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Ancient Wisdom Taught in a Modern Way!
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11-19-00
Being Grateful for Simple Things:
Ordinary
Grace
Join
me in affirming: Something
wonderful is happening to me right now. It is this thing called life.
Life is in my mind. Life is in my body. Life is in my affairs.
I receive it-I share it-I am it and I accept it. Just the way that it is
and just the way that it is not. Thank you, life. Amen. By Rev. Peggy Bassett "Terton
Sogyal, the Tibetan mystic, said that he was not really impressed by someone who
could turn the floor into the ceiling or fire into water.
A real miracle, he said, was if someone could liberate just one negative
emotion.” Sogyal Rinpoche, P.
120, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. "I
have learned this one thing, that in whatever circumstance I am in, therein to
be grateful." This was written by the Apostle Paul in Philippians
4:11. He was in a rat-infested dark
hole of a prison when he wrote this. Here
is the big question, how might we be grateful when life appears most dire?
Here is a little poem I received in my daily emails: BE THANKFUL Anonymous So let’s talk about how we can do that. Dan and I had a very challenging year. His only brother died. My mother died 2 weeks later. Dan’s work, and our financial situation, seemed to be drying up. There were no good jobs for architects in Monterey County it seemed. And so we moved away from a place that had been our home longer than any other place we have lived. How is it that we are so very happy? Meister Eckhart said, "If there was only one prayer you could give, one prayer, it should be 'Thank you, God." Gratitude is more than good behavior or stuffing it when the difficulties inherent in life arise; it is the means by which we demonstrate the true nature of our heart, giving thanks for what we once took for granted. We can say, "Thank you, God, for healing this situation,” We can say, "Thank you for being there. Even when everything seems to go wrong in my life, I can still feel your Presence.” Eileen Caddy of Findhorn in Scotland says, “Gratitude helps you to grow and expand; gratitude brings joy and laughter into your life and into the lives of all those around you.” When we do this in the face of adversity, how could anyone fail to be inspired? Let me share a condensed version of a true story from Ordinary Grace, by Kathleen A. Brehony, a book we are using in our Tuesday night class: Amy and Peter Barzach were parents of two wonderful children, an infant and a 3 year old. Jonathan and Daniel were happy and healthy and life was perfect. Peter's family had emigrated with only a couple of suitcases filled with old clothes, first from Russia to Israel, and then 2 years later to Connecticut. They were Jewish and had lost everything when they left Russia because they were considered traitors, even though both parents had been successful: the father an award winning athlete, the mother a highly ranked engineer. Peter was the only member of his family that spoke English, having studied it in 5th grade. Both Amy and Peter had overcome some major obstacles to become successful; met, married and after a time, began a family. Amy worked part-time as a Corporate Vice President and Peter spent 6 months of the year representing his aerospace company in Russia. Then Amy noticed that baby Jonathan was suddenly having difficulty raising his head. She took her sweet baby boy to the Pediatrician who sent him to a Pediatric Neurologist. By the time she returned home there was a call on her answering machine that said the Neurologist wanted to see them the next morning. They went through 6 weeks of testing that confirmed their Pediatrician's initial devastating impression. Baby Jonathan had a particularly virulent form of spinal muscular atrophy. They went through 4 more months of doctors, medicine, hospitals, and tears. They were unable to do anything to help Jonathan. Imagine! It became clear to them that their beautiful boy would die. During these times their friends and co-workers had rallied around them, the mothers of Daniel's nursery school classmates made him lunches, he was taken to movies and other outings away from the hospitals by other friends, gourmet meals were delivered for those times when they were able to be home together. When Amy called a Borders bookstore to find books about childhood grieving for Daniel, the employee who helped her sent Daniel a Paddington Bear and a card showing a child slaying a dragon. The love and support that each member of the family needed welled up around them. When Jonathan died, he was nine months old on January 5, 1995. During grief counseling a hospice counselor told them that someday they would find a way to use their considerable skills to do something that would have great meaning and give a lasting legacy to Jonathan's short life. The Barzach's donated Jonathan's organs, but that didn't seem to be it. One day they drove past a lumber company that had a piece of playground equipment, a boat with slides attached. Suddenly they remembered Carissa, a 5 year old with a milder form of the same disease that had killed Jonathan, with her chin quivering on the verge of tears, watching the other children play at the park on equipment she could not use. They decided to build a special playground where all children could play together. Not just accessible by wheelchair, but wheelchair friendly, fun for children with special physical challenges as well as their able-bodied friends. Jonathan's Dream was born. There was a long list of amazing things that happened, but within a year, there