Eleanor Rouse

This morning in church I received more than I gave. For a mere two-dollar offering and two hours of my time, I was reminded that God is in charge of what grows when we humans sow seeds. After a few weeks’ absence, I was grateful to have pulled myself away from the New York Times Style section, put on a sun dress and lip gloss, kissed my studying husband goodbye, and made it out the door by 9:53 on a Sunday morning (when I’m usually still in my PJ’s). It was good for my soul to be there. Surrounded by a lot of people I don’t know and a few smiling friends, I felt part of a community. I prayed more deeply today than I’m normally able to in church. I always blame my inability on the bright lighting, the dress clothes, and the feeling of being watched. This morning I must have needed humility and God more than I needed to hold onto my excuses for not surrendering to prayer.

As I looked around, I wondered if my fellow parishioners rely on their belief in God as much as I do while, like me, not really knowing for sure if there is a God. I wondered if they were feeling overwhelmed by the pressure of work and life “to-do’s” and the immensity of big goals they hope to accomplish. Do those who come regularly feel calmer because they believe a greater power is here, available to us, at all times?

I can’t tell if it’s from drinking too much iced green tea or if I’m really experiencing anxiety, but lately I’ve been thinking I need to find some calm inside me. The doctor of a dear friend once refused to give her anti-anxiety pills until she changed the pace of her life. Good doctor, I thought at the time. Lately, I need to follow her prescription myself. My mind and my heart feel jam-packed during the week trying to make things happen – good things, fulfilling things, just a lot of things. At night, I’ve started dreaming about work, colleagues, papers shuffling around before me, and unread emails. This is my fear: “What if I don’t get it done? What if I can’t make it happen? What if I don’t succeed?”

The thing is, I find myself thinking there is only one “it,” one version of success. Today I was reminded that perhaps God’s ultimate design is unknown to me right now. So I do my best in the sowing and then let go. For me, this kind of trust is only possible when I give myself some down time – time to be instead of do.

On weekday mornings, I often take a walk before work and listen to sermons by Rob Bell or the Brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist. It grounds me in the deeper calm and bigger picture of Love. Their prayers remind me that I’m human, not the machine I expect myself to be. And I forgive myself for not doing things as well as I wish I could.

Save for sivasana at the end of yoga, I haven’t meditated on a regular basis in quite a while. I miss connecting intimately with God through breath, presence and an open heart. This weekend, I made time and I feel a bit healed. It feels similar to coming home at the end of a stressful day and resting in my sweet, strong husband’s hug. I completely lean on him, he makes me laugh and it all feels instantly better.

I’ve preached the being/doing balance to others many times without knowing how hard it was until I was put to the test. My apologies if I’ve done that to you. I do believe it is critical for our health, happiness and effectiveness in the world to regularly lean on some greater power while we take a break. I’m practicing right beside you.

Thanksgiving might not the best time to talk about evil. Or maybe it is. Perhaps acknowledging what seems lately to be an overabundance of evil in the world makes me even more grateful for the good I do see and the good I can create.

It overwhelms me how huge some problems seem – systems of violence, inequity and greed. Maybe I’m watching too many shockingly real episodes of “The Wire.” Or maybe it’s because my favorite character on “Private Practice,” Charlotte, was brutally raped. In real life, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted every two minutes. My current obsession with the dark side could also be driven by my disbelief at the inequitable opportunities that exist for children to succeed. I need only check the “most viewed” articles in my local paper to see a daily list of shootings, murders and cases of abuse. 

“What a bummer of a message,” you might be saying! I felt the same way the other night while trying to decompress from “The Wire” Season 4. I decided that even though I want to lessen the bad in the world and will work to do so, I can choose to focus on what is good in my life. Sometimes, I just need to notice how pretty the golden leaves are on my street, and take a minute to be in awe at the magnificent full moon or mindlessly silly with my boyfriend. It’s rejuvenating.

I do wish though that God would just eradicate evil – all of it. I’m beginning to wonder if that’s not what God is for. Wouldn’t He have already done so if He were going to? There’s certainly been plenty of monumental suffering in the history of time that could have been stopped were that God’s job.

A friend of mine, a funny, wise, lawyerly woman, believes in the devil. She believes there is a force intentionally creating and orchestrating evil in the world. I’m not quite there yet, but I do think it might just be semantics. I can understand that there are deep psychological and sociological reasons that may cause a person or a society to commit atrocities against other living beings. Even though I understand where it might come from, I will never get over the fact that it actually happens.

