Living with an open hand

I went to the David Wilcox concert tonight... it was like a revival for my poor, weary heart. It brought up a lot of epiphanies about stuff going on in my life right now. Most of my epiphany was how good it felt to just chill out and listen. I don't do that very often. Stopping my life to listen to David Wilcox's story-songs seems like a luxury and also a little scary because he might bring some stuff up in his songs that open up some truths in my life. I found myself spontaneously weeping and thinking "Crap, I so don't want to deal with this feeling right now". But there I was, weeping. It wasn't that I felt sad, it was just that I felt home. So in a way it was like a "good" sad, you know?

He played two songs that really met me where I am right now. The first is a song called "Deeper Still" which is about as heartbreaking as a song can get, but also sings of hope. How do we go on when life gets so hard? As David Wilcox sings, "you will always have what you gave to love".

The next song he sang that really touched me was a song called "Open Hand". If you want to live life, live it with an open hand. Receiving something is always better than demanding it, right? I want to be able to receive what God gives to me with an open hand, I know that if I clutch onto anything, my appreciation of the gift decreases by about 10.

i dunno...David Wilcox is just amazing. This posting is just to say that and give you an opportunity to agree with me. :-)

The sea is still the sea...

How much does anger cost?

I'll admit, I've been frustrated lately. It is easy for that frustration to manifest into anger and then for the anger to manifest into bitterness. And then the bitterness makes us feel more bloated than a hot dog eating contest. The truth is, anger does nothing for us. It is like drinking poison and expecting the object of our anger to die. And yet, we have such a hard time releasing ourselves from it. It is almost addictive. If we could just get a witness or some validation for our anger, then we'd be free of it.

Well, that doesn't solve problems. The truth is that life is sometimes unfair and sometimes we don't agree with people or practices. And instead of accepting that, we get angry-er-er. These are the people at health care reform town hall meetings, these are the people who have talk shows on news networks, these are the people who have escalated to near stroke levels in their inability to process difficult emotions.

I was told this summer that I am in the "in" group where I work. I don't know about that. I tend to deal with difficult situations by problem solving or rationalizing, rather than escalating the situation to epic levels of "THIS-IS-SPARTA!!-push-you-off-a-cliff" madness. I wasn't always this way. I can be pretty emotional and scream-y and blood pressure raisingly grrrrrrr sometimes. But that emotional torment has never aided my cause. I found outlets for my grrrr-ness; yoga, counselling, chips and salsa, and visualizing that stone cottage in Scotland. If nothing else, I have great "shower rants" in which I rant and argue with nonexistent people while I shower.

Yesterday, I read this idea that the sea may ebb and flow, but it is still the sea. What is constant in my life is God. God is. The troubles of my life and the anger that I feel may come and go, and come again, but God is God. He is my anchor when I feel adrift. And honestly, why participate in anger when it produces so few results? Anger doesn't make us healthier, smarter, more popular... it is a moment of torment that we have a hard time casting off.

What does anger cost us?