Day 32 Lenten Meditation: Surrender

This is a difficult column for me to write, because I am the sort of person who wants to fix things, to do things, to make things happen. I don’t like getting into situations where I can’t make things happen.

I don’t surrender easily. I am convinced that if I beat my head against something long enough, I will accomplish it.

Some things, however, don’t lend themselves to beating one’s head against something long enough. A pandemic, for example. I sit here, helpless. I can do nothing. I can’t even sew well enough to make masks.

This is the point where I have to surrender. I’ll be honest, I don’t believe that God will take away the pandemic, or that it’s His will that millions of people will get this disease. My God, when I believe in him, gives comfort and strength and the clarity for us to use our minds to solve things. So I don’t surrender to God’s will. I surrender to my own imperfect humanity.

Day 31 Lenten Meditation : Support

One of the most enduring traits of humanity is its ability to support each other during times of crisis. Just some of the supports I have seen during shelter-in-place are the following:

Education units (pre-K through higher education) quickly mobilizing to online without a break, and with sensitivity to students’ needs
Textbook publishers allowing free access to online textbooks over the duration of the sheltering
Internet Archive offering free access to their library
Local Facebook groups helping each other meet needs
Outreach by the Instagram cat community reminding us to take care of ourselves (I suppose there are others, but I tune into the cat community)
Countless others
Harbor Freight’s donations of N95 masks and face shields to hospitals
People on social media reaching out to the more vulnerable
And so many I’m not aware of

I’m not counting the millions of businesses, small and large, who are adapting their businesses to face our current reality — online and curbside. The businesses who are adapting their production to fit our current needs. (I’m only not counting them because there’s a profit motive).

The way humanity gets through these calamities — pandemic, natural disaster, war — is through supporting each other. We much each be supported, and we must each provide support.

Day 30 Lenten Meditation: Inspiration

As a writer, inspiration is where the universe and my imagination connect, whether that be the world outside my door or the world inside my head. And where the two interact, sparks fly, and I am driven to put pen to paper and translate the gestalt impressions of the interaction.

Inspiration is open to all of us, not just creatives. It still marks the intersection point of internal and external worlds even if one is inspired to clean the kitchen or plant a garden.

How can we encourage inspiration? We can by being open to the world outside our heads. We have already experienced, and are always experiencing, the world inside our heads. We need something new to reflect on and to ruminate on.

A change of scenery helps. Sheltering in place during the pandemic makes for a monotonous experience, but one’s scenery can also be changed by reading or watching videos. All that is needed is inducement of the spark by external experience.

Open-mindedness certainly helps. We all interpret the world according to an inner framework, a set of rules that governs our perception of reality. Don Juan Matus, in Carlos Castaneda’s writings, called this the tonal, but that’s not important. What is is that our inner construct of reality filters our world for us. If we let go of it, even a little piece of it, just for the briefest moment, we can see our world differently and be inspired.

Right now, we need to feel inspired. We need to feel that spark to motivate us, whether toward mundane or glorious tasks. Inspiration will help us see our social isolation as opportunity and allow us to remodel our inner and outer spaces to be more creative, more pleasing, and more nurturing.

Day 29 Lenten Meditation: Trust

It’s easy to make a blanket statement that we should trust people more. This statement, however, is simplistic and wrong.

We should be careful who we trust. There are people out there who would use our trust to secure unfair financial gain from us. There are those who would use our trust to destroy our lives. There are those who would use our trust to elevate themselves to the level of a cult leader, which we have seen in the form of cults of personality, religious cults, fringe political movements, and militant cults.

We cannot blindly trust. So how do we manage trust safely?

1) Don’t use heuristics as a substitute for information. A heuristic is an information-sorting rule that substitutes, often poorly, for the actual information. We use heuristics every day to our peril: “He’s a clergyman. I can trust him with my kids.” “I heard it on TV — it must be correct.” “Nothing illegal could be happening in such a nice neighborhood.” We should be asking questions: What are this person’s actual credentials? Do they extend to the area in which we are trusting them?

2) Practice risk/benefit. Does the risk of having our trust betrayed outweigh the benefit of trusting? Use this to set a boundary around every decision involving trust: Would I trust this politician to take out my appendix? Would I trust the person I’ve just met to take care of my children? Would I trust anyone other than my spouse with my bank account number?

3) Weigh the emotional against reason. We often choose to trust for emotional reasons — relief, cease from worry, desire. Emotions can be powerful, but they can be countered by rational thinking as I’ve outlined above: information, risk/benefit. Force yourself to wait.

