Only Everything

Dear Friend,

A few years back I stumbled onto this Kathleen Norris quote about the gift of crisis. No. That’s not quite true. I stumbled upon a quote by Glennon Doyle Melton that mentions Norris:

“You have been offered the gift of crisis,” Glennon Doyle Melton writes.   “As Kathleen Norris reminds us, the Greek root of the word crisis is “to sift,” as in to shake out the excesses and leave only what’s important.  That’s what crises do.  They shake things up until we are forced to hold on to only what matters most.”

I am all but certain I would have shared this with you. It was, and it remains one of those touchstones that I return to over and over again, and one that occasionally finds its way into my sessions with clients. 

I invite them to imagine their three-year-old selves, carrying a bucket on the beach. Probably a green or blue plastic pail with a braided yellow plastic handle  with a red plastic shovel - you know the kind, and in the bottom of the pail is a beautiful shell or a smooth stone or maybe even a shark’s tooth that their mom or their dad or their older sister gave them the day they arrived at the ocean. And how they love this beautiful something and they put it in the pail because they are determined not to lose it. Determined not to let it slip out of their bathing suit pocket in the surf. (Most clients get this immediately. Most can even describe what the shell or the stone or the tooth - in detail.)

And then I invite them to go for a walk on the beach. And of course, one of the first things they do is take out the red shovel and begin to fill the pail with sand. A little at a time, of course, but it doesn’t take long. The beautiful shell gets covered by sand, the bucket gets too heavy to carry, and they might even forget what is buried beneath the sand. 

Eventually, I invite them to dump the sand into one of those blue plastic sifters that I happen to be carrying with me. And they do. And sometimes the sand refuses to pass through, and sometimes we have to give the sifter a good shake. But eventually, the sand falls out and we rediscover the shell and it re-mesmerizes us - and their bucket is lighter - way lighter. We admire the shell together. Sometimes we keep walking - repeating the process over and over again. 

But sometimes the client hands me the shovel and asks me to hold on to it for them.  I love it when they do that.

I love the metaphor and it was immensely comforting as we walked through Abi’s cancer. It was as if we were invited, over and over again,  to empty our buckets of sand - until we finally dropped our shovels, stopped refilling our pails, and admired the gift, the gift of now, that we had been carrying all along.

Do you remember this?

---

Today marks the end of the first week of radiation and chemo. 

We have been incredibly well-supported. Friends drive me to the hospital each day for radiation and tell me their stories and indulge me when I spend my time talking with the residents about their Thanksgiving plans and these same friends invite these same residents to their very own homes for Thanksgiving dinner. These friends send flowers and cards and text messages, and they listen to my thoughts - even when the I play them on repeat. They bake homemade pumpkin scones bring them when they pick me up for afternoon radiation. People have gone far beyond offering compassion and are being grace. The difference matters immensely, and I hope I might be one of a thousand people around you who know how to be grace and not simply compassionate. I want to be one of thousands of people who remind you of your belovedness by the spark in their eye every time they see you.

---

I feel great. One week down, and no discernible negative side effects. Sometimes I feel like a poser. Sometimes, when I see the same brave people at Massey, I wonder if my cancer doesn’t count unless I am in more pain and the radiation doesn’t count unless I find myself unable to retrieve words that used to roll off my tongue or until my vision begins to fade or I develop tinnitus and the chemo doesn’t count unless I find myself nauseated by the aroma of night-scented white stock (which would be the cruelest thing cancer could do to me.) 

Imagine that. Even cancer shames us. Even cancer whispers into our ears:

”Imposter.”

I am resisting this. Thinking on it. Admiring it’s cruelty, and wondering how often others feel this. Maybe Abi knows, but I hope not. Maybe you know. Do you know?

---

Since Glennon introduced us, Kathleen Norris has become a spiritual mentor, and she, my friend Richard, another friend, and I were talking about Norris’s thoughts on crisis yesterday. Richard chimed in with his idea that suffering is, by definition, “whenever you are not in control,” and while he didn’t say it explicitly, I think he was getting at the idea that the gift of crisis is that it releases us from the illusion that we are, or ever were, in control.

Yes.

But I don’t think he took it quite far enough. I’m sitting with the idea that suffering is not just not being in control, but instead, suffering happens when we fight to retain control over something we never had control of in the first place. The suffering is in the fight - not in the lack of control.

I understand this is problematic. I understand that some might hear this as me suggesting that pain is completely subjective, or worse, suggesting that the best we can do is to accept our lots as beasts of burden and to do so with grace and integrity. Those are reasonable conclusions, I think. A lot of people conflate pain and suffering, and there is a lot of fatalistic stoicism going around these days. But that is exactly not what I am suggesting at all. Not. At. All.

Try this on. What if the exact opposite were true? What if instead of being mere beasts, we are beloved? Suppose we are lovingly made and that God - however you might think of God - not only loves us, but delights in us? Suppose that the gift of crisis is a peek, an invitation, into a different sort of life. One in which we are not simply asked to bear the burdens of the world bravely, but one in which we might shed our yokes completely and walk with the one who just can’t look away from us? To trust, rather than to strive. To rest occasionally in the certainty that we have nothing to fear, not even rest. And that we might have abundant life not in some distant someday, but beginning right here, right now, and that abundance doesn’t depend one sniff on our circumstances, but only on our surrender? Our trust?

What changes when we accept this? For me…only everything. Letting go of the illusion of control invites awe and wonder back into the room. It clears the air and allows me to behold what is and what has always been, rather than noticing how what is fails to measure up to my desires, my plans, and my carefully, fearfully constructed ideal. It allows me to notice that mourning doves get along with everyone - the black and white birds that I haven’t named yet and the blue jays that literally don’t get along with anybody else. It allows me to notice, or to hear somebody notice, that mourning doves always show up in pairs, and that water colors will do what they want to do and that the results are better when we simply let them. It evicts comparison from its apartment over the garage to make room for joy to move in. It transforms disappointment into thanksgiving.

---

Maybe this is a good place to call it. Sometimes I wonder if you read these words and hear platitudes. I hope not. I write them with deep conviction. But I am also open, and indeed, invite your thoughts, no matter how divergent they might be. Tell me about crisis. About control. About all the things. In your own words.

For I remain, I dare to hope, one friend of a thousand friends, and I will not look away.

Oremus,

Chris