The Miracle of Becoming

There’s a saying – another suggestive hint, which is all that words can be:

“For knowledge, add. For wisdom, subtract.”

The growing up process was all about gaining knowledge – learning how to get along in this world, how to negotiate the physical and social terrain so that we’d get our needs met and be safe. The arc of our becoming was measured by the progress of our knowledge, and we thus arrived at adulthood with a lot of knowledge, which is to say, a lot of strategies.

Our shining light, however, gets covered over by all those strategies -- until the strategies fail, and fail so utterly that our heart is torn open. When that happens, the arc of becoming then requires shucking off some of those strategies, forgetting some of that hard-earned knowledge, opening up to what’s present without quite such a need to subject everything to one or another of our preset strategies. If we can do that, if we can subtract the carefully learned categories of knowledge upon which our previous life had depended, we arrive finally at wisdom.

Let me just tell you some stories – three stories (one today and two more in subsequent posts). These are excerpts and abstracts of stories you can read at greater length and detail in Elizabeth Lesser’s book, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow.

1. Judi's Story

Richard and Judi’s second child, Marion, was born brain damaged and with life-threatening epilepsy. Shortly afterward, Judi awoke to a numbness in her leg and overall exhaustion. It would turn out to be MS. Judi

“went through periods when she raged against the world, when it seemed as if terror, like an evil guest, had moved in and taken over her home and family.”

After a number of years, Judi looked back and spoke of

“the miracle of who each one of us became by not shrinking back from the challenges.”

She wrote:

“We still process stray pieces of shrapnel that work their way to the surface from time to time....Our trials have taught us lessons that have made the rest of our lives all the more precious. The first lesson is as old as the hills: ‘This, too, shall pass.’ Everything passes and changes and turns into something you would never have imagined, if you will only let it. I have learned how suffering only increases when I demand of life that ‘this should not be happening to me.’

That is the second lesson – not to dwell on whether or not something should be happening to me. In the process of grappling with the fact that I had a debilitating illness for the rest of my life – and that my daughter would struggle with her situation for her whole life too – I realized that my only hope was to give up the life that had been, in order to make room for the life that is. I call it my ‘choiceless choice.’ Making that choice, over and over again – to accept what is, and to release what was – has become the major focusing agent for my spiritual work.

My spiritual practice deepened because my life and my child’s life depended on it. When I say ‘spiritual’ I don’t mean a practice that is in any way separate from the rest of my life. I mean an emotional, intellectual, and physical process that is ruthlessly real and adventurous and full of death-defying risks. I mean a process that is patient, surrendered, and openly embracing of what is before me every day when I wake up in the morning to my changing body, and when I help my daughter deal with hers....

And so I went deeper... until my illness naturally became my teacher. As I learned to hold my disease in the light of truth and heightened awareness, I experienced a new outpouring of self-love and the love of God....

I surrendered my MS and Marion’s condition and all of my losses and fear and blame and guilt to the flames of what is. And in the ashes of what had been, I began to dig up my soul....I began to notice how so much of what we do each day is really a way of avoiding the deep and quiet voice of the soul....Today I value every nuance of despair and every trill of joy, as I was never able to before.

I still lose my way and take day trips down the side streets of anxiety over money, personal conflicts, my children, or my health, but mostly I am content with the unfolding skein of my life threads.

I have already met some of the worst fears I could conjure up and am a kinder, humbler, more patient, and I hope more loving woman as a result....In fact, it is the acceptance of death that has finally allowed me to choose life.”

That’s Judi’s story. It shows the miracle of who she became by not shrinking back, by not retreating protectively, by breaking open.

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This is part 2 of 4 of "Broken Open."
Click for other parts:
Part 1: Seeing the Blessing in a Crisis
Part 3: The Wisdom of No Control
Part 4: Pain's Surprising Lesson

Seeing the Blessing in a Crisis

About half-way through President Obama’s speech in Selma on Sat Mar 7 (see below), he quoted James Baldwin.

“We are capable of bearing a great burden once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.”

