The power of your spirit

When ancient man confronted the mystery of death, which is also the mystery of life—when he looked at the body of a dead man and compared it with himself as a living man and wondered at what terrible change had come over it—one of the first things that struck him apparently was that whereas he himself, the living man, breathed, the dead man did not breathe. There was no movement of the chest. A feather held to his lips remained unstirred. So to be dead meant to have no breath, and to be alive—to have the power to rise up and run and shout in the world—meant to have breath. And the conclusion, of course, was that breath is not just the little wisps of air that men breathe in and out, but that it is the very animating power of life itself.

Breath is the livingness of those who are alive.

This is why in so many languages the word for breath comes to mean not only the air that fills the lungs but the mystery and power of life itself that fills a living man. Such is the Latin word spiritus, from which our word "spirit" comes.

Each one of us has a spirit, this power of life in us, and like breath it is not just something that is in us but something that also issues from us. Every man has the capacity, more at some times than at others, to project some of this power of his own life, his vitality, into others. It is the power literally to in-spire, breathe into, and although it is invisible and intangible and cannot be put into a test tube or under a micro-scope, it is perhaps the greatest and most dangerous power that we have.

Team spirit, group spirit, esprit de corps in French—all these point to the power that can be generated by a group of people and can be generated with such force that to be in the group or even just near it is to risk being caught up by it and for a time at least transformed by it, made drunk on it. The least likely person can be so galvanized by the spirit generated by the crowd at a horse race or a football game that their madness becomes his own and he finds himself one of them.

Or the least likely person can be so possessed by the spirit of a mob bent on destruction that he joins in deeds of violence and hate that otherwise he would never be capable of and that leave him, once the spirit has passed, gutted and empty like a house that has been swept by flame.

Individuals no less than groups have this power of the spirit. We can all remember certain people who were not necessarily any more intelligent or more eloquent than other people but who had this power to communicate something of their aliveness in such a way that it is part of our aliveness still. This does not come through what they say or through what they do necessarily but through what at their best they manage to be. The word "inspiring" has been so loosely used for so long that it no longer conveys very much, but again, in the literal sense, that is what such people are—life-breathing, not through deeds or words so much as through some invisible force that leaps from their lives to our lives like electricity.

There are times when this force of a person is so intense that we can feel it when he just walks into a room. There is the intensity of spirit that comes with great gladness or great grief, for instance, which can gladden or grieve an entire house although the person himself may say and do nothing. It is a force that can be either creative or destructive. There are good spirits and evil spirits, and that is what makes it potentially so dangerous. In some measure everyone has the power to transform for good or ill the whole life of the community, invisibly, intangibly, but nonetheless really. And one of the strangest aspects of spirit is that it does not appear to be bound by either time or space. The spirit of a community is the product not only of all who are part of it now but of all who were part of it years ago and whose very names may no longer be remembered. By the power of your spirit, your life can reach out and become part of my life, you can empower me to do things and be things that I could never manage on my own, and this can remain true whether we are six feet apart or six thousand miles, six years or sixty. The spirit of men who died centuries ago can intoxicate us, electrify us, transform us, as really now as when they were alive.

Frederick Buechner

The Magnificent Defeat

A parenthesis from Madeleine L'Engle

(A parenthesis here about quotations and credits. I was taught in college how to footnote, how to give credit where credit is due, and in the accepted, scholarly way. But most of the writers I want to quote in this book are writers whose words I've copied down in a big, brown, Mexican notebook, what is called a commonplace book. I copy down words and thoughts upon which I want to meditate, and footnoting is not my purpose; this is a devotional, not a scholarly note-book. I've been keeping it for many years, and turn to it for help in prayer, in understanding. All I'm looking for in it is meaning, meaning which will help me to live life lovingly, and I am only now beginning to see the usefulness of noting book title and page, rather than simply jotting down, "Francis of Assisi.")

Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water, p. 29

*italics mine

We are an art form

But the idea of ‘The Environment’ brings other thoughts.

After all we are an art form. I do not mean that we produce consciously now,

but I mean we are an art form, whether we think of it or not,

and whether we do anything about it or not.

We are an environment, each one of us. We are an environment

for the other people with whom we live, the people with whom

we work, the people with whom we communicate. And in this

sense we do not choose an art form and create something in that

form; we are an art form.

Just as 'The Environment' created by modern artists in the museums involves people when they simply

walk in, so we are an environment which is affecting people around us.

People who come across us or who walk into our presence, become involved.

There are various art forms we may or may not have talent for,

may or may not have time for,

and we may or may not be able to express ourselves in,

but we ought to consider this fact- that whether we choose to be an environment or not, we are.

We produce an environment other people have to live in.

We should be conscious of the fact that this environment which we produce by our very "being" can affect the people who live with us or work with us.

The effect on them is something they cannot avoid. We should have thoughtfulness concerning our responsibility in this area.

