Poverty of spirit

Airline Delays and Poverty of Spirit.

“O Lord, all your ways are true, all your judgments proper, and all your decisions just. For behold, in sin was I conceived, a sinner was I born.”

Chicago. Friday ended up being a hard day. I missed the #151 bus to the Gleacher Center from Union station because I wanted to walk two blocks and find the blue line. I had taken the commute line into downtown in keeping with my newfound belief in not relying on cars, living out my ethic by relying on muscle power and public transportation. So, walk I did. Walking two blocks I found the CTA blue line, and learned there was no value to doing so; for no information was posted. But now there was no bus, the sun was already hot though it was only 8:00 in the morning, and I began to sweat as I carried my bags down the street.

After awhile, and a few more blocks of walking, I found another bus. However, by the time I arrived at the conference at the Gleacher Center, I was late, and sweaty. The morning meetings transpired. After lunch it was time to get to the airport. I walked back out to find the blue line, this time armed with my google-app-ready I-phone. The air was fresh, the day balmy. But the stop was not where the map said, and I had to ask. When I found it, I was again sweating from the heat and my luggage. The fatigue of the week had begun to wear on me. The blue line arrived soon enough, but we were packed in like sardines. I could not find room on the floor for both my backpack and my legs, and soon was forced to sit in a position that caused me pain, and sit that way moving only a little from time to time due to the close quarters. There was no room to pull out my laptop to work, and no signal on the cell phone. When we came above ground, the sun beat in, and though I’d now removed my outer shirt, I was hot. My body odor was noticeable from the day’s periods of sweat and drying and re-sweating, and I felt self conscious sitting so close to others. When I saw a beautiful woman stand in front of me, her skin, her curving hips, I could not bear to speak to her, thinking she would find me repellant due to my smell. Perhaps this is now a homeless man feels every day but one (the day he gets to shower).  Although I had a passing thought that maybe a car would have been better, I took comfort in seeing that the Dan Ryan was bumper to bumper and our Blue Line train was moving faster than the traffic.

At last we reached O’Hare. I found a restroom, washed up as best I could, and put on a different shirt. Our plane was delayed a little, but at least we boarded. I reflected that it had taken me a full two hours from the time I left the Gleacher Center until the time I reached O’Hare, just as it had taken a full two hours door to door in the morning, and that I was feeling weary and tired of this “car free” life.

We were on the plane a few minutes, seated and doors locked, and pushed back from the gate. Then we stopped. The Captain announced that we had a power outage and were waiting a few minutes for maintenance to arrive. Then he announced that a generator was out, and they would replace a coil; it would take 30 minutes; if it failed to resolve the problem, we would probably need another plane. I felt a passing thought, that perhaps we’d just stay overnight in Chicago. I formed an attractive plan B in my mind—I’d take the train back to the Loop, and catch the morning symposium that I really wanted to see (on inflammation and ADHD). But then I thought no, we’ll be on our way in 30 minutes.

But thirty minutes later we were deplaning, with no specific instructions. I was overtaken with concern that my phone and computer batteries would run out in the interim. I rushed up the way to a bank of plugs, and plugged in. After a bit of waiting, I’d found a seat. I called United, thinking cleverly that I would rebook for the next day, and be done for the night. I was through to an agent immediately, and felt even more satisfied with myself. But the agent said that United’s computer system was down, worldwide, and United could not fly. All planes are grounded. Well. So I thought, that’s okay, there is nothing anyone can do, so I’ll just make alternative plans. I signed up for the internet, which is when I noticed that my Mastercard was not in my wallet. Hmmm. I realized I’d have to report it  missing. I set about working on that. Meantime, I opted not to go try to stand by on the 9:30 flight to Portland (by now it was after 8:00). I reasoned that it probably was not going to fly, and that even if it did, going so late would be exhausting, that I would be better off getting a good nights sleep anyway. And I thought, I wouldn’t be able to do the charity bike ride anyway if I got home so late.

