support worker, but now I get phone calls from the different agencies when she is not home. Saturday I had 4 calls from 2 different agencies because she did not answer her phone or door. Finally she answered the phone when she came home 7.30pm from her mineral club show. She did not tell the agency or the helper as she found them a nuisance . God give me strength and wisdom as I have to convince her that independence means having these people in her life!

Dogs and Cats

Strange stuff the last few days. I learned that my good friend is looking after Penny a small friendly long-term. He took her on a canoe trip and had a great time with her. Dogs need us our attention and care about us. Penny was off her leash and yet came back because she knew who fed her and cared for her. I think Penny is good for him. He has to get up in the morning walk and feed and play and be loved by this little dog.

This morning I was late for service and was even later because as I locked my bike I saw a group of people looking upwards. There on the building opposite a 4 storey industrial place and on top of a 12 foot large brick chimney was a small white cat. How it got there I have no idea. But to be sure cats are very different animals to dogs in human relationships. Yes we worry about the cat but I don't think we can say a cat loves its owner or the one who cares for it in the same way as a dog.

This fits something I was reading in a book this week which is about small acts of generosity and their far reaching effects even on the one being generous. Henri Nouwen in an interview with Philip Yancey records being correct by Nouwen that he did not give up stuff to care for Adam at L'Arche. Nouwen gained and benefited from the relationship because in learning to love he learned how much he himself was loved by God.

In learning to love a little dog, learning to care for this animal we can learn that we are loved and cared for. I feel even in my relationship with others, and especially with Iris, in loving and caring for others I have learned what love is and more so the greater love of God.