Sometimes I think evil exists so that we will continue to evolve as humans into our higher selves. I heard Rob Bell say in an interview, “Your divine calling is to meet the world at its greatest points of suffering.” Maybe God is waiting for us to do the good we are capable of doing. Maybe that’s what we are for.

I believe there are solutions to the issues we face – many have already been identified, just not fully implemented. I think God will indeed help us when we help each other. Maybe this is our job. The point of being here. In the face of evil in our world, we are not helpless and we are not powerless. I’m grateful for that.

Happy Thanksgiving.

You haven’t heard from me in a while as I haven’t felt ready to publish.

I wrote a piece on Glenn Beck and my realization of how alike we are. Though I have far different opinions than he, I spout them off just as much and often base them on little to no research. There’s too much of that in the world right now.

Then I wrote a piece about saying goodbye, after a dear friend’s father suddenly passed away. How can we possibly say goodbye to those we love the most? And what circumstances are we granted to do so? It was too soon and too personal to send.

So I’ve waited. Waited until new inspiration came.

And it did, in a Washington, DC yoga class. In tree pose, to be exact. Now, usually, in tree pose, I’ve had too much iced green tea to be able to balance, or my head is spinning with thought and I can’t focus. Tonight was markedly different. Earlier in the day I had toured the National Cathedral with my boyfriend. We walked slowly through detail after detail of beauty, dedication, and devotion to God. A place where people of all faiths, or no faith, are welcome to pray, to wonder or just be reverent.

I thought of the cathedral while I was in tree pose. “Do this for God.” My standing foot pressed more firmly into the Earth, my hip relaxed, my hands reached higher above my head, and a calm strength spread through my body. When my teacher asked us to look up to the sky, I didn’t fall.

I’ve been thinking about this lately – doing something for a purpose larger than myself rather than for my desire for praise. I’ve come to discover that when I do things to gain someone’s favor, be it my yoga teacher, my colleagues, my boyfriend, or God, it doesn’t really work out so well. I trip up. I start thinking I have to be perfect or I will lose something precious.

I’ve come to believe that it’s my effort and my intent that matter. Not perfection. Effort to follow God’s will and not my own in a relationship. Intent to do my job well for the good of children, not the praise of others. Effort to stay in tree pose – even if I fall out.

Part of what inspired me at the National Cathedral is that no part of its design was too small for dedication. Every corner, inside and out, was hand carved for a purpose. Not to please God, but for God.

When I’m able to make the switch from doing something for a lesser motive to doing it for God, I feel an immediate, visceral difference. I exhale. I let go of control. I’m easier on myself and more in sync with the natural flow of life. This is my source of living, working and loving with gentle strength and less ego.

What would feel different for you if you did it for a greater purpose? I’d love to know.

During an email discussion about the latest in a string of horrific attacks on children in China, my family asked me, as they do after nearly every tragedy, “So Nerd, where is God?” (I’m disclosing my family nickname here because it requires an appropriate dose of humility when I am asked to give my opinion on such matters.) Luckily for me, one of my sisters took the lead on trying to answer this most difficult question, she said:
 
“God wants you to take responsibility for your own actions. He may have created the universe, but he is not going to save you (over some other poor soul) if you are in danger. He (?) created the force of Nature, and the ways of Nature cause these awful things to happen… On the flip side, many, many wonderful things are happening at the exact same time as the awful ones. Good WILL prevail as Good is stronger than evil and therefore will survive.” 
 
Thomas Keating expressed a similar sentiment in The Human Condition:
 
“God invites us to take responsibility for being human and to open ourselves to the unconscious damage that is influencing our decisions and relationships.” 
 
It seems to me that we are given a mind, body, heart, and spirit to do with as we wish – to tend with care and effort so that we may use ourselves for good. Or not.  
 
Like my sister, I believe there exists more good than evil in the world and in the majority of humans. I often forget to acknowledge the good, though. Especially when facing a challenging situation, I don’t give good its due credit for my cozy apartment, my health, a felt sense of God, cute pillows on my couch, plenty of food, iced green tea, an amazing church which asks so little for all it gives, the sound of birds, a strong and kind boyfriend, a loving family that has experienced relatively few tragedies, enough money to pay my bills… the list goes on. 
 
I believe taking responsibility for being human includes opening to and respecting the range of what it means to be human. The whole range – good, bad and in between. A favorite priest once suggested that I, ”feel it all, welcome it all and let it all go.”  
 
