Many “alternative” gift articles suggest non-gifts — things like giving to charity in the person’s name, or giving service rather than a thing — but choosing a present specifically for another person, wrapping it playfully and offering it to them can tap into love, charity, selflessness and hospitality. I refuse to let consumerism win by equating gift giving with money and greed. I want you to buy gifts, real physical gifts. So how do we choose gifts in a mass consumer culture?
There isn’t just one approach. You might choose items made locally; or by individuals; or from small manufacturers that treat their employees well. If you’re not buying directly from the supplier, you will be considering the retailer too. Let’s call it “conscious” gift shopping. The spiritual principle here is to consider the whole gift: what it will mean to the recipient; what it’s made of; how it was made; who made it; how it got to your hands. I think everyone can embrace supporting individual craftspeople and small businesses over multinational corporations. At least for Christmas.
I don’t want to encourage the kind of scrupulosity where consumers think they must know everything about products and feel guilty any time they buy anything mass-produced or unrecyclable. And if you know the perfect gift for someone and it doesn’t fit these criteria, the happiness they will get from that gift is probably worth it. Most spiritual principles, if you turn them into rules and apply them thoughtlessly, can do more harm than good. This is no different. But if you use these suggestions for some or all of your gift buying this season, it might just help spiritually ground the Christmas season a little better for both the receiver and the giver.
The common denominator is love
The easiest place to find local craftspeople, if they’re too small to have a store, is probably a farmer’s market, if your town has one. You can also find many of them on Etsy, which includes a “shop local” option. Following are a few personal suggestions and some more thoughts to consider for your conscious gift shopping.
As I see it, the common denominator of the businesses that follow is love. The creative folks behind them love what they do, and they love sharing things that others will love. This is simply not the goal of large corporations. As Parallel Print Shop cofounder Monika Rose sums it up: “We are choosing a simple lifestyle and doing what we love to support it. Everything we make holds within it our intention to fill the world with love, beauty and peace.” I want to support businesses like that.
Three Keys to Lasting Happiness necklaces from Metta Metalworks
When you buy a gift from an individual, you know your money is going to the person who did the work, and often you know something about them and their process. That can add a nice story to the gift as well. A great example is Metta Metalworks. Owner Kathy Cherry is a successful jewelry designer; she also runs the Dharma Punx NYC Buddhist group with her husband, Josh Korda. Kathy started the line to create pieces that would bring reminders of spiritual teachings into daily life. Some have an obvious spiritual component; others are just playful, with an edge — like Dharma Punx. “My circle of friends are a bawdy and unorthodox bunch,” says Kathy. “I don’t think that being spiritual means you need to speak in hushed tones, wear organic cotton outfits and carry a blissful smile at all times.”
Kathy does freelance design for others and makes her own line, and she loves it all: “There is nothing more thrilling than seeing one of my designs walking down the street on someone. It is the same thrill whether it is a Metta Metalworks piece or a piece I did for another designer… well, maybe a little more thrilling when it’s an MMW.”
What about the inherent conflict between buying sparkly things and the spiritual principle of nonattachment? “The thing to look for is integrity in the work, a relationship with the designer or local business if it is possible, and some sense of your underlying motives for making the purchase.”
Katheryn Langelier makes hand-crafted herbal medicines, body products, baking extracts and teas in Midcoast Maine. She sells her Herbal Revolution products through farmer’s markets, stores and her own mail-order business, which includes a very cool herbal CSA option. (The CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, model is a great example of more closely connecting the buyer with their purchases. Consumers pre-buy a share of the upcoming season and receive fixed shipments with content that varies based on what is produced.)
Katheryn acquires her herbs through a mixture of sustainable gathering, her own organic garden, and buying from other local organic suppliers. She then makes the products in small batches by hand. “I find it very powerful keeping the money I work hard to make in the hands of small businesses: farms and people who create,” says Katheryn. And that’s a good reason to buy from her rather than one of the large beauty product conglomerates pretending to be a friendly little herbal company by using an alternate brand name.
More importantly, “every step in the process is taken with great care and respect, infusing the herbs and the products with positive intentions and love.” And for gifts, the gorgeous packaging helps too.
California-based Parallel Print Shop uses a vintage letterpress with recycled and reclaimed papers to create hand-printed cards and other paper products.
Like Katheryn, Parallel Print Shop co-owner Monika Rose emphasizes the sustainable approach you are supporting when you buy from hers and many small businesses: “We do our best to complete the circle, by sourcing our paper and printing material locally and USA made, and spending our earnings at other non-corporate places.”
There are plenty of gift ideas among their paper products, and they have beautiful gift cards and tags that will enhance all your presents.
There’s nothing wrong with manufacturers. But as companies get bigger, the pressures to cheapen their products increase. And a little understood factor in the mass consumer culture is the role retailers can play. Wal-Mart’s insistence on low wholesale prices pushes suppliers to cut employee benefits and salaries, outsource and lower quality.
A wonderful example of a retailer that celebrates ethical manufacturers is Dry Goods, in Brooklyn, NY, which focuses on what are called heritage brands: products from long-standing smaller companies that produce in their country of origin. You won’t find these items in discount department stores, but some of them are household names, or warm fuzzy memories from childhood, like Jadeite plates, Stanley thermoses and Pendleton blankets. They are well made, durable and attractive, designed to last, even to be passed on. A store statement says, “We believe that using and supporting these companies enriches our lives. Using these products makes what ever task embarked upon more pleasant and functional.”
Store co-owner Carla Brookoff said it was important to have products at different price points and appealing to all generations. While heritage brands aren’t going to be as cheap as mass-produced junk, many items are surprisingly reasonable, ranging from $3 to $300. Dry Goods just opened a few weeks ago and doesn’t have an online store yet, but you can see many of their items in the photo galleries of their Facebook page and call to order.
