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The Now of Job

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Job is an amazing character in the Bible. He was wealthy beyond imagining.

Job 1:1-3
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil. 2 There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3 He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and very many servants; so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. (RSV)

He was righteous, even offering extra sacrifices for his children just in case they made a transgression unintentionally. They would all spend days together having feasts at each other’s houses.

Job 1:5
5 And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually. (RSV)

But then he lost it all.

Job 1:13-22
13 Now there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house; 14 and there came a messenger to Job, and said, “The oxen were plowing and the asses feeding beside them; 15 and the Sabe′ans fell upon them and took them, and slew the servants with the edge of the sword; and I alone have escaped to tell you.” 16 While he was yet speaking, there came another, and said, “The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; and I alone have escaped to tell you.” 17 While he was yet speaking, there came another, and said, “The Chalde′ans formed three companies, and made a raid upon the camels and took them, and slew the servants with the edge of the sword; and I alone have escaped to tell you.” 18 While he was yet speaking, there came another, and said, “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house; 19 and behold, a great wind came across the wilderness, and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead; and I alone have escaped to tell you.” 20 Then Job arose, and rent his robe, and shaved his head, and fell upon the ground, and worshiped. 21 And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” 22 In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. (RSV)

It is amazing that Job doesn’t complain or freak out when he hears all of this bad news. Notice that each messenger hadn’t even quit speaking before the next one came in with even worse news.

Remember how bad news is said to come in threes? He got four. All at once. He didn’t even have time to recover from each blow before he received the next one.

Then he personally is afflicted with sores all over his body.

Job 2:9-10
9 Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God, and die.”10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips. (RSV)

He praises God and accepts what is given to him. What a model for “being in the now” It reminds me of the story of Jonah. He praised God while in the belly of the whale. While in the middle of a bad situation, he praised God. He didn’t say “If you get me out of this I’ll praise you.” He didn’t know if he was even going to get out of it. In fact, just before, he thought he was going to drown from being thrown overboard during a storm. Things weren’t great, but he was alive, having been rescued in an improbable way.

Job and Jonah teach us a lot about accepting where and how we are, just as we are.

Now is the time.

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A coworker just died. His wife died about a month ago. He was young. They were both young.

He had been not taking care of himself for the past year, ever since she got sick. His blood pressure was high. He drank a lot of sodas and ate a lot of breakfast sandwiches. He ate fast food. He never took time to exercise.

He said that he used to take care of himself, but that he just didn’t have time now.

Now it is too late.

Pointless. Pointless. Pointless.

Such a waste of a life.

Jeff Russell was a good man. He was kind, caring, and funny. He could do any impression. He brought cookies and snacks for us all the time. He was good with the patrons. He was easygoing. He didn’t gossip or badmouth anybody.

And he suffered. He was quiet about his pain and his loss. He didn’t know how to handle life after his wife died.

He laid down because he wasn’t feeling well, and he didn’t wake up. His family thinks it was a heart attack.

His heart stopped. It was broken. His sadness filled him up and drowned him, and he died.

Now is the time. There is no other time to eat well, to exercise, to take care of yourself. There is no other time to rest, relax, and process your feelings. Now. Or never.

You have to build up your flame, or it will go out. You, and nobody else, can do this. You must do this.

Tomorrow doesn’t exist. Today is all you have. Use it well.

Shorts

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Try not to take life personally.

Forgive yourself and others.

Keep trying.

You are never too old to be a child.

Childish and childlike are different things.

Don’t wait – tomorrow may never happen.

How you spend your days is how you spend your life.

Be mindful. Autopilot is for planes, not for people.

You are responsible for your own feelings – not anybody else’s.

Love is a better motivator than fear.

What you expect to see, you will see.

Poem – Sad birds

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Not every baby bird
learns how to fly.

Not every story
has a storybook ending.

Sometimes the ending
is the ending
and not a beginning.

It is healthy to know this.

It is part of knowing
what is,
of accepting
the truth.

