The Only Successful Way, the Spiritual Way

The longer I live, the more I am reminded, how fickle life is, and how quickly we are to kick against the goads that come against us.  

Finally, if only there were a simple, easy way, or philosophical approach, that would guide us throughout our lives — to help us trustfully respond well.  

Well, there is!  It’s been given to us from the ancients.  

It is easy in theoretical ways of understanding.  

The way forward is to consider anything that would grieve us as inconsequential in comparison with something infinitely more important. That thing that is infinitely more important is the fact that we are eternal spirits.  

We will only be justified in this view when we are in eternity.  

Sadly, we are so fixed in this life, attached to this world, that we refuse to see what is beyond it.  

Clearly, the reality of death helps us understand that this life is not all there is.  

Evidence of eternity is in that concept: death.  This, and the concept of an eternity nestled in each of our hearts — that surely this world, this life, isn’t all there is.  

Pleading Pascal’s wager, it is far easier and wiser, and by far more beneficial in this life and in the next, overall, to subscribe to the concept of a world — a celestial shore — beyond ours.  

Reframing the challenges of this life around the eternal concept is the best and right way to traverse this life.  

It helps us here, and it helps us there!

This mode of thinking helps us to accept that nothing we could attain from this life can we keep.  

This mode of thinking helps us live honestly, empowering us to be honest with ourselves, honest with others — thereby living our relationships the best way we can — and honestly before our eternal God.  

Peace is within our grasp when we accept the things we can’t change, and have courage to change the things we can.  

The spiritual life is the direct path to truth, to right living, to peace, fuelled by hope in a reality that cannot disappoint us.  

An eternal hope cannot disappoint us, for we gain while we’re here through a hope borrowed from eternity.  

Living a successful life is living the spiritual way, where we’re prepared to jettison the material and fleeting for something intangible and permanent.  

Eternity cannot be taken from us!  

And all the pain we endured in this life will only make complete sense when we arrive there.  

The repetitive nature of grief in loss

One of the hardest realities that we cannot ignore in loss is the repetitive nature of grief that invades our being without notice as if it were the first time we had ever been impacted by the loss.  

Most people don’t have any comprehension of the pain involved in the grief that comes from loss. They have no comprehension that it is like we are in another world — another dimension — stuck in the in-between — without the capacity to communicate or connect with those who are there even in our midst.  

The dawning reality of loss brings a dread that feels exactly like when the loss first happened.  The brutality of the emotions, the starkness of the dread, the despair that swoops like a blade through grass.  

It seems so unfair that the grief in loss ought to be so painful as to render our hope forlorn.  We have no answer for it.  It castigates us into an oblivion of numb dysfunction.  

How can it be that a state of acceptance can so easily be replaced by a state of utter depression?  In minutes.  The repetitive nature of grief in loss reminds us of the trauma of it all.  

Shock is something that is so akin to the grief in loss, the trauma of triggering, occurring again and again, where we have nothing to fight back with.  

My hope somehow is that the uninitiated would read this and begin to realise the suffering of grief in loss is not only seemingly ten times worse than anyone could possibly imagine, but that the nature of grief in loss is it’s repetitive, with the same sting each time; whether it’s a week or a year (or more) old.  

There is hope for recovery, of course.  Paradoxically, much recovery, hope and gain is experienced between the repetitive abysses experienced.  

A person who is grieving needs empathy and listening when they’re in the abyss, just as much as they need ‘you can do this!’ as they stride forward in hope.  

As support people, we can give them this, especially as we’re prayerfully patient amid the tumultuous journey.  

Knowing Those We’ve Lost More After They’ve Died

One of the worst experiences of life is surely losing a loved one.  It seems so obvious to say it.  But what if we commence a quest of knowing our lost loved ones more indeed after they leave us?  

I think it’s a cosmic truth for all of us to discover — who our loved one really was.  Of course, we can know them so well.  But, like it is to truly know ourselves, there is always an enigmatic, unknowable part of each of us.  

I know two vivid losses in my own case, in both situations it was only after each had perished that I was taken into the spiritual reality of a deeper knowledge of both.  

Yes, this is very much a spiritual experience — just as that is all that is left when our loved ones have died.  It is a healing reality for us to grieve well in remembering them rather than bypassing the pain by thinking of anything but them.  

When we lost Mum, suddenly we gained such insight with all her possessions at our grasp — photos, notes, nicknacks, planning her funeral, even voicemails we thought nothing of previously.  Every little possession we clung to.  And in trying hard to not forget her, I know I at least embarked on a 12-18 month journey of keeping her close to me.  Nearly four years later, I feel at complete peace that I processed my grief well.  