We should be artists in doing something about the environment we are creating -artists before God, of course.

We have His help because we are artists in this sense, in the hands of the Holy Spirit; for if we are Christians, He is dwelling in us,

and we can ask for His power to help us.

P. 208-209

I think it’s good to ponder and ask yourself “what kind of art am I portraying through my being? And after you have spent some time alone Pondering, go to the next level, take a big risk, and ask those who you live with, work with, communicate with, “How do you experience me?” “If I were a piece of art, what would you feel?” “How am I affecting you?”

And, really listen and consider the answers.

(I found this quote in my commonplace book where I copy down words and thoughts I want to remember and ponder. Funny that I wrote the pages, I guess I was thinking I would remember where it was from. And I didn’t think I’d be sharing it on a blog!)

Lamentations is not grief management

Suffering is an event in which we're particularly vulnerable to grace, able to recognize dimensions in God and depths in the self. To treat it as a problem is to demean the person. The fact that in Lamentations there's no recourse to incantation or magical formulas to secure protection against the effects of divine anger - a common practice in neighboring civilizations - serves as a warning against the acquisition of "techniques” to alleviate suffering.

Lamentations is not grief management.

Nothing, in the long run, does more to demean the person who suffers than to busy oneself in fixing him or her up. And nothing can provide more meaning to suffering than taking the suffering seriously, offering our companionship, and waiting in the dark with that person for the coming of dawn.

Eugene Peterson, Conversations, (p.1259)

Why cheer tears?

“STANDING ON A HILL in Galilee Jesus said to his disciples:

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessings to those who mourn, cheers to those who weep, hail to those whose eyes are filled with tears, hats off to those who suffer, bottoms up to the grieving. How strange, how incredibly strange!

When you and I are left to our own devices, it's the smiling, successful ones of the world that we cheer. "Hail to the victors." The histories we write of the odyssey of humanity on earth are the stories of the exulting ones—the nations that won in battle, the businesses that defeated their competition, the explorers who found a pass to the Pacific, the scientists whose theories proved correct, the athletes who came in first, the politicians who won their campaigns. We turn away from the crying ones of the world.

Our photographers tell us to smile.

"Blessed are those who mourn." What can it mean? One can understand why Jesus hails those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, why he hails the merciful, why he hails the pure in heart, why he hails the peacemakers, why he hails those who endure under persecution.

These are qualities of character which belong to the life of the kingdom. But why does he hail the mourners of the world? Why cheer tears? It must be that mourning is also a quality of character that belongs to the life of his realm.

Who then are the mourners? The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God's new day, who ache with all their being for that day's coming, and who break out into tears when confronted with its absence. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm of peace there is no one blind and who ache whenever they see someone unseeing. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one hungry and who ache whenever they see someone starving. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one falsely accused and who ache whenever they see someone imprisoned unjustly. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one who fails to see God and who ache whenever they see someone unbelieving. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one who suffers oppression and who ache whenever they see someone beat down. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one without dignity and who ache whenever they see someone treated with indignity. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm of peace there is neither death nor tears and who ache whenever they see someone crying tears over death. The mourners are aching visionaries.

Such people Jesus blesses; he hails them, he praises them, he salutes them. And he gives them the promise that the new day for whose absence they ache will come. They will be comforted.

The Stoics of antiquity said: Be calm. Disengage yourself. Neither laugh nor weep. Jesus says: Be open to the wounds of the world.

Mourn humanity's mourning, weep over humanity's weeping, be wounded by humanity's wounds, be in agony over humanity's agony.

But do so in the good cheer that a day of peace is coming.”

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son (P. 84-86)

Blessed are you that weep

"BLESSED ARE YOU that weep now, for you shall laugh," Jesus says (Luke 6:21). That means not just that you shall laugh when the time comes, but that you can laugh a little even now in the midst of the weeping because you know that the time is coming. All appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the ending will be a happy ending. That is what the laughter is about. It is the laughter of faith. It is the divine comedy. 

In the meantime you weep, because if you have a heart to see it with, the world you see is in a thousand ways heartbreaking. Only the heartless can look at it unmoved, and that is presumably why Jesus says, "Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep," meaning a different sort of laughter altogether—the laughter of callousness, mockery, indifference (Luke 6:25). You can laugh like that only if you turn your back on the suffering and need of the world, and perhaps for you the time for weeping comes when you see the suffering and need too late to do anything about them, like the specters of the dead that Jacob Marley shows old Scrooge as they reach out their spectral hands to try to help the starving woman and her child, but are unable to do so now because they are only shadows. 

The happiness of the happy ending—what makes the comedy so rich—is the suggestion that ultimately even the callous and indifferent will take part in it. The fact that Jesus says they too will weep and mourn before they're done seems to mean that they too will grow hearts at last, the hard way, and once that happens, the sky is the limit.  

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark