Crunch Time

Welcome to the in-between world

It’s important to recognize where we are.  This is brand new stretch of water.  It’s Crunch Time, a disorienting moment of change rife with such extraordinary potentiality that people are faced with the transformative decision on how to get through it. Professor Walter Brueggemann writes that there are three major stages of orientation that reflect even the seasons of our own lives.

The first stage is being “securely oriented”. It is here that we feel settled and secure. Our lives make sense and the decisions we make are anchored in good judgement. This could be a time when your job seems secure and your family life is well ordered. Financially we are doing okay. Yet we know that this security never hangs around for long. Which leads us to the second stage.

The second stage is being “painfully disoriented”. These are times when we feel blind sided, hurt, and reeling from stress and the perceived enormity of change. Here you may have lost a job, a child, a divorce or some other chaotic and unexpected event. Yet if we persist in this movement, hang on with resilience, the third stage inevitable reveals itself.

This third stage is “surprising reorientated”. This stage is marked by surprise, the way things all seemed to work out for good and gives us something new out of something old. When we are in this stage, life seems renewed and our circumstances are compellingly welcomed. Over time this new place becomes settled and secure and we begin the process of moving through the stages all over again.

Right now we are in a stage of painful disorientation. We suddenly find ourselves in a tough new work and life environment.  We have drifted out of the current of a known world and into the vortex of a completely strange, new world. It's in-between what was and what will be. It will be surprising to see where this all leads us.

The mauraders of change

A ship ladened with gold, silver, and precious jewels was on its way back to port when it was suddenly confronted by a pirate ship, skull and crossbones flag waving in the wind. The first mate asked the captain what they should do. The captain simply replied, "Bring me my red shirt". They repelled the pirates with out sustaining any casualties.

A few days later the ship was confronted not by one but by three pirate ships. The first mate asked the captain what they should do. His reply again was, "Bring me my red shirt". The captain fought valiantly and was an inspiration to the rest of the crew. They again held off the pirates with very few casualites.

That night as they were celebrating, the first mate asked the captain what the secret of the red shirt was. "It's quite simple," replied the captain. "I wear the red shirt because then the men won't see the blood from my wounds and will be inspired to continue to fight."

Another couple days went by when yet again they were confronted by pirate ships. The strength of the mauraders this time was an armada of ten ships. The first mate, in a panic, asked the captain what they should do. The captain answered, "First mate, bring me my brown pants."

There are many reasons today to wear our brown pants. The mauraders of change that bear down upon us can cause great fear and a trepidation:

The Financial Marauder: We are currently living in the worst economic times since the Great Depression of the 1930's. No one has been immune to its residual effects. People either are, or know someone who is, laid off or underemployed and struggling to make ends meet.

So we wear our brown pants.

The Technological Marauder: We live in a day and age of rapid technological advancement. It's exciting, but is still wrought with fear. Are we able to keep up with the accelerated innovations? As more and more functions are being taken over by technological automation, where does that leave the workforce? With the blending of fact and fiction, real and digital (atoms and bits) what does it mean to be human?

And so, we wear our brown pants.

The Environmental Maurader: The degredation of our natural habitat is quickening. The warming of the planet is causing frequent and powerful weather events. Earthquakes remind us that we are beholden to the natural moans and groans of our planet.

And so, we wear our brown pants.

The Educational Maurader: Our public school system is the focus of much critique. No matter how much money we throw at our concerns, education in the United States is lagging in many ways the rest of the world. The answer to the question, 'What does it mean to be well educated today?" does not seem to align with the answer of our current educational systems.

And so, we wear our brown pants.

These are just a few of the mauraders  that are sailing the waters of incredible change. We could come up with many more. The challenges and opportunities are all there before us, confronting our abilities to engage in significant ways. Fear is there, yes, but so too is the adrenaline of where we can go with these changes. The onus is on us to engage them with confidence and in ways that will better the world - or at least our little corner of it.

They mostly come out at night, mostly

In the movie "Aliens", a little girl named Newt, found by a visiting crew, gives insight into the cruel, fear-inducing aliens that have decimated her community and home. "They mostly come out at night" she says, "mostly".  The aliens that haunt me during this recession mostly come out at night too. They wake me up from an uneasy sleep and make it hard for me to go to bed at night. They mostly come out at night, mostly.

When you bed down for the evening there is a vulnerability that sweeps over you. Your physical body is going to shut down for a time and your brain is going to dissipate into dreams. You are at the whims of the night. It is then that I begin to feel the full weight of the situation and the reality of very tough times - the aliens of angst in our midst.

What are the aliens of angst that come out at us at night, mostly?

