The Tiger You Know...

Are you familiar with the saying, “The tiger you know is better than the tiger you don’t know?” It originated in India, with townspeople that lived on the edge of jungles inhabited by tigers. Inevitably, a tiger would wander out of the jungle and through the town, looking for food. This was certainly an immediate danger, but over time the town got to know the tiger’s habits, his routines, and when he would come calling. They chose not to kill the tiger, because they knew that another would soon replace it, and bring new habits they were unfamiliar with. This new tiger would be more dangerous than the old because the new one would be unpredictable.

This “settling mentality” may be the right strategy for Indian towns dealing with tiger problems, but it is a slow death for marriages, a quitting that is just as final as a divorce.

Marriages get into ruts, and stay in ruts for many reasons, but at the core is a fear of change. We are always free to make changes, adaptations in our marriages, big and small. True, our freedom is not unlimited but there are always choices…always. However, there will invariably arise a serious temptation to deny this personal freedom, and give excuses for why we must remain stuck.

Anxiety comes with all change, because change brings us face to face with possibility, with the great unknown, with new challenges and responsibilities. And anxiety is an uncomfortable feeling to say the least. It may sound crazy but many marriages stall, and remain stalled, because relative dissatisfaction is seen as preferable to all that potential healing and growth would bring. “True, I’m not wonderfully happy, but it could be worse.” The tiger you know…

Spring is the season of new beginnings. See if now isn't the right time to re-discover why you first chose each other. What first drew you to each other, and what you origninally fell in love about....and begin that wonderful process of falling in love all over again!

Facing Pain

"There is no coming to consciousness without pain." -Carl Jung

Jung is right, of course. There is no coming to consciousness, no "waking up to reality" if you will without pain. Whether it arrives physically, emotionally, or spiritually, pain will come knocking. C.S. Lewis once said, "God whispers to us in our pleasure and shouts to us in our pain." This is reality, this is life on planet earth. Lots of wonderful, beautiful, fun, loving experiences, but always with a pinch of pain tossed into the mix here and there (and sometimes even more than just here and there). This is not Heaven.

The point of this life is to learn how to love and grow up, to help others learn to love and grow up, and to prepare for eternity. This doesn't happen without pain. Sure wish it did, but it doesn't.

But as someone who feels pain, as someone who works with people in pain all the time, and as someone who (like millions of others around the world) is trying to embrace all that is Holy Week, simply feeling pain is not enough.

People in pain can be quite dangerous, destructive, crazed...like wounded animals. They have not come to "consciousness," to awareness and mindfulness. Or maybe they have, and concluded that objective reality is not what they're willing or able to embrace.

What do we do with pain when it comes? This is the key question. Do we pretend like we don't feel it? Do we get busy, compulsive, frantic with activity? Do we isolate? Do we go to war against real or perceived enemies (anger is a popular hiding place for those attempting to manage pain)?

Or do we feel, and bring the pain into relationship with trusted others (asking for accountability, guidance, support, and love). Feel, and work to place the pain in a larger context of meaning and purpose (what can be learned about the world, human nature, and all that I have to be grateful for?). Feel, and choose to let the pain educate us about where we need to grow up (immaturity, entitlements, and illusions). Feel, and choose to purify, mortify the parts of us that need to die (pride, sloth, greed...shoot, just choose your own favorite deadly sin and insert here)?

Life is difficult. Pain is inevitable. No use denying. So let's learn what we can, seize the opportunity for transformation, face reality as head-on as possible, stay connected to life-giving people and institutions, and recognize that the pain we feel (however debilitating, terrifying, crushing, or maddening) is only part of the much larger reality of our lives. Let's not hide... for our sakes, for the sakes of our loved ones, and for the sake of this hurting world. Because if we can summon enough courage to live in truth, pain will not have the final word. And resurrection will become much more than a theory.

World Down Syndrome Day

HAPPY WORLD DOWN SYNDROME DAY TODAY - 3/21 is World Down Syndrome Day. The date was chosen because it points to the third chromosome that attaches to the 21st, causing Trisomy 21, or Down syndrome.