Within each person and each spiritual tradition, good and bad are subjective. So how do we all figure out how to be with one another? Whose code (and which interpretation of that code) are we following? And how do we know whether our well-intentioned contributions will be received as we hope? I’m not sure, but perhaps we need to expand our “good” portfolio to allow for different perspectives while being true to ourselves and our values.
 
It’s an individual journey – this moment-to-moment decision-making. Serve my understanding of good or add fuel to the fire of evil? Which will I choose? Which will you? As the poet Mary Oliver asks in “The Summer Day”:
 
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
 
I look forward to finding out.

Hardly.

In this morning’s New York Times, I read an article about the “Lord’s Resistance Army” (LRA) and their recent activity in northern Uganda. Now, I ask you, what do you think an army named after the Lord does? Feed its country’s poorest people? Provide health care? Educate children so they may create a better life for themselves and their communities?

Well, apparently not. Instead, this self-proclaimed “Christian” militant group came upon a 23-year-old woman working in her field, told her she “talked too much,” and cut off her lips and right ear. This “army of the Lord” – raised by kidnapping children and, under threat of their own death, forcing them to kill – originally claimed to be guided by the Ten Commandments. No wonder we’re fighting an uphill battle to trust in religion, any religion, as a good and just thing. 

A few paragraphs into the article, I realized why some people I know have stopped reading the newspaper. The front page can indeed be horrifying, but I feel it’s my duty to be aware of what is happening to my fellow man – whether it be on the Gulf Coast or halfway around the globe.

To counteract my news-induced state of depression, I went to yoga. In class, I thought, “What can I do in the name of God?” If I can’t stop this “Lord’s Army” from continuing its butchery, is there anything I can do to provide counter-balance to their evil?

I decided that starting small was better than nothing. So, I invoked God’s name in every upward-facing dog pose (of which there were many). In every forward bend, I silently said, “In the name of God.” And you know what? My heart opened, my body relaxed, and my exhalation lengthened – as if being connected to more than myself was my natural state.

While the Ugandan government, with U.S. support, pursues its own strategy for ending the LRA’s 20-year maraud, can extra devotion in my yoga practice make any difference for the young woman with gauze and tape where her lips used to be? I’m not sure.

Today’s passage in a meditation book of my late father’s reads: “You must be, before you can do… We must choose the good and keep choosing it, before we are ready to be used by God to accomplish anything worthwhile.”

I use yoga as a spiritual practice to work on the “be” part, so that ultimately I may do. Does a more open heart make a difference in the world? I think so. For me, being in a worthwhile state takes practice and intention. Likewise, doing good is a choice I must make again and again. Love just a little bit more than I would have. Exhale one second longer.

What can you do today in the name of God? Actually, what can you be?

All of us becoming ready to be used by God. What could the world look like then? I hope to find out.

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / The world would split open.” – Muriel Rukeyser

I confess… I didn’t get a Christmas tree. I intended to on Saturday, but got snowed in. So instead, I wrapped lights around my ZZ plant (Zamioculcas Zamiifolia to be exact!) The lights are my favorite part anyway. I love Christmas; I love Christmas trees; and I love all of my ornaments and each of their stories, yet something in me is feeling drawn to a more simple expression this year.

I want to feel what’s underneath the tinsel of Christmas. The quieter, more contemplative side. I don’t have children of my own yet, so it’s easier to be outside the rush of those who are anxious to “do Santa” for their little ones and to do it perfectly.

When I hear people totally stressed about the holiday, I have to check myself. Where am I rushing to “do something” and do it “right” – something that is meant to be so fun and beautiful? My life! I’ve constructed such a huge tree decorated with all my hopes and dreams and strewn with all my regrets, mistakes, successes and gifts. Constantly trying to avoid doing something wrong and causing the whole thing to come crashing down.

So what am I without all my ornamentation? Without the layered on tinsel of being this, becoming that, giving this, and wanting that? What’s left at the core? What is it that the light of my eyes illuminates?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for sparkly earrings, lip gloss and world-saving aspirations yet only after being sure of what’s underneath. What’s real about me?

What’s real about you? Who are you underneath your tinsel? I want to know you. Not the self-critical you who is always trying to do it better or perfectly. I want to know the pure, flawed, adorable you.

In that place, there is no worry about the tree crashing. There is no care of whether the neighbors have a bigger Santa in the yard. There’s just us. And love.

Unadorned. Lit up from the inside.