Two hours later I was not so sure. The computers were still down, the plane at Gate 9 was still undergoing a generator overhaul, and gate agent knew nothing, and the 9:30 flight to Portland had flown, loaded with at least a few standby passengers, but not me in my tactical blundering. I needed housing, and it suddenly seemed a large and unreasonable undertaking to ask my aunt to drive over an hour to get me and an hour to her house. The train back to the Loop seemed beyond me; I was tired, hungry, and sweaty. It made the most sense to stay at a hotel near the airport if I could. But the thought filled me with sadness. I was tired, alone, and I had blown my chance to get home on the 9:30 flight. Dumb, dumb, I thought. I felt self pity and exhaustion overtake me, and I fought it with every ounce of my remaining strength to keep my chin up. I gritted my teeth, lifted up my head, and reached vainly inside myself for a bit of enthusiasm for the challenges now before me. The walk from the gate to the hotel shuttle was a long long walk indeed. A march of defeat.

By 10:30 I’d booked a hotel, and by 11:15 I was in my room. But the longest and hardest part of it all was that 10 minute walk, from the gate to the hotel shuttle, down one empty cavernous corridor after another, bags heavy on my back, unsure how much further it was to go, following hidden signs, weary, tempted by despair. In the room, I took up repeatedly dialing United to see if computers were up, checking email, making sure Storm (my dog) was covered, and hungrily eating my only food, a box of almonds that later gave me a stomachache. I had no clean clothes; I washed a t-shirt and a pair of underwear and hung them on a chair. I watched TV, letting midnight and then 1:00 come and go. Finally at 1:00 I tried United again—they were up! And the wait for an agent was projected at 25 minutes. In reality it was 75 minutes. I was on the phone with an agent at a little after 2:00 am, and facing what felt like crushing options: Fly Sunday night (stay 36 more hours in Chicago); take a 12 hour trip (2 stops)….or fly at 6:00 am, just four hours from now. I opted for the last, and the agent said he had to call Delta to confirm a seat on that flight. He put me back on hold. I laid down on the bed with the phone on speaker next to me, and waited.

My mind was swimming with second guessing. If only I had gone for the standby. Why was I so preoccupied with charging my computer? Why did I take the phone agent’s word at face value? Did my hesitation about willing to be home that night cost me the way? I was going to miss this fabulous charity bike ride on Saturday. Surely that was not God’s intent. I had blown it by my own lack of presence-of-mind. Penny wise and pound foolish. And so on. Then I fell asleep.

I woke at 4:30. Light had come up in the predawn. I was no longer connected to the United agent. The recently sink-washed t-shirt and underwear were still way too wet to wear. My belly was bloated from the almonds I had scarfed down. I got on the computer and managed to create a password and log on to United; I was listed as having 3 reservations, including the 6:20 am flight on Delta, but I could not check in. I tried to call Delta on one phone, and United on the other. Both kept me on hold and then the United disconnected. I decided the best and only option was to forgo any sleep and go to the airport. I showered, found my least dirty dirty shirt and put on my least-worn pre-worn underwear, and somehow found a clean pair of socks. I called the front desk about the shuttle, suddenly realizing time was running—the next shuttle was in 5 minutes (5:45) and that would barely give me time to make the 6:20 or 6:40 (or whatever hell time it was) flight if all went well.

It didn’t, not in that regard. I caught the shuttle, already tired and sweaty. I went to Delta (my one good and lucky decision, the one moment of grace, the turn of the wheel).  I stood in line until 6:20; when I got to the agent she said the doors had just closed on the 6:40 flight and I wasn’t on it. But then, in another moment of grace, she announced that she had found seats for me on a 9:20 flight through Minneapolis and into Portland at 1:30. This suddenly sounded like an absolutely fabulous plan. I only had to go to United (a walk in the now seemingly pleasant morning air) and get them to reissue the ticket. I walked to Terminal 1, stood in two long lines for an hour, and tried to maintain my calm. Soon however the other passengers started talking and I was in conversations of mutual sympathy.

