Freedom Against The Wind; Sailing to Joy and Happiness

The new day has dawned.

Now comes the challenge of deciding what can be done with it. How we will spend today is largely up to us. Sure, there are those who will direct our activities. We have obligations to fulfill. People depend on us to one degree or another and we are accountable. However the goal is not to acquiesce to demands or to please others. The goal is joy and happiness. This might sound a bit self-serving or hedonistic, but it is not. Far from it. All spiritual teachings point us in that direction.

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”

— Henry David Thoreau

So this new day calls for sorting out the inconsequential in order to live more fully toward joy and happiness. Finding the new freedom promised in that endeavor will sometimes feel like fighting against the wind. But ultimately, the same wind will fill our sails and take us to the place we have been seeking all along.

Chris, a lifelong friend of mine sent me an email recently which provided a link to an article called "Claim Freedom" by teacher Evan Mehlenbacher. It was really quite good, and I ended up subscribing to his blog. What caught me a bit off guard though was a comment Chris made about his take on my life's mission. He said that he had been 'thinking of me and my work freeing people'. Over the course of most of the past five decades, I have worked with folks who suffered childhood abuse, trauma, and addictions. The headwinds they faced were sometimes CAT 5 in strength.

At times, I veered away seeking other professions for a break, but always came back to see if I could at least help pack some sandbags. I never considered my work being about freeing people. But I guess that's exactly what I have been called to do. And in the final analysis, it is what each of us must do if we are to reach the goal of joy and happiness.

Richard Rohr has defined the role of freedom as conjoining compassion and mercy. I think this statement is true. For when we have been blessed with freedom, joy, and happiness we have an obligation to give it away to others. It cannot be contained. The only way I know how to extend such freedom, joy and happiness to others is through my shared brokenness and vulnerability. This can only result in subsequent compassion and mercy. We no longer have room for measuring and judgment. Then the new day dawns on a sea of mutuality and interconnectedness and there will always be fair winds following.

Grief Re-purposed; Reveling in Life at the Moment of Death

We continue to explore loss and grief with this third-in-a-series of four journal followup articles on Loss and Grief.  This piece refers back to 'Grief and Celebration; Twins or Pairs of Opposites'.

I just returned from a week-long visit to New Orleans.  The Big Easy is remarkably different from any place on earth.  Celebrations of life are blown out into extreme displays found only there.  Funerals (called homegoings) and weddings alike are known to have jazz band accompaniment through the city with the community of friends and family forming a Second Line parade.

Allen Toussaint tribute in New Orleans ends with a jazz funeral, a longtime tradition that unites communities, irrespective of class, color or background.

Of the major attractions in NOLA, tours of its' historic and storied cemeteries are among the most popular.  We were given a grand tour of three famous last-resting spots by a local haunting expert, photographer, and author, Kristen Wheeler. Our day-long adventure informed me that grief and loss are integral processes of life experience as opposed to an end story of death.

I have visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and many other solemn places of remembrance. But there is no place and nothing like the open experience of life and death in New Orleans.  The community, which suffered such catastrophic losses during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, has come back like gangbusters.  This is not to say that scars have been erased and pain eradicated.  On the contrary, they are both quite visible.  The resurrection of New Orleans is an effort in the making.  But joy and hope were never blown away into The Gulf of Mexico, starved in the lower parishes, or abandoned in the Superdome. The City Under Water would not drown in a sea of sorrow.

"When the procession hits the street, the songs are played as a dirge. Mournful, slow playing. Music that suits the sad mood of a loved one’s passing. But, a song or two in, the mood changes. The brass band plays the first notes for “I’ll Fly Away,” and everybody sings. Dances. Smiles and laughs. It’s celebratory. It’s a joyful noise. It’s Gospel. Blues. Jazz. It’s music."

Ray Laskowitz, New Orleans photographer

The lessons learned from New Orleans can allow us to re-purpose grief. 

What we can come to believe is that healing for loss and grief starts when we abandon dualistic thinking.  Celebration and grief do, indeed, share the same space.  However, it is more than that.  Along with them, abundance and scarcity, joy and sorrow, fear and love, are all in a kind of circular dance.  And what can be more full of fun than a dance? These things which seem to be opposites are really one and indistinguishable. This is essential to understand because when the dark hours of loss descend, it seems as if the light is no longer present.  Feelings of abandonment and hopelessness can be so overwhelming that we become frozen in time.  The truth that God is with us seems unreal. At these moments we must accept that the dance continues all around us.  We can allow the process of grief because joy and hope are not just coming back someday, they are already present.

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Here is a mindful and gentle way to allow the celebration of life to commingle with grief. 

Choose a short sentence like "Love never fails" or "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want" and repeat it several times during the day. 

The truth of it will settle into the center of your heart and darkness will begin to accept the dawn. Though this may seem simplistic or mundane, it will actually re-purpose your feelings of grief and enable you one day to dance again.