We are told it is natural to thirst for fulfillment in aligning our life with God’s plan for us and to thirst for the kingdom of heaven on earth to be made manifest around us. So how is this compatible with the idea of accepting everything exactly as it is? This tension is expressed in the Serenity Prayer, which I’ve written about here before. In one line we ask for the courage to change what we can; in another the serenity to accept what we can’t. The prayer’s author then adds a request for the wisdom to know the difference. Well, that’s easier said than done, isn’t it?
Usually in this column, I at least take a stab at giving some advice. But here all I can do is acknowledge the tension. For myself, I focus on acceptance. Because that’s what I need to emphasize. Whether it’s my maleness, my intellectual temperament, my upbringing, the culture I live in, or something less easily label-able, I was primed in life to want to figure things out, fix them, have answers. So, balance is restored when I lean towards acceptance — when I stop trying to control things and just let them be — when I accept reality in the present moment exactly as it is.
Most of us, most of the time, need this side of the scale emphasized as a counterbalance to the modern world. Someone whose M.O. has always been inaction may need to emphasize willingness to change, though, to restore their balance.
I was primed in life to want to figure things out, fix them, have answers. So, balance is restored when I lean towards acceptance… But it’s not that simple, because I also have a history of standing at the crossroads of big life decisions and being frozen in fear, resulting in the “choice” of no action.
When working to embrace acceptance, it’s also useful to limit exposure to things we are powerless to change. This is why I have always advocated avoiding the news except in rare instances. It can be anxiety producing to be bombarded with problems you’re in no position to affect. Slacktivism might give the illusion of responding to issues, but I think deep down people know it’s just a way to feel like they’re doing something.
I’m not saying to put your head in the sand or harden your heart. Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn and blessed are the peacemakers. It’s right that we should yearn for all the problems around us, in the society and in ourselves, to be healed and made perfect. We should take actions towards that goal where and when we can be effective. But that goal is not helped by watching the news or skimming the hate-filled political blogs and getting worked up about things.
But it’s not that simple, because I also have a history of standing at the crossroads of big life decisions and being frozen in fear, resulting in the “choice” of no action, which itself leads to some set of results. You’ve probably been there too. So, we can’t just sit comfortably in acceptance and never do anything. Sometimes, the courage to take decisive action is exactly what’s called for. And the dis-ease that stirs up inside when such an action is asking for our attention needs to be answered or it will get louder and louder. This is what Steve Jobs was talking about when he asked whether or not, first thing in the morning, you are looking forward to your day.
So, we live with the need for discernment between those things we can change and those we can’t. We seek help with that discernment in prayer, and through friends and spiritual advisors. We pray for God’s kingdom to come and will to be done on Earth today, knowing the reality is far from it. We take actions where we can and we embrace the imperfection. We live with the tension.
I probably should have had an obit for Steve Jobs ready to run. We had a dry run when he resigned as head of Apple a few months ago. But I didn’t, and many others have accurately chronicled the facts, so instead, for my regular personal spirituality column, I’m going to look at a few things we can learn from him.
Though I never had the pleasure of meeting the man, Steve Jobs’ work and influence affected my life often. At different times, I came close to working for both Apple and Pixar, the latter before he took it over. The first personal computer I ever bought was a Mac 512, no hard drive, for $2,600 (in 1984 money; that’s the equivalent of $5,400 today). Compared to my current MacBook, it had 1/800th the RAM, 1/600,000 the storage, and maybe 1/1000th the processing speed. The excitement as my wife and I brought home that machine and started exploring its revolutionary features was unlike anything I’ve experienced since with technology. Though iPods, iPhones and iPads are amazing, and the internet may be a more important shift, they are not as groundbreaking as was that moment. That was the arrival in my home of personal computing, of the home computer. All these later breakthroughs have built on that. Several years later, I was honored to write a landmark cover article for PC Magazine, at that time the nation’s tenth largest magazine, explaining the benefits of the Mac’s operating system to DOS and Windows users, and I wrote a column about the Mac for several years after that.
Follow your heart
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. — Steve Jobs
We don’t have to guess at how Steve Jobs set his priorities. He told us. When Jobs gave the commencement address at Stanford a year after he had thought he was going to die of the cancer that eventually took his life six years later, he gave his own account. And there are few questions more challenging and more potentially upsetting than the one he posed that day. This Stanford speech has been quoted a lot in the last few days, but usually people point to the positive formulation of the challenge, something along the lines of, “Do what you love.” Far more powerful was his negative framing:
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Note that though this question reflects a soul so aware of death, Jobs tells us it was his guiding principle throughout his career, long before his first close call. Steve Jobs lived his passion. He had cranky moments, sure. And that passion sometimes came out as passionate pig-headedness. The consensus from personal friends who worked with him is that the experience was sometimes exhilarating but often infuriating. But ask yourself, would you rather be a passionate person who sometimes gets carried away, or a passionless person who never ruffles feathers.
In Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell describes the sheer joy of playing on a trampoline — a moment in which he is entirely present and connected to the world around him through love, in which time stops and he feels the divine dimension of life. Jobs, in that commencement speech, observes, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.” Great work also brings that timeless quality. Jobs is saying, why settle for devoting at least half your waking hours to something in which you don’t feel fully alive.
“There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Radical technology
I do want to say something about the fruits of Jobs’ work. Steve Jobs is certainly the most important inventor in our lifetime. But the defining quality in his inventions is that he saw technology as a tool for freedom, for empowerment, rather than for work productivity and increased profits. He often pointed to Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog as the thing from the previous generation that inspired him most. Jobs took 60′s liberation-oriented thinking about technology serving personal empowerment to another level.
