Everyday Boy

Solitude On The Beach

I arise from rest with movements swift
As the beat of the Raven's wings
I arise
To meet the day
Wa-wa.
My face turned from he dark of night
To gaze at the dawn of day,
Now whitening in the sky.

Inuit poem as told by Edmund Carpenter in Eskimo Realities, from North To The Night: A Spiritual Odyssey In The Arctic by Alvah Simon (211).

Josh found a small book for each of us at Regent College, to guide us through a day of solitude, silence, prayer and reflection. We each headed our separate ways on Chesterman's Beach - a few minutes walk from our house - and spent the morning and afternoon sitting and walking along the water in meditation.  It was fitting going to the beach with the sand and surf, reminding me both of the wildernesses and waters to which we go to re-establish our relationships to God, each other, and the world around us.

It was good to head out early in the morning with only a few folks out: a few surfers, a few dog walkers, and a morning mist along the shoreline and trees to the south - a sunny morning, with a pale gray horizon. I headed into the trees a bit, finding a road winding up above the rocks, and a hidden cove all to myself where I could look out to a bonsai-like tree to my left, the ocean tides coming in to the rocks below me, and surfers waiting to catch their waves to my right. It was a good spot to sit and watch the day unfold around me.

By mid-morning, with the tide out, I walked back across the dried up stretch of beach leading to an island across Chesterman's beach, to sit and stare out at the ocean.  Being the prairie boy that I am, I almost got stuck on the island, not knowing that the tide was coming back in!  Luckily the water was only coming up just below my knees for me to wade back to shore.

By the end of the day we were able to enjoy the sunset on the beach, and then came back to watch the stars come out under the sliver of moon sinking low on the horizon.

Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went -
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars:
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked,
And I hadn't been.

Robert Frost

Catching Up Inwardly

For those of us who have considered physical flexibilities to be of import, I bring news from the field... It is my new found experience that in order to get things done, I must be still.  When that is afforded by an imposed restriction (illness, weather, incarceration, generally being grounded), I now believe it is God's way of giving you some true freedom to catch up on what you need to accomplish... inwardly. - Robert Downey Jr., written in letters from jail. Vanity Fair, Aug 2000 (86)

I always liked this quote because they were words of wisdom that came from such an unlikely source... It's been one of those horrible weeks you have every now and then, where there's stress at work, and on top of that you're as sick as a dog.

Coming up to a year into my volunteer commitment, and I think this past week was the hardest one I've had work-wise. There's been a lot of changes within the structure of the organization itself the past couple of months, with program changes and new staff being hired on and experienced staff moving on or switching programs.  I've sensed a lot of malcontent with the many program changes, and just a sense of unease between folks with all the staff movement. And I've also sensed a greater responsibility with work. Being here three months now I feel like I should be up to par, but in many ways I feel like I'm not.

This past week we've had a lot of mental health youth come stay with us, and youth with very difficult attitudes and personality's who can just drive you up the wall. Many of them were very needy, and it drains you trying to address their needs without being sucked into their negative attitudes and energies. Our program is pretty structured so the youth know the boundaries, but they know where to push and test the limits. I'm a terrible disciplinarian so I tend to let things slide a lot, and try to understand where each youth is coming from. I find that a lot of what irks other staff doesn't register with me sometimes, but I'm trying to understand the boundaries and behaviors that we need to keep the youth accountable to.  I'm still trying to figure out how to instill those changes in attitude and energy with the youth, and keep things light and try to keep a sense of humor in it all. It just becomes difficult when from youth to youth you hear them talk about abuse, drugs, and prostitution - it just wears on you. I can certainly understand how many front line workers need therapists themselves at the end of the day.

On top of the heaviness that I felt at work, I caught some sort of flu bug this past week: a sore throat, headache, fever and cold - so I was feeling quite miserable physically. And of course the week that I'm feeling in the dumps is the week where there's non-stop sunlight in Vancouver! The bright spot in the week was the care my housemates showed me, in making me soup and giving me rides into work, and the way my team leader and co-workers covering my butt at work.