Our theme for March is Brokenness. And while I’m going to talk today about personal and individual crises, and how they bring us to arrive where reality is, it bears remembering on this 50th anniversary of the Selma marches that brokenness is also relevant on the national scale, and that our national crisis 50 years ago cracked us open so that more light could get in. As a nation, we still have more breaking open to do.

As individuals, we do too. It takes a crisis to break through the shell of habits and assumptions that we live within. Not that you’d ever want a personal crisis – in fact it can’t be a genuine personal crisis unless you really, really don’t want it. And there’s no guarantee that personal crisis will break you open. People respond differently when hit by a stroke, a terrible accident, a divorce, loss of a job, death of a spouse or of a child.

In the face of such full-scale and personal catastrophe, some people “lose their spirit, and never fully recover.”

Others become “more bitter, more reactive, more cynical....They protect themselves fiercely from any kind of change, until they are living a half life, safe yet stunted.” Still others, however, work through the grief, the pain, the loss, and come at last to discover “a clearer sense of purpose and a new passion in life.” They “turn their misfortune into insight,” and “their grief into joy.”

All of us have been cracked in ways that, at the time, we didn’t want. And none of us has broken as much as we’re going to. Illness, pain, separation, loss and death come in time for us all. We’ve all been broken, at least a little, and we were for a time lost. Some of us might be feeling lost today because of a recent loss. Or possibly it wasn’t recent, and lostness has become an enduring reality of your life. Some people stay lost, and my heart goes out to them.

Others build a hard cast around their brokenness, a cast to protect the fracture so it can heal, but then they never take the cast off. They are bitter, reactive, and cynical because that protects them from more hurt. They are safe but brittle, guarded but closed. They are no longer lost, but they avoid being lost in the world by keeping their world small. My heart goes out to them, too.

Then there are the ones who come through and understand in a new way that...

That what? What do they understand?

If words could tell you what they came to understand, then they wouldn’t have had to break -- and break open -- to understand it. Words can only be suggestive hints. What these people understand is that that love is the only law. That every moment aches with beauty. That no one is or could be alien to them. They feel as if wakened from a dream – a dream of being separate somehow. They saw the blessing in their crisis. My heart goes out to them, too – but because it is pulled out by the attractive force of their joy in being.

They see that every second of just being alive is holding “the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake.” They move toward a continuous gratitude for all things, every gesture whispers “thank you,” and every individual thing becomes, itself, nothing but gratitude. Like I said: Words can only be suggestive hints.

Thomas Merton wrote:

“There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun....They are not ‘they’ but my own self. There are no strangers! If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed....I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”

That peculiar gift is in all of you. It’s there, I know it, I catch glimpses of it sometimes when I’m with you. It’s there. You don’t have to do anything to produce it. You only have to uncover it. But we don’t know how to uncover it, can’t know how, until we break.

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This is Part 1 of 4 of "Broken Open"
Click for other parts:
Part 2: The Miracle of Becoming
Part 3: The Wisdom of No Control
Part 4: Pain's Surprising Lesson

This Week's Prayer

Dear Faith, in our imaginations personified,

Your body is the commitment we make with the fullness of our beings to whatever rescues us from the ego’s definition of success. That commitment is Faith.

Your heart shows us how to open our hearts to the unknown, responding to uncertainty with embrace rather than fear. Heart opening is Faith.

You, Faith, are all the ways we make meaning of life and experience, and we invite your presence in our lives. Be with us, and make of us instruments of understanding and compassion.

There is much that weighs on our hearts today.

This week Islamic State militants "bulldozed"northern Iraq's Nimrud archaeological site. Thousands have fled the Iraqi city of Tikrit as various regional forces seek to push the militants out. Make of us instruments of understanding and compassion.

