Quiet Cooling Breeze

Quiet cooling breeze, lift up my pain

Move it over where it has no home

No body to oppress

No mind to curl around

No soul to unbalance

Quiet cooling breeze, lift up my pain

Move it away and release the joy.

Compassionate Curiosity

A wonderful description of therapy from Happy At Last: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Finding Joy by Richard O’Connor M.S.W., Ph. D

§  A good friend of mine uses the phrase compassionate curiosity to describe the ideal therapist’s attitude toward the patient. We begin therapy with a much more compassionate, kind, understanding stance toward the patient and his problems than the patient has himself. And we are curious, in a calm, unafraid way – we want to understand how things got to be so bad, and we assume that by fearlessly facing reality we will help the patient find relief from his distress. Compassionate curiosity is the attitude most of us need to apply to ourselves as well. What a change that would be for almost everyone I know!”

I don’t know what to think

Everyone is panicking and I see it in my clients.  I struggle with the economic concerns of others. I am in such a place of abundance with a solid marriage, an employed spouse, good health, good credit and a family that would help.  I give to my church and to the food bank.  I take my clothes to Goodwill.  I know that helps but what do I do about the people I know personally who have no family, no savings and low paying jobs that will never be better.  They really have no safety net.  If they get sick they lose pay and nobody is there to mother them.  If there car breaks there won’t be enough money for food.

I was telling a client how my  trip back home was a little miserable because I was sick with a bad cold.  During a family function they propped me up in a chair with a blanket and brought me hot cider. Her comment was simply “At least you had someone to prop you up.”  That’s when I felt her icy cold fear of being alone and without resources. Of course she translates the fear to rants and ravings about the government and world economy, her job, her housemates….

So how do you give hope?

Muddling

I have had some interesting comments about my attempt to blog which makes me wonder why I started.  It seems to have become a scrapbook of myself.  I like that.  I haven’t done that since I was a young teen and taped tickets and pictures onto brown paper pages of an album.

The outcome seems to have no value but the process has been tremendous and I like playing with it.  Like any medium I’m learning it’s potential and limitations. Oil paints, clay, movement, voice we seem to be attracted to a medium both as an audience and a muddler.

Connection

It seems like a lonely world out there.  Technology provides us with so much self-service that we interact less and less with each other. Technology provides us with entertainment that doesn’t need a partner. On top of all that technology provides us with the ability to work nonstop making us too busy to meet with those we know let alone those we haven’t met.

Mostly I think we decide others don’t have time or energy for us so we avoid inviting others to join us.  But who really feels the exhaustion? Maybe it’s me. And so the cycle begins. I’m tired living in our complicated world so I stay cocooned. Because I’m cocooned I don’t connect with others for the pure pleasure of life and I deplete my source of energy. I become bored and retreat farther thinking I’m boring. Then I’m even more tired and decide I can’t handle any rejection so I better stay cocooned.

Yet, we frantically check our e-mails for a connection to someone who knows our name. One of my irrational fears comes from 2001 Space Odyssey when the astronaut’s life line springs free from the spaceship and the astronaut floats away through a void of absolute disconnection. Surely that will be the moment of ultimate despair and the thought of “what’s the use?”.

Why do we nurture that void?

Susan Howatch & the Process of Creation

A Brief Passage on the Travails of Creation

In her novel, Absolute Truths , Susan Howatch offers this fascinating conversation between a minister and a sculptor as they view a recently completed work.  The sculpture is of the hands of another minister, folded in prayer.  The passage can be found on pages 376-377 of the 1994 edition of the book.

 

This was evidently the right thing to say.  She decided to confide in me.  “I always wanted to do those hands of his,” she said, “but I could never see the right way to present them.  Then about a year ago they began to haunt me.  I dreamed about them, thought of them night and day – until finally I saw how they had to be done.”

 

            “And after that did everything go smoothly?”

 

            “Good God, no!  Quite the reverse.”  She sighed before adding:  “Creation has to be the greatest pleasure in the universe, but it can be pretty damned harrowing when the work’s in process.”

