Last Friday we thought about what Sarah Bachelard calls the
Tragic Gap. This is the gap between what
ought to be and what is – if you’re sophisticated you say… between idealism and
reality. So the Tragic Gap is where we
are living unless we retreat into some preferred dreamworld or fantasyland,
which is always a popular option. Quoting
a few words from last week, thegap is… between
a peaceful world and the world we’ve got; or the gap between what I wanted in
life and what actually happened; perhaps the gap between reasonably good health
and the fact that I’m coming apart; the gap between youth and ageing, religion
in our family and irreligion in our family…
I went on to suggest that standard Christian perception and
teaching, truth be told, makes not a lot of difference in the Tragic Gap except
to help us feel better or hopeful. We are unlikely to change the
world. Our real task as people of faith
is to be faithful, to be the persons whose lives are not inevitably shaped
and determined by the gap and all its demands and disappointments, but by our
open hearts, open to love and goodness and freedom in Christ.
And so it is that Sarah Bachelard goes on to teach that,
living in the gap, we are mistaken if we think our options are either to fix
what is wrong or to ignore it. This is
her second point about the Tragic Gap.
She instances a colleague who lapsed into a prolonged clinical
depression. Later he reported that some
friends and associates for whom it was all too difficult or mysterious stayed
away because they didn’t know what to do or say. They felt they couldn’t understand it and
couldn’t change it. He suffered also
from others wanting to make him feel better, somehow, anyhow… He actually had to try to hide his feelings
from them. But there were others who did
make a difference. One of them showed up
regularly to massage his feet, rarely ever saying much. This person was neither evasive nor invasive,
but was there, present, in the gap, available, attentive, accepting, and in
some way lifting some of the load and taking some of the pain.
To live in the gap meaningfully we need to find our own personal
ways of being properly present. Of
course, if something can be fixed, someone should fix it, and that is often
precisely what happens. But as we well
know, there are things that can’t be fixed.
Mortality itself comes to mind, and the processes of ageing. Dementia, as it seems at present, and also
those who are caring and coping in that situation. Grief, often, can’t be fixed… nor other forms
of deep loss. Being present might mean
massaging their feet, as it were… it might mean mowing their lawns… it certainly
means listening and actually hearing...
As meditators know, really being present starts when words no longer
predominate, including “helpful” words.
It means that we are now not trying to exert control or fix things – let
alone having our own helplessness or our own fears or our own experiences intrude. Telling our own stories and what happened to
me, or what I believe, is not being truly present… as we saw last week: The gap
is not about me. For some that may be a
hard thing to let go.
But contemplative practice of life and prayer, day by day,
year by year, forms us this way. In a
discipline of silence and stillness we are practising being present, because
that is what our prayer is about. We are
learning discernment… that is, starting to sense, gently and peaceably, what is
really going on, in me and around me. We
are learning to live by relinquishing the illusion of control of life and
events. It is a freedom, and a relief.
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