Steve Jobs was a radical. He had a subversive streak, and saw personal technology as something that could serve the subversive impulse rather than contain it. It’s important to understand that about him. And about Apple’s products. One of the reasons corporate IT departments refused to accept Macs into the fold until they we’re forced to by demanding users was that Jobs always prioritized freedom and collaboration above corporate control, so Apple products were more open and sometimes, honestly, less secure.
This is also why Jobs always put user experience at the top of the priority list. Technology should not get in the way of the human. As much as possible, the technology should adapt to the way people naturally interact. So: pointing and clicking, dragging and dropping, icons that relate to real-world objects like trash cans and file folders.
This also is at the root of Apple’s defining design characteristic: simplicity. In the design phase, Apple engineers, faced with decisions of whether to include a feature or controller, routinely choose to leave it out to avoid complicating the product and making it less easy and less fun to use. This contrasts sharply with most of the computer and consumer electronics world, where designs are jammed full of features and buttons that most users never understand and that create clumsy, ugly and less stable products. Apple products are elegant, and that elegance is thanks to Steve Jobs.
The time is now
Earlier in the day Jobs died, I was sitting with Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen discussing the fact that Sheen’s character in their new movie The Way takes actions to change his life at age 71 and that it’s never too late to commit to spiritual growth. Then later comes the news that Steve Jobs has lost his battle with cancer at age 56. It’s never too late, and it’s never too early. As Roisen Murphy, former singer of the band Moloko once said, “The time is now. It’s always now.”
The Way, written and directed by Emilio Estevez (Bobby) and starring his father, Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now, The West Wing, The Departed), is rather obviously about the spiritual journey. The Camino de Santiago, called “The Way,” is a literal spiritual journey, a 1,000-year-old 500-mile pilgrimage route across the Pyrenees. The lead character Tom (Sheen) takes a physical journey to Spain and eventually on the Camino while also taking a spiritual journey starting with word that his son (Estevez) has died. Many of the other characters Tom meets along the way are on their own spiritual journeys, whether they are Camino pilgrims or not.
Despite being built around a religious pilgrimage, however, The Way is not a “faith-based” film; rather, it is a movie about a human story, and the human story. There is no preaching; there are no soppy scenes meant to tug at the spiritual heartstrings. Estevez’s writing reveals a sophisticated understanding of the beautiful brokenness of people, the glorious absurdity of it all. One of the overarching themes is how Tom gets thrown together with other pilgrims. Not only was it his intent to travel alone, but if he were to travel with others, these are definitely not the others he would choose. But it is precisely through struggling with each other’s imperfections that we are challenged, pushed outside our comfort zone, and, sometimes, forced to grow spiritually whether we like it or not.
The Way
Written and directed by Emilio Estevez
Starring Martin Sheen, Deborah Kara Unger, Yorick van Wageningen, James Nesbitt
PG-13
115 minutes
Release date: October 7, 2011 (limited); October 21, 2011 (wide)
I asked Estevez about this aspect of the film, and he said: “If we are honest, I think the first thing we’d agree on about ourselves is that we are imperfect, that we are these beautiful, wonderful disasters, all of us. We are. That’s the first step; acknowledging that you’re this beautiful wonderful mess. And yet, that’s how we connect to one another. We’re in a culture now that says, you can take this pill and it will make you happy, or take that pill and you’ll be thinner, or visit this plastic surgeon and change the way you look, and yet, none of that stuff makes you happy ultimately, because you’re still left with yourself. And I think, if there’s a theme in the film, it’s: How about being OK with exactly who you are. How about being comfortable in your own skin, being exactly this beautiful wonderful mess that we are, because God loves us no matter what we are, who we are. But why don’t we love ourselves in our imperfections. So that’s really the larger question in the film: How do we get to that place where we’re OK being exactly who we are?”
Maybe this aspect of the film stood out for me because I reacted so strongly myself. The motley crew perfectly captured a range of annoyingness. I found the overbearingly friendly Dutchman (Yorick van Wageningen; Winter in Wartime) almost intolerable, and kept wishing Tom would get away from him. The too-clever and self-involved Irish writer Jack (James Nesbitt; Cold Feet, Bloody Sunday, Murphy’s Law, Millions, Jekyll) is like many a friend I’ve tolerated in my life. On the other hand, perhaps not surprisingly, I found the chain-smoking sarcastic divorcée Sarah, portrayed beautifully by Deborah Kara Unger (Crash, The Game, Combat Hospital) to be intensely attractive despite (because of?) her extreme brokenness.
It was a delight, too, to see a favorite actor, Tchéky Karyo (Full Moon in Paris, La Femme Nikita, Bad Boys, The Messenger, The Core), as the police captain, a small but important role.
A father and a son
A human story to which everyone can relate whether or not they’ve ever called their journey spiritual
The anchor is out-of-shape California doctor Tom. As the movie begins, he learns his estranged son has died while on the Camino. Traveling to France to retrieve the remains, he instead finds himself completing the Camino “with” his son, whose ashes he carries in his backpack.
It’s impossible to imagine what Tom would have been like portrayed by a different actor. Estevez wrote the role for his father and the entire project began with Sheen. He travelled part of the Camino with his grandson, Estevez’s son, while on a break from The West Wing, and encouraged Estevez to consider making a documentary. But Estevez wanted to take it in a narrative direction.
So Tom is Sheen and Sheen is Tom (though nowhere near as cranky.) In the same way, it’s impossible to separate the resulting film from the fact that it is a father-son production about a father and son. Though it’s not autobiographical, you can feel that energy in the writing and acting. And you can feel the love Sheen and Estevez have for the Camino and for talking about the spiritual journey; that love surges through the film.
