The Cup

Elizabeth Sherrill, author of "All the Way to Heaven" puts it much more eloquently than I ever could:

"In Can You Drink the Cup? [Henri] Nouwen writes of 'the Cup of Sorrow.' Famine, epidemics, child prostitution, in his global travels Nouwen had grieved over all of them. He lived daily with the sorrows of the mentally handicapped. And he had his own times of depression and doubt.

"'There was a time,' he wrote, 'when I said, "Next year I will finally have it together," or "When I grow more mature these moments of inner darkness will go."'

"Christian maturity -- this was the very subject I'd hoped to ask him about! I too was always waiting for unwanted traits to fall away. Someday I wouldn't have these cyclic depressions. Someday I'd be more outgoing. Someday I'd get my desk cleaned up.

"'But now I know,' Nouwen continued, 'that my sorrows are mine and will not leave me.'

"I read the words with dismay. Here was a modern-day saint who to the very end of his life could not eliminate the negatives in his personality. 'The adolescent struggle to find someone to love me...unfulfilled needs for affirmation...sorrow that I have not become who I wanted to be. They are very old and very deep sorrows and no amount of optimism will make them less.'

"But there's a surprise about this Cup, Nouwen went on. 'The cup of sorrow, inconceivable as it seems, is also a cup of joy.' He could not explain the mystery; he could only experience it. 'In the midst of the sorrows is consolation, in the midst of the darkness is light, in the midst of the despair is hope'

"In the midst...simultaneously...in the very worst moment. I thoguht of John in the ICU. Thought of the darkest times in my own life, and saw myself in such moments turning to God, gaining compassion, growing.

"And if I refuse the Cup? If I will not make peace with the flawed person I am -- what then?

"Maybe, I think, carrying on in my head the conversation I never had with Henri Nouwen, it's not my flaws that stand between me and heaven. Maybe it's that ideal image of myself. That serene, loving, well-organized creature-that-never-was. The effot to be perfect, Nouwen's insight suggests, may be hell's biggest temptation.

"My friend Lucia Ballantine gave me a verse by Leonard Cohen that I've taped tot he side of my still heaped-up desk.

Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That is how the light gets in." 

Balance

FINALLY some time to post. 

School got off to a rough start with my laptop breaking and me scrambling to find a way to keep up with research without being able to work from home (let's just say one too many super early mornings followed by late night at the office). My yoga practice was shot and consisted of me practicing whenever I could (random times, like between 9-10pm one day, 3:17-4 the next, etc). I was stressed about work, stressed about money, stressed about generally everything. I felt out of control. Which is ironic as my themes for this fall/semester are "balance" and "freedom."

Then I went to church on Sunday and the sermon blew my mind. Stick with me here because I know the sermon may seem unrelated at first.

We have been going through a 4-week series on Temptation, moving through the book of Hebrews, focusing on what grace is, and what it means to have Jesus as our high priest. This week, however, the sermon was about God as our Father. He is a disciplinary father, but the discipline is for our good. Jeff used the analogy of us gripping an electric fence, holding fast and unable to let go due to the current running through us. Discipline is painful, but it is a lesser pain to prevent us from suffering a greater pain. Discipline in this analogy would be us being forcefully wrenched from the electric fence. The wrenching is painful, yes, but it is a lesser pain compared to the pain of being electrocuted to death. Our God is a good God, and He is a father. And like (some of) our earthly fathers (and I am blessed enough to have a great father), He will not want to see His children suffer in great pain for long. So He will discipline when it is for our own good. Moreover, the end result of discipline will always be freedom. 

This is a simple concept, yet profound to me. I think as a Christian, I still live in a way where I feel condemned all the time. I try to keep myself in check, do the right things, and feel super guilty when I screw up. But what I'm starting to learn -- and this lesson became more solidified through the sermon -- is that the more I focus on my shortcomings, the less I focus on my goal, which is Christ. And so because of God's character, instead of focusing on keeping myself in check, I can just run after Him freely with no regard for anything else, and know that because He is a good father, He will correct me if I am doing something wrong.

Back to my unbalanced life of late. I realize that most of my imbalance comes from the stress of feeling like I'm not handling things right, that I keep screwing up and am falling short of my own expectations (I'm not doing enough research, I'm not getting a full yoga practice in daily, etc). But everything that needs to get done is getting done. They are just not getting in the order or the way I expect them to. So perhaps if I stop focusing on what I'm not doing (which is what is causing this feeling of unbalance), and just live and accomplish what I can to the best of my abilities, I'll find myself more balanced than not.

Surrendering to usher in freedom.

If things need to change in my life, I can trust that those things will become apparent soon. Until then, I can just focus on living without worrying about my shortcomings. And that, I believe, is the key to balance and freedom.