Why do we celebrate this day? Because it is a chance to recognize the giftedness and beauty of our Down syndrome children, and the eternally significant lessons they teach with their very beings. In a larger, deeper sense, though, we should also be celebrating this day because it makes a statement about the inherent value of human life...every human life.

Thank you God for our John Michael, the inspiration for so much including Stillpoint Family Resources. And thank you God for all special needs persons. Our world is a kinder, gentler place because of them.

Attaching the card to the gift

Words matter, especially when it comes to loving: there is no getting around this fact. Love is just too powerful and too important to leave mute. In the midst of one memorable marriage therapy session, I had a husband actually say to me, in front of his wife: “I said I loved her on our wedding day, and if that ever changes, I’ll let her know.” Now, before you judge this man to be a complete jerk, let me say that he is actually a good man…verbally challenged, but a good man. He did many things that communicated love to his spouse and his kids, but these acts of charity were often lost in the busyness of everyday life. Working 50 hours a week in order to provide financial stability for her, responsibly putting away money for their retirement years, and remaining faithful to his wedding vows in mind and body were all ways he believed he was communicating love. And this was true. However, relationships are strengthened when words accompany deeds.

Words clarify intentions, and don’t leave too much open to interpretation (or mis-interpretation). When you give people gifts during the Holidays, you attach a card, right? You let them know who gave them the present by signing your name. Why? Probably because you want them to know you were thinking of them, caring about them, confirming that they matter to you. You don’t typically leave a package outside the doors to their rooms or their houses and silently slip away. The gift is nice, but what matters more (and lasts longer) is that the people receiving the gifts feel loved. Don’t leave them guessing. Say the words that affirm, “I love you,” and make sure your gift is received in the spirit it was given.

Consider your family members, starting with your spouse. How does your husband or wife know you’ve loved him or her today? “I fixed dinner, “I came straight home from work instead of going out with my co-workers,” “I washed the car,” “I did the grocery shopping”: attach an “I love you” to these deeds, and clarify what they meant to you, and what your partner means to you!

“My kids know I love them.” Really, how? Because you are planning for their futures, or paying for their piano lessons, or praying for them at night after they’ve gone to bed? These can all be statements of love, true, but your kids can’t read your mind. And even if they could, there is still something deeply formative about hearing you affirm their preciousness. They don’t always see the world the way you do. Their feelings are not your feelings. Don’t assume; “sign the card”.

The Fruit of Love

Love is dynamic: it is always in motion, always impacting, always expanding. It cannot be contained! A sure sign that a family is loving in word and deed is that they don’t just love each other: they reach outside of their home and love those around them. Mother Teresa of Calcutta put it this way, “The fruit of love is service.” This service to God’s family will necessarily take you beyond your comfort zone, beyond where you’d travel if it was just about you and yours. Service, empowered by love, will be inclusive, because God’s love is inclusive and it is He Who is ultimately loving through us.

I recall that a tradition of my family growing up was to adopt a family at Christmas time through our Church. My mother would always organize this event, and I admit that at the time I didn’t grasp the full significance of this annual ritual. Frankly, at 46 years-old I’m still processing the meaning: love, and the fruit it bears, is a great mystery. The first few years, I mostly experienced our adopt-a-family project as a disruption to my weekend plans. After all, this process took a little time, asked me to get outside myself for a few hours, and didn’t seem to provide any tangible benefits…not terribly compelling for a typical teenager. We’d all go shopping for food and toys as a family, and then deliver the goods to our church where someone else would drive the gifts to the adopted family. But one December my mother, God bless her, decided we were going to deliver this taste of Christmas in person…as a family. I remembered feeling uneasy as we drove up to a dimly lit apartment building, in a neighborhood I had never ventured anywhere close to. A cheerful mother answered the door and invited us in. Before the rest of us could think of an excuse, my mother was saying thank you and moving through the threshold. There were at least ten people in this little two-bedroom apartment, a mix of children and adults: three generations of family sharing a new start in a foreign land. I couldn’t believe how crowded it all seemed, and how happy these beautiful souls appeared.
When I arrived back home that night, I sat in my room reflecting on the life that surrounded me…all the goodness and blessing…and it looked a little different. Like tectonic plates moving miles below the surface of the earth, slowly reverberating up until an earthquake is eventually experienced at ground level, the impact of that evening took time to consciously reach me, but I still feel the impact today some twenty-five years later. Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.” That direction needs to eventually be outward.

