Perfection or Goodness?

I grew up in a culture of perfectionism - that is the way it was for my family in Christian Science. When Scripture says (in the first chapter of Genesis) that "God saw everything that He made, and it was very good," Christian Science (C.S.) takes that to mean perfection. And in the C.S. line of reasoning, anything that isn't perfect was not created by God. Oh, dear. This creates a tendency to intolerance, and to "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." I developed a perfectionism and self-criticism that I am still working to release, and I applied it to my character, my figure, my art and work, relationships and my environment.

It is extremely hard on people if you expect them to be perfect, because - though we are very good - no one is perfect. A perfectionist culture can lead to extremism, intolerance and cruelty, even in families - and certainly, in world events. Even cleaning house can become stressful, if you are striving for perfection; pet fur, falling leaves, pine needles and dust will always create imperfection on your newly washed & vaccummed surfaces.

What a relief it was to me to discover Richard Rohr's writings! They make sense of the world in which I live, and of my own imperfection. They show me that I am loved without conditions, in my present state of imperfection. I am (and you are, & they are) beloved as I am right now, in this place. Today's email from the Center for Action and Contemplation reads:

"We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens; yet nothing in us wants to believe it….

"If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it! A “perfect” person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond imperfection.

"It becomes sort of obvious once you say it out loud. In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good. Perfection is a mathematical or divine concept, goodness is a beautiful human concept that includes us all."  - From Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

This week, I found (through a friend's recommendation - thank you, Diane!) a blog that has beautiful resonance with me and with this enjoyment of goodness over perfection. There is a link on my sidebar now, and it's called "This Beautiful Wound." Several of her postings were so great that I commented right away. The first one, back in the archives, speaks of her journey - and it describes mine, too, in a clear and simple, yet profound way. If you are on a spiritual journey that includes great loss (and it seems that most of them do), I encourage you to visit Mirabai's blog.
 
As I clean the house today, in anticipation of hosting my parents (they're home!) and Gregg's parents for dinner tonight, I am striving for goodness over perfection. I hope you will have a good day, too, knowing that you are beloved exactly as you are.

"The LORD is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger and of great kindness.

The LORD is good to all

and compassionate toward all his works.

The LORD is faithful in all his words

and holy in all his works.

The LORD lifts up all who are falling

and raises up all who are bowed down.

The LORD is just in all his ways

and holy in all his works.

The LORD is near to all who call upon him,

to all who call upon him in truth." - Psalm 145

Acknowledging Heaven & Hell, Here & Now

"Compassion means to suffer with, to live with those who suffer. When Jesus saw the woman of Nain he realized, This is a widow who has lost her only son, and he was moved by compassion. He felt the pain of that woman in his guts. He felt her pain so deeply in his spirit that out of compassion he called the son to life so he could give that son back to his mother."  - Henri J. M. Nouwen

When I read this, I immediately thought of Jesus' mother, Mary, and how he saw the pain of the woman of Nain. I wondered if he saw his own mother's suffering before it happened, and raised this woman's son in solidarity with what was to come to his own mother. Then, I wished that he could have done the same for me, for so many of us who are grieving our children's passing. It's always difficult to live without Katie, but the holidays are especially painful for grieving people.

Then I thought about growing up in Christian Science, and how much I loved reading about every healing that Jesus did for those he met. We read those stories in the gospels over and over again (as well as stories of the prophets healing people in the Old Testament). We were taught that the healings were the proof that God is Love, is perfect Principle, and would enable us to heal as Jesus did. When we experienced spiritual healing (without medicine or material aid), it was considered proof that God is good, and that Christian Science is Truth. That's what I used to believe with my whole heart, and I had many years of healings to show for it.

But many people's illnesses were not healed; people died, and some of them died in a state of a sort of ignorant neglect. That always bothered me, and it was somewhat hidden - not openly questioned or discussed.  Accepting medical intervention was considered to mean failure, giving up the faith, and a sort of adultery towards God. I did not use medicine until David was born. After I submitted to many hours of labor-inducing drugs, he was delivered via emergency surgery; and then, all of my questions broke open afresh. I asked and asked and asked why prayer alone had not been able to help us through his delivery, and NO ONE could answer to my satisfaction. No one was even willing to say, "It's a mystery that we don't understand." I was told by a church elder to "turn the page on it." But how do you turn the page on a near-death experience without first trying to understand it? Sweeping unanswered questions away doesn't lead to peace, growth or trust.