The alien of uncertainty: We are conditioned by our Western scientific mindset to value certainty over all else. When it gets threatened, we begin to run scared in the face of its unpredictability. It is the loss of control that we fear. Yet even in the best of times, the loss of control is a certainty. It is the illusion of control that we cling to and that gives this alien its fearful presence. To look uncertainty in the eye and accept it for the fact that it is, diminishes its negating, illusory partner; control.

The alien of failure: I have lived most of my life living under the description of bipolar II disorder. It has stalled my life. The main reason is that every opportunity became an invitation to despair. A friend asked me yesterday if I ever had a dream job. I answered I might have, but I wouldn't have known it. So here I am with very few prospects, no momentum, and not much to show vocationally for all my work.

To define failure, one must define success. You can't understand one without the other. Yet our definitions vary across the spectrum. For some success is defined by material possessions. For others it is the amount of time available to pursue what's important. This alien comes at me most profoundly because I allow the materialistic, consumeristic definition of success to rule the night. I am not a failure.  I am a good father to my children and a loving husband to my wife (thought not very capable at the moment of providing for them). So, in the words of the great American philosophy Kenny Loggins, "even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with you hunny, that everything will bring a change of love."

The alien of despair: Despair is like a compression wave that radiates through everything. It is mostly a mindset that we allow ourselves to engage in and allow to have its way with us. I've mentioned in previous posts that depression has a tight logic. It's easy to stay there. What's harder is to break out of its grip. To do so requires joy. Joy is not happiness. Happiness is fleeting, like trying to chase a butterfly. Joy is enduring and finds us. It can seep into our lives in the most unlikely of situations - situations for which joy should be in short supply. It comes from something outside the realm of our reality. Joy, as C.S. Lewis says is "the serious business of heaven"

The persistence of joy

My lived experience has been an attempt to effectively migrate the quandaries of change by tapping into the persistence of joy. In a previous post, I defined joy as that smoldering internal ember that refuses to be extinguished despite repeated external attempts to douse it.  Happiness is embedded in our constitution and is a protected right.  Yet happiness is fleeting in our attempts to capture it.  Joy, on the other hand, captures us.

Joy is the deep undercurrent of life. Independent from any temporal realities, joy compels us to tap into the transcedent dimensions of our lives.  The two eternal dimensions that buoy joy are humor and hope. Both are in desperately needed today.

Humor: This is the closest we can come to facing our failures and moving on with renewed vigor.  When we can laugh at ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in, we are engaging in a very courageous act; for both our egos and our culture don't like to be laughed at.  Yet it is the discovery of humor and the act of laughter that disarms them both. As the great American philosopher Jimmy Buffett once said, "if we all couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."

Here are some suggestions for finding humor and engaging in laughter:

• Listen to comedians.  Most comedians will tell you that their humor is inevitably birthed from pain and insecurity.  Some of my favorites are Jim Gaffigan and Demitry Martin, and Ken Davis

• Share a bottle of wine (or two) with great, close friends and loosen up the nerves enough to laugh with one another. A nice affordable merlot that does the trick for me is Red Diamond

• Read and watch satirical content such as the Colbert Report or "The Onion".

Hope: I define hope as an act of the will that stubbornly leans into and moves forward against the headwinds of life. It is a refusal to be knocked down completely. Hope exists at the interface between the temporal and eternal. All that separates this world from the next is a sigh. That deep, audible exhalation of sadness or duress is the signal to begin leaning forward. 

Here are some suggestions for accessing the will and leaning forward in hope:

• Nurture the soul. This is best done in contemplation and silence. It is very hard in our noisy world, but try sitting silently for 20 minutes. Let any thought that comes your way to flow along out of your consciousness so that can be fully presence with the eternal.

• Don't go it alone. Share your worries and fears with those who can be trusted. The act of verbalizing them with others can normalize your situation and provide much needed camaraderie and support.

• Absorb stories of lives lived hopefully in the midst of extraordinary bleak circumstances. You will learn how powerfully resilient the human spirit is when enriched with hope.  Two wonderful ones are: The book "A Paradise Built in Hell" and the movie, "Life is Beautiful"

I wish you all joy as you move forward into the new year!

Deeper perspectives

When the US Airways plane with 155 people on board ditched into a chilly Hudson River, we knew who to thank for saving all on board.  It was captain Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, whose masterful skills navigated the plane to safety. 

But, imagine you are on a plane flying over two hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet, when suddenly without explanation, the engines stop working.  The captain has tried everything to get them to reignite, but to no avail. You are in crash position and agonizing your demise.  Then, suddenly, without explanation, the engines burst back to life one by one, delivering you safely home.  Who do you thank then? read more>

The maurader

Maybe you’ve heard this one...

There was a treasure ship on its way back to port, ladened with gold, silver, and precious gems.  About halfway there, it was approached by a pirate ship, skull and crossbones waving in the breeze, intent on seizing its valuable treasure.