We need to be of service to those outside our own families. We need to learn to give to those less fortunate then we are, not because of their poverty but because of ours. God understands perfectly our tendencies to become too self-involved, too insulated from the larger family of humankind, too self-congratulatory in our private realities. This society we are a part of has become alarmingly divided, splintered, alienated: we have too often forgotten who we are and who we are meant to be. This is why He calls us to action.

The family that truly loves will follow the lead of Love right out the front door of the home, and into the big wide world. It will love in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, who sacrificed for his neighbor even when his neighbor was supposedly a sworn enemy. It will love in the spirit of the religious family of the Sisters of Charity around the world, who like their little Albanian foundress find people of all religions and races in muddy gutters, and dark alleys, and all kinds of wretched squalor, and joyfully care for them. And it will love in the spirit of my mother, who challenged her family time and again to move beyond the limits of comfort toward greater meaning and purpose.

Happy Valentine's Day....let's try to live the spirit of the day in word and deed all year round!

Reverie and rosemary bread....

“Earth is crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God…” -E.B. Browning

For the Porter family, Friday nights have become synonymous with dining at Nicola’s Kitchen, a friendly little neighborhood restaurant that our kids love. They love being recognized by the waitresses, they love the familiar surroundings, and they love the bread. Nicola’s makes this warm rosemary bread, and serves it as a wonderful appetizer. John Michael, in particular, likes it and for him it is the dinner. On one occasion, a family friend joined us for this Friday night meal and was soon enthralled with the way John- John was eating his bread; gently, lovingly, and with great joy. “Look at how into the bread he is; it’s like a religious experience for him.”

If we had only observed John Michael in this state of reverie while eating at Nicola’s we could easily explain it as him enjoying his favorite food, end of story. But we see John Michael enraptured by simple things all the time, certainly enough to say that this is one of his gifts. He has a remarkable ability to live fully in the moment, a moment most of us miss in our rush to get on with the "important" issues of life. And in these given moments, filled with simple things, he is able to identify and accept the gifts God offers there. This all occurs in the course of everyday activities because God wants us to see, and hear, and understand in a certain way.

He wants us to value what the powers of this world have deemed insignificant and small. These blessed moments carry glimpses into eternity…of peace, love, communion, and everlasting happiness…and remind us of how close Heaven is to us all the time. They appear in many different contexts because God likes variety. Time of day or night is irrelevant because they come from outside time. Location is inconsequential as well because all of His created world is sacred. God is always reaching out to us, calling to us, showing us His reality. We are all sent these moments, kairos moments, moments that are not measured chronologically because they cannot be measured at all. How can one quantify things of the Spirit? These moments, and what they bring, ultimately escape words. One can talk about the felt experience, but descriptions fall short in the end. Mystics and poets would agree.

In a world that lives too often for the moment, with a grabbing-and-hoarding orientation, John Michael’s gift of receptivity in the moment stands out. Heaven has begun on earth for him. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, in The Little Prince, wrote, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” While those of us who are not special needs (in medical terms, anyway) see with our eyes, John Michael sees with his heart. He has an intuitive knowing about what is essential in life, and is not distracted by the things that God has not deemed truly important.

Recently, a friend was sharing with me his deep concerns about whether his son would be accepted at his alma mater Yale University. As I listened, I found myself thinking about all the issues I’m anxious about: ‘Is this person upset with me?’ ‘Did the audience truly like my speech or were they just being polite?’ ‘How will I afford college tuitions for my children?’ ‘Will the Stock market rebound?’ These concerns matter on some level, but are they really worth the amount of time and energy I give them? It can be easy to shrug off what others might consider anxiety provoking, but consider for a moment what the anxieties are in your life…the concerns that jerk you out of the present moment and either throw you back into the past, or catapult you into the future? Jesus promised that God would care for all the needs of His children. How much do we believe this? How differently would we live if we really believed it deep down in the depths of our souls? And I wonder about John Michael, who will not be applying to Yale University, does not worry about whether someone is saying nice things about him, will not need to pay for his children’s college tuitions, and doesn’t even know what the Stock Market is. What, if anything, is he anxious about? He doesn’t have the vocabulary to tell me explicitly, but his behavior tells me that anxiety is not a burden for him.