The Christian Science religion has its roots in the 19th-century intellectual freedom of New England; it was considered by its followers to be a real Science, like mathematics, and science was deemed infallible. Well, my own experience showed me that that just wasn't true; it failed, and it failed spectacularly. Nowadays, we see science as having aspects of art, and the more we know, we see just how little we know.

I had to move on from that belief system. I didn't find answers to all of my questions, but I found relationship with God. I found God as Presence, as Love, as One meeting me where I am, and that is infinitely more comforting than an imaginary Principle which doesn't bend, or care about us as individuals. I also found a suffering God, a God who allows suffering and participates in it (Jesus on the cross), and I am still mystified by that. But so is everyone else, and they are admitting to it, thanks be to God. It just IS. When bad things happen, it doesn't necessarily mean that we made a mistake; it is the way of the world in which we are living, the "human condition." In order to live in any kind of integration, we need to be free to see and to ask questions. That is the way of the scientific method.
So we come to Richard Rohr, a Catholic monk whose words and whose take on God and Jesus make sense of the mysteries for me. He doesn't pretend to have answers to all of the questions, but he is unafraid to look at them openly and to name the reality he sees. Father Rohr's work speaks to me, has helped me through the hardest parts of my life thus far, and is helping me now. I will never cease to be thankful that I was introduced to Fr. Rohr well before Katie became ill with cancer. Here is today's message from him, regarding Advent, and life:

"When we demand satisfaction of one another, when we demand any completion to history on our terms, when we demand that our anxiety or any dissatisfaction be taken away, saying as it were, “Why weren’t you this for me? Why didn’t life do that for me?” we are refusing to say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” We are refusing to hold out for the full picture that is always given in time by God.


"When we set out to seek our private happiness, we often create an idol that is sure to topple. Any attempts to protect any full and private happiness in the midst of so much public suffering have to be based on illusion about the nature of the world in which we live. We can only do that if we block ourselves from a certain degree of reality and refuse solidarity with “the other side” of everything, even the other side of ourselves."

-Adapted from Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr, pp. 5, 7

So the suffering of the woman of Nain (which Jesus alleviated), the suffering of his own mother (Mary), Katie's suffering, our suffering over Katie's illness and passing, and the suffering of so many others with the tragedies, illness, disaster, corruption and death that occur in this world, are to be seen and understood as part of the deal. We live here; it's like this. What will we do about it? Try to secure our own happiness at any price, even to the point of denial of what is in front of us? Or try to alleviate that suffering by doing whatever we can for good with what is put in our path, this day?
 
If we try to keep ourselves "safe" and "happy" what (or who) are we worshipping? Does it work? Has it ever worked?
 
Spending months in the hospital, co-existing with an illness that had the potential to take our daughter's life away at any moment had a profound effect upon me. I stopped looking far ahead. I had to live in the present, because (I learned) it was all I had. We didn't know if she would die in this moment, or the next, or in a year, or after we were all old people. We didn't know; the doctors didn't know. They didn't even know for sure what kind of cancer she had; they just knew that it was threatening her life, NOW. So we suffered in love, in fear, in hope, and in efforts to alleviate her suffering. We bore it with her. Practicing that for months on end created a kind of endurance.
 
This isn't talked about often nowadays, but human beings need to learn how to bear suffering. It is part of the school of life.
 
 "³ ...we^[c] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." Romans 5: 3-5
 
To be honest, I love my cozy spot here on the yellow couch; I don't like suffering. I don't toil in a coal mine or labor in a field in the heat of the midday sun. I do not pretend to suffer as the world's oppressed and poorest people do, laboring in unsafe and corrupt conditions. Some of the "hell" of this world is here, however, in grief and broken dreams and lost savings and confusion as to what is next. And much of the "heaven" of this world is here, too, in love, peace, friendship, gifts, purpose and meaningful work. Both are present; both must be acknowledged. I am thankful for the heaven, as I work to lighten the hell. And I am thankful for the work that God has done in me through my suffering.
 
As one of my favorite books is titled, "Everything Belongs."

