A Momentary Rebellion

or I Would Like a Macrocosm, Please.

Even just for a while.

A few years ago I read a book by Patricia Loring on prayer in the manner of Friends (Quakers), called Listening Spirituality (Volume I).  Friends seek to "center down" into a listening quiet; the idea of prayer is always more to listen to God than to talk.  In any time of silence, though, distractions arise—thoughts that bubble up and start chattering.  Loring suggests regarding these thoughts as ideas that are clamoring for blessing.*

So when the word "stultify" bubbled up from nowhere on me today, no one was more surprised than I (has anyone ever used the word "stultify"?), but I decided to pay it some attention.  I associated it vaguely with the idea of a skill or personal quality withering from disuse, a kind of atrophy of the self, but thought I'd look it up to be sure.  From various dictionaries, these definitions emerged:

• To cause to lose enthusiasm and initiative, especially as a result of a tedious or restrictive routine
• To make useless, futile, or ineffectual, especially by routine
• To render absurdly or wholly futile or ineffectual, especially by degrading or humiliating means

Synonyms: cripple, impede, frustrate, hinder, thwart.

It seems like an odd word to have come clamoring for a blessing.  But it knocked on the door asking for something.

Probably for my honesty. This has been one of those weeks when I've looked up and seen a wider world, the world I used to be part of.  It started off with a sunset and two vivid pink contrails jetting off invitingly into the Western sky, and continued with encounters with the world of ideas—with people engaged with their work and growing in it—that left me just as far behind. When I stop and let it, the loss just bites. 

I don't generally believe in stopping and letting loss bite.  I don't see the point in complaining or in harping on symptoms—I just don't think it helps, and it often makes things worse, besides making you forget that other people have their difficulties, too.  But not complaining can sometimes turn into denial or a kind of false front, and it can give others the impression that everything's fine—or worse, that CFS isn't that big a deal—when the opposite is true. 

So for today, I am aware of being stultified—and I'm passing that awareness on to you, you lucky people.  I am tired of a world of walls and restrictions, of being trapped by illness within narrow limits, of being daunted by stairs and parking lots, of having difficulty understanding non-fiction and being incapable of remembering it for more than a day, of having to control light and noise and stress and chemicals and food and thought and activity in order just to function.  After 15 years of this, I am aware of thoughts being shallower, of standards lower, of caring and accomplishing less, of slowly giving up bits and pieces of the fight.

I would like to go out for dinner, just once this year; to stay out after 7:00, to remember where the switch is for the headlights on my car; to go to a movie at the actual theater or a play or a concert or a lecture; to listen to music for more than five minutes before the noise gets too intense; to spend my birthday doing something other than lying on a sofa; to go for an easy walk in the bosque without spending the rest of the day in bed and taking a three-day weekend to recover; to travel in a plane and still be well enough to enjoy myself when I reach my destination.  I would like not to feel as if every cell of my body is lugging around 25 pounds of lead weights, to forget the meaning of the word malaise. 

And I am one of the lucky ones.  I'm still at about 60% of my former capacity—with that 60% I can go to my easy part-time job and maybe do one errand.**  Then I go home to rest. On weekends, even if I seldom feel able to leave the house, I can play a bit in the garden and do some cooking and cleaning.  Holidays are the break in the routine, the chance to "chase sunshine" and escape for a couple of hours, or at most two or three days.

I love my little garden.  I love it.  I am so grateful to you all for walking the circle path with me twice a week and letting me share its pleasures with you.  I keep thinking, "Surely they're all getting tired of hearing about 'Wild Thing' autumn sage yet again."  But this little garden is all I have.  It's all I have to offer.  It would just be nice if there were more. 

There.  I am done complaining.  Tomorrow I will remember gratitude and regain some contentment, because I do, after all, have a roof over my head, plenty of food on the table, and a loving family within calling distance.  The rest, I'm convinced, is (more or less) a matter of perspective.  And besides, the Lady Jane tulips—early-blooming wildflower tulips—are up.  They won't bloom until March, but the leaves are showing.

There's light at the end of this (very small) tunnel.

______________________
* It also sticks in my mind that she credited this idea to Hasidic Jewish teaching, but I can't recall for sure.
** Just as an exercise in CFS awareness, assuming that the waking day is 16 hours, and 60% of that is about 9.5 hours, if you had to throw away the remaining 6.5 hours of every day, which would you choose?  Now imagine if you were functioning at 25% of normal, like many people with CFS...  Keep in mind that you won't feel well for any of those hours.