4) Be extra cautious in times of turmoil. We are desperate to trust, so we become less discriminating; we want to believe and so we give our trust to the unscrupulous. Remember that, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

To some extent, we need to trust, or else we will miss out on our connection with others. We will miss out on having our needs met. We will not thrive. However, we can trust wisely and protect ourselves, in times of turmoil and in times of calm.

Day 28 Lenten Meditation : Fire

It’s difficult to reflect right now, as I am scared of what’s happening in the United States. But I want to keep my daily rituals as a method of surviving this mentally.
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Fire consumes. It destroys — houses, forests, lives.

Fire warms and feeds. When we capture and contain fire, it becomes a lifesaving force in our houses.

Fire soothes, as we watch it dance in a fireplace.

Fire inflames — we use it as a metaphor for passion.

Fire reflects human complexity in its many, many aspects, which might explain why we’re so fascinated with it.

Day 27 Lenten Meditation: Struggle

In this time of contagion, all of us are struggling.

We struggle through anxiety, isolation, sleepless nights. Essential personnel struggle with overwork and worry about their own health. We all suffer uncertainty about whether we can be infected.

We were created or evolved to be concerned about our tribe, to find comfort in each other. We were created or evolved to help each other in times of struggle. In our current case, it is hard to seek comfort in a time of social distancing. Hugs are prohibited, as are gatherings. We make do with the Internet. We comfort ourselves with the belief that this will not last forever.

In this, we are united with others worldwide — with China, with Italy, with all the world that has been touched by COVID-19. It is a sign of our shared humanity that we can worry, we can sorrow, we can all catch this disease. The world is our tribe, and although we may be powerless to help others through their struggle, we can at least think charitably toward others, even though they are not of our tribe. Because that is how we survive in struggle.

Day 25 Lenten Meditation: Craft

(Note to readers: I am struggling with intermittent panic attacks over the whole COVID-19 situation. I will, however, give you my best.)
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A craft is not a hobby. A craft, instead, represents a set of skills, tools as it were, used to create. We can create with words, with music, with wood or clay, with yarn or fabric. But the key is creation.

A craft requires a human capital investment in one’s creative and maker skills. This takes time and money. Practice, classes, mentoring — all of these are how the crafter hones their skills. This is why those in the crafts get frustrated when someone offers “exposure” for a handcrafted sweater or a sketch.

A craft brings beauty to the world, as it is an expression of the primal creation.

Day 24 Lenten Meditation: Grace

As ever we needed grace, we need it right now, in the middle of this pandemic.

Divine Grace means “Love and Mercy without us having done anything to earn it.” As a Quaker, though, I can’t help but think of “that of God in everyone”, and concentrate on what we need to do to manifest grace on earth.

In Divine grace, love embraces all of humanity, not because of their pecuniary worth but because they are, simply, a miracle. It extends a hand regardless of what the other can do for you. It means being bigger than squabbles, greater than divisions.

In Divine grace, mercy means relinquishing power over other people and holding only goodness. It means accepting their faults and looking beyond them at their humanity.*

We need divine grace right now. We need to see ourselves as denizens of a world that is suffering even as we are, perhaps suffering more — a world where we are all nations, all ages, all genders, all socioeconomic statuses, all religions and none. We need to offer love and mercy, not because we will receive it back, but because it is demanded of us.

*Mercy doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a victim. You can protect yourself from harm without denigrating the other.

Day 23 Lenten Meditation: Freedom

I highly doubt the person at the Unitarian Universalist Church who created these daily meditations counted on COVID-19 and social isolation. For the sake of our fellow humans, we have forsaken our freedom to congregate in groups and socialize in mass events. Freedom, it seems, is defined by not having it.

In these days, we realize that freedom has a cost. Those who speak about the military say “Freedom is not always free”. What they’re missing is that freedom is never free. Freedom to congregate in the days of Novel Coronavirus means the virus will spread faster. Freedom of choice at the supermarket leaves us bewildered. And freedom to choose weapons that can kill tens of people in minutes costs society many more innocent lives.

If we have freedom, we have responsibility to others. A free market economy requires corporate responsibility to customers and workers, which doesn’t always happen, thus the need for laws. The freedom to bear arms requires responsibility to keep those guns from the hands of children, which sadly fails too many times. We do not handle our freedoms well.

I hadn’t expected this to be such a somber reflection. We usually talk about freedom in lofty terms in the US, leaving the costs of freedom on the shoulders of soldiers who fight for American interests. But we all have a responsibility to make decisions for the whole about how much freedom we should allow.