Bookends.
Bookends may be library hardware simply propping up books, without
any particular meaning other than their utility. On the other hand,
some may be chosen and placed with an intention to reflect, lightly
in some cases, but nevertheless to symbolize the contents of the
volumes being supported. Ceramic vegetables or fruit supporting a
shelf of cookbooks. Or, an example from my college days, a paired
set of chimpanzees posed as “The Thinker” holding up volumes on
evolutionary biology. Or, more seriously perhaps, Lady Justice seen
on the barrister bookcase of an attorney's office.
Two messages came to me this week that served as reminders again of the direction and
purpose of this blog, and the image that came to mind was "bookends".
Bookends for living. Not simply in the sense of propping up, nor as marking only the beginning and the end of life, but symbols
between which the project of living is balanced and takes place,
day-by-day; the rhythm of the Ebb and the Flow, the Yin and the
Yang, the Warp and the Woof, of the Journey Outward
and the Journey Inward.
One
of the verbal bookends received was from the author
Jon Kabat-Zinn. In a chapter highlighting the value of rising early
to spend time in meditation (the book's subtitle is “Mindfulness
Meditation in Everyday Life”) Kabat-Zinn suggests: “Just
waking up early to practice non-doing is itself a tempering process.
It generates enough heat to rearrange our atoms, gives us a new and
stronger crystal lattice of mind and body, a lattice that keeps us
honest and reminds us that there is far more to life than getting
things done.”1
“Far more to life than getting things done”: A tough challenge in
the world in which so many of us live. Today, where living seems to
demand constant busy-ness and distraction, there is a need, a value
(as in fact there has been for human beings down through millenia) to
creating a rhythm in which there are regular places and times when we
stop. A time to turn off the TV and the cell phone, to remove
ourselves – even if only momentarily - from the kinetic pace of our
lives and to enter a place of silence, to become aware, to listen to
the Voice(s) within, to open ourselves to the Universe, to Mystery.
Sometimes our houses of worship can be such places – perhaps at the
weekly service, or at a time when we can be alone in personal prayer.
Liturgical Christian worship, done well, can be such a place for me.
“Practice,” as Kabat-Zinn calls meditation, is also a place where
I am at times able to enter this sacred space.
The other bookend came to me from a young woman whose family attended
the church I pastored on the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska, in
the 80s and 90s. “Cokey,” as we used to call her, was a young
girl at the time. Now, graduated and a counselor and instructor at
the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, she posted the following
powerful quote this week to her Facebook page:
"Don't
speak to me about your religion; first show it to me in how you treat
other people. Don't tell me how much you love your God; show me in
how much you love all God's children. Don't preach to me your passion
for your faith; teach me through your compassion for your neighbors.
In the end, I'm not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as
I am in how you choose to live and give.”2
Cokey's
one-word comment on this quote: “Action!”
Balancing
the vital call to awareness and reflection is the equally critical
call to action. And, as I hope has become clear in the pages of this
blog, in my view the action that we are called to is that which
places us clearly on the side of justice and in solidarity with
individuals and communities at the margins of society. We cannot
isolate ourselves or withdraw permanently to the comfort and seeming
safety of the inward journey, in whatever form. As Cory's words
challenge so powerfully, hiding behind pious speech is empty,
meaningless religion. In the parlance of the Christian scriptures:
“If I speak with human and angelic tongues, but do not have love
[i.e., do not put my values into action],
I am a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”3
Living is incomplete without both
the Journey Inward and the Journey Outward.
The
vision and challenge I propose for myself in these pages is that
life, to have meaning, to be fully lived, must take place within this
stretch and balance. And it is my hope that these
thoughts-put-to-word may be fodder for your own grappling with living
as well. Not all activity or action. Not all withdrawal or
reflection. But a moving between, spending time in each plane.
Journeying deeply into both, and engaging the journey from one to the
other as well. That awareness may inform and lead to wise action,
and that focused, intentional activity may in turn inform and lead to
deeper, connected meditation.
1 Jon
Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation
in Everyday Life (New York:
Hyperon, 1994), 180-181.
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