Humility is in the Circumambulation of Life

There’s one counselling concept that continues to remind me of the humility required to live the successful life.  And that successful life is in the plain acceptance that we will need to eat humble pie with a generous heart on occasion.  It’s good for us.

Circumambulation means to walk around a holy place.  The very nature of life is that we walk around and around and around the circumstances of our lives that repeat to teach us a lesson or two.

The same lessons in slightly different circumstances, around and around we go, throughout life.

Today I learned something that I first learned 30 years ago.  You know when you have that moment, and it’s always an uncomfortable moment, where you think, “I’ve been here before, a very long time ago, and I thought I’d learn the lesson then.”  It was such a simple thing.  To include a quieter member in a group.  For years I’ve skilfully drawn out the quiet one, always seeking to even up group dynamics.  Today I was reminded to do it again.  The temptation to pride of course meant that I needed to simply listen and smile and agree with the truth I was informed about.  It was delivered kindly and well.  It was beautiful.  But hard.  Yet necessary.  There was gold in the experience, but only if I succumbed and listened with a humble heart.  I don’t always, but I did so on this occasion.

It's just one simple example, that the older we get the more we realise we will need to relearn and relearn many things in our lives, as we encounter these old things in new ways.

We learn nothing when we respond in pride.  But we serve others when we listen and agree to learn again, demonstrating that we have the capacity of humility to simply take on board what is meant for our betterment.  And not only do we learn nothing when we respond in pride, but we hurt others in the process.

Circumambulation is a good term for this phenomenon where we re-learn again and again.

When we find we are schooled in a thing that we previously thought we’d mastered, it is one of the biggest tests of our pride and humility.  The fact is, we need to meet this test with gratitude instead of annoyance.  Then, and only then, as we resist the pride of reacting against the feedback, do we make the practice of circumambulation a reality.

Learning, and particularly relearning, are sacred practices.  They are veritably the difference between life and death.  When we have a teachable attitude, we demonstrate humility, and we resist narcissism.  Indeed, it can be seen that the best leaders are learners, ever humble enough to be ever respectful of the sacred process of circumambulation they are privileged to partake in.  Circumambulation is a honourable pastime as it ushers us to the doorway of humility.

One of the lessons of old age is the acceptance of our past, warding against regret, grateful for the years lived, less anxious than ever, and especially the acceptance that the more honour that is due to us for our gathering and plenteous years is often thwarted by the young who think they know better.  Sometimes they do.

Part of the privilege of ageing is not resenting being taught by the young.  It’s being humble enough to allow them to teach us, especially if they are kind about it.  They too will have their opportunity of learning and relearning their lessons more and more as they age.  They will have the same tests that we have—those tests of our annoyed pride rising to scorch the ears of the one trying to help us.

Life is an invitation to humility, and the more humility we show, the more gratitude is on offer for the simple things in life.  Life has so much to show us, but we’ll see precious little of it when our pride looms large.  Pride is a blinding force, much as any sin is.

The honour of life is being gentle with ourselves and others when it comes to being taught fresh lessons about things we learnt long ago.

Think of the peace that this holy circumambulation brings when we don’t always need to be right, when we resist defensiveness, and can allow others their opportunity of showing us things.  Instead of a scowl, it can be a “thank you.”

There’s good character in being wrong in a right way
but being right by doing it wrong only creates hurt.

Humility is the first lesson in life and it’s also the last one.  All through life, nothing will test us more than opportunities to be humble.  Especially these days.

Anxiety and the longer journey to peace

Sometimes you realise how much you needed a break only after having commenced it.  Suddenly there is the presence in the conscious mind of the anxiety one has been blocking out.  There had been a certain awareness of it, but there’s nothing like stopping as you face what is an altogether disconcerting frame of being.

So we stopped.  Having been on a frenetic path for weeks beforehand, planning a trip, organising things for when we’re away, organising contingencies whilst we’re on the road, working hard to achieve the space to relax—which is an utter paradox—we finally found ourselves away from home, out of range, unplugged, on the road, in the bush.

Time to relax...

Yet...