was a groundbreaking. Amy's skills as a project manager and Peter's financial expertise combined to fuel the project. They got money from a variety of sources. Russians who only earn $300 a month donated $100! Land was donated by their Temple, materials were donated, volunteers from all walks of life worked together to construct Jonathan's Dream. There is a tree house designed by little Carissa and her friend Vanessa with a sign that says "Carissa & Vanessa's Tree House.” There is a baby Beluga Whale in honor of Daniel's soulful inspiration to show his brother the Whale just days before he died. The playground is constructed of recycled materials that contain no splinters so each and every surface can be crawled over without hazard. Amy and Peter transformed their grief into an extraordinary place and brought light into the darkest experience of their lives. The goodness that arose in the people and organizations that supported the realization of their vision is so very profound, a community came together and honored a tragedy in a way that brings life to all of their children without exception and serves now as a model for other communities. Jonathan's Dream is now a well-used playground and a model that is much studied and is being duplicated. Kathleen Brehony, the author of Ordinary Grace writes: "We come into life expecting loss. We begin with loss—separated from our mother's protective heartbeat, from the security of her womb, and from our sense of oneness with everything—as we are plunged into an unfamiliar and uncertain world. Life's expected losses carry a potent mythology—an acceptable story. We hope that, if everything goes according to plan, we will live to a ripe old age. We anticipate that we will outlive our parents and have to say good-bye to them; after all, most are twenty or more years older than we are. If we are wise, we understand that everything is impermanent and that during our lives we will lose everything—our looks, our intelligence, our possessions, our careers, our relationships—as we move down the path to our own inviolate mortality. It is as the poet Ranier Maria Rilke wrote: "So we live, forever saying farewell." But we don't expect the death of our child. It shatters our innocence and causes most people to rage at the heavens.... "The word grief comes from the Latin gravis, meaning "to bear." Gravis is the root of the word gravity, which aptly describes the heaviness and depth of the wrenching pain left with the Barzach family by Jonathan's death. Grief seems to have a singular power to bring out the dark side of people. Significant losses can cause us to feel so out of control about life that we refuse to trust others, to believe in God or in life itself. Reeling and spinning through the shadowy underworld of sorrow causes many people to become bitter, disenchanted, and—worst of all—hard-hearted, closed emotionally and spiritually to the light of hope. Think of people you know who have closed down after a loss: the friend who will never love again because he was betrayed; the relative who refuses to associate with the family because of a past hurt; the person who hold everyone at a distance because he or she has suffered great sorrow. "We often describe grief as "being brokenhearted," and it is an accurate image. But it is precisely this broken-ness that creates new spaces for light and love to enter...This is like the loss that plunges us from the everyday reality of our comfortable, familiar lives into the shadowy underworld of sorrow—what St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul." It is a moment that opens us up to ordinary grace and allows us to put things back together differently, as the Barzach's have done. "Look at all the smaller stories within this story. " This story began with a wish that came from a broken heart. There was a transformation of anguish into kindness and concern for other children. "Their devastating loss signaled a decision to embrace life, not to retreat or withdraw into their pain, and initiated a majestic call to celebrate and honor the spirit of their tiny Jonathan. At the moment of their decision, grace flowed like a river." "Ordinary grace helps us understand that God and Spirit are present in the shadows as well as the light. The German Christian mystic Meister Eckhart must have agreed, for he wrote, 'God shines in the darkness where every now and then we get a glimpse of Him. More often, God is where His light is least apparent." Being of service takes the focus off ourselves and looks for how we might help others. When we feel grateful, we naturally want to share ourselves and our good fortune. Then we find that being in service only increases our gratitude and joy. When we can do this very same thing in the depths of life’s deepest anguish, when we can engage in the deepest alchemy that life has to offer, this is when we know that we have grown in Spirit. “I am alive in Spirit, Spirit is alive in me,” we chant together on some Sundays. This is a time to know gratitude for simple things; Love is such a simple thing. Love knows no bounds nor does it require that life or anything within it be different in any way. It allows life’s difficulties to surface to find the divinity hidden within each experience. May we appreciate this divinity in all of life together. The word "appreciation" means to be thankful and express admiration, approval, or gratitude. It also means to grow or appreciate in value. As you appreciate life, you become more valuable - both to yourself and others. The Hidden Power of the Heart, Sara Paddison Thank you for being here today!
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