"We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves..." - Colossians 1: 9-13

Incarnation & More GOOD NEWS

"When God gives of God’s self, one of two things happens: either flesh is inspirited or spirit is enfleshed. It is really very clear. I am somewhat amazed that more have not recognized this simple pattern: God’s will is incarnation. And against all of our godly expectations, it appears that for God, matter really matters. God, who is Spirit, chose to materialize! We call it the Christ Mystery.

"This Creator of ours is patiently determined to put matter and spirit together, almost as if the one were not complete without the other. This Lord of life seems to desire a perfect, but free unification between body and soul. So much so, in fact, that God appears to be willing to wait for the creatures to will and choose this unity themselves—or it does not fully happen. Our yes matters, just like Mary’s."  - Richard Rohr, Adapted from "Near Occasions of Grace," p.5

This is so important to me that I can't believe I haven't posted it before. I went back and looked in my archives, but I didn't find it, so you get to have it today; an Advent gift, from me to you.

Growing up as a Christian Scientist, I was taught a profound distrust of all matter and material evidence. Never mind that I have an artistic temperament, and that what I see is of vital importance to me; I was taught that "Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal." Temporal, yes, of course; but unreal? That implies that everything that I can learn with my senses is an illusion. And I spent many years of my life swimming upstream in this mind-set, trying to "translate things into thoughts," "see through matter," or "unsee" things that were unpleasant, like illness and death. It's a hard way to live.

The mind has to be very, very, very busy in this paradigm, in a state of constant alertness and questioning.  "Stand porter at the door of thought," we were taught as children. Like good little mental soldiers, we were to watch what we allowed into our thinking, lest it take root and turn into illness or another problem. So what happened to you was, in a way, your own fault, because you had to let it into your mind as a thought, before it could manifest as a thing.

One inconsistency (one of many) in this paradigm is that the physical healing of disease, through prayer alone, is considered as evidence of the truth of the religion's claims. But you have to accept the physical evidence of the healing, in place of the physical evidence of disease, in order to confirm the belief system. It's still physical evidence - matter - that you are believing. It's simply matter in a more pleasant, "harmonious" state. So that doesn't add up at all.

Anyway, from this bit of information about my former religion, you can see just how radical Richard Rohr's ideas would have been to me, when I first started reading him. And his writing simply cut through all of the old chatter, and was clearly, obviously, effortlessly true. And the more difficult my life has become, the more I see that it is all true...nothing has been contradicted, nothing has broken down. As the title of one of his books states, "Everything Belongs."

As we prepare for Christmas, walking through the days of Advent, the devotional readings in Fr. Rohr's book "Radical Grace" comfort me. They remind me of the freedom that God has given me, in releasing me from the tyranny that was part of being a Christian Scientist. Betraying myself - denying what I perceive with my senses and my intuition - is not what God asks of me.

Here is a reading for Advent:
"Many of our people create for themselves a permanently maintained happiness in the midst of so much public suffering. That state is based on an illusion about the nature of reality. It can only work if we block ourselves from a certain degree of that realilty. That's what is meant by denial.

"The Christian, though, is always saying, 'Come, Lord Jesus.' In other words, 'Let reality get at me, the full reality, the Cosmic Christ, all that is.'

"The Incarnation is the refusal of all denial. It is God saying yes to the muddy, the messy, the partial, the powerlessness of it all."

And today's reading:
"...God is the only one we can surrender to without losing ourseves. It's a paradox. I can't prove it to you, and it sure doesn't feel like that, but I promise you it's true.

"When Jesus says those who lose their life will find their life and those who let go of their life will discover their life, obviously he's talking about life in a different way than you and I experience it. We think life is the thing that we've got to protect. He's saying, No, the true self needs no protection: It just is. What we are usually protecting is the repetitive illusions and addictive feelings of the false self.

"God is the only one we can surrender to without losing ourselves. The Christian people, the brothers and sisters of God's Son, Jesus, are those who are called to that life of surrender." - From Preparing for Christmas With Richard Rohr

This Advent season, I'm grateful to have a teacher who tells the truth, who helps me to trust God AND myself, and to see that those are not mutually exclusive. 

GOOD NEWS UPDATE: Thank you for your prayers for my friend, Ann Vossekuil (Angel Taylor's mom). She just posted that her biopsy's findings show the growth to be BENIGN! Thanks be to God! What a great Christmas gift!