The quietness of the bush teases a tired soul with its serenity.  But a tired soul cannot put everything down just as simply as that.  It is an enigma that the hypervigilance in the tired soul craves the activity that got it tired in the first place.  And nothing drives hypervigilance like always having stuff to do—I mean, stuff you MUST do.

The tired soul is quite sick of people, but still so willing to be busy.  And that is a clue to anxiety.  In the first place, it’s the abandonment of care that lets the anxiety in, which is the very dysfunction of busyness, and in second place, anxiety is the will to control and make safe of everything.  This is a madness, for so few things can be controlled in this life, but my anxious soul insists on entertaining insanity.

Out in the bush, where there is a wafting breeze, still trees, a tweeting of birds, and the occasional buzz of mosquitos and flies, even a kangaroo or four, the environment is so stark from what the tired soul is used to.

The tired and anxious soul senses a problem; one should be able to relax out here, but there are problems to be resolved first, a multiplicity of little problems that leave the soul unable to sit even for a full minute and enjoy whatever the senses take in.

But the first task to be achieved in relaxing is the quest to remain watchful for signs of anxiety.  As surely as anxiety does come, notice how it rises, sometimes to the level of an instantaneous panic, though it doesn’t usually manifest in panicked feelings.  Normally it manifests simply in the need to control small things that with confidence don’t warrant a concern.  Sometimes anxiety is irritation, frustration, and the fight trauma response.

This is the clue that we are anxious, we don’t feel safe, or we feel vulnerable, and therefore we need to control little things.  We can be miserable to live with.  I do wonder at this point, for those who are given to attributions of narcissism, how many are simply anxious?

The body also has its way of telling you things are not quite right.  Or perhaps it’s the other way around, and the body is simply a focus point, and any little niggle or pain becomes a cause for concern—again, these are minuscule things that don’t warrant concern.  At times, this can be a body image thing, where preoccupation becomes the clearest sign of the presence of anxiety.

It’s simply good to be aware when we are battling anxiety.  Without awareness we can do nothing.  I always found that in noticing in my irrational irritability there was often the presence of unheralded anxiety and/or depression.  Irritability I couldn’t control, therefore, was a sign that I was on my way to a full-blown depression.  In times past I mean.

One thing I noticed in my anxiety was the absence of anxiety in my wife.  She had planned 90% of the trip, the logistics, the routes, the accommodation, etc.  Once we were out on the road her performance continued unabated.  She seemed to know when to do what and how to do it, whereas I felt constantly discombobulated unless things were straightforward.  At times, I felt annoyed and even a little threatened by this apparent disparity between her performance and my own.  I stared at my incompetence and my confidence in those moments was shot.  There were a couple of moments when my anxiety shone a shadow across the light of finally being together alone.

My discombobulation was the sign that I’d been driven hard by the wind into the island of the loss of control.  Only six weeks beforehand, I was frequently heard to answer the question, “How are you going?” with, “Truly, never better.”  And that was genuinely true.  How could one slide from the best state I’d ever been in, to a place where anxiety battled for my peace?  It shows how quickly we can relinquish our peace, just like we can rise out of the ashes like the proverbial phoenix.  All because my optimisation had gone from a healthy 85% to something like 105%.  I’d been “on” for weeks on end and it had to stop.

It is a good thing to have problems like this to resolve, because they shed light onto the inner workings of our souls.  Some of my anxiety is due to having still more to do, some of it is down to my attachment style, but most of it is about finding a way to decompress.

It just takes time, and we need to allow ourselves this time, and it is especially good to watch how present (or not) we can be or are.

~

One of the things we all need is a little agency, which is some level of control over the living of our lives.  Interestingly, however, if the rest of our lives is challenging and tough, I believe it equips us for confidence and agency.  Overcoming anxiety isn’t so much living a life of ease which only leads to entitlement, it’s about choosing to rest when we can and noticing how successful we are in this quest, which gets us strategising for a way through.

Full schedules do nothing to assist us in the maintaining of spiritual equilibrium, of which we all need.  Full schedules only serve to prevent us from entering relaxation on a whim.

~

Peace came, and I could tell it had returned because I wanted to be with people again.