True, his medical diagnosis places him in a different category than you and me. But if we believe what our faith tells us, we don’t have to be Down syndrome to live as freely as my son does. John John’s secret lies in his commitment to living in the moment, and enjoying the simple things God gives him there. I can almost hear the echo of St. Paul writing to the Church at Philippi from his dark, dank prison cell in Rome, while he waited for his certain execution: “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances…”

John Michael enjoys ecstatic moments over more than bread; a gentle breeze caressing his face, bright lights on a Christmas tree, a grape flavored popsicle, dappled sunlight kissing him through a canopy of trees, a prayer being recited in church, and raindrops dancing around him in the garden. His eyes may widen or close, he may sit silently and motionless, head titled slightly back, or jump up and down in place, giggling and waving his hands in joy. He has many more facial expressions than words, but during these times he’ll occasionally say, “God power,” or “beautiful”, or “church people.” I so wish I could see what he sees, know what he knows. My son seems to be taken into a world of wonder, through a portal I can’t recognize until he’s through it. I feel like I’m a step behind him because I’m moving too fast. He’s with me, but not. Then, he’s back and the moment is gone. There is no short-cut technique that could force open the door; his entry ticket is his way of being. He just is…and these moments come with remarkable regularity for him. I wonder if they come for all of us and we just aren’t paying enough attention? How different would our lives be if we lived with sensitivity, and openness, and respect for the simple things? What if we weren’t so busy; busy being productive but not fruitful; important but not meaningful; pious but not holy; successful but not faithful; knowledgeable but not wise. Would heart attacks and cancer be such epidemics? Would we constantly be on the brink of war, as individuals and as a nation? Would people still be dying of starvation in our own cities? Would the earth be so polluted? There is so much to attend to, but how much of it is eternally significant…and how much do we miss? I think the holy often wears the ordinary as a disguise.

God comes to us in and through the natural world. He is the God that guides with a pillar of cloud by day, and a column of fire by night. He is the God of the burning bush and the rushing wind. He leaves His fingerprints on sunrises and sunsets, points the way with a star, chooses birth in a stable, baptizes with water, heals with mud, and gives Himself to us in bread and wine. Why, then, should it come as any surprise that He would use a Down syndrome boy who experiences a taste of Paradise in rosemary bread to teach a seminary graduate about the deeper issues of faith…and life?

Building a culture of care

Alfred Adler defined empathy as “seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.” To build empathy, one must invest time in the relationship: quality time to explore the mystery of the other. One must also try to be humble and patient, and be more interested in understanding and true reconciliation than in being “right” and in control. In other words, empathy is a rare and beautiful virtue. At its core, empathy is the ability to step out of your shoes and into those of the person you’re interacting with: to experience the world from his or her perspective, and broaden your worldview in the process.

My friend and colleague Joe provided a great example of this when he rolled up to a staff meeting one day in a convertible Jeep Wrangler he’d just purchased. I asked him about the change, wondering to myself (in a rather un-empathic spirit) if this wasn’t a midlife impulse buy. Joe simply explained that he wanted his boys to have more of an experience of driving as they entered their teen years, and a bouncy, loud, roofless jeep would provide this much more than a typical sedan. How is this empathy? Joe’s two sons are both blind. Empathy is the stuff of saints.

When individuals feel cared for and respected, the home becomes a sanctuary, and relationships and souls are safeguarded. I may be nervous about something I’ve done, or unsure of a direction to take, but in a family working toward health and wholeness I don’t have to worry about being shamed, ridiculed, manipulated, or rejected. This doesn’t mean there will be total agreement amongst family members. There won’t be, but that’s not the ultimate goal anyway. We’re talking about a family here, not a cult!

If I know there’s someone who will really work at hearing me, seeing me, and loving me as I share, then I will risk, and heal, and grow….and so will my family!

Who do you need to practice more empathy with? Get started now, and keep trying in little and big ways each day….asking, listening, and then acting in generosity.