Then WGN News and ABC Channel 7 showed up and started interviewing us. Suddenly, like Woody Allen in Zelig, randomly, I was on camera with a national network holding forth on the problems in customer relations being evidenced by United Airlines in the light of this computer –induced crisis, all of my rapid-fire content based on no deeper information than my last 10 minutes of kvetching with my fellow malcontents in the line, and now unhesitatingly ready for national television tonight. (Later, my mother called to say she’d seen me on TV spouting off on this point).

But then I arrived at the agent, got my tickets issued, and left that crowded, 3^rd world-like United Terminal and returned to Terminal 2, where Delta was, bracing for the next long wait. Except the security line was—no one. I walked up, immediately was let through, and took my time with an x-ray belt all to myself. The place was deserted. By 8:15 am I was on my way to my gate, and I was on the first class waiting list. I was beginning to feel that things were looking up. I was beginning to feel good. I reached the gate, drank a cup of coffee, and sat to think. I realized then that I had left my cell phone charger in the hotel. I called to tell them and see if they could send it. Later I realized I seemed to have lost my Bose headphones, and I called again about that. In my haste I'd left half my stuff in the hotel. But the terminal was not crowded, and despite the desiderata of irritants to be taken care of from yesterdays’ fiasco, it felt like I had left hell and landed in heaven; all was realized; the morning travelers were rested, healthy looking, contented, and waiting with their newspapers, laptops, and Starbucks coffee mixes, conversing casually, civil society now working as it should.  The sun was shining through the window, but was nice and cool where we sat.  I felt happy, and my problems seemed to have melted away.

Once on board, I was seated in first class. That flight was uneventful, and once in Minneapolis, I scored first class again. That meant lunch, and a comfortable seat, and airline staff waiting on me instead of me waiting on them. The wheel had turned.  I felt fine. I felt fine about myself. And I saw clearly and with crushing humility that my inner state was driven quite heavily by my circumstance, and that my detachment was pretty darn limited or perhaps non-existent.

            And I realized that one prayer, one mantra, had gone through my mind the entire evening before, which was Azariahs prayer in the furnace, from the book of Daniel:

“Blessed are you and praiseworthy, O Lord, for you are just in all you have done; all your deeds are faultless, all your ways are true, and all your judgments right.”

Azariah goes on to declare that the entire community has sinned, and his presence here reflects that; his own virtue is irrelevant. Here is Azariah, a just man, a good man, thrown into the furnace to be burned to death because he refuses to deny his God. He is a victim of religious persecution. Thrown in the furnace, he does not pray for deliverance, or for mercy, or anything else. He embraces his fate as just, for it is God’s decision. Like Job, he finds no fault with God. What courage! What nobility! I have long been impressed, blown away, by Azariah. Willing to bet it all on God, all the way to the line, not backing off even as he faces an unjust and needless and painful death. Like an Aikido master moving in the direction his adversary moves—as fast as he can--Azariah immediately embraces God in the situation in which he is thrown.

To our modern secular ears, in that kind of context, these are words of neurotic self denigration, leftovers from an era of false masochism, before we discovered how to self affirm our way to happiness and fulfill ourselves by achieving our potential.

But I felt moved to look a little bit deeper at these words, which today seemed as true as anything I had ever heard before.  These were my thoughts:

All religious masters, monks, mystics, and inspirational figures have taught the importance of achieving indifference to success or failure, riches or poverty, indeed the whims of this world at all. Buddha, Jesus, Francis, and Day demonstrated this by giving up tremendous wealth, opportunity for power, and ease in favor of poverty, homelessness, and begging. They were as happy with the last as the first. Their followers, from the martyrs to St. Damien to Thomas More to the modern prophets and martyrs of El Salvadore like Rutilio Grande and Oscar Romero, have shown like Christ, complete freedom in giving up life itself in service of charity, love, justice, and the truth.  They shine like beacons on the dark sea, like stars in the moonless sky.