Dona nobis pacem

or That of God

I.
It is easy to be at peace when the world is still.  Easy, on a golden day in an unusually warm autumn, nestled into the shelter of the garden.  The leaves aren't particularly vivid this year, but their colors are warm—sienna and ocher, earth tones that soothe rather than dazzle.  Occasionally a leaf falls, riding a light current of air before landing, beached, among its drifted kin.  Sir Marley snuggles up to the west-facing garden wall.  Although the house shades the wall by mid-afternoon, it still breathes out a gentle warmth until dusk.  The cat's front paws curl underneath him; he blinks contentedly at nothing.  For some reason the way he looks off into the distance makes me think of a haiku, a poem whose simple words gesture toward something beyond them in the silence.

II.
The Quakers—or Friends, as they prefer to be called—cherish silence deeply.  In the Friends' view, it is by centering down into quietness, by listening for the still, small voice, that we become attuned to the ways of God.

I considered myself a Friend for several years, but lately I haven't been so sure.  I wonder whether my reticence isn't really a form of rebellion against silence in general.  I may have come to value the quietness that illness has forced upon me, but to seek out more of it when what I really crave is a little noise and bustle and excitement—at this point, it's not happening.  So these observations are not coming from someone for whom "way has opened" (as they—we?— say) into peace, or from a "weighty" Friend of measured wisdom and clarity of insight.  They're just things I'm pondering and offer in a spirit of sharing.

George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, wrote to his followers from prison in 1656, encouraging them to "walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone." Modern Friends still hold this saying dear, perhaps because it reaches out wide in an age when the world has grown small, when radically different cultures and beliefs bump shoulders in uneasy proximity.

That of God.

At its simplest and broadest, perhaps, the phrase refers to the urge toward goodness, to those actions that partake of love or joy; peace, patience, kindness; gentleness; maturity.  To answer that of God in those around you—to respond to the goodness in them, to speak to what is admirable in them—is to base every action on kinship, on respect.  It is to be generous in giving the benefit of the doubt.

The point of listening in silence for the still, small voice that lies beyond you is to learn to recognize its sound, to know its distinctive timbre even in the midst of noise and activity; to hear the voice of God speaking through a person's life, even when that person differs from you.  Then one can answer in kind.

III.
Today, November 4, 2010, marks the seventh BlogBlast for Peace from MimiWrites—a day when bloggers from around the world all post on the topic of peace. It comes hard on the heels of a more than ordinarily acrimonious election here in the USA, and as I write I find myself thinking less about peace between nations than about peace between neighbors—because frankly, peace among nations seems like the more accessible goal right now.  I have never seen people with so much in common so divided, so entrenched in fear and egotism (why do the two so often go together?), so eager to insult and smear and slam doors, so loathe to engage in discussion, so unwilling to bridge differences. 

The BlogBlast's theme is "Dona nobis pacem"—grant us peace.  I can't say the words without also hearing the round we sang many years ago in high school choir.  I don't normally wax rhapsodic about high school, but experience has taught me what an extraordinary ensemble that choir really was.  Our director had a gift for awakening talent and enthusiasm and for bringing out his singers' best efforts, but he especially had a gift for uniting us that I didn't realize was rare at the time.  While I can remember some petty squabbles and hurt feelings and teenage angst behind the scenes, I don't recall any of the poison and backbiting and spite that can often destroy a group from within.  All of that was checked at the choir room door, because once we started rehearsal, we were there to make music.  Our director filled us with that vision.  He showed us something beyond ourselves.  He taught us to listen to one another for balance and blend, to watch each other's breathing, to pool our resources in a common endeavor.  We respected the different gifts we each brought to the table. 

Our worlds were noisy, full of internal and external commotion, with big and little egos, rank immaturity, raging hormones, and problems of all kinds that loomed over our inexperienced heads.  Yet when we sang "Dona nobis pacem" and our words asked for peace, all along we were engaged in the process of making peace.  We looked beyond ourselves, we listened to each other, we worked together.  I can't help thinking now that what we really did was to answer to that of God in one another.

So yes, dona nobis pacem.  May we have peace, may we be given that grace from beyond us that somehow, miraculously, makes the unlikely all work out.  But in the meantime, let us go make peace, even amid the noise and clamor of a sound-byte world that pits neighbor against neighbor.

Walk cheerfully over the world, my friends, answering that of God in everyone.