Imagine yourself as a living house...

© Sophia Roberts

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

~ C.S. Lewis

52 Ordinary Words: Confession

© Sophia Roberts

When I first went to Confession at the age of eleven I had to invent a sin. I couldn't come up with anything. It wasn't that I lacked the imagination: I said I'd stolen my sister's pencil case!

I didn't appreciate a lot of things about the sacrament of Confession for a long time. But when I did, I came to know that it is about much more than admitting to someone else what you've done - or, for that matter, failed to do - and for which you are truly sorry.

I'm entirely with David Whyte when he says, in his book, Consolations, that a confession's a profession of allegiance: a first step on the road leading home. I like his description of confession as the shearing away of a former identity (a working delusion) to reveal an honest self dedicated "to something beyond the mere threat of ... punishment."

But no confession is without consequences. Saying, 'sorry' is not a cure-all; we still have to live with what we've done, and so do other people. And I would also hold that, sometimes, we can consider confessing a luxury; particularly when the only positive consequence is to salve our own conscience - to dump a burden, so we feel better. In some cases confessing a truth will only cause a great deal of unnecessary pain.

The alternative - to live with the burden of our silence - may be the kinder alternative. A man confessing a very old sin of adultery, for which he's truly sorry, could well be left to carry on his "journey newly alone, unaccompanied by the familiar company [he] has kept until now," were he to confess his sin, but so could his wife, who has, hitherto been happy in a stable, if duplicitous, marriage. A matter of the greater evil?

If we risk confession and the loss of "our old fearful identity" - which preservation will doubtless have taken an inordinate amount of effort and willpower - we come to appreciate that our old sense of fixed personhood was only ever temporary and provisional. We become liberated to commit to a new life, "shaped around a different life that calls for a deeper discipline." We come out of hiding, no longer living on the defensive, but true to ourselves and others, "integrating the offending with the offended, inside and out."

Over the years I have come to appreciate that confession is a continuous process of dedication and not a static product: it's a way of life. It's living according to a manifesto. It's living courageously and honourably, whereby we declare our commitment to others - and to ourselves - by bearing witness, in words and deeds, to the highest good.

52 Ordinary Words: Besieged

© Sophia Roberts

This doesn’t strike me as an ordinary word.  If someone is besieged it sounds as if they are enduring a state of emergency and need rescuing - as a matter of urgency.  I’m not sure that I agree with what David Whyte says in his book, Consolations, that this is how most people feel most of the time.  If he’s right then most people must be in state of nervous exhaustion and close to breaking point. 

I do agree that when I feel like this that it’s my own deliberate fault; that I am responsible - if not for the extenuating circumstances, than for my response.  This sound like a tough call, but I do believe we bear a deal of responsibility for how we react to any given situation.  It may not be easy, but we always have choices.

I am heartened to note that Whyte recognises that being besieged doesn’t necessarily refer to living in a war zone; that the fall out from creative ‘success’ can be just as onerous. It can set up a perceived demand; to not only repeat the performance, but to do better, next time.

But perception is the operative word in this context.  If we perceive we are besieged then, doubtless, we are.

Even relatively laid back, or retired people, have responsibilities and commitments.  And even runaways have their problems: if we choose to go into the desert (literally or metaphorically) we are - at the very least - obliged to provide ourselves with food, warmth and shelter.  There is no escape: if we have something that the world wants - be it a fortune or wisdom – we are unlikely to be left to our own devices for very long.  We may consider that we are of no interest at all (that we have nothing to give), but there will always be the curious or the concerned.  Further, we live in a state of flux; the world does not stop just because we want it to!

As Whyte says, we all of us define ourselves in relation to the society in which we live; even if we consider that we have made a choice to live outside it. We all define ourselves in terms of other people. 

So, I take it as read that if you are reading this that you, too, are a member of a society (!) And I also take it as read that your life is a kind of juggling act; that your challenge is living in the midst of commitments – be they to yourself, or to others – without feeling beset. 

