Funny day today.
After church today, the boy and I picked up pizza and drove over to my buddy Greg’s garage. Bert n Ernie chose to sit alone in the convertible eating his slice while Greg and I sat on lawn chairs a few feet away.
Greg and I talked about all the easy things–my fiancee and his wife, daughters’ jobs and apartments, and motorcycles–before getting to the hard stuff..
Eventually, Greg talked about next steps with his brother George. George is staying with friends, but is in very bad shape. He has lost over 100 pounds, lost mobility in both legs, and seems to be addled in his brain. It’s suspected that drug addiction may be behind this rapid, unexpected decline. In seven days, Greg will go home to Indiana to get his brother into a medical facility where he will be supported. Even as he does this, though, he has little confidence that George will ever live independently again. It’s just heartbreaking.
And, then I talked about tomorrow–a hospital visit for my son. There we will get another MRI look at the lesion in my son’s brain, he’ll have surgery on his eyes, and he’ll have his teeth cleaned and any cavities filled. My son doesn’t know all that’s in store for him nor how much discomfort he might have upon waking. He only knows that we’ll go to the hospital, he’ll take a nap, and that we’ll have cheeseburgers after he wakes up. And, he knows it so well that he recites it when you ask about tomorrow’s schedule.
During Greg’s sharing and my own, my son was miles away. Yes, you could see him turning lights off and on, locking and unlocking doors, playing with the mirror, parking brake and steering wheel. But if you had seen him posing into the mirror–trying to understand what he looks like as he pretend drives the car–you’d know he was actually racing along an oceanside cliff, shooting missiles out of the back of the car at bad guys in a plot to save a heroine. (Ok, maybe you wouldn’t know all of that by his gaze. You would have needed to be listening to his monologue through the glass. Whatever.)
These things really don’t belong together, right? Does the hallmark movie place reflections on addiction and ill health next to the kid excited about a new car? I don’t think so. But, that’s life. Right? The things that give us joy or shake us in our boots with fear or bring us to a heap on the floor with grief, they are often happening at the same damn time. Tending to one while ignoring the others is something of a lie. And holding all them altogether, that can feel impossible and a little crazy-making. Right?
A fellow spiritual director once gave me a term for this: Holy Mix. She didn’t take credit for it. Someone in her congregation used it once and it just caught fire. People seemed relieved by being able to simultaneously talk about what was lifting parts of them up and what was knocking other parts of them down. That relief led to deeper, more authentic relationships within the congregation. While my friend didn’t talk about this, my bet is that it didn’t end there. My bet is that for people who really internalized it, it led to more acceptance of the traits and tendencies in themselves that on first blush appear to be incongruous or incompatible.
There’s more here. Maybe 1 road. Maybe 3.
One road would be a prayer or blessing which acknowledges the mix that life is and somehow expresses gratitude for all of it.
Another road is a meditation. Some invitation which brings one into deeper awareness of oneself and one’s inner landscape. Something that acknowledges and holds the apparent incongruities so they can be befriended without judgment or shame.
There’s even contemplation questions for readers–questions about what would be the absolute high and absolute low they would consider holding together from the last day or week. Questions about what happens in them when they are asked to view these things as holy, as blessed, as being special in some way. And if that something is negative, questions about whether their higher power or Source could hold them–all of them and all of their traits–and see them as Holy. (I’d hope that they could, or that the question would nudge them further along that road).
If that’s work for you, please go for it! If that’s work for me, that’s work for another day.
For now and for tonight, I’m going to enjoy my son–his songs, his smelly farts and loud burps, his accusations that I tried to steal his car, and his protests over baths and brushing teeth. Tomorrow might be really, really hard and might have tough outcomes. But, that’s tomorrow. Today, I choose today.
And when my son’s in bed, I’m going to sit down in my meditation chair. I’m going to try going back to that conversation in the garage with Greg on my left and my son on my right. I’m going to try holding Greg, his grief about his brother, my son, and my son’s joy of a new toy together in meditation. I’ll do it for as long as it is fruitful. It will certainly be strange, but it’ll be a Holy Mix too.