Hit or Miss?

Live Oak, November 5, 2006
Rev. Kathleen Ellis

I’ve been puzzled about something lately. How is it that some people are so faithful to a spiritual discipline or an activity, and some of us just wish it were so? During a recent leadership conference in Plano, I was treated to home hospitality for two nights. One of those nights found me up from 3 to 5 in the morning, unable to sleep and in an unfamiliar setting. Next to the recliner in the study was a book that Mary Oliver wrote about the art of writing poetry. It’s called A Poetry Handbook: a Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry.

The opening story gave me a clue to personal discipline. I suspect that most of you are quite familiar with the story of Romeo and Juliet. They were in love but knew their families would not approve, so they went to extra effort to arrange meetings. They took risks, enlisted the help of friends and servants, and thrilled at the prospect of their next secret rendezvous.

If either of them had been detained for any reason, the romance would not have flourished. If the first to arrive had not been willing to wait for the other, there would be no romance. They both had to show up consistently and faithfully. Showing up, says Mary Oliver, is what a poet must do.

“The part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem . . .exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious. It learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be. Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. It waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself—soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.”

Of course! You have to have a little bit of determination to keep showing up when you said you would. Showing up—it has to be more than once or twice or even a few times. I thought of some more examples.

Kathi Appelt, a Unitarian Universalist who lives in College Station, is a writer of books for children and teenagers. She wanted to develop the discipline of writing every day, and shared this ambition with a friend. She vowed to write for a minimum of one hour every day. Her friend laughed out loud. “You’ll never do that! Be reasonable!”

So Kathi said, “Okay, thirty minutes. That’s not so much.” Her friend disagreed. “Kathi, you are constantly dealing with interruptions from your kids, your husband, the phone. If you want to do this every day, make sure you can follow through.”

Eventually, going back and forth with her friend, Kathi cut her promise down to five minutes a day—and that could include writing a grocery list. She kept her notebook next to her favorite morning chair, and found that she could indeed keep up the practice of writing five minutes a day. Occasionally an unexpected morning would go by while she continued to write. But the first task was to begin, with a manageable portion to which she could commit no matter what.

A woman I knew about 30 years ago didn’t have very much money. But every week she would come to the bank where I worked and deposit the change she had accumulated in her coin purse. It was never more than a dollar or two at a time. By the time her children finished high school, it had become a sizeable college fund.

My first challenge as a sermon writer is to find a block of time for writing. But then I face a blank screen and the test then is that first five minutes of writing. It’s hard for me to begin unless I have a good idea of where I’m going. But the truth is, throughout the early stages, there is still a lot of latitude in the ultimate destination. Only as the words move through my brain to the keyboard does the objective gain more clarity. My personal challenge is to get started. A paragraph is about 50-100 words. How hard can that be? To write for 500 words gives me a real jumpstart on the process. I have had to convince myself that those initial thoughts can easily be revised or deleted, but first they have to have a chance.

My son was told when he got stuck just to start writing, “I don’t know what to write; I don’t know what to write.” He morphed that into, “I don’t know what to write about jungles; I don’t know what to write about forests; about trees; about monkeys that live in the jungle.” Before long, he was on his way, putting two sentences together, then three.

Anne Lamott tells how her son had postponed his report on birds until the night before it was due. He sat at the kitchen table, overwhelmed with the list of birds, the encyclopedias, the photographs. How could he possibly write about 30 birds? “Son,” she said, “you just have to do it bird by bird.”

Naturally, the writing method matters very little, especially to the reader or the listener. The main thing is that there’s a deadline and it has to be done one way or another. That external pressure adds extra incentive.

There are other areas of my life that need attention, but no one else cares a whole lot if they get done or not. Once a year my doctor will ask if I’ve been walking for 30 minutes a day; it’s in my best interest, but to get up and out the door is sometimes beyond me.

Even more easily neglected is my spiritual life. I love to read poetry and learn my favorite ones by heart. I want to do it every day, take a walk every day, write in my journal every day, yet too often I use up my morning time with the newspaper and a cup of tea. Before I know it, the morning is half gone and I have a meeting or an assignment or necessary messages to send.

Does anyone else neglect some part of your life? You know it’s important—spending time with family, keeping up with developments in your field, running for exercise and stress relief, meditating.

We have to figure out what’s important to us. Then we have to show up even when it’s inconvenient or we’re not in the mood. I’ve learned a few things from some of you. For example, my own Zen meditation practice never lasted more than four months at a time, but Gaines Whitcomb began meditation and has kept it up over time. I asked him how he got started and how he maintains his practice. He said, “It helps if your life depends on it.”

