Want What You Have: What To Do With Our Uninvited Guests

Part of a Month-Long Series on
"What Does it Mean to be a Person of Hospitality?"

I know you all are too polite and kind to say it out loud, so let me be the one to say it for all of us today: How can Rumi be such a jerk?!

I mean seriously! Doesn't he see that we're all doing the best we can?

Or Galway Kinnell?! Oh, it's a nice poem--a wonderful ideal--but it's not really real. No, in real life, in our actual struggles with uninvited guests, it's just not the way it all plays out. In our Parkinson's Poems--and we all have one, at least one, right?--in our Parkinson's poems, these redeeming moments are few and far between. The more realistic goal when dealing with our uninvited guests-as any mature person knows-is graceful endurance.

So come on Rumi! Come on Galway Kinnell! You've got to be just a bit more kind. You've got to give us just a little bit of a break.

But they don't. And that's the thing, right? They just don't.

Welcome in it all! Be glad and grateful for it all! That's what they insensitively expect. Every mess. Every disease. Every unexpected diagnosis. Every miscarriage. Every child or friend that falls into addiction. Every lay off. Every fall in the value of your stock portfolio. Every annoying or ungrateful or combative co-worker. Welcome it all. No matter how much pain you're in. No matter how tired you are. No matter how severely you've been wronged. No matter how much has been taken away. Figure out a way to buck it up, and see the silver lining.

And so in light of this, how can our question this morning be anything other than, "Why?" Why can't they be just a bit more compromising? A bit more realistic? A bit more kind? What are they seeing and looking at and worried about, that we just aren't?

Because it does seem that we're all looking at the same thing, doesn't it?

I said a moment ago, that we've all got our Parkinson's Poem. On some level we all know this. We know that behind the smiles that each of us wear, there lies some debilitated "loved one" in our lives. Might be a Parkinson's stricken father just like Galway Kinnell's. But if not, it's surely someone or something else. An alcoholic brother. An angry or unforgiving daughter. Maybe it's a diagnosis of our own. Could be a broken marriage, or a broken sense of self because of a broken marriage. For some, it's a pregnancy we're not sure what to do with. For others it's an inability to get pregnant. Maybe your debilitated loved-one is a lost career. Or a lost dream. Or maybe the wrong career. Or wrong dream. Or maybe a career you love but is now suddenly asking way too much of you, taking more from you now than it gives-way more than it gives.

Whatever it is, we've all got one--at least one. Some uninvited guest, some tricky, threatening, largely unannounced "being" that has walked right into the center of our lives, and plunked itself down in a way or at a time that was certainly not of our own choosing.

And just like Galway Kinnell, we're also walking that uninvited guest of ours to and from the bathroom. It's a great metaphor really-a bit crude but who of us here can't connect with it? Who of us here can't connect with having to clean up or suffer through a mess we didn't create or cause, but is now so clearly ours?

But what is harder to connect with is that dancing part. It's just not how the situation usually feels.

I think here of how one of our church members reacted to Galway Kinnell's poem. I shared it with her because her father also has Parkinson's. Since I was planning on using the poem for this sermon and I wanted her reaction. And reaction I got!

She knows I respect and love her and won't judge her, so she wasn't afraid of offering her most raw and truthful response:

"Hmmmm." she said, "I guess the first thing that comes to mind is that Galway Kinnell can stick it in his ear! Forget patiently feeding my dad. Or magically stumbling on a redeeming moment. I'm just proud of the days that I resist the temptation to put down the spoon, start screaming in front of everyone and throw all the dishes against the wall!"

In case you couldn't tell, my friend is in the "graceful endurance camp" not the "be grateful for everything that comes camp."

And then she said this:

"Not only am I not dancing with my dad, I'm not even there. I'm thinking about how I can get out of there as quick as I can so I can go spend at least a little time with my husband and my kids. I'm trying to manage and contain it, so it doesn't suck even more of my life away from me than it already has."

I want us to hear that again: "I'm not even there."