 

            I gestured towards the hands.  “You never thought of giving up?”

 

            “Don’t be ridiculous!  When things go wrong I don’t chuck in the towel,” she said, caressing the hands again with her forefinger.  “I just slave harder than ever to make everything come right.”  She ran her forefinger down the back of the left hand and around into the hidden area at the base of the palm.  “Making everything come right,” she said.  “That’s what it’s all about.  No matter how many disasters happen, no matter how many difficulties I encounter, I can’t rest until I’ve brought order out of chaos and made everything come right.”  She moved dreamily around the plinth.  The caressing hand seemed almost to impart life.  I half expected the sculpted hands to unclasp themselves in response to her touch.

 

            “Of course I made a lot mistakes,” she was saying.  “I turned down various blind alleys and had to rework everything to get back on course.  But that’s normal.  You can’t create without waste and mess and sheer undiluted slog – you can’t create without pain.  It’s all part of the process.  It’s in the nature of things.”

 

             Suddenly she swiveled to face me.  “You theologians talk a lot about creation,” she said, “but as far as I can see none of you know the first damn thing about it.  God didn’t create the world in seven days and then sit back and say:  ‘Gee whiz, that’s great!’  He created the first outlines of his project to end all projects and he said: ‘Yes, that’s got a lot of potential but how the hell do I realize it without making a first-class balls-up?’  And then the real hard work began.”

 

            “And still continues.  Theologians don’t believe God withdrew from the world after the first creative blast and forgot about it.”

 

            “Of course he couldn’t forget!  No creator can forget!  If the blast-off’s successful you’re hooked, and once you’re hooked you’re inside the work as well as outside it, it’s part of you, you’re welded to it, you’re enslaved, and that’s why it’s such bloody hell when things go adrift.  But no matter how much the mess and distortion make you want to despair, you can’t abandon the work because you’re chained to the bloody thing, it’s absolutely woven into your soul and you know you can never rest until you’ve brought truth out of all the distortion and beauty out of all the mess – but it’s agony, agony, agony – while simultaneously being the most wonderful and rewarding experience in the world – and that’s the creative process which so few people understand.  It involves an indestructible sort of fidelity, an insane sort of hope, and indescribable sort of . . . well, it’s love, isn’t it?  There’s no other word for it.  You love the work and you suffer with it and always – always – you’re slaving away against all the odds to made everything come right.”

 

            “It doesn’t matter.”  I moved to the counter to join her.  “And when the work’s finally finished,” I said, “does every step of the creation make sense?  All the pain and slog and waste and mess – how do you reconcile yourself to that?  Is every disaster finally justified?”

 

            “Every step I take – every bit of clay I ever touch – they’re all there in the final work.  If they hadn’t happened, then this” – she gestured to the sculpture – “wouldn’t exist.  In fact they had to happen for the work to emerge as it is.  So in the end every major disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat and tears – everything has meaning.  I give it meaning.  I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.”

Looking for a Purpose in Life

I’ve been doing some philosophying. The question of no purpose in life or no passion comes up time and time again in sessions with all kinds of people.
 
 I have found that I am happiest when I accept there is no lofty purpose or miracle to achieve but instead focus on a deeper experience of the process of life.  Which means, step one, I need to learn more about myself (eg. I can’t think when I’m hungry, I prefer a concert to sports and so on). I notice what am I attracted to, what makes me smile, what do I enjoy?

Then do more of that even in small ways, step two.  Add the food, colors, sounds I like to my life. Make space for what energizes you. 

As I deepen the experience of life other things happen, step three, by accident, that I couldn’t predict or create on my own.  Sometimes its a new friend but more often a brief encounter with someone that reminds me that we are all connected in so many different ways. Life gets richer.
 
Step four enhances the first three steps when I remind myself to get back today, disconnect from what is right, or admired, or clever and accept that my life is just that, a life, and I feel energy from making it richer.
 
Meaning is nurturing the process of life and disconnecting from the outcome.  What a relief!