Time is on God's side

The past few days, I've been thinking about the passage time, both in my own life and in the greater society.

Once again, states across our country are debating and voting on gay marriage. For those of us who support gay marriage, the news from North Carolina and Colorado is sobering. There is hope for the future, however. In an interview with NPR's Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center shares some statistics about support for gay marriage (2012). Kohut notes that support for gay marriage has grown from only 31% in 2004 to 47-50% today (2012). When asked by NPR's Inskeep if "it's unusual to have that big a change on that kind of issue in a relatively short period of time?" Kohut responds:

Yes. On abortion there is no change. You can go back 25 years and you'll still see the same numbers we see today. What's happened here are two things. One is generational replacement. Younger people, who have joined the electorate, came of age accepting gay marriage, and 63 percent majority of those people currently favor.  And we also see people of all ages changing their minds a little bit, even the oldest people. But the big difference is that people under 35 are now more dominant than they were two cycles ago. (2012, emphasis mine)

It seems that time is on the side of gay marriage supporters; unfortunately, we need patience as we wait for "generational replacement" to complete. Eventually, those of us who are of Generation X will replace the Baby Boomers as society's elders. No doubt there will be some other issue we (the Gen Xers) oppose that our children will support, and generational replacement will play out again. Hopefully, as we saw with the civil rights movement (as the Baby Boomers replaced the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation), the wait will not be long. To quote from Martin Luther King Jr's March 25, 1965 speech in which he answers how long it will take for the laws and attitudes of the United States to change: "Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" (as cited in Howe, 2009).

Arc of justice?
Image: Sky with rainbow by Jon Sullivan

How amazing that in our short lives, we can see "the arc of the moral universe. . .bend[ing]."  When we're in the middle of the fight, it seems long. In terms of the history of Earth and of human life on Earth (let's call this "God time"), it's not long at all.

Which brings me to my own life and current struggles. As I shared in my post, "I'm not dead yet," one of my children is going through a difficult time. In my own life, I've learned to turn to God (or at least I've learned I can turn to God--as this blog shows, I often forget to do the actual turning). My husband and I have shared with her how we pray to God for help, but she doesn't seem to take in the message.

I want so badly for her to feel comfortable using prayer for help--and I don't mean Help, as though prayer will "cure" her of her problems; rather, I mean short-term help, the comfort of reminding yourself that you're not alone and that this huge, barely know-able force loves you, no matter what your problems.

I want her to feel better now, today, this minute. I want her to know, as a young child, how to do what took me 25 years to learn. I don't want this to take God's time. Unfortunately, that's what it takes. Maybe, with her father and me trying to teach her now, she won't take 25 years to learn how to turn to God for help and comfort. It's unreasonable, though, to expect her to learn in one day, or one week, or even, I think, one year.

I took the above picture on Mother's Day, at York Long Sands (York, ME). When we arrived, somewhere between mid- and late afternoon, the tide had turned and was reclaiming the beach. As the tide pushed our tide-pool poking towards the upper end of the sand, we came upon a grouping of water-worn boulders. Erosion had formed a small gorge in one of the boulders; when the waves crashed, the force pushed water up the boulder and then the gorge funneled the water over the side. In that short moment between the wave's crash and its recession back to the sea, we witnessed an ocean waterfall. The sound of the crash, the push of the water, the forcing of the water into the gorge and over the side, to fall on the lower bolder; all of this happened again and again as we watched.

It occurred to me that it must have been just this action, over years (hundreds? more?) that wore out a thread of weak minerals in the taller boulder, creating the gorge.  Here was the powerful process that had created the grand canyon, playing out beneath our shadows and toes. What a humble reminder of God's time. When given enough time, the forces of nature erode stone; the collective consciousness of a society grows inclusive; the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. What's the process of learning how to pray when compared to all of that?


References

Howe, A. (2009, January 19). The arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice. Salon. Retrieved from http://open.salon.com/blog/arthur_howe/2009/01/18/the_arc_of_the_universe_is_long_but_it_bends_towards_justice

Inskeep, S. (Interviewer) & Kohut, A. (Interviewee). (2012). Pew Poll: More Americans Support Gay Marriage [Interview transcript]. Retrieved from NPR Web site: http://www.npr.org/2012/05/11/152480805/pew-poll-more-americans-support-gay-marriage



ErNoWriMo and the anchor of prayer

No, that's not a typo in the title of this post. You have perhaps heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). NaNoWriMo is an event held each November during which would-be novelists attempt the insane task of writing a draft of a novel in 30 days. (Click here to learn more about NaNoWriMo.) I've decided the next 30 days will be ErNoWriMo: Erica Novel Writing Month. There's nothing national about it--it's just me (and my cat, Mittens), here at my desk trying to make progress on my novel. 

Mittens says, "You no has plot."

I don't even need to complete a draft in 30 days; I'll save that insanity for November, thankyouverymuch. I simply want to have a chunk of my book written before I begin teaching again at the end of next month. By chunk, I mean that a hard copy, double spaced and single sided, would take both my hands to hold. Notice I say "my hands" because I have very small hands (so we're talking, what? 50? 100 pages?).

Not quite that small. . .

What does ErNoWriMo have to do with PUSH? In the past, I've needed the pressure of outside deadlines to help me focus my mind. Self-imposed deadlines don't work quite as well for me. . .when I know that no one else is waiting for my work, it's hard to sit and write. In the May 2012 issue of Yoga Journal, there's a section about author Ann Patchett and her yoga practice. Patchett describes the connection between yoga and writing like this:

It's about being able to sit in a chair all day. It's about being able to stay with one thought for hours at a time and yet have peace of mind. Yoga is a balm to antsiness. And antsiness is the foe of writing a novel. (as cited in Sexton, 2012, p. 100)

Yoga isn't praying, not exactly, but I find prayer and yoga work in similar ways. They ground me in my day. As yoga anchors my body in the moment, so does prayer anchor my mind. Prayer keeps me humble.

Don't confuse humility--the state of being humble--with humiliation. The latter is forced on us from the outside in order to degrade us; the former can only come from within us and is achieved when we're honest about our strengths and weaknesses. When I write from a place of humility, I recognize that my writing is a gift. I acknowledge not everyone carries stories and poems in their minds. I accept that I am not the best (or even one of the best) writers of my time and I do not feel ashamed by this. Uninhibited by fear (what if people do not like what I've written?!), typing my words feels nearly as effortless as breathing.

Later in the Yoga Journal piece, Pratchett shares about "coping with criticism":

Having a practice that helps you maintain a strong connection to who you actually are is essential to the creative life. Otherwise, you can lose your mind from the criticism and, for that matter, the praise, which can be equally damaging because it doesn't create a clear picture of who you are. You can't control what other people think about your art. . .Yoga and meditation can help. (as cited in Sexton, 2012, p. 100)

And prayer. Prayer is how I "maintain a strong connection" to my true, humble self.


Reference

Sexton, S. (2012, May). Express yourself. Yoga Journal, 246, 96-101.