Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, February 24, 2019<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I last brought the message, in early December, I spoke about Parker Palmer\u2019s Habits of the Heart, from his book Healing the Heart of Democracy<\/em>. The Habits of the Heart are five interlocking habits that Parker has outlined in the belief that developing and practicing these habits can help individuals from diverse backgrounds better hold tensions in society. As a reminder, the five habits are: <\/p>\n\n\n\n In\nDecember I talked about Habit 1: that we must understand that we are all in\nthis together, and Habit 2: that we must develop an appreciation of the value\nof \u201cotherness.\u201d Today I am turning to Habit 3: \u201cWe must cultivate the ability\nto hold tension in life-giving ways.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a way\nin to thinking about that, I want to share with you a quote from Rainer Maria\nRilke\u2019s \u201cLetters to a Young Poet.\u201d Rilke writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBe\npatient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the\nquestions themselves, like closed rooms and like books written in a strange\ntongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given because you would\nnot be able to live them\u2014and the point is to live everything. Live the\nquestions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along\nsome distant day into the answers.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n These\nwords have resonated for me ever since I first heard them, probably because I\nhave spent so much of my adult life trying to find answers that have been hard\nto come by. In school there was an answer for everything, or at least, so it\nseemed. And so, as I have navigated the first nearly-20 years of adulthood, I\nguess it is not surprising that I get thrown off by questions and situations\nthat don\u2019t have an obvious answer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rilke\u2019s\ncall to \u201clove the questions,\u201d and to \u201clive the questions\u201d is challenging for me\nbecause it means embracing not knowing and embracing the lack of a clear\nanswer. But it is also liberating. It is liberating to take a deep breath and\nbelieve with certainty \u2013 even if only for a few minutes \u2013 that I do not have to\nanswer my questions today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In my\nadult life one of the biggest questions that remains unanswered is a question\nabout career path. I have always been a goal-oriented person, so my natural\ntendency in my 20s was to pick something and aim towards it with equal parts\nintensity and rigidity. On the cusp of turning 30, the economy crashed, and it\nseemed like all of my hard work towards a career crashed out from under me. All\nof a sudden I was left to consider what to do with a brand new degree in a\nfield that simply wasn\u2019t hiring anywhere in the country. For the first time in\nmy goal-oriented life, I was really lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finding my\nway again has involved a certain amount of re-learning how to be in the world\nand how to approach navigating a path forward. In many ways, I have been living\na version of what Parker Palmer would call a \u201ctragic gap.\u201d Parker describes the\n\u201ctragic gap\u201d as being the gap between the way things are, and the way we know\nthey might be. In my case, this was the gap between knowing that I had all the\nskills to be able to land a good job and the reality of being an unemployed\nnewly-minted dramaturg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parker\nspeaks often of \u201cstanding and acting\u201d in the tragic gap\u2014being able to hold the\ntension between reality and possibility in a way that can open up a new and\ndifferent way forward. Standing in a tragic gap and holding that tension is\nhard. It means resisting being pulled towards either pole of the gap: not\nresigning ourselves to the way things are or giving into cynicism and\ndisengagement on the one hand; not allowing ourselves to escape into excessive\nidealism or fantasies on the other hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nchallenge of standing and acting in the tragic gap is as relevant in the ways\nin which we interact with society as it is in our personal lives. I know that\nthere are many people in this Meeting who are probably standing in their own\nversion of the tragic gap as they work on societal, political, and global\nproblems: climate change, gun violence, immigration, education. The list could\ngo on and on, the relevance of the idea of the tragic gap has no limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think\nthe idea of the tragic gap is also key to understanding what Parker means when\nhe names the third Habit of the Heart as being: An ability to hold tension in\nlife-giving ways. As he fleshes out his description of this habit, Parker\nwrites, \u201cOur lives are filled with contradictions\u2014from the gap between our\naspirations and our behavior to observations and insights we cannot abide\nbecause they run counter to our convictions. If we fail to hold them\ncreatively, these contradictions will shut us down and take us out of the\naction. But when we allow their tensions to expand our hearts, they can open us\nto new understandings of ourselves and our world, enhancing our lives and\nallowing us to enhance the lives of others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This\ntension-holding, this standing in the tragic gap, is tremendously challenging.\nIt means having to let go of preconceived notions of what is best, of what the\npath forward should be, of thinking we have the answer. Sometimes we may have\nthe answer, but I think that holding tension in live-giving ways demands of us\nto let go of our answers for a little while and be able to live in the\nquestions. When we can live in the questions, and love the questions, as Rilke\nexhorts his correspondent to do in \u2018Letters to a Young Poet\u2019 we expand our\ncapacity for listening to other answers. In listening, to both ourselves and\nothers, we may be better able to walk the line between the poles of a tragic gap,\nfinding a new way forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Israeli\npoet Yehuda Amichai has a beautiful short poem that I think encapsulates this\nidea of living the questions, and I would like to share it with you. It is\ncalled \u201cThe Place Where We Are Right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the place where we are right<\/p>\n\n\n\n flowers will never grow<\/p>\n\n\n\n in the Spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The place where we are right<\/p>\n\n\n\n is hard and trampled<\/p>\n\n\n\n like a yard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But doubts and loves<\/p>\n\n\n\n dig up the world<\/p>\n\n\n\n like a mole, a plough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And a whisper will be heard in the place<\/p>\n\n\n\n where the ruined<\/p>\n\n\n\n house once stood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we settle back into silence, I ask you three questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n (1) What questions are you living at this time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n (2) In what place are you standing that will not allow flowers to grow?<\/p>\n\n\n\n (3) What doubts and loves help you dig up the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, February 24, 2019 When I last brought the message, in early December, I spoke about Parker Palmer\u2019s Habits of the Heart, from his book Healing the Heart of Democracy. The Habits of the Heart … Continue reading