Another theme of The Way is that the spiritual journey is not always what, when or where we think it is. Tom is a reluctant pilgrim. He has no intention of growing spiritually, or going on the Camino. But he finds himself drawn and pushed into it by events and by other people. The other pilgrims may have reasons they’re on the Camino, but they learn much more along The Way.
Watching The Way, I was reminded of a passage from the new David Brooks book, The Social Animal:
“We are primarily wanderers, not decision makers. Over the past century, people have tended to conceive decision making as a point in time. You amass the facts and circumstances and evidence and then make a call. In fact, it is more accurate to say that we are pilgrims in a social landscape. We wander across an environment of people and possibilities.”
All the characters in The Way are pilgrims wandering a social landscape, being changed by it.
Anyone who has walked the Camino will of course find The Way evocative and moving. Busted Halo‘s production editor, Joe Williams, who blogged about walking it this summer, said the movie made him want to go right back. The Way will easily join a short list of quality films that are enjoyed by spiritual seekers, a list that includes movies like Into Great Silence and Of Gods and Men. Moviegoers will get a taste of what the pilgrimage is like (though it understates the physical hardship of walking 500 miles.) The Way has the potential, though, to reach a much larger audience, thanks to its star power, its beautiful scenery and especially thanks to the fact that it is above all a human story to which everyone can relate whether or not they’ve ever called their journey spiritual.
I often hear people talking about living in the present moment as if it is a struggle, some cosmic game of attempting to grasp something that is fleeting, illusory. They say things like, “the moment I have it, it’s gone.” While this is true and can be frustrating, the last thing present moment awareness is about is grabbing serenity. I have always liked the metaphor of the river (borrowed from my Christian contemplative practice of centeringprayer) in talking of the flow of thoughts. Imagine the stream of consciousness as a river, with boats and debris representing thoughts. You’re sitting on the bank of the river watching it. Normal awareness has you looking at each individual boat-thought, following it down the river with your eyes — and to strain the metaphor, getting on it and opening hatches — then suddenly shifting your awareness to another boat and so on. If your mind is particularly cluttered, you can feel overwhelmed by all the boats you have to look at and it can feel like that classic I Love Lucy skit with the conveyor belt at the chocolate factory, like you’re falling behind and they start slipping by. There can be a sense of panic that a thought that’s getting past you without attention is important and you’re missing it.
Present moment awareness is simply sitting on the bank and watching the river, not the boats. Boats cross your field of vision and you do see them, but you don’t follow them with your eyes or get on them. They’re not out of focus, but you don’t focus on them.
The present moment is where reality is, where God is. When you remove the obstacles from being fully present, fully awake, you remove the obstacles from seeing the glorious reality of life, the presence of God’s love.
Paradoxically, you are actually more aware of what’s going on than when you focus. Why? Because when you attach to one thought at a time, it is to the exclusion of all the others. Staying alert but not putting your attention on any one thing makes you more aware. Like a hunter or a birdwatcher before they’ve spotted something, you are taking in everything around you.
Once a birder or hunter spots something, they shift into focused attention, and this is how life can be if you are well practiced in present moment awareness. The goal isn’t to never focus on anything and live in some gauzy vagueness. It’s to stay open, teachable, aware, present. Then, when a task is to be attended to, you focus on it. That’s fine. When the task is over, though, you let it recede into the stream of consciousness again. You don’t keep thinking about it.
It’s compartmentalization in the best sense of the word. But many people who are critical of this approach to life see it in the same vein as the bad type of compartmentalizing, where bad things are ignored by keeping thoughts about them walled away. They might say, “but you should be thinking about such-and-such because it needs to be dealt with.” Well, maybe it does. (Or maybe it doesn’t. As I say often, most of the things we worry about never come true. But let’s assume it does need to be dealt with.) The point is to deal with it when it is actually time to deal with it, when it is actually occurring in the present moment and is the focus of your attention. But neither you nor the issue is helped by your worrying about it when you’re not in a position to do anything.
Where reality is, where God is
Reducing worry and stress is just a happy side effect of cultivating presence, though; it’s not the point. The point of living in the moment is that the present moment is where reality is, where God is. When you remove the obstacles from being fully present, fully awake, you remove the obstacles from seeing the glorious reality of life, the presence of God’s love. The Great Commandment is: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) When you remove the obstacles from being truly present, you can fully experience reality as your true self, and love and know God’s handiwork all around you, and by that act, you are changed. The second half of the great commandment flows from the first. As I said in my column about revenge, if you love God and experience the closeness of God, and thus experience the interconnectedness and oneness of all Creation, then you can’t help but love your neighbor as yourself. Not similarly to yourself, but as yourself. The illusion of separation is gone.
Of course this type of perfect Oneness doesn’t stick around. We get it in glimpses. And of course there is some frustration with that. We want it all the time, but can’t conjure it up at will. But we can cultivate presence to improve the frequency and the duration of those times. As I’ve said before, the most helpful thing for me has been my Christian contemplative practice of centeringprayer. But that is only one method. There are many other contemplative practices in the Christian tradition, including the rosary, adoration. lectio divina, and the guided meditations of the Ignatian Exercises. There are also contemplative practices that aren’t part of a religion, like some forms of yoga and meditation, and of course, almost every other faith has some contemplative practices in its tradition. And finally, as I also say often, perhaps the most powerful teacher of present moment awareness is Creation itself. Spending time in nature, re-tuning yourself to the woods or the ocean or the desert, will slow your pace, lower your level of chatter and open you, naturally and gently.
How do you cultivate presence? How have experiences of presence affected your spiritual journey? I’d love to hear from you.