Spiritual Direction

I saw my spiritual director yesterday. For those of you who don't know what a spiritual director is or does, check out: http://www.sdiworld.org/.

I first learned about spiritual direction in a book that I read many years ago, written by Susan Howatch. Ms. Howatch is a fabulous writer whose work changed my life. When I was a college student, returning home from a term spent in England, I bought a book at the train station to read on the airplane going home. It was called, "Penmarric," and it was by Susan Howatch. I was riveted by her character portraits, and in love with England at the time, so it was a great book for me. I soon began to look for, and devour, almost everything she had written.

Years later, she began a series of books about priests in the Church of England. I recommend all of them. The first one is called "Glittering Images." In this book (and all of those in the series), at least one major character has spiritual crisis which involves a big breakdown, and there is a spiritual director who helps him (or her) by companioning the person through the "hell" of it, and out to the other side of the darkness. I never knew such help existed. I wanted a spiritual director.

I did a little searching and found that this is an age-old tradition in the Catholic church, and that other churches offer it, too. When I left the Christian Science church, I was looking for a church that offered spiritual direction, and I found it at a Presbyterian Church near my home. I've been working with my director, Bev, for about 8 years. This was one of those things that helped me so much during Katie's illness: I had spent all of that time working through many issues about myself, family of origin and God. Not that I am "done," or will ever be done, but that I had quit my part-time job and devoted intention and time to the process of healing, in part to be able to be a better mother. I do not know what the past year and a half would have been like if I had not had that grace of time spent with God and Bev.

We were talking about grieving yesterday (DUH!) and discussing the way I am doing it. I don't know any other way that I could get up in the morning and function than the way I am doing it. Gregg has his work, David has school, and I have time and space for writing, praying, listening, sewing, exercising and adjusting to this new reality. I need alot of peace and space for this work, and I am SO thankful that I have been given both in which to do it.

After that conversation with Bev, I remembered one of the stickiest disagreements that we had early in our marriage. Gregg and I were working on our wills, and discussing LIFE INSURANCE. People, this can be a minefield. I may have mentioned here before that Gregg and I have very different family backgrounds. One of the differences is what we each grew up with, in terms of money, and what we think we need, as a result of what we were used to having in our family of origin. When the life insurance discussion came up, we had TOTALLY different ideas of what "enough" meant. Maybe this was influenced by the fact that one of my grandfathers was a life insurance salesman, but I suspect it was due more to our different living conditions as kids, and...more importantly, my assumption that if anything happened to Gregg (if he died), I would need at least 6 months to "freak out" (as I thought of it in those days), be useless and non-functioning as I tried to adjust to life without him. It was quite clear to me then that I would simply want to lie down and not get up if he died, and to be left with two small children in the midst of that was impossible to imagine. I never was a big income-earner, and the thought of that responsibility being all mine just filled me with fear. As a result of all of this, I assumed that if he died, I would need alot more money (life insurance) than he assumed I would need to be able to "pick up the pieces" of our life and go on.

Funny thing: this disagreement made me feel as if he didn't care about me, didn't want to take care of me and the kids, at that time. Now, I get that it is about what we were used to, and what each of us would do in the event of such a catastrophe: he went to work nearly every day throughout Katie's illness, and he went back to work about 2 weeks after her passing: I was a stay-at-home mom. I am still here at home, walking my way through it a moment at a time. I was right about my needs; he was right about his. Interesting.

So I suspect that the work of grieving is as individual as the person and the situation. I think it was healthy that, in the old days, people had a period of "official mourning" after a death; it is necessary to slip the ties of normal social behaviour and interaction. You are not the same as you were; you never will be again. It takes time to be able to function again, in even the very simplest ways. Social situations can aggravate the worst feelings. It's better, for me, to have "a free pass," as Angela said to me, and just stay in my appropriate environment until I feel it's time to come out. Not "wallowing," but awaiting the sign that I am well enough to join the flow of life in society again.

Thanks, Bev, for everything.

Ash Wednesday

I guess I'd better deal with Ash Wednesday.

I've mentioned that I was brought up in a non-traditional, though Christian, religion (Christian Science). What that means is that Lent, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and Easter were not celebrated (nor was the Eucharist). So I haven't had a lot of experience with Ash Wednesday, since I was baptised, with my children, a number of years ago into the Presbyterian church.