A purpose in and beyond hardship and suffering

So often people come to see me wondering, what on earth is the purpose in their hardship and suffering.  It is a lofty and perplexing question, that leaves even purveyors of theological graces like me standing and looking skyward for answers to such questions.

A fresh revelation has me offer this answer.  Out of the title of this article the two operative words are ‘in’ and ‘beyond’.

~

To imagine there is a purpose BEYOND hardship and suffering we must necessarily infer that there is a purpose IN hardship and suffering.  But if we are only to imagine there is a purpose BEYOND hardship and suffering, we will FIND the purpose IN it.

I hope that’s not too confusing.

So if we are to see that there is a purpose beyond in hardship and suffering, we will continue to have hope despite the threat of despair.  In simply reminding ourselves that there is a good purpose beyond hardship and suffering, we are given our way through, and we have a reason to choose to be resilient.

Not that we will always get it right.  We will often stumble and fall, getting it wrong, needing to forgive ourselves, needing to be forgiven by others.

Getting it wrong from time to time, whilst also being on the journey of a reasonable resilience within the hardship and suffering, we find that we don’t need to be anything like perfect.  Good enough, most of the time, is good enough.

An integral part of the journey is being able to reconcile our fear, guilt, and shame as we go, when we get it wrong.  We must be able to afford ourselves grace in our time of need.  If others deserve to be forgiven, we do too.

Holding out hope that there is a purpose beyond our hardship and suffering, helps us IN the hardship and suffering.

This is pretty much what faith is all about.  It’s about borrowing a reasonable and good hope from the future, dragging it back to the present, and focusing in on it, as our modus operandi.  And anything that leads us to living a more hope-filled life within the season or life situation that is perplexingly impossible to reconcile, is a good faith in a good hope, and the resilience we enjoy is the fruit of such faith.

~

The purpose beyond hardship and suffering is a state of learned and adapted resilience that we bear for such a life lived.  Every time we look back, we see the faithfulness of God who gave us strength in our weakness, who gave us a skerrick of hope in the rising despair of a moment going south.  We see what we have been able to endure and withstand!

Rather than simply be crushed by overwhelming lament, we are encouraged that we kept on getting up off the canvas of life, after each body blow, even if it took us longer at times.

We see that God has even used the hardships and suffering we have endured to strengthen us for the present-day challenges that would be enormous just months or a few years ago.  Hardship and suffering therefore have equipping properties about them.  Not least how we use our experiences to help and encourage others.

Not that we have glorified hardship and suffering, or having overcome, yet we are simply grateful for the times that we have endured.

The purpose IN hardship and suffering is the purpose beyond it all.

We must not lose sight that what we are enduring now is sowing up for ourselves capacity for tomorrow; for a tomorrow that may indeed demand more from us than what today’s does. 

~

All this needs to be undergirded with support to help us.  It’s fine to imagine that we’re capable of resilient choices, but without help, support, and assistance along the way—from wise and encouraging others who love us—it will be too much for us.

This is all about the resources we need to tap into.  Don’t forget, none of us are alone along the journey.  We need each other.

Acknowledging the complexities and connection between anger and forgiveness

Those who have suffered injustice inevitably have a relationship with both anger and forgiveness.  Anger is a big part of the triggers that take a person from a stimulus they don’t understand to a place of acting out their anger.  Understanding those triggers is always an initial key in getting a grip on the anger.

Anger can so easily be pathologised as “a lack of forgiveness,” without understanding that anger and forgiveness are interlinked and co-related.  One doesn’t form without the need of the other.  Forgiveness’s antecedent is anger.  And anger’s invitation is forgiveness.

UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT, ANGER & FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness isn’t forgiveness without the apportionment and rectification of anger.  To say that forgiveness could occur without having the need to deal with one’s anger is to say that the issue didn’t really matter, and therefore one can wonder if a case in question is even a genuine case of conflict that required forgiveness.  If it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter.

When we acknowledge that conflict is a difference in opinion or purpose between people that frustrates their goals or desires (from Ken Sande), we necessarily account for the idea that there is an inherent measure of anger to process in conflict.  Acknowledging this helps to de-shame anger and it validates the convoluted work nested within forgiveness.

