What is Saving You?

A couple of weeks ago I had an irregular EKG.

It was my yearly physical with my primary care doctor, but since I am now the big 4-0, part of best practice preventative care apparently for my new age box includes a yearly EKG.

And it was my first, so I was a little scared as the nurse hooked me up to the machine with all of those wires and stickers to take that picture of my heart that looks more like a card they show you during psychological testing.

But then, when my doctor came in to the examining room, and made a quizzical face as she reviewed the piece of paper with all of the squiggly lines that showed how my heart is beating, I went from a little scared to afraid.

So now I'm scheduled for the first time to see a Cardiologist later this month, and while I'm in this limbo period I'm contemplating one of the titles of American Buddhist nun and author Pema Chodron's many books: Comfortable With Uncertainty.

Because, really, how on earth do you get comfortable with uncertainty?

Pondering this question led me to think about a Zen Story that Western Buddhist teacher and author Sylvia Boorstein frequently refers back to when she is giving dharma talk that I listen to via Dharmaseed podcasts.

It goes something like this...

A person is walking through the forest  and encounters a tiger. 

To escape the tiger, the person runs through the forest until they can't run any further because they have reached the edge of a cliff of a nearby ravine. 

The tiger still in pursuit, the person decides to climb down into the ravine by grasping a vine.

Momentarily feeling safe from the tiger who stands at the edge of the cliff, the person, who is holding tight to the vine while hanging down into the ravine, now notices two mice (one white and one black) are beginning to gnaw the vine apart.

With the tiger above, the vine being chewed apart by the mice, and while hanging on the side of a cliff, the person spots a luscious strawberry growing out of the cliff-side. Grasping the vine with one hand, the person plucks the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

I like this story a lot.

As a person who is a problem-solver by nature, in-between-times (particularly during stressful events or crisis) are particularly difficult.

Like sitting in a waiting room while a loved one is in surgery.

Waiting for the phone call about your blood work.

Waiting for the response to your well-thought-out email or text.

Waiting for the radiologist to read your child’s X-Ray.

Or in my case, waiting for the next doctor appointment to find out if I have a heart condition like my grandfather had...

Nothing to do but wait.

Dr. Seuss once wrote about waiting in his book Oh the Places You’ll Go in something he called the “waiting place.”

THE WAITING PLACE 

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come,
or a plane to go or the mail to come,
or the rain to go or the phone to ring,
or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting.

Unless, there happens to be a "luscious strawberry" nearby.

I must tell you, it is completely counterintuitive for me to consider eating, and dare-I-say enjoying, a "luscious strawberry" during times of distress.  No, if problem-solving was not possible, I was taught to linger, dwell and ruminate on every single god-forsaken second of the distress.

(Talk about a sure fire recipe for suffering!)

So what could be my luscious strawberry? What could be my salvation?

Salvation.  I like this word.

As someone who was not raised in any religion and who is not Christian herself, in the most respectful way, every so often I like to try on religious words to see how they fit.  Lately, it has been "salvation."

Twentieth Century Christian monk Thomas Merton said this about salvation in his 1961 book New Seeds of Contemplation:

It is a pity that the beautiful Christian metaphor 'salvation' has come up to be so hackneyed and therefore so despised. It has been turned into a vapid synonym for 'piety'- not even a truly ethical concept.

'Salvation' is something far beyond ethical propriety. The word connotes a deep respect for the fundamental metaphysical reality of man. It reflects God's own infinite concern for man, God's love and care for man's inmost being...

It is not only human nature that is 'saved' by the divine mercy, but above all the human person. The object of salvation is that which is unique, irreplaceable, incommunicable- that which is myself alone. This true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescence.

I love the idea of "god's own infinite concern" and "god's love and care for man's inmost being" as salvation- especially during those times of distress.

I was actually first introduced to the word salvation though through Barbara Brown Taylor's 2006 book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith.

In the very last chapter of the book Ms. Taylor writes about a question she was once posed at a church gathering: Tell us what is saving your life now.

She writes:

It was such a good question that I have made a practice of asking others to answer it even as I continue to answer it myself.

Then, she goes on to define "salvation," in her own felt experience of the Christian word.

Salvation is so much more than many of its proponents would have us believe. In the Bible, human beings experience God's salvation when peace ends war, when food follows famine, when health supplants sickness and freedom trumps oppression. Salvation is a word for the divine spaciousness that comes to human beings in all the tight places where their lives are at risk, regardless of how they got there or whether they know God's name.

Sometimes it comes as an extended human hand and sometimes as a bolt from the blue, but either way it opens a door in what looked for all the world like a wall.

I love that phrase: divine spaciousness that comes to human beings in all the tight places...

The tiger. The cliff. The vine. The mice.

Ms. Taylor ends the book by listing some of the "luscious strawberries" that were saving her life at the time she wrote the book. She included:

*teaching at a college,

*living in relationship with creation,

*observing the Sabbath,

*encountering God in other people, and

*committing to the task of becoming fully human.

While re-examining Ms. Taylor's  fantastic list, and waiting for my Cardiology appointment, I've been contemplating: what is saving my life right now?

For the time being, I would have to say, my list probably would not include the big stuff, the salvation I really aspire to. 

Instead, it would most likely include mini-salvations, like snack size.

For example, A bike ride,

A field of golden rod,

Dawn,

Great food that is pretty too,

Meditation by the river,

Meditation by the ocean.

 

And going to church.

However, even when I am able to notice that moment of salvation for what it is, I think what can still make this list hard for me is that I forget to remember that:

1.) it is not merit based, and

2.) it is not indulgence to engage these experiences during stressful times.

Author Anne Lamott reminded me of these two obstacles in her 2014 book Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace when she said:

In my thirties, my system crashed. I got sober, because I had gone crazy. A few women in the community reached out to me. They recognized me as s frightened lush. I told them about my most vile behavior, and they said, 'Me, too!'...I couldn't seem to get them to reject me. It was a nightmare, and then my salvation.

Hugh.  So the salvation, the luscious strawberry, is not merit based and not indulgence...  Very counterintuitive. Very tricky for someone like me.

On the other hand, when hanging on the side of a cliff, with a tiger above, and mice eating the vine I hang from, what have I got to lose?

Maybe I should just go ahead and eat the gosh-darn strawberry, and dare-I-say, enjoy it?

May it be so.