Tag: Joy

On being amazing and perfect

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tree

When entering a supermarket store on Saturday I was greeted with a banner telling me that shopping there would make this Christmas “the most perfect ever”.  This desire for perfect conditions  is necessary when we are young, in order to allow the development of a stable self. As the English psychoanalyst Winnicott said,  “the mind has a root in the need of the individual, at the core of the self, for a perfect environment”. However, as the child grows,  its capacity to live with a less than perfect environment develops and the mother just has to be “good enough” in an ongoing committed relationship rather than being perfect in every instance. And it is the same for us as adults.

Our lives are always a work in progress, with moments  of failing followed by repairing, integration mixed with disintegration.  Despite what we sometimes think and express from time to time,  we don’t really need perfection. We push ourselves hard enough due to that false belief. That things go wrong – despite our best efforts – is just part of the human condition. What we really want is to be seen as we are – not completely sorted out –  and for that to be good enough. 

It’s odd in a way, this business of Perfect Christmasses. The story of the first Christmas is the story of a series of completely unplanned, messy events – a surprise pregnancy, an unexpected journey that’s got to be made, a complete muddle over the hotel accommodation when you get there… Not exactly a perfect holiday.

But it tells us something really vital. We try to plan all this stuff and stay in charge, and too often (especially with advertisers singing in our ears the whole time) we think that unless we can cook the perfect dinner, organise the perfect Christmas, we somehow don’t really count or we can’t hold our heads up. But in the complete mess of the first Christmas, God says, ‘Don’t worry – I’m not going to wait until you’ve got everything sorted out perfectly before I get involved with you. I’m already there for you in the middle of it all, and if you just let yourself lean on me a bit instead of trying to make yourself and everything around you perfect by your own efforts, everyone will feel a little more of my love flowing’.

Archbishop of Canterbury, Pause for Thought, BBC Radio 2.

The sun and the moon and the stars

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File:Moon rises above the trees at the Mississippi River Headwaters, May 19, 2016.jpg

From the 17th to the 23rd of December a special sequence of invocations have been used since at least the 5th Century.  Today’s one – “O Wisdom,  Come to teach us the way of prudence” – reflects the age-old quest for a  balanced way of being,  that will lead to our hearts being fulfilled,  faced with all the demands on our time.

Every day we bump into things that challenge us to keep our hearts soft when fears and disappointments try to convince us to harden and close down. The temptation is to say “What can we do? It is as it is” .  However, this never-ending wisdom practice consists in keeping open to experience in all its changing forms  – its joys and its sorrows – having the courage to meet whatever comes our way with a spacious heart. We dare to believe in the underlying mystery, behind the busyness of the day.  Things may change, the attitude of the heart doesn’t:

The water in the stream may have changed many times,

but the reflection of the moon and the stars remains the same.

Rumi

More fun

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File:Crossing Stepping Stones in Bolton Abbey - England.jpg

I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.

Anne Lamott,  Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

photo Barney Moss

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harvest

Some days or weeks we work with limited vision. The true meaning is hidden. We rely on inner values and on the commitment we have made.

Bringing in a full harvest from human effort has always been difficult, because what is worth bringing in is almost always hidden from us: think of the hard, protected kernel of the wheat amidst a waving sea of gold, or the the walnut nestled in its dense, unyielding skin of green and white, think of how common a much-wanted, simple understanding is needed, hidden by our complex thoughts; or the attempt to fully forgive when even forgiving a little seems to be the last thing we want to do; and lastly, the wish to love and to be loved, when loving is what we are most afraid to do.  

David Whyte, Letters from the House

Trust

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File:BBGMonarchButterflyWings.jpg

With no mind, flowers lure the butterfly;
With no mind, the butterfly visits the blossoms.
Yet when flowers bloom, the butterfly comes;
When the butterfly comes, the flowers bloom.

Ryokan, 1758 – 1831, Buddhist monk, hermit and poet.

Sunday Quote: Wholeness

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leaf-blurWe can sometimes feel fragmented in our inner life, sucked into a crisis,  pulled in all directions, but…

There is not a “fragment” in all nature,

for every relative fragment of one thing

is a full harmonious unit in itself.

John Muir, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf