Course Corrections

In mediation practice, we are always seeking to help people adopt a larger and more inclusive perspective.  In this way, the participants can begin to see one another's interests.  Then the participants can make the empathic move toward a resolution that addresses as many of those common and multiple interests as possible.

I can adopt the same strategy in negotiating with myself during challenging times.  If I can place my life and my problems in a larger context, they appear more manageable.  It becomes easier to see possible pathways to the future.  I can better appreciate the possible meaning and significance of what I am experiencing.  I can connect my life more fully to God, the Universe, the All or however else you would like to name the Framework of Transcendence.

I am asking myself lately what I hope my life will include fifteen years from now.  That's a good conflict resolution question for people locked into intractable struggles.  It is also exceedingly challenging, I think, for all of us who have lost someone dear.

In fifteen years, I will be seventy (Wow!).  How in the world can I think about fifteen years from now when the very next moment could be my last?  That is one of the impacts of losing someone--that deepened sense of mortality, finitude, limits and threat.  It is a challenge to see a larger perspective when one is deeply and daily conscious of such realities.

I need to remind myself often that the world itself has not changed.  Having someone die is not a recent innovation in the human experience.  That reality is not what has changed.  What has changed is my experiential awareness of what has always been true.  We are mortal and finite.  We have limited time in this life.  We don't really know when that time will be over.  The world has not changed.  I have.  Now, what will I do with that change?

There is no news in the preceding paragraph.  I need to remember that often.

So, thinking about where I want to be fifteen years from now (more important--where God calls me to be on the journey) is really the same exercise it was five years ago.  The difference is in focus for me.  Loss changes priorities and perceptions.  Loss sorts out what is really important from the merely urgent.  Knowing in my bones that time is limited and every second is precious--that knowledge turns out to be a gift that deepens the joy and love in this life and sharpens my focus on the future.

We are given the gift of limits so we can savor the joy and beauty of this life.

I struggle these days to know where we might be headed in the next few months.  I can fixate on the issues that this uncertainty presents.  I have done that several times in the last few weeks.  That fixation is depressing and debilitating.

Far more productive to imagine that fifteen year time frame, and then to make plans to get to that destination.  I hold those plans loosely and am always ready to adopt a new course in response to what God offers.  It is a privilege and a challenge to take life on God's terms rather than mine.  But the blessings of the larger perspective far outweigh the disappointments of having to make course corrections.  In the larger perspective those course corrections are always small.

So what are those hopes?  The plan is always a work in progress, but...

--I hope to be in good enough health to be with family often, serve Jesus well, and take ten days each year with Brenda on St. Pete's Beach.  That hope requires certain self-care disciplines every day.

--I hope to be able to offer coaching, consulting and mediation services for free to those who could not otherwise afford them.  That hope requires certain work, fiscal and educational disciplines every day.

--I hope to be able to offer my gifts in volunteer ways to innovative ministries to and with the poor either here or in another country.

--I hope to be able to go fishing once a week for four months every summer.

--I hope to write one book a year, whether anyone reads it or not.

--I hope to have more friends than I could imagine.

Sorry--no "bucket list" of things to do and places to see.  Those things will take care of themselves one way or another.  I just hope to be able to love, serve and give from the fullness of joy that we have.  Now, to work out the details...