Last year, Ash Wednesday fell on February 21st. How do I know this? It was the day of Katie's surgery (to remove her tumor). We spent the entire day, and all of the night, until 4:30 in the morning of the 22nd, holding vigil for Katie in one way or another. I refused to go and get ashes put on my forehead, though I think it was offered at the hospital chapel. It just seemed like too much, while my daughter's life was on the line in the operating room; as if I was not offering everything already.

We went to the hospital around 7:30 a.m. The doctor came in and told us that a short surgery or a long surgery was neither good nor bad; that they would work until they were finished. I got to help Katie change her clothes, and we were able to stay with her until she had her "relaxation medicine." She got to have hugs and kisses, some words of love and encouragement, and then she went out of the room with her friend Julie from Childlife. That was the last time we got to see her for many, many hours.

We were given a pager so that we could receive updates. Every two hours or so, a nurse would page us and say things like, "They have her open now." It took them at least five hours to get her abdomen open; we did not understand this, at first. The tumor was so extensive that it had grown from her adrenal gland, encased a kidney, crossed over her midline into a lobe of her liver, grown to completely fill her inferior vena cava, and entered her heart. Her body had miraculously created alternative pathways for her blood to flow, since the vena cava is a vital, major blood vessel. As much of a blessing is this was, the surgeons had to be very careful as they worked around these alternative blood pathways.

In the middle of the night, as we were trying to rest and trying not to worry too much, we were paged to come to the surgery area. Dr. W. told us very gently and very gravely that he did not expect Katie to make it through the surgery. He had been working on her since morning, and this was around 11:30 p.m. We were aghast. Why now? He felt that she was going to bleed to death when they began to work on her liver. Dr. C. was in the OR, working on her heart, as we were talking to Dr. W. He simply wanted to prepare us. I still cannot believe how kind he was, after such a grueling day, with so much left to do yet to try to save Katie --when he might have been resting-- to tell us this awful news personally. I don't know how I would have faced parents with that kind of news.

We were devastated, and went back to the family area to try to rest, pray and hope for the best. About 2 hours later, we were paged again. Dreading this meeting, we went back to the ICU and met a smiling Dr. C, the cardiac surgeon. "My part went great!" he told us. She didn't bleed as much as they had feared; Dr. W. was working with her now. He gave us such a lift. We went back to the family area exhausted, but with a glimmer of hope.

Around 4:30 in the morning of February 22, we were paged to come to the ICU and see Katie. She was alive. As Dr. W. told me many times, "She is still very sick," and she looked quite different than anyone I had ever seen, but I have never been so glad to see anyone in my life. She had survived! They were happy, and a bit surprised, I think. She had used about 70 units of blood products during her surgery; you've got to love all of the blood donors after that. We thanked the doctors profusely, and I said, We will see you after you've had some rest, thinking that they would take the day off, after an 18-hour surgery. Dr. W. said that he would be back later in the day to check on her. Amazing. He did come back, every day, to look after her recovery. We will never be able to thank these doctors enough for giving her a second chance to live without the tumor.

I really believed Katie was going to make it. Adrenocortical carcinoma is very rare, especially in children, and presently has no known cure; her tumor was a huge, widespread one. Still, she survived a surgery that was absolutely mind-boggling. She recovered her strength rapidly and surprised the nurses with her spunk and determination. They loved her spiciness and her sweetness. Those nurses are ANGELS, and they will have my love and gratitude forever. I just felt that given any odds, even a small percentage, a girl this strong, this beloved, and with such a sparkling character would have to recover and go on to live a different life, but a good one.

So I confess that, since that day, I have thought of Ash Wednesday with the opposite of reverence. It sounds ungrateful, since we were surrounded by caring family, friends and staff as we waited, and Katie survived the surgery, but that is not what I am thinking of; it is of the awful anguish of spending 18 hours knowing that (in order for her to have a chance to live) you are allowing your child to be cut open, and it is all out of your hands. Perhaps in time I will see it differently. We were fortunate to be in such a world-class facility, with Katie receiving the best care available; many people were praying for Katie. I know that God loves us all, and I love God, with gratitude for His grace; but the circumstances do not feel like love. We were held in love, as the vigils for Katie clearly show, but we were also suffering, as we were held in love.