Since last summer, our immigration and customs enforcement began rapidly expanding detention of asylum-seeking women with children. These are mothers who have been determined to be fleeing credible fears of persecution. Despite a recent court order, thousands continue to be detained without clean drinking water or suitable food or adequate medical care for the sick kids or their mothers. Make of us instruments of understanding and compassion

The Alabama Supreme Court, defying a federal court, ordered probate judges in the state to stop issuing licenses for same-sex marriages. Make of us instruments of understanding and compassion.

As we approached the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches, the Justice Department’s investigation of Ferguson, Missouri’s police department found significant and appalling racial bias in both the police force and the court system. Make of us instruments of understanding and compassion.

Be with us, Faith, that we may dedicate ourselves to the practices that liberate us from thrall to success, and that open our hearts to embrace the challenge to love our way through every moment.

Give It Away! Spiritual Practice of Generosity, 4

Giving is a crucial part of your spiritual life, a necessary component of your spiritual growth, and nurturing spirituality and fostering compassion are the mission of Community Unitarian Church. It is our business – it is our mission -- collectively to encourage compassion in each other. It's really good for us to do this.

"Research from the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School shows that spending money on someone else — as little as $5 a day — can significantly boost your happiness. Students who practiced random acts of kindness were significantly happier than those who were not given this task. In another study, college students were given money and directed to either spend it on themselves or spend it pro-socially (on activities meant to benefit other people). Participants who spent it pro-socially were happier at the end of the day than those who spent it on themselves." (Mark Ewert, The Generosity Path, 2)

Part of your giving goes to charities. Charitable giving is an important spiritual practice. For this part, I particularly want to encourage looking at website called givewell.org. They’ve put thousands of hours into researching which charities are most effective, dollar for dollar, and are underfunded. Right now, three of their top-rated charities include the Against Malaria Foundation, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, and GiveDirectly.

• For five dollars per mosquito net, we can go a long way to preventing malaria.
• Schistosomiasis comes from water-born parasites, and it is inexpensive to treat – so even a small donation makes a huge difference in a number of lives.
• GiveDirectly distributes cash to very poor individuals in Kenya and Uganda. Directly transferring money to poor individuals allows them to purchase that which they believe will help them most. Strong evidence indicates that cash transfers lead recipients to spend more on their basic needs, may allow recipients to make investments with high returns, and results in no large increases in spending on items like alcohol or tobacco.

Those are some good charities to receive a portion of the percentage that you set aside for giving away. Here are some other websites worth a look:

Giving What We Can http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
80,000 Hours http://80000hours.org/
The Life You Can Save http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/
Effective Animal Activism http://www.effectiveanimalactivism.org/

Peter Singer mentions these websites in his TED talk where he makes the point that helping others is a requirement of an ethical life. Singer addresses the questions: How much of a difference can I make? Am I expected to abandon my career? Isn't charity bureaucratic and ineffective anyway? Isn't it a burden to give up so much?

Give to Your Congregation

Another part of your giving goes to support your congregation and its programs. In springtime many of our congregations are conducting their annual stewardship drive. It's a time for thinking about the meaning and significance your congregation has for you. As you consider what your pledge will be, here, too, please think about percent first, then calculate what dollar amount that comes to. This will probably mean your pledge amount will not be a nice round number. But you’ll know it’s a nice round percent.

For your congregation's thriving, and for your thriving as a part of it, I suggest thinking in the range of three to five percent of adjusted gross income.

Pledging is a part of the meaning of membership, a part of what makes membership meaningful, and part of each member’s spiritual practice and development. Through the practice of generosity, we are connected, made whole, better able to be the people we want to be.

* * *
This is part 4 of 4 of "The Spiritual Practice of Generosity"
Click for other parts:
Part 1: Money Makes Mean?
Part 2: Mo Money Blues
Part 3: One Glove and Ten Percent

One Glove and Ten Percent: Spiritual Practice of Generosity, 3

"You can't think and hit at the same time.
- Yogi Berra

For hitting, as for many action, we must rely on habits, so the formation of the habits we'll need is crucial. For that matter, even when there is time for reflection, the way we think is governed by the feelings and values formed as habit.

