Why I Live Where I Do

Christmas, which thanks to friends was a Norman Rockwell scene this year, and a host of less important, although urgent things have come and gone since the last post. And in the hustle and bustle of this time of year, many thoughts crossed my mind to write about. However they escaped as I moved on to the next thing. But now on the verge of a new year and a new decade, I slow down again and am reminded of the need to make a conscious choice about what to keep or try to bring about in my life and what to turn loose of in the coming year.

One of the things to keep for sure is my spot in this place....the physical surroundings of my life. Place is important to me. It affects the way I think, how I feel and what I focus on. For me, place  contributes to or diminishs the bajiggityness of life. Although I'm not sure when I first realized this, I know it was long ago, and it was long after the realization that I actually moved to a place (home, town, location) more in keeping with what feeds my soul.  When places attract people who appreciate them, community can grow.

These thoughts flowed from a brief editorial in today's New York Times. Here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/opinion/28mon4.html

Time to Quit - Again

I'm supposed to be in Chicago. I'm in Michigan. I'm supposed to be sitting in a professional development workshop at the university where I have been on the adjunct faculty for nearly a decade. I love these workshops. I get to interact with my peers, learn new teaching tips, meet new people and generally breathe in the academic air. So why am I not there?

I forgot.

The date was long marked in my calendar. I rsvp'd. I'd thought about how I would get over and back (train? drive?) And when I read an email early this morning from a colleague commenting about the day, I realized that my life was becoming bajiggity again, just when I thought I was beyond it.

Back in the days of my corporate employment, I would wake up in the middle of the night worried about projects that were due. A committed employee, you say? Yes, but the problem was, I wasn't worried about real projects. The project that woke me up were created by my anxious, bajiggity mind playing the trick of adding one more thing to my to do list. Then I would panic even more about the real ones I had on my plate. While some people seem to thrive on it, stress was definitely NOT my friend.

Since walking away from the corporate world for the last time in the early 1990's, I've chosen a life that was determinedly NOT bajiggity by my definition. To pay the bills I created a "mosaic" of jobs - tiny little gigs pieced together to provide just enough and sometimes not quite that. But I said I would bag groceries before I went back into the pressure cookers I'd left behind. Admittedly for some people the uncertainty of where the next bit of income would come from would be far worse than being in a job that drove you to distraction. Not me. We choose our poisons and choose where we draw our lines in the sand.

So I see in today's forgotten workshop a hint of the kind of behavior that was my everyday life all those years ago. And I know what to do. It's time to quit - again. Its time to refocus and, if necessary, recreate what holds meaning in my life and leave behind those things that don't anymore. While it's sad to think about leaving behind what made me "me" for this part of the journey, I know I can't get further without dropping some things and freeing my hands to discover and pick up what's next.

It occurs to me that this sounds like the opposite of the idea of "bloom where you are planted" but I can reconcile the two. It is about adapting to the world around you and the place where you are in your life rather than trying (in vain) to be someone that you aren't. And since you don't stop becoming who you are til you die, it's a process of discovery. Sometimes going deeper, sometimes wider. I think I'm heading for some deeper waters at the moment.

Two Prayers

All day I think about it, then at night I say it: Where did I come from and what am I supposed to be doing?
 I have no idea – my soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that and I intend to end up there.
 Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

Rumi

I just ran across the above verse from Rumi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalal_ad-Din_Muhammad_Rumi and like the tone from a crisply struck bell, it rang clear and true, resonating in my mind, ultimately trailing off into silence.

On the other side of the silence was the memory of a prayer by Thomas Merton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton that I had discovered during the years leading up to my father’s death. One of my father’s fondest wishes was that I would “come back” to “the” church. Perhaps my attraction to prayers (of all kinds and from all traditions) is a subconscious effort to respond to that wish. I believe God’s greatest test of humanity is whether we can see and sincerely accept the common threads among our differences and have that be enough.

Thomas Merton’s Prayer

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please You. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, You will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.