Anger is not always visible, but as surely as frustration is experienced, there is always a measure of irritation anxiety within conflict.  It’s all too easy to be dishonest about anger.

Many people make a lot about forgiveness, pretending it is easy when it is often complicated by the anger that shades many unknown and confounding nuances, and they simplify something that is not aided in simplification.

Many people also make a lot about forgiveness because they can’t or won’t hold space for a person who needs empathy and time.  Not holding space for someone in this situation speaks more about a lack of love than anything.

STALLING ANGER, FORCING FORGIVENESS

Telling someone they must forgive, without empathising for the anger they feel because of the injustice incurred and the mysteries behind the difficulties experienced, is like knowing someone is going hungry while offering to pray that someone feed them.

It’s just not helpful and says something more about the heart of the person telling a person to forgive, and their unconscious and unacknowledged anxiety, than it says about the person who is struggling to forgive.  What occurs is the person struggling to forgive then must bear what is essentially abandoning and thereby traumatising.

Many people who are angry know that they need to get to a place of acceptance, of forgiveness, for their own benefit, let alone for the benefit of others they care about.

When a person is angry and struggling to forgive it’s often because the injustice simply cannot be reconciled—there are so many different situations like this.  Until a person has been in a situation like this, they don’t really comprehend how difficult it is to process anger, and how complicated it can be to advance upon forgiveness.

THANK GOD FOR THE TRAUMA-INFORMED

Now to one of the purposes of learning how to forgive the hard way.  Experiencing injustice that cannot be reconciled is paradoxically of profound importance and is instructional for their equipping in anyone’s life who wishes to assist in the ministry of the traumatised.  It’s inherent in trauma-informed work, for instance.  Forgiveness and anger are such complex concepts in trauma.

It’s always important to take polarising situations as they come, always resisting the urge to judge anything as good or bad or otherwise.  If there is a situation where a person finds it impossible to forgive, it is not a weakness in them, but simply an opportunity to explore the matter.

There’s always a logical reason as to why anything’s difficult.  The task is to find the reason or reasons.  Where matters can be explored without prejudgement there is the opportunity to be curious where judgement would quench the spirit of trust.  Judgement stems from either ignorance or anxiety (sometimes both), most often the former, due to a lack of empathy.

The trauma-informed have invariably been through their own trauma work.

~

When a person finally achieves forgiveness, a vital component of celebration must be the acknowledgement of the anger that has been processed, and the courage it took to get there.

Processing anger invariably involves navigating the complexity, showing grit borne of humility, and the key element of time, which levels the playing field for us all.

What it means to BE LONG

One of the greatest needs any human being has is to belong.  Every human needs to belong to prosper.  Each person has this need.  Not just in their home, but in their workplace, and in their third place—for so many this is a church, a sporting club, a university, etc.

But have you ever taken a moment to think about what this word really means?

What does it mean to belong?

I think the key to this two-syllable word is in the two syllables themselves.

BE-LONG

The essence of belonging is in being allowed to BE.  Which is such an innocuous way of saying that when we are allowed to BE, we are essentially at home, which means we are relaxed, and we have permission to be ourselves without airs and graces.

There are so many situations in homes, in workplaces, and in every other place where we may find that we not only don’t have permission to be ourselves, but we are also punished for being anything.  There are so many situations where we should be able to BE, yet we cannot because of abusive dynamics borne out of toxic relationships.

Situations where people don’t feel safe bear no feature of being places where they can belong.  It demonstrates that abusive situations are untenable, because where we cannot belong, we cannot live, we cannot thrive, and we can barely survive.  It’s no exaggeration that it is a threat to our life and to our being, being in such toxic situations.  Abusive situations are intolerable.

So this is the BEing part of what it is to belong.

The second part is obviously related to the second syllable of the word, LONG.

In essence, this is what adds a penetrating nuance to the word belong.  What a person needs is to BE, and to be able to do that LONG.  A person needs to BE, with space, without limit, without condition, wholly, functionally, in every way—in a LONG way.  They need to BE LONG.  When the places in life offer such space for time and growth and grace, there is the real sense that these places are LONG on BEing.