Now I'm not sure about you, but when I heard that, it stuck out for me like it was written in neon lights. That's when my whole perspective on this "welcoming in the uninvited" thing began to shift. That's when Rumi and his words slowly began to feel different to me-no longer unrealistic or rude or insensitive, but suddenly kind.

You see, I think my problem had to do with this idea of graceful endurance. It's definitely the framework that I-like most of us-use to think about our struggles with uninvited guests. It's how we describe our experience, not only to others, but to ourselves. "We're getting through." "We're getting by." "We're making it." We say these things to each other all the time. "We're doing ok." "We're holding things together." "We're taking it one step at a time and just doing what needs to be done."

We are "gracefully enduring it all."

It can seem so noble. And indeed it is noble. Like my friend said, it's a proud day when we can just avoid throwing things against the wall !

But there's the rub, right? It may be a proud day, but how much of a day is it really?

And that's what I think Rumi and other spiritual guides see that we so often don't. So often what we call "graceful endurance" is really more a matter of just not being there--or being there in a form or manner that is largely empty--largely wasted time.

And so shame on me, right? Shame on me for hearing Rumi as saying we should be perfect in every moment, when what he's really trying to do is simply give us our days back! Far from seeing us as falling short of his spiritual standard, what he saw when he looked out was a bunch of people writing off moments and days of their lives when they simply did not have to!

And friends, once you see it that way, what else is there is to say but, I just don't want that to be us.

And if we don't want that to be us I think there's nobody better to turn to than the Buddhists. I recently learned that they have this concept called "un-embodiment." And what they mean by it is not just the stereotypical Buddhist thing of not paying attention to what's in front of you. Rather it has to do with failing to embody yourself in a way that you want to be where you are at.

And their answer to this--their path back to embodiment--is so simple that it's almost embarrassing to say out loud. Their prescription--what they call "active meditation"--is to face every single moment of your day and say over and over to yourself: "WANT WHAT I HAVE. WANT WHAT I HAVE."

As one Buddhist teacher says, it's terribly hard if you say it once, but surprisingly easy if you make yourself do it all the time. It's mostly a matter of reminding yourself that at every moment you have a choice.

Which takes me back to something that happened this summer. It's a story about me and my brother Tim.

As many of you already know, this summer brought my family the uninvited guest of having to take care of my mother who has Alzheimer's after my father had a serious accident than landed him in ICU for six weeks and extended rehab after that. My younger brother, Tim, lives in Los Angeles. This distance, on top of the fact that he just had his first child, has meant that he hasn't been able to be directly involved in my father and mother's care. But he's handled a ton of the work that can be done by phone and he's also given me the great gift of flying out this summer on two occasions to help.

This story happened when he came out to help me move my mom into a memory care center. I often use the colder phrase, "put mom into a home," because frankly that best captures how it felt-not only to me but also to her. You see my mother's Alzheimer's is far along but not so far along to blind her to the fact that she was being put somewhere she didn't want to go. Simply put, my sweet, compliant mother, was not so sweet and not so compliant. There we stood at the entrance of the living center-me, my brother, the center's director, with my mom saying repeatedly not, "No thank you. No thank you. No thank you!"

And then finally after repeated efforts, she turned to me, stuck her finger at my face and said with more fury than I'd ever seen from my mother, "If you do this to me, I will hate you for the rest of my life!" She then walked off into the parking lot. It was right at the very moment that my sweet, sweet little brother, turned to me with those compassionate eyes of his, laid a gentle hand on my shoulder, and said, "That was hard, Scott. I'm really sorry. But I just want to be clear. She did say she'd hate YOU, right? Not US?! Right?"

Yes, it's funny. But it was also transformative. That's why I share it. It broke me open. It helped me step back and see that this task of getting our days back is just not as hard as it seems--if only we set our minds and hearts to it.

What Tim was saying with his joke-of course-was simply that there was more there than loss--more than two sons starring at a tragedy that's befallen their mother's mind. There was also-if we were willing to see it-two brothers sitting there with the opportunity to tell each other: "You can count on me."

