Our local NPR station has a series called “This I Believe” which features local people spouting on various things. It can be silly, and it can be quite moving. While I mainly listen to the radio while driving somewhere and so don’t actually follow any shows or even segments of shows, it is among the bits I feel particularly pleased to capture on my Mr Toad’s wild rides around town…
The other day a rabbi I know and rather admire held forth on how as he ages he feels a tug to move from a focus on local issues, smaller things, acts of mercy and compassion, and toward larger and more public stances about the ills of our time and place. He said this in the context of being someone pretty engaged in the issues of our day. I know him in fact just because we find ourselves at the same meetings and demonstrations focusing on matters like racial and gender justice, immigration and marriage equality.
What I find worth commenting on, is how at the very same time and in the same place with him, that I find myself pulled in a different direction.
I’m finding more and more that handing a can of beans to a hungry person is probably more important than all the time I throw myself into some issue, say, like calling for the repeal of Arizona’s noxious SB 1070.
I say that, not intending to pull back from larger issues. Even as, I strongly suspect, my rabbi friend has no intention of pulling back from his more local projects.
But, I suspect it is wise to pause every once in a while and to reflect on what we are doing, or not doing…
I turn sixty-two in one month. And while I’m going full bore and grateful beyond speaking to the opportunity to have a place where I can do some good work as part of my work, I’m aware, deeply aware, of how temporary it all is. I look at the backs of my hands at the spotting, or at the hair gathering around the drain when I shower, and how the color is almost all gray, and I know…
And I’ve seen shifts in how I engage.
As a parish minister I find I can’t hold my attention on things that seem petty or unproductive. Not the best thing in a parish minister for whom relationship is paramount.
But, but, knowing how quickly time passes, I find myself thinking about my work. Our work. The work of life.
And I find it hard not to make some value judgments.
I want to be careful. Establishing hierarchies of suffering can be one of the more obnoxious things people can indulge. No doubt.
And I know how I bristle when people speak of soup kitchens and food pantries as “band aids.”
Usually these are attached to social engineering schemes that have almost nothing to do with the realities on the ground, fantasy castles in air so far removed from what is that it would be laughable if it weren’t also so potentially damaging to people doing what might in the last analysis turn out to be the most important thing.
Someone reaching out to one person.
And doing something to help.
I increasingly find that the stronger pull.
But, I write this thinking of how admirable that rabbi is. And, I have no judgment on the movement of his heart. I just at the same time must be aware of the movement of my own.
And this is all said within the context of some action.
The bottom line, I suspect, is that there are many things that need doing. We need to care about the person right here in our neighborhood. And we need to care about those who are caught up in systems of oppression in our country. And we need to care about those rhythms of life that lead to many different evils around the world.
And.
And I believe, at the very same time we need disciplines of the heart that cause us to pause and to notice, and from that to reflect, and from that to find the direction of our actions.
If we don’t act somehow I think we aren’t watching our own hearts, we are ignorant of our connections.
And, as we do, we find we can’t do it all.
I think the call of the contemplative heart, is to do something.
That’s all.
Sit down, shut up, pay attention.
Then get up, and do something.
Know your heart. And just do something…
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