We all know this to be true.  When we feel like we belong, we prosper, as much as we prosper around others, and in prospering together we learn what it is to BE in a LONG way.

What the world needs most is more communities where people can BE in a LONG way.

Especially in situations that are long in coercive and controlling ways, where trauma runs rife, we need places for such people where they can BE in a LONG way to begin the healing process where people need the space that LONG affords so as to learn or relearn how to BE.  Anyone who’s ever borne any trauma will know that, whilst it sounds simple, this can seem and even feel like an impossible task.

My vision of the church is that we are to be this place where people can BE in a LONG way.  But surely any community ought to strive for individuals to be safe and prosperous to this degree.

The season eternity stepped into our lives

Perhaps it’s not a day or even the moment, it could even be a whole season, but there is a time when eternity steps into our lives, and completely reforms our living priorities.

This was the season of our lives in 2014, from July 1 onwards, and anyone could say it in terms of loss, but just as much as it was a season of loss for us, it was every bit that eternity stepped into our lives.

From hearing those words uttered from the doctor’s lips, the gravity of his words and a tear in his eye, to walking around aimlessly, to reconciling that we couldn’t reconcile this, to discovering hidden blessings within the pain, it wasn’t just grief, but there was a good portion of the extraordinary, the intangible, that had entered our lives.

It wasn’t as if we were only cut off from a physical world that could not relate, but we were attached just as much to a spiritual world.  It’s not just a silver lining to the cloud.  It’s much more than that, and we may not by default look past the pain and grief to notice it.

There were many times in this season of losing Nathanael that I seemed to have strength, insight, courage, and perseverance that I previously didn’t have.  It was the same for my wife.  There seemed to be a grace about her with all of what was going on, external to us, and internally within her own body.  With a triad of tumult going on, not just the one grief but three, this was the season that should surely have broken us.  But that wasn’t to be, at least not at that time.  That came later when in 2016 we faced the circumstance of our once-supportive world turning away from us.

This day eight years ago we were only coming to terms with what was happening.  We’d only had the confirming amniocentesis the day prior, and the dire results were conclusive.  Even though Nathanael was growing like a steam train, he was on a perilous journey, as were we.

Still, and I can barely understand this, in this season I was still able to work pastorally and focus entirely on people’s needs before me.  It wasn’t like I was partitioning or compartmentalising my life in any way.  Our truth was ever before us.  We never needed to deny it or look away from it or get angry by it.  It just was.

There were times when we were upset, when the gravity of the situation came to be particularly heavy, and the insanity of other circumstances swarming around us.  But these were fleeting moments where we simply looked at each other and continued to press on caring for our 16-month-old son and working together as a family.  Sarah said many times in this season that she was thankful for my work.  It was a necessary foil.

Eternity had stepped into our lives on a single moment in a single day for an entire season, and yet the gift we received is that that eternity never really left.  It is the positive side of grief.

When part of anyone’s life is called heavenward, where there is a requirement to say goodbye, where there are no words to describe or to rationalise the feelings, eternity steps into our lives.  Suddenly, as if overnight, part of the psyche is quarantined for special people in special circumstances.

Suddenly we found ourselves connecting with parents of special needs children.  Suddenly prayer wasn’t just a cliché.  We saw God, living and active, every single day along the journey of frequent medical intervention.  We noticed the provision of energy to do what needed to be done, and only that.  As husband and wife we grew close through observing miracles we saw each day, even if we weren’t granted the major miracle of having our son healed and restored to us to live.

When eternity steps into a person’s life, everything about the life of the person is redefined.  I would call it a heavenly compensation, even if compensation is not the right word.  Somehow for the believer, heaven steps down and makes good out of the horrendous circumstance.  Though the situation of loss and grief does not change, something incredibly indescribable occurs that makes the entire experience not only liveable and survivable, but worthwhile, and especially memorable.

When I counsel people from a grief perspective, I try not to prejudge their experience.  This is because our experience opened our eyes to the degree that even now, we cannot explain how blessed we felt even though it was the worst experience of our lives.

The only thing I can say is that in loss and grief, eternity steps into our lives.  When eternity steps into our lives, we are shocked, but the fact is it lingers there eternally, and it visits each one of us at our appointed living or dying time, and for many the eternal encounter may occur several times in our lives.

