Showing Up for Our Lives

I just turned 60. Rather than denying the fact, I figure I may as well name and claim it. I have discovered that this milestone birthday is a great catalyst for life reflection and examination. I retrospect, it turns out I’ve learned a few things.

Just the other night I learned that you can turn off your rear running lights on your car! Did you know that? Yep, the Caledonia police were kind enough to pull me over and let me know.

I’ve learned not to put E-85 gas in my car… it doesn’t run well. But the dealer is willing to flush out your gas tank for a mere $700 to fix it! Or you can just put the right gas in and keep driving until it dilutes enough to get back to normal.

I’ve learned not to burn lots of candles in a plastic container with sand in it… the container tends to melt and set things on fire. I used this important information at a conference once when I watched the same thing happen and had to stop the speaker to let them know that a fire was starting right in front of them!

Yep, I’ve learned lots… not to run over ground bees with the lawn mower, not to drink more than one glass of port, and not to be late to the tour bus lest they leave you behind. By the way, I learned all these things as an adult - most in the last 10 years. Isn’t it nice that we can keep learning things as adults?

Spiritually, the older I get, the bigger the Divine gets and the less I feel like really know. Which often makes it a bit challenging to preach on Sundays. I am so gratefully to all the folks who show up and listen to me!

I think Quoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, who seems to be a teacher, philosopher and theologian all rolled up into one, felt the same way. Everything was conjecture, everything that has happened will happen again, everything is illusory, passing - including everything we strive for. So, what is the purpose of life? Quoheleth, a number of times, essentially says that the purpose of life is to live fully in the present enjoying it as much as possible. In chapter 9 he says:

So go, eat your bread in merriment, and drink you wine with a merry heart, for God already judges your work (The NRSV is actually closer to the literal and says “for God has long approved what you do”, in other words, God created human beings good and supports us taking legitimate pleasure in being alive.)

Then Quoheleth goes on to say:

Always wear white (which were festive, holy clothes) and don’t spare the oil for anointing your head (more celebratory actions - this is a call to exuberance!) and enjoy all these passing days with someone you love. This is the work you are truly supposed to do! Whatever you choose to do, do with all the drive you have. There will be no sense of accomplishment, pride, learning, or wisdom in the grave.

Here’s my take on this today, as I reflect on 60 years of life, with more years behind me than ahead of me: the spiritual path is about showing up for our lives. Life is precarious, but we are alive. So, show up, body and spirit. Put your all into everything you do, know a deep abiding joy beneath every moment, learn from every experience, because this is the only moment we are guaranteed. It’s become all too clear lately that life can change in a split second.

Parker Palmer says it this way,

The spiritual journey is an endless process of engaging life as it is, stripping away our illusions about ourselves, our world, and the relationship of the two, moving closer to reality as we do.

We’re called to show up for life. Not the life we pretend it to be, but the life it is.

They say that 80% of life is just showing up, which suggests we only need to be there physically. However, I think REALLY showing up means much more.  I believe it means that we are spiritually and emotionally present, engaged in the people around us and what is happening. We’re paying attention, listening, sharing, curious, questioning. I believe showing up to our lives means we consider how we spend our time. Is it truly how we want to spend the precious minutes of our days?

And we’re not just called to show up for eating, drinking and being merry. No, we’re called to show up for all of it: the glorious and the wretched, the dull and the exciting, the ordinary and te extraordinary.

Some things we don’t want to show up for, I get it. Show up anyway. We can do the hard stuff and we are not alone when we do it. There is a spiritual energy, love, grounding, web, light, that undergirds us always.

At the last church I was at, I had to hide who I was, and later my relationship with Julie, for two and a half years. And for the last six months, after a letter had been written to have me removed and I had announced that I would be moving on, I had to show up on Sunday mornings and preach knowing that there was a contingency that had worked diligently to have me removed. But I showed up for all of it, body, mind and spirit. I showed up for the sadness and the pain of it - for two and a half years I cried every single day. No lie. I showed up for those I cared about - for two and a half years I tried to be the best pastor and parent I could be. And the last six months I still put my all into Sunday mornings… then went home and cried. And I look back now and think, that was the hardest time of my life, and there were a few times I was ready to ditch it all, but darn it, I showed up for all of it. I wasn’t just physically going through the motions. I put all of me into it as best I could.

Showing up for our lives also means showing up for the people in our lives and in our communities. We show up when people are happy and celebrating, and we show up when people are lost, alone, hurting, sick, and grieving. We show up when people are being oppressed and threatened. No, it isn’t always easy. Sometimes we’re hurting, too. But we do our best because it is important and because we intentionally want to be present to everything in our lives. We can do the hard things.

Author and rabbi, Sharon Brous, tells a story of her startup Jewish community that was launched in the spring of 2004, and of a crowded Friday night Shabbat service with a couple hundred people, mostly under 40. It wasn’t a fancy space, just the dingy hall of the Jewish Community Center, but the energy was palpable. And then someone rushed up to tell her that a couple just got engaged, in the middle of the service. She thought to herself, “This must be every rabbi’s dream!” Except for one thing, she had just noticed a young man named Dode, whom she hadn’t seen in months, was hanging out tentatively by the door in the back. He was in the middle of a painful divorce, and his mother was sick and nearing the end of her life.

What would happen if she announced the happy news of this couple? Would he leave and never return? She decided she had to risk it. “Dan and Rachel just got engaged!” Everyone went wild. People were cheering and dancing around the couple. Four people held a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, over the couple like a wedding canopy. Rabbi Sharon danced, but tentatively, as she scanned the crowd for Dode. He seemed to be gone. Her heart sank. Then suddenly she spotted him a few feet from the happy couple. She watched as he took a turn holding a corner of the prayer shawl and he was smiling.

Toward the end of the night Rabbi Sharon approached Dode and said, “I was so moved that you came up to dance tonight, given everything you’re going through.”

“Are you kidding?” Dode replied, “I felt their love in my bones. How could I not celebrate?”

That is the perfect story of someone who was probably blindsided in the moment, not expecting to return to Shabbat services and be thrown into an impromptu engagement party. But he leaned into the moment and showed up fully for someone else’s joy, despite his own pain.

There is a Zen proverb that says, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." It means that true spiritual awakening does not exempt us from daily life, but rather transforms how we experience it.

Truly showing up transforms every moment into a spiritual connection with life, love, suffering, and even ordinariness.

May the Presence of Love help each of us to show up to our lives, to eat, drink and be merry, to give our all to everything we do. May we come to the end of our lives and know that we fully lived.

Love & Light!

Kaye