    "Captain, captain, what do we do?" implored the panicked first mate. 

    "First mate," said the captain calmly, "go to my cabin, open my sea chest, and bring me my red shirt."  The first mate did as he was told.

    Wearing his bright red shirt, the captain exhorted his crew to fight.  So inspiring was he, in fact, that the pirate ship was repelled without casualties. 

    A few days later, the ship was again approached, this time by two pirate sloops! 

    "Captain, captain, what should we do?" asked the first mate again, this time with greater urgency.

    "Bring me my red shirt!" the captain insisted.

    The crew, emboldened by their fearless captain, fought heroically, and managed to defeat both boarding parties, though they took some casualties.  That night, the survivors had a great celebration.  The first mate asked the captain the secret of his bright red shirt.

    "It's simple”, he said, “if I am wounded, the blood does not show, they see no weakness in me and the crew continues to fight without fear."

    A week passed, and they were nearing their home port, when suddenly the lookout cried that ten ships of the enemy's armada were fast approaching.

    "Captain, captain, we're in terrible trouble, what do we do?" the first mate pleaded and looked expectantly at the miracle worker.

    Pale with fear, the captain commanded, "Bring me my brown pants!"

As we sail through contemporary chaos, a looming marauder appears and approaches us at an accelerating pace.  It comes equipped with boarding parties ready to wreak havoc on our lives, plundering our precious safety, happiness, and security (so perceived).

It often can and does render us ineffective, stealing our confidence and emotional resources. 

It’s visceral.

You feel it in your bones.

The quivering of the minute hairs on the back of your neck hearken it’s arrival. The superficial muscles embedded beneath your skin begin to quiver. The skin itself is affected, with sweat easily oozing from its pores. The rush of adrenaline courses through even the smallest capillaries, causing the heart to beat violently, palpitating its reaction against the ribs.

Your breathing becomes frantic. Your mouth becomes dry and your senses crackle with every stimuli.  You can't sleep. Or if you do, you're dreams are uneasy, disconcerting. You are on high alert and on watch.

Fear has arrived...

Unlike scary movies or Halloween haunted houses, this is a fear we can’t control.  Nor do we seek it out.

It invades and debilitates.  We know there is no safe place, really. Not even home.

It’s known as a crunch time moment.  Its accompanying fear invades when you realize your life will never be the same again.

It is ominous as we stare it down and downright mean as we confront its sudden arrival:

• A routine check up with the doctor ends up revealing a devastating diagnosis,

        And so we wear our brown pants

• A lack of clarity or anything approaching unanimity on a host of political issues;

        And so we wear our brown pants

• Years of acquired wealth is precipitously diminished by an unprecedented economic downturn,

        And so we wear our brown pants

A new baby brings the prospect of renewed priorities and deliberate introspection about the future.

        And so we wear our brown pants
       
The list, of course, goes on, and the marauder continues to arrive in never ending waves...

Amusing Ourselves to Death

I found this intriguing and have attempted to explore the concepts in a previous post.

The constants of change

My main focus over the last twenty years has been helping people effectively migrate through the quandaries of contemporary change.  Without a doubt, the recent perplexities we are encountering are unprecedented in their scope and the challenges for us is extraordinary indeed.

I've discovered too the irony that change is consistent in its effects.  The larger the scope of the change the greater these constants seem to become:

1) It is frightening: Change makes the world seem less predictable.

-Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inaugural address took on an unusually solemn, religious quality, and for good reason. By 1933 the depression had reached its depth and the nation was struggling. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address outlined in broad terms how he hoped to govern and reminded Americans that the nation’s “common difficulties” concerned “only material things.”  It is in this address he uttered the now infamous words, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself". 

We must learn to harness fear's energy and make it our heart's ally and not its enemy. 

2) It is threatening: Change implies that what exists now is inadequate

-We can get so confident in the way we've done things in the past, that it is can be a surprising and agonizing moment to discover that it no longer works for our current condition.  When we are threatened by change we usually choose one of three stances in reponse: Retreat, Retrench, or Relaunch.  For me relaunching is the most adventuresome and leads to richer discoveries and deeper redemption.

3) It is embarrassing: Change requires admitting and understanding our past errors.

-Being vulnerable is one of the most powerful attributes we can harness.  I believe it requires two elements: Humor and Honesty.  Laughing at ourselves is one the most mature defense mechanisms human beings have at their disposal.  In spiritual terms, it is the closest we can come to confession. Being vulnerable forces us to get to the heart of the matter in deliberately open ways. It means not pointing fingers at people or the past.  It means taking responsibility. Honestly interrogating our hearts during change is the first step in moving through change unencumbered by anxiety, insecurity and blame.