The good that's come at the end of such a difficult week has been a better perspective on the purpose of Lent, and my failings so far.  I began this Lent with a view of giving up things on the periphery of life, but I was gratefully reminded by Maggi that fasting requires giving up some of the essentials in order to be more reliant on God.  I've come to meditate on the story of Jesus fasting in the wilderness for forty days; I've come to see it as a place of solitude that I myself have to enter this Lent, to answer the voices that demand my attention, with words that place my trust in the voice of Love - even when that voice may be silent.

Is God truly all-sufficient for me?  Being ground down by work and sickness this past week, and having to give up some essentials by default has been a blessing in disguise, because it's caused me to say that no, God still hasn't been all-sufficient for me.  There are many, many other things besides God - mostly myself - that I rely on.  Thankfully, grace by sometimes painful grace, I find this slowly being remedied...

Friends & Solitude

Jesus, too needed friends; close friends
and solitude.  The companionable meal,
laughter and talk - then he, the one who spends
himself in desert emptiness to be
by Father filled.  and then poured strength upon
all the emptiest, the most in need.  And he,
being human for us, needed me.  Peter and John.
So taught he did us.  So did we learn
this lovely rhythm - needing, needed - then
the deepest of all needs, the heartward turn
to Love's own source, the spring which fill all men,
Son-lit, Father-filled, Spirit-blown,
By yourself, Lord, to us our self is shown.

Andrew, Madeline L'Engle, A Cry Like A Bell (68).

I caught a bit of the Superbowl yesterday.  A former faith community member came over for dinner, and we had New England clam chowder to start with... and the New England Patriots ended up winning!  Coincidence?  Well, no - Josh deliberately served the chowder in honor of the game.  I'm glad that he didn't serve up eagle.  Sadly, it was in the local news that half a dozen eagles had been found mutilated in the woods.  Kind of spooky.

Anyway, I've been struggling with this whole balance between solitude and hospitality.  Do I need the solitude I think I do when I come home from a long day at work, or do I need to open myself more to relationships outside of work?  I'm finally feeling settled, once again coming to another new city, house, and workplace - but it feels like it's taken such a long time to come to a place energy-wise to invest myself in building relationships again.

I've been in such a reflective mood the past couple of months that I've been caught not being present to the here and now, and the people I am surrounded by.  Not knowing what to do as my volunteer commitment draws to a close has also kept my mind preoccupied, and my heart a bit apprehensive about putting roots down again when I'm not sure if I'll be staying long term.  I guess in the end I may be confusing myself between being social and being hospitable.

The whole person is on the one side open to God, and on the other side open to other people. The isolated individual is not a real person, for a real person lives in and for others. This idea... could be summed up under the word love. We become truly personal by loving God and by loving other humans. By love, I don’t mean merely an emotional feeling, but a fundamental attitude. In its deepest sense, love is the life, the energy, of the Creator in us. We are not truly human as long as we are turned in on ourselves. We become whole only insofar as we face others, and relate to them. - Kallistos Ware, via Bruderhof's Daily Dig

Solitude & Gentleness

When I first arrived in Vancouver, my housemates Chris and Josh got me a gift certificate to Regent College's bookstore. I finally made my way over to browse their titles, and as usual bought more books than I should have. I picked up three books: Henri Nouwen's book of daily Lenten readings, Show Me the Way, Garrison Kiellor's anthology of poems, titled Good Poems, along with a Merton reader of sorts. The following is from the third book, A Year With Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations From His Journals, selected and edited by Jonathan Montaldo:

It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them. It is pure affection, and filled with reverence for the solitude of others. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say. It is no longer a question of dishonoring them by accepting their fictions, believing in the image of themselves, which their weakness obliges them to compose, the wan work of communication. Yet there will , it is true, always remain a dialectic between the words of men and their being. This will tell something about them we would not have realized if the words had not been there.

Solitude is not merely a negative relationship. It is not merely the absence of people or of the presence with people. True solitude is a participation in the solitariness of God - Who is in all things. Solitude is not a matter of being something more that other men, except by accident: for those who cannot be alone cannot find their true being and they are less than themselves. Solitude means withdrawal from an artificial and fictional level of being which men, divided by original sin, have fabricated in order to keep peace with concupiscence and death.  But by that very fact the solitary finds himself on the level of a more perfect spiritual society - the city of those who have become real enough to confess and glorify God (that is, life) in the teeth of death. Solitude and society are formed and perfected in the Sacrifice of the Mass.

Thomas Merton, January 12, 1950, II 398-99.