Yet, despite how much we pray and fast, when the test comes we find that it is no easy matter to reach such indifference, such equanimity, or such freedom of action—such freedom as allows one to maintain one’s integrity, to show love and mercy, to forgive, to care, to be human, and to act justly, no matter the cost. It is indeed easier to hold lightly success than failure, and we are quicker to achieve indifference to ease or hardship when at ease, to fortune or ruin when we experience fortune.

One might even say there are gradations to the challenges God hands us to test our indifference and our love. 

            Easiest of all is to achieve what seems like indifference when one has reached success, when one can live well with little effort, and even surrender much with fairly little real permanent pain. This is the case for most of us who pretend to this discipline in White, middle and upper class America. In fact, here we really have not sacrificed; we have comfort, success, and on top of that, the moral satisfaction of having achieved a certain indifference to it all. Expect to be tested.

            Some achievements and successes are a bit more difficult, however, and reveal more quickly how shallow I remain. Let your desires and dreams come true: be singled out as the best in your field, or selected for an important meeting with the chairman or the president, or taken into the confidence of the most admired man or woman in your circle, or admired by strangers, or loved by a woman of surpassing beauty, or told by a young man you changed his life for the good, or granted sufficient wealth that you can bestow favors on whomever you please, or sufficient power that you have your decisions and decrees met with immediate action by an army of loyal subordinates--and then see how clear your inner thoughts remain, how indifferent you are to this turn of events, how free to serve the needs of others without also serving just a few of your own. You will see that within yourself grows a little satisfaction, a little self importance, a reassuring sense that one has been blessed, noticed by God, that one truly does exist, is more than a dust speck, that you have lived as you ought, that you must have satisfied not only men but God, that you have done right as well as done well. Find out how difficult it is to give up so much, how weak you really are, how unprepared, and how easily you will rationalize some exceptions to your principles and to solidarity and to truth. After all, why should so much opportunity to do good be thrown away for the sake of some relatively minor belief or principle, which may not even be correct? You will think: Everyone is doing their best, and has a point of view, and a legitimate concern; is it really my place to judge? See how quickly you begin to collude in the concentration of power and wealth, to remain silent in the face of moral compromise, and in the exclusion of the least, and to keep the silence that enables evil and injustice to flourish. You will taste pride, and a price too great, and with it the fall, and damnation, and the loss of all that matters, and so come too late to curse the day such fortune and blessing ever came about.

            And you will know then you need redemption, and beg for it, and cry tears of gratitude to discover redemption is real, and you will crawl all the way to Galilee to pay homage, and kiss the sores of the leper who you now see is none other than you in disguise, your brother, your sister, your own child,  that you now know that your own soul has been purchased, in the end, and saved.

            And so, for all that, you will know not to be too glad when your desires come true and fortune smiles upon you.

            On the hardship side are as many gradations and challenges. Able to be achieved fairly readily by novices is indifference to the necessary hardship, whether necessary because morally obvious (giving up a place in line for a needier fellow, missing a party to comfort a relative, and more ambitious versions of these—living in an unappealing place for the sake of a spouse; giving up a fulfilling hobby or relationship circle for the sake of parenting demands), or because it is inevitable and out of everyone’s control: The delayed flight which cannot be avoided; the illness that must be borne; the bad weather that ruins a planned outing, even the delayed retirement due to an economic downturn. To cease complaining, and be indifferent to these, is no great achievement, but a necessary first step. These moments are offered to all of us constantly, training wheels for the spiritual life.