Once we grapple with this idea, that loss and grief aren’t the end of life, but the concept itself is the very beginning from an eternal perspective, we quickly reconcile, at least in theory, that nothing can conquer us in this life.

There’s something very much of God in that.

Boundaries for the prevention of burnout

It seems that the well-intentioned person is most susceptible to burn out given their desire to invest in life and to bless others.  Inevitably we come to a place where we need to institute boundaries to protect and provide for our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Many of us want to do so much, be available to others, and ultimately make a difference in this life, for the time we’re alive.  This is the eternal perspective that respects the integration of two contrasting ideas: that life is fleeting, and we can’t waste it, with its opposite, that what we do must be sustainable.

Then there’s another dynamic that seems ever out of our control.

This is every circumstance, whether it is people or the varying situations that occur in life, where things happen to a person.  If it weren’t for this dynamic, there would be no need for boundaries.

Wisdom is instructive for the institution of boundaries to protect the most vital resource we have—our vitality, our verve—in order that we can provide what our life requires of us.

Simply put, what protects a person from burnout are the positive activities that replenish one’s soul.  I learned years ago the importance of that word, replenish.  The demands of life tear at the cords of our enthusiasm and strip us of vital energies.  What burnout teaches us most is we need to be proactive in filling our lives with pastimes of replenishment.

Replenishment for most people will be about protecting the little discretionary time that’s available, to invest in quality activities such as time with loved ones and our own quiet time.

Taking into account the people in our lives, and the obligations we find ourselves tied to, that call of duty leaves those of who care taxed, and it tests the very tip of our resilience.

Many of those who say they have excellent boundaries also don’t have the service work ethic that many who care do.  Their “boundaries” are self-serving priorities, effected to protect their time to do their thing.  Selfishness is too easily branded as boundaries, especially when the selfish person criticises a caring person for having “poor boundaries.”

The key opportunity is combining two concepts: 
the service work ethic WITH boundaries.

A service work ethic is an excellent thing, 
but the challenge is being drawn into busyness.

Those who have good hearts see needs and they do what they can to fill those needs.  People with good hearts are not necessarily pushovers or people pleasers.  They want to contribute toward the colouring of the canvas of life.  But there are those who view such a service work ethic in a good heart as an invitation to exploit that goodwill and those same people call the good-hearted “weak” when they begin to wilt rather than acknowledge their service.

The recognition of the need for boundaries is an important step in reconciling a balance is required.  There are those however who will cry foul that a person’s boundaries cut their access for exploitation.  Sometimes this sort of thing is an affirmation our boundaries are on the right track.

“REPLENISH”

Is it okay if I finish on the positive?

Essentially everything that we need to restore ourselves in the season of fatigue is captured in the word, replenish.  Prioritising time and space and hope for replenishment is necessary.  Ordinarily this is done within the busyness of the life we’re called to continue to lead.

This means there’s often no need for dramatic departures from what has led us to this place of physical exhaustion, mental flatness, emotional crisis, and spiritual emptiness.

First, we can build ourselves up with the mindset of replenishment.  This is first and foremost about thinking in gratitude about the smallest things of blessed protection and provision.  It’s about breathing—in-out... in-out... in-out... slower and slower... you get the idea.  It’s about taking a moment to smile in the mirror each day.  It’s about attending to the basics of prioritising sleep, good diet, and a sprinkling of exercise.

Within replenishment is a positive series of actions that necessitate boundaries.  It’s no good continuing with the same tortuous workload and adding activities of replenishment.

As the positive augments our lives, boundaries curtail our accessibility to those who would exploit the goodness in our hearts.  We learn that saying no on occasion is empowering.  We’re affirmed that those who respect our boundaries are relationships to nurture, just as we’re cautioned that those who don’t are relationships to avoid.  We begin to appreciate that our boundaries don’t discriminate—some of our closest relationships need to be redefined.  Some end or access is sharply reduced.  It causes conflict, but again, we’re empowered to gently and kindly reinforce what we know to be the only way to sustain the goodness in our hearts for the long haul.