Consider the story I’ve heard of a woman getting off a subway train. As she readies for climbing the steps into the cold outside air, she reaches into the pockets of her coat for her gloves. She finds only one glove. The other must have fallen out of her pocket. She turns around and looks back into the subway car, and she can see the seat where she had been sitting, and, sure enough, there’s her other glove on the seat. But now the doors are closing. She won’t have time to get back in and retrieve her glove. The glove she has, she throws into the subway onto the seat next to its mate – just as the doors close.

I love that story. One glove isn’t going to do her much good, but somebody else can have the complete pair. That’s the reflex of a person who has cultivated generosity as a deep habit of being, a habit of the heart. It’s the reasonable thing to do, but if you rely on reason, the train will be long gone before you’ve worked it out. Random acts of kindness and senseless beauty flourish as the fruits of disciplined habit-formation that is not at all random or senseless.

"You know she must have lived a long life of generosity, a life of wild and creative generosity of spirit, to be able to think so quickly, to act so urgently and healthily, to know precisely in that moment what would bless the world right then and there. It happened in an instant, but that was planned giving through and through. Something in her past or everything in her past, prepared her for her gesture -- habits of living and giving practiced and refined her whole life long." (Terry Sweetser)

Think in Percents

As a piece of the happy discipline of generous giving, the piece that has to do with giving away our money, it will help to think in terms of percents. This gift comes from you. It is you, so place it in the context of your overall income. Are you giving away twenty percent? Ten percent? Five percent? Decide the percent first – what percent are you going to give away? Maybe this year it can be a higher percent than last year. Then do the math and figure out what dollar amount that comes to. Don’t start by thinking about a dollar amount. Start by thinking about a percent.

I know, questions arise. Percent of gross income or of net income, or what? I recommend using AGI – adjusted gross income – the line at the bottom of the first page of a 1040 form – where certain vital expenses are subtracted, but itemized or standard deductions are not. Adjusted Gross Income is the benchmark used by researchers into giving rates.

Naturally, you'll want to spend a bit more on ice cream than is shown here.

And what percent do you choose to give? The traditional percentage is 10 – that's the standard ten percent "tithe." The Torah, the central part of the Hebrew Bible, also known as the first five books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), set forth law requiring that a tenth of all produce, flocks, and cattle be given to support the Levites, the priestly class in ancient Israel. The Torah also emphasized assistance to foreigners, orphans and widows, those in need, in addition to the tithe of support for the priestly class. The Christian Testament mentions no specific rules about tithing. Jesus is simply clear that we are obligated to be cheerfully generous to those in need.

The tithing rules in the Torah were based on the religious and social system of ancient Israel and on an agricultural economy. The Torah is not authoritative for us. Even it were, it does not address modern-day questions about what percentage we should give, how much to the church and how much to other charities, or whether to base it on gross income, net income, or wealth. Still, I do find there’s something psychologically significant about 10 percent – just move the decimal over one place, and that’s what you give away. If you’re just starting out with generosity practice, giving away 10 percent is a good start. Those who have been at it longer, or are better established in life can think about higher percentages.

* * *
This is part 3 of 4 of "The Spiritual Practice of Generosity"
Click for other parts:
Part 1: Money Makes Mean?
Part 2: Mo Money Blues
Part 4: Give It Away!

Mo Money Blues: Spiritual Practice of Generosity, 2

Timothy Judge (Notre Dame), Beth Livingston (Cornell), and Charlice Hurst (U of W. Ontario) published a study, "Do Nice Guys -- and Gals -- Really Finish Last?" (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012 Feb).

“Subjects were asked to assess whether they had a forgiving nature or found fault with others, whether they were trusting, cold, considerate, or cooperative. Then they were given and agreeableness score. Men with the lowest agreeableness earned $42,113 in a given year; those with the highest agreeableness earned $31,259." (Lisa Miller, "The Money-Empathy Gap," New York Magazine, 2012 Jul)

In another study ("The Psychological Consequences of Money," Science, 2006 Nov), researcher Kathleen Vohs merely planted the idea of money in subjects' minds. As the subjects filled out questionnaires, some of them were in a room with Monopoly money present (left over from a prior monopoly game), and some were not.