Vermeer's "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary"
My last column, about waiting patiently for a late bus, provoked some interesting comments and reactions (on the site and directly) that tease out the bigger issues involved. While I wrote about waiting for someone who’s late, two commenters brought up the flipside of the same time management coin — what to do when you’re going to be late yourself through no fault of your own. Fellow Busted Halo contributor Ginny Moyer wrote:
I have often been in situations where freeway traffic is crawling along, which is pretty high on the frustration-meter. In those situations, there really IS nothing to do but just let go and crawl right along with it. That requires a certain kind of surrender, which is not easy for me … but it’s a skill worth cultivating. When I stop fighting it and just let it go, I can feel my stress level drop dramatically. “It is what it is” is a very helpful mantra for me, in those situations.
And Emily said,
I also think of saying that mantra “get there when i’ll get there” is like a little prayer to the Holy Spirit saying, I trust you, guide me. It has given me the best relief when I used to have road rage.
I’ve written two earlier columns about being late, here and here. Whether you’re waiting for someone who’s late or you’re running late yourself, the answer, of course, is the same: accept that this is what’s happening and, if you can’t change it, don’t stress. In the same way that in my scenario, “the bus will arrive when it arrives,” if you’re running late (and there’s no way to do anything about it), then you will arrive when you arrive. Now, when I used to be late all the time, it was a different story. A lot of the anxiety I experienced while running late was directly related to self-recriminations and guilt.
I have found that since getting better with time management myself, those times I am late are not as stressful, because I know I’ve made a reasonable effort. (If I have, that is.) This itself is part of a much bigger spiritual principle: If your intentions are aligned with good, then on those occasions when things don’t work out, there’s no reason to feel guilty. That guilt comes from believing you haven’t done all you could. And as Ken Maher observed, doing “the right thing” is important even when you expect it won’t matter, as in showing up on time for someone (or something, like my bus) who’s late:
Being on time is merely a matter of respect for and commitment to the other(s) whom you are meeting. Your respect and commitment should have nothing to do with theirs, just like the size of your Christmas present to someone should have nothing to do with the size of theirs to you.
I find that if I let myself get worked up over something like the late bus, it is usually not healthy. Like Martha, I find myself living in the resentments, not in the presence of Jesus, who in the story of Martha and Mary is physically in the room, but who is just as present for us all if we can only notice… I have found that 90 percent of the time when it feels like actions need to be taken, they really don’t. So, I’d prefer to err on the side of being present than on the side of taking action.
If you do the right thing regardless of what others are doing, then your heart can be at rest. Or, as the saying goes, take the right actions and let go of the results.
I think kelly damude summed it up better than I could have myself:
Life’s too short to waste time being grumpy about things we have no control over, so BE in the moment & make it count.
It’s remarkable how much of the spiritual advice amounts to this simple concept of being fully present in the moment. I think that’s because we need to be reminded of it again and again.
Martha and Mary
There was one dissenting commenter though. Theresa Henderson said,
I’d contact the bus company and inform them of each time the bus was late and petition that they have a covered area built there because of the number of folks who wait there. Get the folks to sign it too. I’m a lot more patient when sometimes i am part of a solution.
To paint far too broad a stroke, the world of spiritually-minded folks is often broken down into Marthas and Marys, from the story of Jesus visiting the home of two sisters (Luke 10: 38-42):
Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
While Martha is busy running back and forth to the kitchen preparing dinner and being the perfect host, Mary simply sits at Jesus’ feet, which he says is the only thing that is needed. This brief 100-word story has been interpreted many ways depending on who’s doing the interpreting. I won’t get into whether there is a preference for a contemplative over a social justice orientation in Jesus’ words. (As a contemplative myself, I’m biased.)
But as I see it, the main point is that it is better to be inactive and truly present than to be busy doing “good” things at the expense of being present. This is not a call to do nothing. Jesus also said blessed are those who mourn and blessed are the peacemakers. Martha’s fault was not that she cared about being a good host, or that she wanted to make a nice dinner for Jesus. The fault was that she allowed her busyness and her resentment of Mary destroy her present moment awareness.
It’s possible that the actions described by commenter Theresa Henderson would be done in a loving and fully present manner, but for myself I find that if I let myself get worked up over something like this, it is usually not healthy. Like Martha, I find myself living in the resentments, not in the presence of Jesus, who in the story is physically in the room, but who is just as present for us all if we can only notice.
There’s also the distinct possibility that what the action-taker thinks is the solution is not the best thing. In the late bus scenario, I wouldn’t want a shelter clogging up the sidewalk and looking urban. Martha’s answer in Luke 10 is for Mary to get off the floor and come help in the kitchen, leaving Jesus alone in the other room. I have found that 90 percent of the time when it feels like actions need to be taken, they really don’t. So, I’d prefer to err on the side of being present than on the side of taking action. Whatever you are doing, though, just make sure to be present in the moment.
Thanks for all the wonderful comments to the last post. This issue of the spirituality of time just keeps coming back. It’s something so many of us struggle with.
One of the most popular columns I’ve ever written is about struggling with being on time. It led to a TV interview and, almost two years later, people still regularly bring it up in conversation. But working on your own on timeness can lead to an interesting new issue: being on time when others are not.
It’s one thing to be on time and have everything go smoothly. You can point to your on timeness and feel a sense of self-satisfaction at having contributed to the proper flow of the universe by having aligned yourself with the way things are meant to be. Call it spiritual pride or call it enjoying the fruits of “skillful means,” we all enjoy it when we do the right thing and things go our way. But what about when you are on time and someone else isn’t?
There’s a long-distance bus I catch fairly often in the summer coming back to the city at the end of the weekend. My stop is in the middle of its route and, almost every time, the bus is about 10 minutes late. The place we wait isn’t covered and today it was 15 minutes late, in pouring rain. This is not convenient. I know it will probably be late, but I still have to make sure I’m there on time because every once in a while it is, and it doesn’t wait around for me if I’m late.