Earlier, when we lost Nathanael in 2014, holding him in our arms was the kind of ‘closure’ (if there is such a thing) that we needed.  We recorded a lot of videos and photos with him, so it is easy to go back and remember him.  We couldn’t have really ‘known’ him as he was stillborn, but we felt we knew his character in the womb, and we also let our imaginations run free — knowing with absolute peace that we will go to him in heaven one day.  

When I experienced my first real loss — the loss of my first marriage — I felt I was able to say goodbye to that version of myself as I embraced a new identity with being a loving single Dad, a committed member of AA, really ‘getting’ Christ, becoming a servant leader in the church, and importantly, without the alcohol and the ambition that pushed the old life to the edges of the end.  

I embraced what was the most painful of losses because it was the loss of my life partner, everyday access to my children, my home, and eventually my job (which involved too much travel).  I embraced these losses because — between bouts of depression and panic attacks — I was determined to heal and become who I’d always wanted to be; who I was called by God to become.  

These losses were more about mourning the old me.  In embracing the new me, I actually got to know the old me very well.  Hence I felt like I could let go; and so well did I let go, I love going back to the memories and reminisces of the past.  

It’s counterintuitive to run toward a hazard or danger.  I’m sure we view grief as too dangerous, too risky, to run toward.  So we may be tempted to bypass it or to run from it or to deny it or busy ourselves.  

This is the importance of a spirituality that can accommodate loss and grief — and even to risk being broken open by the visceral emotions incumbent of the season.  To make and hold space for pain.  

There is wisdom in allowing grief to take us into the truth of its pain.  What may not sound palatable at all may actually heal us purest and quickest over all.  

When we trust such a process we stand at the gates of God’s promises to prove good through it all.  

If only we can allow our grief to redefine us, we trust God in the process of reforming us according to the truth of who or what we have lost.  What could be more important?  

I think this is more important than pretending we are some other version of ourselves, especially where we think we must conform to a rule of how others define we should be.  

Yes, it takes courage to live this way — better put, I think, it is living by faith.  I love the truth, “who dares wins.” 

Loving That Log In One’s Own Eye

DEFEAT by Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931) is an astounding poem.  It propounds a kind of Ecclesiastes-wisdom that defeat is more meaningful than victory—that defeat may truly be a supreme kind of victory.  

LIFE, TRUE LIFE

Life, true life, is lived in a paradox—
endure on this earth and flourish in eternity;
If defeat cannot defeat us, all is victory.  

These are things of eternity even on this earth.  

Jesus, who, when he lived on this earth encouraged us, and now through His Spirit encourages us, to focus on the log in our own eye and to completely disregard the speck in others’ eyes—in terms of judging others (Matthew 7:3-5).  Jesus also taught us to pray in Matthew 6:12, “LORD, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.”  

Nowhere does Jesus say forgiveness is about reciprocation—but in forgiving we reciprocate the mighty love of God who has forgiven us.  

Losing an argument, or losing in a conflict, would seem at times humiliating.  These experiences are ubiquitous.  But eternity in the here-and-now awaits beyond losses worn well.  

One of my key interests in mediating conflict is helping others see how they hurt others, seeing their own contribution, because that is not only where reconciliation’s at, it’s also the purest path to one’s own healing.  

PEACE IS WITHIN OUR PERSONAL REACH

Here’s the paradox: camping in our own sense of rightness is a dungeon of our own creation.  But leaving that camp to join with another’s understanding, to enter their story, to empathise with WHO they are, is both a venture in aligning with truth AND it’s a holiday from our insistence that our way is the only way forward.  

Here’s the madness.  Two people insisting upon their own rightness; an insistence that, for each, their way is the ONLY way forward.  

It’s a madness, because there’s
only truthfully a THIRD way forward.  

Here’s a series of thoughts for the would-be protagonist:  

• For those camped in their rightness, think about what I’ve said above.  Could it be that there’s a spiritual opportunity of leaving your camp to survey theirs—their understanding, their perception, their hurt, their story?  Could there be MORE to the story?  Could there be more to this that might deliver to you, freedom?  

• Imagine facing God and all of life’s truths one day, all our dark and dirty secrets revealed by a righteous, holy God.  For those who have no faith in God, is it worth the chance not planning for this kind of eventuality?  For those with faith in God, knowing all will be revealed in God’s time, we would be wise to plan for such an inevitability.  

• If we insist upon not seeing truths of life in the here-and-now, are we prepared to face God in the perils of our revealed pride in eternity?  Or reconcile it now?  What risk are we placing against receiving our “well done, good and faithful servant” moment from the Lord when we stay in our rightness?  

• Far worse a reality than a regret in this temporal life is an eternal regret that we cannot change once life’s race is run.  This is what ought to convict us before we stand in the presence of a Holy God.  