“It helps if your life depends on it.” Indeed. There are times when I have had to take extreme measures to save my sanity, to get through difficult times, to tend to my own needs because emotionally I had nothing to give to anyone else. My life depended on it, so its importance rose to the level of crucial. Nathan Stone, UU minister in Waco who did the installation service for Chuck and me two years ago, recently suffered a major family loss through suicide. He is doing everything he can to maintain his own health: massage, talk therapy, medication, prayer time, and fun with friends and colleagues on a regular basis. His life depends on it.

There are countless numbers of people struggling with the cycle of addiction and sobriety. In recovery, each person must take personal responsibility for choosing sobriety in any given moment. Even if they fall off the wagon, for as long as they live they have another chance to make a different choice. Dan Dreyer, whose memorial service was held yesterday, lived through decades of alcohol abuse followed by decades of sobriety. In addition to attending his own recovery, he helped large numbers of individuals follow him in choosing sobriety.

So many temptations surround us that thousands of addicts struggle every day to choose a different path: food, sex, drugs, pornography, gambling—some of us are terribly susceptible to their lure even when they endanger our relationships, our lives, our livelihood, or our freedom to live as we choose.

Everyone wants multiple, conflicting things even if we’re not predisposed to addictions. For instance, we may want to lose weight and we may also want the taste of Jack Daniel chocolate mousse pie; we may want milk or beans or chocolate or wheat and we may also want to feel good the next morning; we may want to get to work early and we may also want to sleep in. Simple choices, but not always easy.

I asked another friend of mine how she starts something new and sticks with it, and she said it helps to go away for a while, then come back home with your new resolve and put it into action. Maybe a simple way to go away without leaving home is to rearrange your space. What do you see when you wake up or come into the house, or walk into your office? Is there something that needs to be more noticeable such as an altar, a painting you love, or a written reminder of your highest priority?

Stephen Covey talks about four different kinds of intelligence: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

For physical health:
Notice your body. It knows when you need more rest or more activity. Annual physicals can more easily address any emerging health problems. Paying attention to the source of any stress will help you know if it’s from hating what you do or feeling tension between where you are and where you’d like to be.

For mental health:
Use part of each day to exercise your mind, even if you have to turn off the computer, TV or radio for an hour.

For emotional health:
Connect with friends or family. Listen to what they say and develop your fascination with their lives. Speak as if everything you say about someone else can be overheard.

For spiritual health:
Listen to your own conscience. One of the simplest ways to strengthen your spiritual core is to practice acting with integrity. Make a small promise that seems easy to others but requires a little effort on your part, then keep the promise. Keep going through life with bigger and bigger promises until it becomes almost second nature to keep them.

But in all this, Stephen Covey encourages each of us to have an overall plan. Making a to-do list simply focuses our attention on those items that are screaming the loudest. Spend some time instead writing a sentence about what matters the most to you. What is your highest priority? You will lead a happier life if you fulfill some part of it every day.

Other advice I’ve collected this week:

Robin Chotzinoff, who was raised by atheists and never particularly religious herself, watched her daughter Coco embrace her Jewish heritage. As an emerging teenager, Coco prepared her own Shabbat services and even asked herself discussion questions like, “What is the appropriate Jewish response to homelessness?” Robin watched her daughter study for her bat mitzvah and began to wonder: Is a bat mitzvah just for kids? Could Robin have one, too?

To her own surprise, Robin began studying with a rabbi. She engaged a tutor for Hebrew, found a friend who would keep pushing her forward, and found herself standing before the congregation. This time, it was her daughter who gave the “proud parent” speech. Her mother had struggled to learn the lessons, write music for the service, and prepare her own speech.

Robin Chotzinoff had decided at age 40 that embracing Judaism was her most important priority. She pursued her goal in spite of her family’s laughter at this new interest. Not only did she transform her life, but she also shared the story in her new book Holy Unexpected: My New Life as a Jew.

Who in the world knows what you can accomplish? Let’s go back to the poet who prompted this topic: Mary Oliver. Though she talks about poetry in her Poetry Handbook, consider her words in terms of your own passion. She writes

“A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry. Poetry is a life-cherishing force. And it requires a vision—a faith, to use an old-fashioned term. Yes, indeed. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, indeed.”

You need a dream and you need to show up and keep showing up when you say you will. Your dream won’t wait forever. Give it the first five minutes.