Transformed by Struggle

It is a fool’s hope to review Joan Chittister. So I won’t. But I wanted to capture my reading of her book Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, and the best way to do that was to locate her own words for the task. Her book is both a small view into a painful experience for her and a series of articulations about struggle and the accompanying gifts which come from those respective struggles.

I think this quote snatches the book in a bite. I hope you find it enticing enough to pick up a copy:

The important things in life, one way or another, all leave us marked and scarred. We call it memory. We never stop remembering our triumphs. We never stop regretting our losses. Some of them mark us with bitterness. But all of them, can, if we will allow them, mark us with wisdom. They transform us from our small, puny, self-centered selves into people of compassion. For the first time, we understand the fearful and the sinful and the exhausted. They have become us and we have become them as well. We recognize the down-and-out in the street who mirrors our despair. We commiserate with the anger of the marginalized. We identify with the invisibility of the outcast. We can finally hear the rage of the forgotten. We are transformed.

From Scarred by Struggle (pg 102)

“Valuable Spiritual Possessions”

Oddly enough the paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions, while uniformity of meaning is a sign of weakness. Hence a religion becomes inwardly impoverished when it loses or waters down its paradoxes; but their multiplication enriches because only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life. Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided and thus unsuited to express the incomprehensible.

Carl Jung (From Jung on Christianity, p. 192)

Setbacks

Though I’m posting this up on my blog for fathers, I think it fits themes I work with here as well:

Be patient with little setbacks and remember that they’re not permanent.

Bryce in my Shoes a While Ago

Being Watched, Motivation, & Growth

My son watches me.  He does.  In fact, it’s become one of the most haunting and motivating parts of being a father.

I didn’t grow up with my father at home.  And I still struggle getting to know my dad.  His distance, with him living in Arkansas now, makes it harder.  Our shared temperament for quietness at best and disinterest at worse makes it nearly impossible.  So we’ve been building what we can with occasional visits and regular phone calls.  I don’t see him, but I do see my son up close.

I’ve noticed how he, simply, pays attention to me.  He does this less and less, but his interest is still there.  He’s interested in other people, picking up details on life and living from a dozen places and people a day.

I remember how when he was really small, when we clicked him in the infant carrier, before he was too long to fit, I would turn around to check that he was breathing.  I was nervous.  I was afraid that I’d drive too fast for his lungs to catch up.  So I drove slowly, and I turned around to ensure that his head was moving, his eyes open.

Bryce Over My Shoulder

One day I turned around and saw him doing what he’s doing in this picture.  I snapped it at a red light.  I had turned to look and he was staring.  I jerked, thrown off.  I said something aloud like “He’s looking at me.”  We were in the car alone, probably going to get his grandmother from home to bring her back to our place.  When I turned around at the light, he was still steadily seeing my shoulders.  He watched my head, the arm from my glasses, the profile of his father.

It launched me into a spiritual experience, and not the kind I enjoy.  That stare made me conscious, technically self-conscious.  Those almond eyes had a love in them that left me with a thousand questions.  The questions have motivated me.  Together, his watching me, the questions I’ve “heard” in his stare, make me want to grow.

It’s funny because I’m a pastor.  I’m pretty sensitive to growth, especially in others.  I’m not completely unaware of the topic.  But I had to admit then–and, often, still–that I’m less aware of the reasons to grow until moments like the one behind this picture.  Even as a Christian.  Even as a preacher.  The fact is I care less about God.  I mean that literally.  I care more about this kid.  I care more about screwing up so daily that he conceives of life is a twisted way.  I care more about doing something well so that he can see accomplishment and fruit and benefits.

Somewhere in my head I tell myself that God will get along well if I mess things up, that God might even show mercy to me.  Of course, that is a motivating message in my ears.  But it also makes me less vigilant.  With my son, with my family, and with the people I love, they might not be so merciful with their glances.  They just might expect me to live up to things.  Indeed, they do, and just like my son’s stare, like his current habit of repeating exactly what I say, they make me want to live well.  Or, at least, better.  …I really have to watch what I say to cab drivers in the loop.

Learning the Spiritual Life

This is part of a letter from Nelson Mandela to Winnie Mandela and from the first page of Mr. Mandela’s Conversations With Myself.

…the cell is an ideal place to learn to know yourself, to search realistically and regularly the process of your own mind and feelings.  In judging our progress as individuals we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one’s social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education.  These are, of course, important in measuring one’s success in material matters and it is perfectly understandable if many people exert themselves mainly to achieve all these.  But internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one’s development as a human being.  Honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, pure generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others–qualities which are within easy reach of every soul–are the foundation of one’s spiritual life.  Development in matters of this nature is inconceivable without serious introspection, without knowing yourself, your weaknesses and mistakes.  At least, if for nothing else, the cell gives you the opportunity to look daily into your entire conduct, to overcome the bad and develop whatever is good in you.