Riding Donkeys

"Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. " Henry Miller

Today is Palm Sunday and I am thinking about donkeys. Today, Christians celebrate the triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem. Tradition tells us it was a joyous event; palms waving, jubilation rampant over the potential for not only a new spiritual way of living, but for some that day, also a possibility for political power and representation. I wonder how many in that excited crowd thought about Christ's choice of a humble donkey to ride. Do you think after the terrible weekend to come, as the disciples and other followers fled for their lives, anyone remembered his first ride on a donkey was in his mother's womb on the way to Bethlehem where he was born?

I read somewhere that terrible events carry within them the means to distract the insatiable hunger of the world so that something beautiful can be born. That is hard to think about. But it does remind me of a recent story related to me by a dear friend. She and her husband had discovered flying squirrels nesting in one of the bluebird boxes at their mountain cabin. One little baby fell out and before they could react, their beloved boxer snapped the nestling right up. It was a simple but stunning example of what exists in our world in a much more powerful way at times. Chilling as it may be, we are wise to remember. The mother squirrel did. She moved the rest of her babies.

I wonder if any of you have ever heard the pithy little ditty 'we are never given more than we can bear'. Now that one can get me twirling. I usually end up at the same place, with the word bear. I keep wondering if that is some type of koan, a very simple phrase that when pondered, blossoms into a profound truth. I wonder if the word bear might mean to bear the experience before us, until it bares a part of ourselves we need to know or understand or accept?

Enter grace, riding on a donkey.

On a recent rip to the Okefenokee Swamp, I saw large tracts of pine forest with an understory full of palmetto palms. Swamp woods quickly fill up with all kinds of vegetation and in an attempt to control the potential for large forest fires, the woods are regularly burned to keep this growth at bay. I imagine watching the fires is quite a site, but seeing the aftermath I think may be more so. It's hard to see the earth and tree trunks black with scorch marks. It is amazing to me that the trees for the most part, survive and some varieties even require the heat of the fires to open their seed pods. Yes, the significance of that we all get.

I am thinking this morning that while life can be like the quick snap of the boxer's jaws, it is also going to offer us a donkey ride afterwards. Lots of donkey rides. It is wise to acknowledge we will all have tumultuous times when life is more than we can take in, much less understand. There are lots of ways to scorch and burn. Whether we choose to get on and ride, to open up and see into what is happening to us, will always be up to us. Rilke writes: "I am the rest between two notes/Which are somehow always in discord/Because death's note wants to climb over--/But in the dark interval, reconciled,/They stay here trembling,/And the song goes on, beautiful."

The older I get, and the closer my own mother comes to life's final mystery, the more I grow aware of the power and evidence of grace. I am discovering it everywhere--in the things I read, in conversations, in chance meetings and events, in the dark at night, in the soft rain, in the faces of those I love. The gift of perspective aging and care giving have offered has opened my heart again and again to recognize the innumerable times through out my own life when I have been carried. Opening myself to acknowledge this has filled me with the donkey's humbleness. I see we are all carried. Our lives are never about all the things we do right. They are about what grace did with the choices we made. The venerable wise book, The Amidah reminds us of this gift with these words: 'With love and grace you sustain the living, you support the falling, heal the sick, free those who are bound in captivity, and keep faith with those who sleep in the dust." The love and beauty that are created in that shimmering marriage can transform all of us who sleep. In those fragile moments when we are most aware of this gift, there is the possibility to move finally beyond the wearing nag of knowing and doing and judging and glimpse the way of being Christ knew of ,when he taught 'the kingdom of heaven is within.' Can we believe the kingdom so many celebrants have thought all this time was of the world of men, is instead, of the universe of the heart? Is the miracle in the baring? Perhaps the humbleness that comes with accepting grace is what allows us to rise from the dust of our humanity long enough to glimpse what we have the potential to become. And you know what they say about that-- 'What the heart once knows, it will not soon forget."

"When we start at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle. We find again some of the joy in the now, some of the peace in the here, some of the love in me and thee which go to make up the kingdom of heaven on earth." Anne Lindbergh