In this essay I confess Whyte confounds me somewhat, but if I read him correctly he suggests that we start the day with a Not to Do List and thereby to set aside a moment of undoing and silence to create a foundation of freedom, from which we can re-imagine or re-see ourselves from outside the margins of a time-bound world.  We let go, therefore before we grasp the challenges of the day. Christians would say, “Let go, and let God,” 

One of the great Christian apologists of the last century, C.S. Lewis, made the point that “The gates of Hell are locked from the inside.”  This line is part of the description of C. S. Lewis’s book, The Great Divorce: a work of theological fantasy in which he reflects on the Christian conception of heaven and hell.  The entire text is: 

"What if anyone in Hell could take a bus trip to Heaven and stay there forever if they wanted to?  In The Great Divorce C. S. Lewis again employs his formidable talent for fable and allegory. The writer finds himself in Hell boarding a bus bound for Heaven. The amazing opportunity is that anyone who wants to stay in Heaven, can. This is the starting point for an extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment. Lewis’s revolutionary idea is the discovery that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. In Lewis’s own words, “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell."

Many of you are not theists, but you will get the gist.  If we are to lift the siege we must adjust our relationship with ourselves and our besiegers; and to be concerned less with what lies beyond the walls - where we fondly imagine our freedom lies.  If we want to experience true freedom we must adjust our relationship with the people and the concerns that we feel beset us.  We can do this if we are rooted in a sense of who we really are.  If we able to reflect – and not to react - we can learn to love ourselves and others, and in so doing become enabled to love the part we must play in our immediate  world.  Only then will, what we perceive as, walls or barriers fall away.

The role of self

© Sophia Roberts

That the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things / is called delusion; / That the ten thousand things advance and confirm the self / is called enlightenment.

Dogen Zenji, "Wandering Clouds: The Poets of Ch'an Buddhism"

52 Ordinary Words: Alone

In lonely places, be a crowd unto yourself ~ Michel de Montaigne (© Sophia Roberts)

Together with other members of Kim Manley Ort’s Google+ group, Adventures in Seeing, I’m using David Whyte's Book, Consolations to reflect on a word a week.  Our first word is Alone.

Extroverts are said to find their own company unacceptable, which was never entirely true for me. I liked own company, occasionally; and I was fine, if I could choose when and where I found myself alone.

It wasn’t until illness forced me into a relatively solitary lifestyle – which obliged me to spend a lot of time on my own – that I began to appreciate how good it is to be alone; and to live in silence. Indeed, once I began to really appreciate the latter I found myself enjoying being alone for considerable periods of time. 

But everything I now know came about because I was metaphorically thrown in at the deep end; I could either sink or swim. For me, necessity was the mother of invention.  

I am not a naturally contemplative person, but I am a spiritual one, so I knew there had to be an answer to my question, “What am I supposed to do with this great chasm that’s opened up,before me?”  Of course it wasn’t as simple as that.  I was obliged to ask myself several hard questions and I had to learn to listen - to really listen - to the voice of my inner wisdom: that still, small voice of calm.

Whyte says that, in order to benefit from solitude, we must be prepared, like a snake, to shed our outer skin.  And as my old life fell away - and silence became my friend - I began to hear a different story and then, eventually, no story at all.  I lost the need to know.  I became comfortable with not knowing; for I had lost the need to ‘interpret and force the story from too small and too complicated a perspective.’  I learnt to honour myself, by choosing to let myself - and others - be...

Whyte maintains that this quality of aloneness does not need the physical conditions of an empty and isolated terrain to experience ‘contemplative intimacy with the unknown,’ but I beg to differ.  I do need to be alone for several hours in each and every day and for a couple of days in every week; otherwise I cease to feel centered and grounded.  But I do agree that my disinclination to answer the telephone or to reply to an email immediately is viewed with suspicion – as if there’s something wrong with me!

In the fullness of time I hope I do hone the discipline - what Whyte calls ‘a sense of imminent aloneness' - because I want to ‘understand the singularity of human existence whilst experiencing the deep physical current that binds us to others,’ without having to physically disconnect myself from the presence of other people. This may take some time.

Until then I am happy to attest that Marianne Moore got it right; ‘The cure for loneliness is solitude.’

The 'Right' Way

Into the Demon's Mouth

We sometimes imagine that if we just lead our spiritual life the 'right' way, we won’t encounter life’s sharp edges. We will be on a direct path to ever-increasing tranquility and joy. We are not prepared for all of our unfinished business being exposed, all of our unresolved trauma pushing up from the depths like a geyser of black mud. Working with all that has been pushed down is a central part of the spiritual journey

~ Aura Glaser, Into the Demon’s Mouth

Holding on to anger

is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. ~ attributed to Buddha

© Sophia Roberts