• Even if we’re right, aren’t we commanded to love our enemies and forgive as God forgave us?  No amount of our own rightness justifies not loving our enemies and refusing to forgive.  (I have learned this the hard way!)  

• If the Bible is important to you—and for many I understand, it isn’t—but if it is, and you wish to follow Jesus’ teaching, then forgiveness and loving our ‘enemies’ is a bone-jarring truth we must wrestle with.  

• Are there others close to you that you care about who are hurt because you refuse to reconcile?  What about people who care about the person on the other side you’re in dispute with, and how they feel?  

• What if there is a life experience we’re all invited to experience here on this earth but too few of us are willing to go there—to humiliation, to defeat, to a place we can only rise from?  

• Think of hearing Jesus’ words: “Did you love me enough to love my sheep; did you love me enough to love my lambs?”  All of them?  Or did we just love those who were easy to love?  How are we loving those who hurt us, or that we have hurt?  

• If only we could hold some space in our hearts for the story of the other that we struggle to understand—to get alongside them as the Holy Spirit does and empathise with WHY they are who they are, and WHY they reason how they do, and from that WHY, determine that they see as they do for logical, explicable reasons.  

If we don’t make any effort to move toward the other person in humility, how can we expect them to move toward us?  

LOVING THAT LOG: KEY TO LIVING THIS LIFE RIGHT

The best test of our Christian faith is how amenable we are to the example and followship of Christ — how well do WE (not the other person we are tempted to point our finger toward) get the log out of our own eye.  

Loving that log in our own eye leads us to hold space, and have capacity and motivation, for forgiveness:  

The blessings of God
are quite directly connected
with humility in terms of
our relations with others.  

Forgiveness is a deeper knowledge,
surpassing all worldly wisdom. 
It is a blessing received only once applied. 
Forgiveness is a grace, a gift, of faith.  

Forgiveness if FOR the GIVING. 
Forgiveness is also FOR GETTING.
As we forgive we GET peace, a part-forgetting.
Though memory cannot fail…
The sting of anger’s pain is gone.  

Forgiveness is the gospel real
and operant in our mortal being.  

It’s God’s design that everyone
experience forgiveness’s peace of healing.  

We all need it.  

The seeing of hearts

Wars are not just waged on national and international scales.  They’re waged first and foremost in hearts — yours and mine.  

In a cosmic reversal of fortunes, we only make peace with our own heart when we’ve agreed to be at peace regarding the hearts of others — over whom we have almost no influence, let alone control.  

We only experience peace in a chaotic world
when we understand and accept the chaos.  

The seeing of hearts — others hearts — is a gift not principally to them, but to us, because it relieves us of the caustic load of bias against them who we hardly understand.  

Seeing people right — through eyes of truth — is crucial to discerning and not condemning.  This is about giving others the benefit of the doubt that we would like to receive from them.  

The trickiest thing about hearts is how secretly divisive and biased they are.  About the only time we’re ready to admit this is when we’re caught in a sin — when our heart has been revealed to us at least as ‘a little corrupt’.  

Facing this truth is key to any objective we have on humility.  

The seeing of hearts is empathy of compassion, seeing and accepting the moral limits on others, even as we understand and accept our own moral limits.  

Seeing hearts means we aren’t shocked when others aren’t “for” us, as we admit the light-speed at which we’re prone to turn “against” others.  

Love can be highly conditional
unless it’s a deliberate choice
to see others as God sees them.  

Seeing hearts is about comprehending we’re not a lot different from one another as human beings — we have our perceptions and we respond accordingly.  

Seeing hearts correctly is not hard when we’re open to the truth in our own heart.  

We want our plans to succeed, we want life predictable and easy, we don’t appreciate surprises and we hate loss, and we want what we think we deserve.  

Unfortunately, life’s not like that.  Not for any of us.  Though there are times when it’s especially rough for us.  Perhaps this coincides with times that seem favourable to another person we’d compare with.  Life feels particularly unfair.  We don’t reckon with the ‘swings and roundabouts’ of life.  We want the disparity rectified immediately.  

The seeing of hearts helps at these times, for we empathise with ourselves and are prone more to patience amid the apparent misfortune.  

When life is good for us but there’s another person suffering, seeing their heart helps us stay in the “mourn with those who mourn” state.  This helps them via our compassion — as we ‘suffer with’ them — and it helps our own heart as we’re blessed in being a blessing.  

In another cosmic reversal, as we see others’ hearts, empathising with them, we do so out of the seeing of our own heart.  

Recognising the vagaries and partialities of our own hearts helps us understand and accept the vagaries and partialities of others — these are human constants that are easy to see if only we will take the time.  

Seeing hearts is the way to peace
in a life that cannot be separated from others.  

In life, inner peace is linked to peace with others.  

As life is relational, so is peace.  

Peace with self is contingent on peace with others.