Sometimes people
can’t
won’t
don’t.

Sometimes things break
and stay broken.

Vicious circle – on codependency

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I know a few people who are having a hard time accepting what is happening to them right now. I’m really worried, and I want to help them. If only they could accept the reality of the situation they are in, things will start to get better. If only they could stop hoping and wishing that things were different, they’d start to heal.

Sometimes we are the ones who have to make a change. Sometimes we are in bad situations that are presented to us because we are the ones who are supposed to fix them.

But sometimes things just can’t be changed. Sometimes things are just as they are, and there is no getting around them.

Sometimes the only way is to go through the grief and the pain, and to see it for what it is.

But then I realized I’m doing the very same thing. I’m not accepting the reality of the situation. I’m not accepting that their pain and inability to face it is in fact the reality.

It is all a great big circle of codependency.

Poem – the moon does not change

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The moon does not change.
We do.

The moon, with its waxing
and waning
its new and old,
the moon is the same
to the moon.

It is us who change,
us who move.

It is our tilt, our time, that is different.

We forget this.

We mark time by the moon, the months of our lives.
We celebrate, we howl, we dance,
all based on the moon
and how it reflects the light of the sun.

The moon doesn’t change.

It is still the same moon, reflecting the same sun, day by night,
night by day.

All the time, up in the sky, it is reflecting
mirror-like,
the rays of the sun to someone.

Your day is another’s night,
after all.

So when we howl, when we dance, when we celebrate
what are we marking?

Why do we use the moon, the same moon,
to tell us
when it is time
to dance, to howl, to celebrate?

Perhaps because we have no other way
to say
that time
is passing by
quickly.

Pay attention.

The winters only come once a year.
We can mark time by them, but then
it is too late
to change
direction.

The moon reminds us faster, and more kindly.

Yet we need to remember
that the moon doesn’t change.
We do.

Poem – Spring’s progression

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First the redbuds, then the dogwoods
then jonquils
then irises.

They come, in that order, marching
into our lives, heralding
Spring.

They flower together only in our minds.
They flower one by one,
in the slow progression of time.

None see the others in their prime.
The dogwood’s bloom dusts the ground
that the iris dances upon.

Time and time and time
and more.

We mark it by the flowers.

We know when is when by our eyes
and not by the calendar.

Soon the twilight will be lit up by fireflies.
A different kind of bloom,
but still a marking of time.

You are here, now, they say.
Enjoy it.
Soon there will be another delight, they say.
Enjoy it.

It won’t last, but that is part
of the beauty.

Really?

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I know a lady who is constantly saying “Really?” It isn’t used to say that something is truly that way, or to express surprise. It is used in an exasperated way. It is used as a way to express frustration. She does this several times a day, sometimes several times an hour.

The weird thing is that she is a grandmother. She is old enough not to say “Really?” all the time. It sounds so immature. It sounds that way because it is.

It isn’t the word that is the issue – it is the thought behind the word. She says “Really?” because she’s constantly upset that her version of reality doesn’t match up with actual reality. She’s constantly being unpleasantly surprised about how her version of real isn’t really real.

The trick is that she needs to adapt her reality to what reality actually is or she will constantly be upset.

Really.

It is always Friday

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There was a great sci-fi series called Farscape. There was an episode in the first season called “Thank God it’s Friday…Again”. In it, the residents of the planet were drugged into working every day. Every day they were told that the next day was going to be a “rest period”. Every day they worked joyfully, and then they partied at night. Then they would get up again and work hard in the fields again, thinking it was Friday, again.

It was genius, really. Convince them that they were almost there.

It was the carrot just out of reach.

It was the Promised Land.

It was retirement.

It was a vacation.

They were always living for some other time, some time other than when they were right then. They were happy because they were about to rest, but the rest never came. They were getting exhausted because they never really got to rest. They were duped by a society that drugged them into compliance.

Sound familiar?

