have the best timing. Just the other day I was thinking about one of the nightly readings Kaleigh did at camp this year. I was thinking of a particular one, but also in general that it would be nice to have one of those inspirational reminders about life, and what it can be if we don't get bogged down by all the pressure we face all the time. I guess I haven't checked my email for a while, but she sent a message on the 30th to everyone from Cabin 5, and I found it tonight. She said:
"For tonight's topic, I wanted to talk about new starts and resolutions. It's traditional, as the new year begins, for people to make resolutions about how they want to change or things they want to accomplish in the new year.
[...]
I want to encourage and challenge y'all to find what you love and keep at it, whether it's a school subject, a hobby, or a relationship. Find your passion and resolve to pursue it. As one of my favorite quotes points out, 'don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.'
[...]
Love,
Kaleigh
PA '06, Cabin 5 Mama '11
Here's your reading. It's from The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne, who is one of my heroes (though he hates when people say that about him).'I fell in love with the Home for the Destitute and Dying and spent most days there. I helped folks eat, massaged muscles, gave baths, and basically tried to spoil people who really deserved it. Each day, folks would die, and each day, we would go out onto the streets and bring in new people. The goal was not to keep people alive (we had very few supplies for doing that) but to allow people to die with dignity, with someone loving them, singing, laughing, so they were not alone. Sometimes folks with medical training would come by and be overwhelmed with frustration because we has so few medical supplies, and the sisters would hastily explain that our mission was not to prolong life but to help people die well. As Mother Teresa would say (telling the old story about throwing starfish back into the ocean even though they continue to line the beach in thousands), "We are called not to be successful but to be faithful." That sounds good, but it was the beginning of my years of struggle with the tension between efficiency and faithfulness. I remembered Gandhi's saying that what we are doing may seem insignificant, but it is most important that we do it. So we did.
While the temptation to do great things is always before us, in Khalighat I learned the discipline of doing small things with great deliberation. Mother Teresa used to say, "We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it.' "
I needed that so bad... to be reminded of that idea of "coming alive," and the challenge of finding what that means for me. I was crying on the phone to Cam today, about how indecisive I've been about next quarter, and lethargic I've felt and how much I've been sleeping. His response was: "well, if you were a bear all you would be doing right now is sleeping." I like that. It made me laugh. And it also makes me think about what it means to be alive. For a tree it means something different than a bear, but they are both fully alive, fulfilling their purposes as living creatures. Even if that just means sleeping to survive the winter; even if it just means growing taller every year.
For humans being alive I guess can mean all sorts of things too, but it gets all complicated because we have so much freedom to choose what that means and so many of us end up feeling dead while we're still breathing. The bears don't have that freedom though, and I guess that's what I've been struggling with is that... I don't have enough constraints, I have so many choices and it seems to me that the best designs usually come from a response to a prompt or some sort of structure. I mean that is a huge generalization, but it seems true. So how am I supposed to design a good life if I can do and be anything cause I want to do and be everything(there is so much that makes me come alive!) so I end up just spreading myself thin over everything and there isn't enough of me to sink in deep enough in a particular spot to do anything meaningful. and then I feel deadened...and exhausted and I eat too much and I can't get my ass out of bed at a decent time. which makes me worry that if I'm not doing enough this quarter then I will keep sleeping in and won't have time or energy or motivation to do anything and... damn, this is circular! but this is where my brain is getting stuck. and i haven't written for a long time (even in my journal) because i can't keep up with all this junk going on in there.
but anyway, back to the email from Kaleigh: it helped to know that other people are struggling with what I have been: "the temptation to do great things." man, i love how it is framed as a temptation... a distraction almost. like there are so many wonderful things that we could be doing everyday to make the world better for the people immediately surrounding us, but we get so caught up in these big schemes that we don't have energy left for the people we interact with face to face all the time. its like that Wendell Berry quote:
"no matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in one small part of it."
i want to do that. but what part? and how?
"we are not called to be successful, but to be faithful."
that...hits me hard. what a beautiful thought.
okay, i could keep writing, but its almost 2 and I need to pack for Oly.
(there ya go Cam... blog=occupied!)