"Vohs got her result only after the ­subject believed the session was over. Heading for the door, he would bump into a person whose arms were piled ­precariously high with books and office supplies. That person (who worked for Vohs) would drop 27 tiny yellow pencils, like those you get at a mini-golf course. Every subject in the study bent down to pick up the mess. But the money-primed subjects picked up 15 percent fewer pencils than the control group." (Miller)

That’s just from the thought of money planted by having Monopoly money nearby.

Vohs stressed that money-priming did not make her subjects malicious — just uninterested....'I don’t think they mean any harm, but picking up pencils just isn’t their problem.' Over and over, Vohs has found that money can make people anti-social. She primes subjects by seating them near a screen-saver showing currency floating like fish in a tank or asking them to descramble sentences, some of which include words like bill, check, or cash. Then she tests their sensitivity to other people. In her Science article, Vohs showed that money-primed subjects gave less time to a colleague in need of assistance and less money to a hypothetical charity. When asked to pull up a chair so a stranger might join a meeting, money-primed subjects placed the chair at a greater distance from themselves than those in a control group. When asked how they’d prefer to spend their leisure time, money-primed people chose a personal cooking lesson over a ­catered group dinner. Given a choice ­between working collaboratively or alone, they opted to go solo.” (Miller)

There does seem to be a plus side. Thinking about money makes people more oriented to efficiency and productivity – like Bob, the advantaged monopoly player. Money-focus encourages thoughts of self-sufficiency: less willing to help, but also less interested in being helped.

Here's Kathleen Vohs' lecture, "Money Makes People Less Socially Focused":

Research so far hazards no guess as to where the tipping point is after which personality transformation kicks in – and that point is surely highly variable from individual to individual. There is a basic human tendency to protect what we have, and the more we have, the stronger the tendency to put our energy into the having. It requires intentionality to avoid being sucked into that pattern.

Give It Away

A practice of generosity counter-acts that self orientation. Warm-heartedness also reduces blood pressure, anxiety and stress and improves health. You’ve got what you’ve got. Now give it away. Make it into something that connects you to others, that connects you to the world’s suffering. Otherwise, it will be a force of disconnection, tending to makes us less social, less caring. Give it away as a regular practice – weekly if possible.

I never met – and I’d be willing to bet you haven't either – a generous person who was bitter or a bitter person who was generous. That bears remembering. Generosity and bitterness are incompatible.

It’s not entirely clear whether generosity causes reduction in bitterness, or reduction in bitterness causes generosity – just as it isn’t always clear whether wealth causes disagreeableness or disagreeableness facilitates wealth acquisition. Either way, they go together.

Generosity – also known as hospitality, kindnesss, largesse, benevolence, bounteousness, magnanimity, openhandedness, warmheartedness, compassion – life as overflow – enriches our lives. When we live from an awareness of abundance rather than in the grip of the delusion of scarcity, generosity becomes possible.

And generosity grows through practice. To develop in an area requires disciplined commitment. The skilled athletes are not the ones who exercise when they happen to be in the mood for it. The skilled poets or musicians do not just write poetry or rehearse when they feel like it. They show up for daily practice, whether they feel like it or not. Generosity develops in us through a disciplined commitment to develop it as a way of being. “You can’t think and hit at the same time,” said Yogi Berra – meaning that we have to show up for the discipline of training our habit muscles, so that the habit muscles can be our guide when, as in most of what we do in the days of our lives, there isn’t the time or the inclination to think them through very much.

* * *
This is part 2 of 4 of "The Spiritual Practice of Generosity"
Click for other parts:
Part 1: Money Makes Mean?
Part 3: One Glove and Ten Percent,
Part 4: Give It Away!

Money Makes Mean?: Spiritual Practice of Generosity, 1

Money.

