“Our personal demons come in many guises. We experience them as shame, as jealousy, as abandonment, as rage. They are anything that makes us so uncomfortable that we continually run away. We do the big escape: we act out, say something, slam a door, hit someone, or throw a pot as a way of not facing what’s happening in our hearts. Or we shove the feelings under and somehow deaden the pain. We can spend our whole lives escaping from the monsters of our minds. All over the world, people are so caught in running that they forget to take advantage of the beauty around them. We become so accustomed to speeding ahead that we rob ourselves of joy.” (Pema Chodron. When Things Fall Apart (Shambhala Classics) (pp. 40-41). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.)

“When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. ¹⁰ She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. ¹¹ When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it.” (Mark 16:9-11)

Pema Chodron developed her book When Things Fall Apart as she gradually read through some teachings she had written over many years. She says, “I began to see that in some way, no matter what subject I had chosen, what country I was in, or what year it was, I had taught endlessly about the same things: the great need for loving-kindness toward oneself, and developing from that the awakening of a fearlessly compassionate attitude toward our own pain and that of others.” She seemed to return again and again to what she calls “groundlessness”.

What Pema Chodron calls “goundlessness” is what Buddhists call impermanence – the feeling that there is no ground under our feet. Her advice for us when we feel this way? She suggests we open our lives up to the groundlessness. When life leaves us feeling as if we are sinking, we often want to run as fast as we can to escape such feelings. Unfortunately, in running away, we can increase our suffering rather than reduce it. Or we push the feelings so deep within hoping to deaden the pain, only to find we become dead inside.

Rather than running away, or pushing the pain deep within, it is healthier to meet that pain, that loss, that suffering face to face. The way to find firm grounding under our feet is resist running, and instead to face our pain – embrace our loss – live on solid ground of G-d’s love, mercy and grace. Mary Magdalene, the one whom Jesus had cast out so many demons, could have lived her life in hiding, but there she was on the first day of the resurrection embracing her relationship with Jesus. As the Sunday school song goes, the wise person builds their spiritual house on the solid ground of Jesus Christ – who loves us despite our struggles.

Pastor Dave

“All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good: And, spite of pride in erring reason’s spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right” (Epilogue I)

(Alexander Pope. Essay on Man and Other Poems: By Alexander Pope – Illustrated (p. 16). Kindle Edition.)

“He (Lincoln) realized that the idea that God takes sides leads to narrowness and, at worst, bloodshed. It was important, in his view, for humans to believe in a Divine Being but equally important for them not to pretend to understand God’s purposes.” (David Reynolds, Abraham Lincoln in his Times, (p. 54), Kindle Edition)

Another life lesson that I have come to learn in my short life is this: the path we hope for and the path that is presented to us usually are not one and the same. For example, I had thought I might attend seminary back in 1991. In fact, I had started the paperwork to begin that journey. But then my life’s journey took a turn that rambled this way and that for nine years before I could come back to my seminary studies. Was this G-d’s plan for me? It was a question I struggled with for some time – until I realized that some of my most formidable life experiences happened in those nine years.

Abraham Lincoln once recited the above words from Pope’s poem An Essay On Man to a friend who asked him about his religious views. Lincoln recited these verses from memory, words that come at the very end of Epilogue I. Reynolds goes on to say about Lincoln: “The best one could do, he (Lincoln) realized, was to attempt to align good works with one’s sense of justice, without ever being assured that one knew God’s plan.”

We cannot always or ever completely know G-d’s ways, or G-d’s plans in our lives. All we can do is trust that G-d is in control, and then learn from the experiences we encounter. Every experience, every failure, every success, every pothole can be a lesson that will lead us down the path G-d always intended, realizing that whatever path we are on, is the right one. As Pope writes: “One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.”

Pastor Dave