When the scheduled time arrives and the bus doesn’t, I see other travelers start checking the time. (I was going to say “checking their watches” but most people don’t check watches anymore, they check cell phones.) At first they do this as if to check their internal clock: “Isn’t it 11:50 yet? I’m sure it must be.” As the minutes tick by, the cell phone time checking starts getting more dramatic. Now they are saying, without words: “You all see that the scheduled time is past and the bus isn’t here, right?!”
Often, if and how much I’m bothered by waiting is in direct proportion to how much distress I went through to be there on time.
But we don’t have an option. The bus will arrive when it arrives no matter what we do, and if it’s on time and I’m late I’ll miss it. Simple as that.
Like pressing the elevator button more than once, all the street theater has no effect on the result.
So I wait.
The outraged ego
Often patientily. Somtimes not quite. I’ve noticed that if and how much I’m bothered by waiting is in direct proportion to how much distress I went through to be there on time. If I am there in plenty of time and stroll comfortably up to the stop and join the first people in line, then all is right in the world. But if I miscalculate or something comes up at the last minute and I end up scrambling to get to the bus stop in time, anxious the whole way that it will be on time and I’ll miss it by a minute (there isn’t another one for hours) and then I end up waiting around, my ego is outraged. I didn’t need to rush! I didn’t need to stress myself out! My time is valuable; how dare they waste it!
This line of thinking veers into the magical when I start blaming the late bus for the fact that I am agitated from running late and having to rush. This doesn’t even make sense — because if I hadn’t rushed and the bus had been on time I would have missed it — but this is where the mind goes.
And being upset is all the crazier because, what actually happens if I’m on time and the bus is late? Well, I spend ten minutes enjoying the day (when it’s not raining), sometimes getting into an interesting conversation with one of the others waiting. It’s no hardship at all. It doesn’t even mean I’ll get home late; the bus makes up the time along the way.
Enjoying the present moment
Being upset is all the crazier because, what actually happens if I’m on time and the bus is late? Well, I spend ten minutes enjoying the day, sometimes getting into an interesting conversation with one of the others waiting.
Essentially, these thoughts all boil down to: I’m more important than anyone else; more important than the bus company having a schedule that helps them stay profitable; more important than the bus staying at a safe speed before it gets to my stop; more important than any human problems or equipment issues that contributed to the delay.
It doesn’t matter if you’re waiting for a bus or an elevator, for your turn in a line, or for that friend who often runs a little behind, the fact remains that working yourself up about it does no good.
So here’s what I propose: The next time you find yourself waiting for someone or something and getting irritated at them and the universe, pause, take a deep breath, perhaps spend a minute imagining that there might be a good reason they’re late (though that’s not important), and turn your attention to enjoying the present moment. If that doesn’t quite do it, pull out the big guns and pray for patience.
If you’re waiting with other people, smile at one of them or start a conversation. If there’s something you could be doing, like checking email or reading, you could turn your attention to that, though just being in the present moment is even better.
Often the irritation just evaporates. It was built on nothing but air in the first place.
What is your experience with waiting? Have you found other ways to be patient? Does it drive you crazy? Share below in the comments.
You have just enough time left if you act now to join me in the Million PALA Challenge — a national campaign to get people active. (Sign up and join us at “Team Busted Halo” or group #935845.) This challenge has been going on for a year, and I’m sorry about the last minute notice, but you still have time. I learned about it just recently from Kevin Sorbo, whose organization, A World Fit For Kids, is an official partner of the presidential program responsible for the challenge, and signed up myself.
To complete the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award (PALA) challenge and receive an (emailed) PALA certificate “signed” by co-chairs Drew Brees and Dominique Dawes, you have until the end of September to log six weeks in which you are active for at least half an hour each day for five of the seven days. (Or one hour per day for those under 18.) You register on the website and log and track your activities there. The Million PALA Challenge is a campaign to get one million Americans to complete this plan.
Make the commitment to be just a little more active for the next six weeks. Sign up for the Million PALA Challenge, then join me in our group. Once you’re logged in, this link will take you to the Busted Halo page, or you can find us by searching for “Team Busted Halo” or group #935845.
I’ve created a group you can participate through. (After you sign up, search for “Team Busted Halo” or group #935845 and join us.) You can just sign up on your own, but I figured I might as well make it a little easier for you, and maybe a little more fun to see our cumulative numbers of our group. If no one does this, that’s OK, but I hope it’s the motivation a few of you need to get moving.
If you’re already pretty active, then this isn’t very difficult. There’s nothing that says what your activity should be, just that you be active. Stroll for half an hour: you’re set. Or you can run, cycle, hike, use a cardio machine, whatever. Anything works, as long as you’re up and active. So why not sign up, log the activity that you’re already doing and get the award!
But it your idea of a walk is the distance from your car to the door, then this challenge may be just the gentle introduction you need to a more active life.
I already walk a fair amount. I’ll usually walk anything less than a mile. But it’s not always as much as a half hour a day, so this challenge is encouraging me to take less direct and more enjoyable routes. And while many weekends I enjoy a hike or a kayaking trip, that’s just once a week. For me, the main thing this challenge has done is to get me to dust off the ole elliptical machine. It’s the perfect answer for those days I find myself at home at the end of the day without having gotten in the half hour of activity. To be honest, that dust on the elliptical was pretty thick, and several very good intentions in the past year didn’t get the dusting job done. So I’m very grateful for this challenge.
Take charge of your own activity level
Regular exercise helps you to stay healthy, balanced and available to the spiritual dimension of life.