            More difficult on the hardship side is to be indifferent to needless hardships--those that might have been avoided, but for one’s own carelessness (an accident due to needless haste, especially if consequences are enduring, such as a permanent loss of health or capacity in oneself or, worse, another who was innocent) or the callousness of a bureaucrat (refusal to make a minor rule exception that might have saved a day or even a life). To look back and rue such events, to replay them, and to find one has lost a certain enthusiasm for one’s new circumstance or even fallen into quiet despair, is in these situations a natural human reaction—and one that can bloom into resentment and sorrow and real despair if not nipped soon enough.  It can take real prayer, self discipline, and support from others to achieve inner freedom now. 

Now the spiritual muscles are starting to work. One is beginning to grow the power needed to stand free and do the right when the time comes—even as one feels assailed by the certainty that I have done anything but the right when it recently mattered most. The difficulty grows a little more when one must watch others, equally situated as me, escape by luck or cleverness the needless hardship that I continue to endure. Others notice a sign out of the jammed traffic at a turn that I miss, or make a call to the airline to get rebooked that occurs to me too late, or enjoy remarkable health while I fall ill though I took more precautions. Now I have not only the hardship, and the lost opportunity, but I have lost at least temporarily my self-image as clever, wise, prudent, effective—or, at heart, as beloved of God after all. Now I must question myself and even my place in the world, as well as suffer the slings and arrows of fortune. Add to this sickness, pain, or misery, so that one’s inner reserves of will are not available, and I become now a boat tossed by the sea, ready to sink. My thoughts turn dark, and my inner darkness is laid bare. Now I must begin to rely on God profoundly, to choose to believe that grace can follow all things, that God’s designs are deep enough to work from here, that there is even now no call to mourn. 

Now I am beginning to see, in the distance, the strength to make a sacrifice at one’s own expense for a fellow man or woman, to stand up for the downtrodden, to be a voice for the kingdom, to choose death for a principle or, as Christ says, for ones friends and even for the stranger, though I be the only one and every man and woman call me a silly fool, and I be assailed by self doubt, and God stay so awfully silent. Such moments of practice, of strengthening, of trial, are therefore sent to us even as we grow in wisdom, even as we gain the ability to live in ease, to master this life’s practicalities. They are sent not only to humble us, but to give us the opportunity to grow strong enough to stand for the truth when the day comes around. They are the practice fields of the kingdom of God.

            And so for all that, be not too sorrowful when your desires are denied, and when fortune frowns upon you.

            For the journey is long, longer than I can picture, and few of us are as far up that mountain as we may think. Just as we feel that we have begun to gain integrity, to grow in strength, to achieve the indifference that enables moral freedom and true compassion, let us look honestly at where we are. Can I truly endure lost opportunity, victory snatched from my grasp, dreams denied, without a trace of bitterness, regret, and remorse? Can I truly enjoy success, privilege, and comfort without a bit of smugness? Without a trace of entitlement? Without an ounce of self satisfaction, self-congratulation, or inflated importance? 

I’ll tell you, I can look around the first class cabin, around the fine restaurant, and I can be certain none have achieved this, for all convey by their body language, their posture, their bearing, their tone of voice, their speech, their eyes, that they feel just a little bit of these things (and in some cases, quite a bit). And when I look honestly in myself, I see that I am no different: given food set before, me, I find I want it done just a little differently, and am entitled to ask for that; seeing that others did not gain the seat I was assigned, I feel just a touch of satisfaction that I have escaped the fate of the masses, a sense of separateness, rather than solidarity, however fleeting. I see that when pushed, I have not eliminated these feelings from my inner life, but only hidden them. They can be revealed by a turn of events. I see that I am as capable of arrogance and selfishness as  those I recently judged lagging, when placed in the right circumstance, given sufficient pressure, placed in the face of sufficient outrage. And so I am subjected not only to the painful judgment of my own conscience as a hypocrite and a snob, but also to the test from God, who places me in a humbling and painful place so I can improve and so I can be rescued from pride and the death it brings. Here I am proven no stronger or better than the next, despite my years of seeking. And so I am both granted the gift of humility and with it the chance of inner freedom once more, as well as challenged all over again, to rely on God’s strength, and not my own, to be made strong even as I am proven so weak.