If you are unusually self-aware, you might have noticed a very slight feeling of tightening or closing at just the mention of the word. Or maybe, if you're that self-aware, you might have transcended the reactivity that's so common. Research suggests that simply having the idea of money planted in mind has a tendency sometimes to reduce inclinations toward generosity. So I’m taking a risk by talking about money. I’m hoping that knowing about human psychology around money will allow us to decide to override the usual reactivity.

The average income in the world is less than $10,000 a year. Perhaps your household is a little above the world average. Our very wealth itself can make us less generous, if we let it – if we don’t intentionally counter-act the effects of wealth through the practice of generosity.

In one study, experimenters enlisted undergraduates to play monopoly, two players at a time, but with different rules. One randomly selected player started the game with $2,000 of monopoly money, got $200 for passing Go each time, and threw two dice for every move – which, you may recall, is the normal way monopoly is played. Let’s call this player Bob. The other player, let’s call him Bill, started with $1,000, got $100 for passing Go each time, and threw one die for every move.

“The students play for 15 minutes under the watchful eye of two video cameras, while down the hall researchers huddle around a computer screen, later recording the subjects’ every facial twitch and hand gesture.”

What happens?

Initially Bob

"reacted to the inequality between him and his opponent with a series of smirks, an acknowledgment, perhaps of the inherent awkwardness of the situation. 'Hey,' his expression seemed to say, 'This is weird and unfair, but whatever.' Soon, though, as he whizzes around the board, purchasing properties and collecting rent, whatever discomfort he feels seems to dissipate....He balloons in size, spreading his limbs toward the far ends of the table. He smacks his playing piece as makes the circuit – smack, smack, smack – ending his turns with a board-shuddering bang!...As the game nears its finish, [Bob] moves his [piece] faster....He’s all efficiency. He refuses to meet [Bill’s] gaze. His expression is stone cold as he takes the loser’s cash."

Another study

“showed through quizzes, online games, questionnaires, in-lab manipulations, and field studies that living high on the socioeconomic ladder can, colloquially speaking, dehumanize people. It can make them less ethical, more selfish, more insular, and less compassionate than other people.”

In one experiment, wealthier people were more likely to take candy from a bowl of sweets designated for children. If there is such a thing as entitlement culture, it is more often (not always, of course, but more often) the wealthy who feel most entitled. As psychologist Paul Piff concludes,

“While having money doesn’t necessarily make anybody anything, the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people. It makes them more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, [jerks]....People higher up on the socioeconomic ladder are about three times more likely to cheat than people on the lower rungs.”

The extent to which people with money behave as if the world revolves around them was further illustrated in another study. Paul Piff and this research team

“spent three months hanging out at...a gritty, busy corner with a four-way stop....[They] would stake out the intersection at rush hour, crouching behind a bank of shrubs… and catalog the cars that came by, giving each vehicle a grade from one to five. (Five would be a new-model Mercedes, say, and one would be an old battered Honda....) Then the researchers would observe drivers’ behavior. A third of people who drove grade-five cars, Piff found, rolled into the intersection without first coming to a compete stop....‘Upper-class drivers were the most likely to cut off other vehicles even when controlling for time of day, driver’s perceived sex, and amount of traffic.’"

A similar experiment tested

"drivers’ regard for pedestrians....A researcher would enter a zebra crossing as a car approached it. The results were more staggering....Fully half the grade-five cars cruised right into the crosswalk. ‘It’s like they didn’t even see them,' [said Piff]."

Source: Lisa Miller, "The Money-Empathy Gap," New York Magazine, 2012 Jul.

Paul Piff's TED Talk, "Does Money Make You Mean?"

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This is part 1 of 4 of "The Spiritual Practice of Generosity"
Click for other parts:
Part 2: Mo Money Blues,
Part 3: One Glove and Ten Percent,
Part 4: Give It Away!

See also:
Paul Krugman, "Privilege, Pathology and Power," New York Times, 2016 Jan 1.
Maia Szalavitz, "Wealthy Selfies: How Being Rich Increases Narcissism," Time, 2013 Aug 20.