I’ll never forget the first time I lived outside New York as an adult (well, kind of adult; I was 17 or 18 years old.) I was in a city, but it was a city of private houses, not apartment buildings, and everyone had cars. The supermarket was a block and a half away. The first month or so that I was there, I walked to get groceries, but before long, I gave in to the design of the streets and the community and started driving the block and a half. I’ll never forget noticing that I’d switched and feeling like I’d given in to convenience over the natural order of things. But that didn’t make me go back to walking. In this society we must sometimes stake out practices that defy what our culture is encouraging us to do. Our society offers us unlimited entertainment from our couch; unlimited access to information and communication from our desk; and numerous ways to get from one place to the next without exerting ourselves: moving sidewalks, escalators, cars, the hipster fashion accessory kick scooter, and the most absurd of all, the Segway.
This is not to say you must skip every escalator. But you don’t have to take an energy-saving option just because it’s offered. You’ll notice that almost every diet plan assumes it’s combined with regular exercise. And this challenge will help get you on a path to losing weight if that’s something you want. But the real issue is general fitness. That’s why the focus isn’t on calories burned or intensity but just on being active. A shocking number of Americans have absolutely no regular activity in their lives. The Presidential Active Lifestyle Award is part of the President’s Challenge Program by the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition, which has been attacking this issue on multiple fronts. This challenge is just one way.
You might ask what this has to do with spiritual practices. I’ve written here many times about things that aren’t directly spiritual. For example, getting enough sleep, spending time in nature, eating regular and balanced meals. All these things, and regular exercise as well, help you to stay healthy, balanced and available to the spiritual dimension of life. If you are hungry, tired, cranky, uncomfortable, it is much harder to hear God’s “still small voice.”
So if you’re so inspired, or if you’re even tempted, join me! Go sign up for this thing. Make the commitment to be just a little more active for the next six weeks. You may not want to go back. Once you’ve signed up and signed in, then join our group. This link, https://www.presidentschallenge.org/activity/groups-home.php?groupNumber=935845, will take you to the Busted Halo page, or you can find us by searching for “Team Busted Halo” or group #935845.
Pope Benedict on summer vacation in the Alps. Credit: CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters
The pope has made several comments this year concerning vacations, which were highlighted in a piece on the Vatican Radio website. (I learned about that post thanks to Mary DeTurris Poust in Our Sunday Visitor‘s Daily Take blog.) Summer is halfway over already, but he touches on some powerful ideas, so while there’s still time, let’s take a look.
Pope Benedict offers two basic goals for our vacation besides relaxation:
spending time with others
spending time with God
It’s one thing to spend an hour or two with a person, or to be with family or a partner all the time in the daily routines of life, but there’s something special (and sometimes challenging) about travelling together. Quality time is a great thing, but the hours of non-quality time during a vacation — in cars, waiting at airports, between events — create a different kind of intimacy.
And as far as what vacation to choose, are you challenged by the pope’s suggestion to spend time with others? Is there a visit to family that you could do instead of that beach vacation which will yield greater fruit in the long run? Maybe not. And not every vacation should be about visiting family. Getaways are valuable too. But it’s worth asking yourself.
“I would like to recommend that during this time of vacation, you revivify your spirits by contemplating the splendors of Creation. Parents, teach your children to see nature, respect and protect it as a magnificent gift that presents to us the grandeur of the Creator!” — Pope Benedict
It’s obvious how to spend time with other people — bring them along or go to them — but how do we spend time with God while on vacation? The pope offers three ideas, and we’ll explore each one a little.
being in nature
reading scripture
visiting sacred spaces
The sacred in nature
I’ve written numerous times about how powerful and enriching it can be to spend time in nature. Camping with my family was my first introduction to the divine. We built vacations around visiting natural wonders: descending the side of Bryce Canyon on donkeys; exploring geysers and hot springs in Yellowstone; watching the swallows of San Juan Capistrano; staying through a hurricane on Cape Hatteras; looking up from the floor of a redwood forest.
In a talk on July 10 to a group of pilgrims — during his own vacation at Castel Gandolfo — Pope Benedict said:
“I would like to recommend that during this time of vacation, you revivify your spirits by contemplating the splendors of Creation. Parents, teach your children to see nature, respect and protect it as a magnificent gift that presents to us the grandeur of the Creator! In speaking in parables, Jesus used the language of nature to explain to his disciples the mysteries of the Kingdom. May the images he uses become familiar to us! Let us remember that the divine reality is hidden in our daily lives like the seed in the soil. “
Whether it’s the majesty of a western canyon or summer night sky, the delicate beauty of a wildflower or songbird, or the insane complexity of a fractal pattern or balanced ecosystem – it’s hard not to feel the presence of something greater than yourself when you spend time in nature. Cherish these opportunities; some of them are probably closer to home than you realize.
Daily practice
Pope Benedict suggests bringing a Bible with you on vacation. This is a not a trivial or overly pious idea. It is easy when vacationing to leave all your normal spiritual routines behind. It might feel like you don’t need daily prayer, meditation and sacred reading when you’re vacationing on the beach, especially if you see those practices as salves, bandages, for the damage done by regular life. But touching base with God is not just something to do when you need it; it enriches the good times even more than the bad, because without a crisis to absorb the good energy, so to speak, it’s all available for enrichment.
This is a case where physical spiritual practices have an advantage. It seems more appropriate or fitting to continue a daily yoga or running practice on the beach than it does pulling out a book. But let me suggest that if you begin your day with prayer and a little reading from scripture that you do this on vacation too.