Our society teaches us this. We are taught to live for the future. We are taught that there is a mythical tomorrow where everything is going to be better and brighter and happier. We are drugged by television “reality” shows and five hour energy drinks. We are drugged by too much of the wrong kind of food. We are drugged by ads that tell us “you deserve this”. We are drugged all the time and we don’t even know it.

I’ve heard of prisoners who were taught to meditate. They were taught not to focus on their lives that they imagined were going to be like once they were released. They were taught not to focus on what they had done to get in prison. They were taught to just be, in the moment, right then. Just feel the feelings that are happening right now.

We are all in prison and we don’t even know it. There is a prison without walls. It is the prison of culture that tells us that we aren’t good enough, and beautiful enough, not smart enough. It tells us that we simply just aren’t enough, no matter what.

We can do the same meditation the prisoners do. We can be, right here, feeling our feelings right now. We’ve been taught to run away from our feelings, from ourselves, from our lives. We spend so much time living in the past or the future that we never spend time actually in the now. Now is all we have.

So it isn’t Friday. It isn’t even Thursday. It is Monday, or Tuesday, and you aren’t there yet. It isn’t retirement. It is just your third year on the job, and you’ve got at least 20 more to go. It isn’t the Bahamas, it is the Bronx.

Be here now. Be right here. If you aren’t happy where you are, then you won’t be happy there either. If you don’t appreciate what you have, then why would you appreciate what you are going to get?

Stop living for the future. It never comes. When you get to the future that you’ve dreamed of, you’ll have spent so much of your life living in a fantasy that you won’t know how to just be in the moment, right then. It is better to start just being in the moment. Practice now.

Today is your “rest period”. What you have now is now. Enjoy it. Even if you are at work. Even if you are in a miserable marriage. Even if you are sick.

Be. Now. Here.

Be NowHere.

Be.

Irish day

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I don’t understand how St. Patrick’s Day has gotten equated with getting drunk. But then again, to be fair, every holiday in America is equated with that.

Cinco de Mayo and St. Patrick ’s Day are both ethnic holidays where people who aren’t even of that ethnicity get roaringly drunk. People who don’t even know anything about the culture before they start to drink get so bombed that they don’t even know anything about their own culture by the time they are done. But it isn’t just these holidays. New Year’s, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Memorial Day – you name it, if there is a holiday, Americans are drinking to it.

Perhaps we collectively have a holiday problem. Perhaps we are just so wound up from our jobs and our families and our lives that we have to escape, at least mentally, every time there is a holiday. Perhaps we need to create lives that don’t need to be escaped from. This doesn’t mean we need to get a better paying job or a bigger house or more friends. This means we need to start appreciating what we have now.

I’m reminded of the story in Exodus, of the Israelites escaping from Egypt. They were slaves in Egypt, but now they are free. They are grumbling to Moses about how they don’t have any food in the desert. They say they were better off in Egypt, that at least they had meat. Right now they have almost nothing, just this crazy manna that shows up every morning. It isn’t what they want. It is filling, and it provides energy, but it is boring. They complain, and Moses complains to God. God thinks they are ungrateful and sends enough quail that they are up to their knees in the birds. They gorge on the quail and get very sick. They never ask for meat again. It doesn’t mean that they don’t ask for anything else – but on that, they’ve learned their lesson.

To me, St. Patrick’s Day is about celebrating the persistence of the heart of Celtic life amidst adversity. The Irish suffered greatly at home and in America a century ago. They were the “immigrant problem” of the time. To be Irish is to endure despite hardship, and to keep your Self intact amidst a culture that wants you to assimilate.

This is something that transcends culture and ethnicity. For all of us who are staying true to your inner Being and not yielding to a culture that tells you to buy more, be mindless, to not care – you are Irish, regardless of your ethnicity.

St. Patrick’s Day isn’t a drinking holiday. It is a holiday about persistence and endurance. It is an Exodus story. It is about finding a safe place to be. Let us remember everything we have gone through to get where we are. Let us not make “here” another “there” that has to be escaped from.