And please, this morning, don't get caught up-like I did with Rumi-in reacting too strongly to me saying that this is just not as hard as it seems. Because, of course, it's emotionally complex. Of course, it's easier said than done. But that's a given. That's what every emotional bone in our body is already telling ourselves. And so if our heads don't start shouting loudly that we can WANT WHAT WE HAVE then how will it ever occur?

We've got to push each other on this. We've got to help each other believe it's completely within reach-ok maybe not easy-but certainly doable. It just won't work if we don't commit ourselves to beating it into our thick skulls and tired hearts that we are never without a choice!

In this regard, I'm incredibly moved by another story I heard recently. A colleague of mine shared it. A women in her congregation was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. She will die. Period. Leaving her two young children behind. It's the worst uninvited guest one can imagine.

Naturally, she was hit right away by this huge wave of anger. The world in a single moment turned cold and cruel. The professionals she turned to are offering all the best medicine they can. But they also prescribed something she didn't expect. One of them instructed her to immediately take on a very specific meditative practice.

It's done in a public space, every day. You give great attention to every person you come upon. You let them pick you out. No cherry-picking. And then you imagine that they-in a previous life time-have been your mother. It obviously doesn't matter if you believe in reincarnation or not. That's not the point. Rather your job is take whoever they are, whatever they present, and see in it some sign, some trace, of how they could have once been nurturing to you.

Here's a quote from this courageous women:

"Shy as I am, I've gotten pretty good at this meditation. In almost every face, I can find a curve of tenderness, however hidden. The way they use their smile, or fiercely invoke their intelligence. Even in a skinhead sauntering past, or a girl who's anxious & anorexic. Often I have to elicit it or nurture it for it to come out. But when I do, it's there. In some form, it's there."

This practice of having to imagine every stranger as possessing the ability and will to love and nurture her, she says has healed her. Not her cancer, of course-but certainly her spirit and relationship with life.

When I got done hearing this story, I thought two things.

First I thought: If this women can look at a world that has given her cancer and see in it a nurturing mother everywhere she looks, then I'll be darned if I am going to surrender my days to the feeling that my uninvited guests can only be seen as a burden.

And second, it occurred to me that a version of this woman's meditation must be what we see as the work our religion calls us to do.

Both of which take me back to that phrase: WANT WHAT YOU HAVE.

Start by noticing the parts of your life where you find your inner voice chanting: "I wish this were different. I wish this wouldn't have happened. I don't want this to be." You'll be surprised how easy those parts are able to find.

Don't shout over those voices right away. Just listen and notice. Notice how much time you spend on that broken record. Notice how much time it takes from your days. Notice how when it happens you're not really there, or how staying there makes you into a person you don't really want to be. Notice how much time is spent dancing with regret or resent or "poor me."

After that, take a moment to remember that brave woman who took the risk of looking into the curves of people's faces to find evidence that there is more in every moment than loss or threat. And then remind yourself that you have the ability to do the same. Even more, remind yourself that life is there to help you out, that it is always too full to fit into just one frame.

Then find those parts of life you've overlooked, parts worth wanting. And place them in the center of your view.

Finally, change your mantra; and say it enough to make it stick:

I can want what I have. I can want what I have. I can want what I have.

And then watch it all change!

Watch the diseased mother whose illness stole your time and took you from your kids become your beloved mother who is giving you the chance to repay her by tucking her back into bed and making her feel safe, they way she so many times did for you.

Watch the failed marriage that seemed such a mistake become the marriage that just wasn't meant to last a lifetime but left many gifts in its wake.

Watch the loss of the one you loved become the realization that friendships are more dependable than you ever imagined.

Watch the failed pregnancy become the chance to adopt and realize that blood does not determine the strength of one's love.

Watch that pain-in-the-butt co-worker become the window into remembering that we're all more insecure and scared than we will ever admit.

Watch the addiction become the proof of your courage.

Watch the loss of your legs, or sight, or music remind you that life goes on.

Watch the lost and angry son, become the lesson that there is no limit to love as long as you don't require love to be returned right away.

And then watch all these things that you never signed up for become the very things you'd never do without.

Watch yourself want what you have, want what you have, want what you have.

Because you can!

So be it. Amen.

Scott Tayler, Parish Co-Minister
September 27, 2009