Sacred spaces
The pope’s third suggestion is to visit sacred places while on vacation – cathedrals and monasteries in particular. When I popped into Notre Dame while in Paris it became a high point of that vacation. (And I wasn’t even Catholic yet!) Visiting basilicas and cathedrals, monasteries and churches with historical or personal significance, shrines — any spiritual site — can be uplifting, and while it might be half a day out of a two-week vacation, it’s a memory you’ll always have with you. And you might even consider devoting a vacation to making a pilgrimage, like the Camino or Lourdes.
Re-creation
As any regular reader of my column knows, I’m a bit of a word nerd. It’s fascinating to me to see how much of the meaning of a word can be found in its roots. Words are not arbitrary sounds assigned a meaning; they are rich little vessels that contain history and ancestry. Often a word’s roots aren’t immediately obvious but in the case of “recreation” they’re pretty plain. It literally means to create anew.
The pope encourages us to “revivify” our spirits while on vacation. Consider destinations or side trips to take in the divine majesty and beauty of nature or spiritual sites. And even if your vacation is calming and escapist, maintaining your daily and weekly spiritual routines will help ground you and might even stimulate spiritual growth.
Share your thoughts about the pope’s suggestions and I’d love to hear about experiences you’ve already had, this year or in the past, where a vacation turned into something spiritually enriching. Enjoy the rest of the summer!
One of the things I notice whenever I spend time on retreat at a monastery (as I did a few weeks ago) is how much I enjoy the regular meal times, with some of the same food choices day after day. This is not the way I live my life. Which makes me wonder: Why don’t I do the same thing at home?
At the monastery, breakfast is one hour after I wake up — 1 hard-boiled egg, 2 slices of toast with orange marmalade. Lunch is four hours later; dinner, five hours after that. The food for lunch and dinner varies, but it is what it is. You eat what you are offered.
Here’s how I eat at home a lot of days: I’m running late in the morning, so I leave the house without breakfast. Sometimes I eat a fruit and nut bar on the way to work, sometimes not. I have lunch about four hours after I wake up, sometimes at my desk. I don’t eat dinner till after I get home, so that is six to eight hours after that. If it’s on the late side, I don’t want to spend another hour preparing something, so I get take-out on the way home. There are at least a dozen choices I can pick up easily, and each time, I debate which to get and usually go with what feels like the most fun in that moment.
There are a few different factors here — regularity of timing, simplicity, and a de-emphasis of food as entertainment.
Regularity
If anyone knows about regularity, it’s monks. Their entire life is routinized to a level ours never will be, framed by the Divine Office, which breaks the day into three-hour chunks between prayer services. But even if we have no interest in a life so regular, we can learn something from their example. As I discussed in my column Freedom From Choice (which I wrote after another retreat), much of the clutter in our day and in our mind is the result of unnecessary choices. Replacing some of these with routines simplifies our life. At the monastery, meal times were not up to my whim, or up to competing priorities, perceived or real. Meal times were fixed. If I didn’t eat then, I missed that meal. (It’s not like they were being hard about it. There was always a bowl of fruit by the coffeemakers.)
At the monastery, meal times were not up to my whim, or up to competing priorities, perceived or real. Meal times were fixed. If I didn’t eat then, I missed that meal. There’s an indefinable comfort in this kind of routine. I can’t explain it, but our mind and body find the same thing happening at the same time each day to be calming.
There’s an indefinable comfort in this kind of routine. I can’t explain it, but our mind and body find the same thing happening at the same time each day to be calming. And conversely, lack of regularity can be unsettling. One of my most popular installments since I started this column was about HALT. HALT says that prior to noticing you feel agitated or irritated, often you will find you were in a state of being Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. In working with people, I find it’s not uncommon to be able to back up from the moment of some eruption of agitation to the fact that they had skipped a meal. (I’ve written before about how not getting enough sleep leads to irritability, and though I almost always get enough sleep, I struggle with having a regular bedtime myself.)
In recent years, science has confirmed ancient wisdom about eating regularly. They differ in the details, but newer diets from South Beach to the Zone recognize the value of giving your system a regular supply of food, avoiding the binge/crash cycle.
Simplicity or amuse-bouche?
Another aspect of freedom from choice is keeping the food choices simple, or eliminating them altogether. At the monastery, instead of deciding each morning what I “felt like” having that day, I simply collected a hard-boiled egg from the bowl, placed two pieces of toast in the toaster, added butter and marmalade, and ate breakfast. (There were a few other choices there. This was my routine.) Was I any worse off for not having yoghurt one morning, cereal the next, eggs and bacon another?
I’m not saying what you should eat or how much. Those are personal decisions and personal issues. I will say this, though. Our culture encourages us to seek entertainment value and instant gratification in food, and much as I strive to be on the spiritual path, that call is mighty strong. While concerns about gluttony have been with us for millennia, and we’ve always been attracted to fun and rich foods — “a land flowing with milk and honey” — much of the current insanity is less than a century old, the direct result of the rises of the food industry and advertising. We are bombarded with temptations and the reality today is that if we so choose, every single meal can be an all-out taste pleasure overload.
The point is not to eat food that is bland or unappealing. All the food choices at the monastery were enjoyable. (Though, believe me, I’ve been at some retreat houses where the food would lose a competition with hospital fare.) The point is that not every meal needs to be about entertainment.
The question I must face in myself is why, after spending a week thoroughly enjoying this simple routine, once I returned to my everyday life, I also returned to missing meals, eating dinner late, and not having the same breakfast each day. Is the pull of competing schedules and fun choices just too strong?
What is your experience? Does your busy life lead you to favor productivity over personal health — running out the door without eating or working through lunch or going from one appointment to the next without thinking about your physical state? Do you make every dinner entertainment? Or have you found success with building routines in the timing and the content of your meals — some of them at least? This is an issue I still struggle with. I’m looking for answers, especially about why it’s so hard to stick with it. I welcome your comments below.
