 |
Peculiar Crossroads
by Father Paul A. Keenan |
|
|
"The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where
time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is
to find that location." These words of Flannery O’Connor
are a more optimistic rendering of the circumstance of
being at a crossroads than we are normally used to
seeing. In our ordinary experience, crossroads seem
anything but upbeat and positive. They are frustrating,
often debilitating, and come under the category of what
we ordinarily call a crisis.
Crossroads situations come in many shapes and sizes.
At the end of a church service last Sunday, an older
gentleman came up to me and told me, "You know, I
was married fifty-four years ago in this very
church." Assuming this was happy news, I smiled and
said, "Oh, how nice!" My friend continued,
"I lost my wife last month. I don’t know what to
do." It wasn’t happy news at all: this gentleman
had returned to this church in the hopes of keeping
something of his deceased wife alive. I thought of my
own father who lost my mother all too soon after forty
years of marriage. Dad certainly went on to make a life
for himself for three years after my mother’s painful
death to cancer. But it wasn’t the same, and each day
he confronted feelings of not knowing quite what to do.
The loss of a loved one is a heartrending crossroads,
indeed.
If death provides a crossroads, so does long-term
illness. Marianne, a corporate executive in her
mid-forties, was at the top of her game when she was
stricken with the illness known as Lyme Disease.
Increasingly, she found herself torn between the heavy
demands of a fast-paced job and her need to take care of
her debilitation and fatigue. Should she give up the job
and go out on disability, she wondered? Would she even
get permanent disability? Would she just lie around all
day for the rest of her life in an uphill battle to feel
better? Would that be her life after she had worked so
hard for so long to get to her level on the corporate
ladder?
The process of aging can do it, too. You wake up one
morning with the vague feeling that you don’t quite
have the drive anymore that you used to. You begin to
notice graying hairs, or a receding hairline. Someone at
work teases you about being fifty or fifty-five or
sixty, and you find that you are miffed. It’s scary,
because you don’t recall ever getting old, and
up to now you haven’t thought of yourself as
old. For many, the realization can be a depressing one.
These are crossroads: times in life when one thing is
drawing to a close and another is beginning. The problem
is, we weren’t prepared for the former to end, and we
haven’t a clue what the latter looks like. When
confronted with a crossroads in life, our usual reaction
is to feel helpless, perhaps to panic. We often feel as
though we don’t know what to do. We get scared and
start to think there is something the matter with us.
A good relaxed look at the phenomenon of crossroads
will help us to learn four important things:
- Crossroads are normal.
- Crossroads show us the difference between illusion
and reality.
- Crossroads reveal to us the importance of intention.
- When we realize the importance of intention, we can
look back and see that the crossroads were really a
mirage.
1. Crossroads are normal. Many
people at a crossroads feel that they are crazy or are
going crazy. Most of the time, this is not the case.
Crossroads are a normal, natural part of life. For that
matter, change is a normal part of life; and crossroads
are nothing more than an invitation to change. The
feeling of going crazy has to do with the loss of the
familiar. It would be nice if changes came one at a
time, but often that is not the case. There’s an old
saying that deaths come in threes. There’s no absolute
rule about that, and it’s a very good idea not to get
that notion into your head lest it become a
self-fulfilling prophecy. But it relays the notion that
often when something shifts in one area of life,
something else in another area shifts as well. Taken
together, both can trigger other changes. Before too
long, you get the feeling that there is no solid ground
for you to walk on.
"I never experienced anything quite like
it," Bob told me, shaking his head. "One day I
was living the nice quiet life I had been living for
twenty-five years. The next day, it all came apart. I
was at work, and the boss called me into his office for
what I assumed was going to be a planning session. He
closed the door, told me that they had decided to
eliminate my position as part of a cost-cutting
campaign, and that I was to be gone in two weeks. I
never saw it coming. They offered me severance, but I
knew it wouldn’t last long and that I would soon need
to find another job. I got my resume together and sent
it out, but nothing materialized. I used to be an expert
in my field, but suddenly nobody was interested in a
fifty-year-old guy with experience. My wife and I had
kids in school, and we were watching our savings
dwindle. Then I got sick. The more the pressure built,
the more my wife and I seemed to argue. Worry and stress
seemed to be the order of the day."
Bob’s experience is not unusual. In fact, it’s
all too normal. One thing leads to another, and there’s
a very good reason for that. As much as we try to
portray ourselves as individuals who are terribly
independent of one another, the fact of the matter is
that we are all citizens of the universe. The very
smallest and finest levels of our being are interrelated
to each other and interact with each other even when we
are not consciously aware of their interaction. Send an
e-mail and you can affect someone on the other side of
the planet. Turn on television or surf the internet and
you can find yourself interacting with the planet Mars.
We speak of coincidences, and yet there is no such
thing: the strange and at times bizarre concurrences of
people and events happen by interaction, not by chance.
Whatever affects us at one point in our lives affects us
at every other point as well. Though it can be
frustrating at times, it’s not surprising that when we
experience change in one area of life, changes come in
other areas as well. That’s what Bob was going through
and it was driving him crazy. Or at least he thought it
was. Actually, it wasn’t, and it became necessary to
sit Bob down and help him to see that what he thought
was craziness was really entirely normal. He was not
losing his marbles or witnessing the ruination of his
life.
2. Crossroads show us the difference between
illusion and reality. Bob knew that he was at a
crossroads, and that he had to do something. But what to
do? Most of us when we face situations like Bob’s have
one of two reactions. Either we curl up into a little
ball of fear or we scatter ourselves all over the place
in a fruitless effort to piece things together.
Fortunately, there’s another option. Instead of
succumbing either to paralysis or to frenzy, we can
quiet ourselves and turn within for divine guidance. I’m
not going to enter into a discussion here of the various
forms of meditation. There are many fine resources on
the practice of meditation, including the archives of SoulfulLiving.com
where each of us can find references, help and various
examples of the meditative process. The point here,
though, is to quiet ourselves. We can’t think properly
or choose properly when we are fearful or panicked. When
we take time to calm ourselves and look within, we may
well get the impression that rather than thinking, we
are being thought through. When I was a boy of about
eight or nine, two very puzzling questions occurred to
me at about the same time. The first was, "How come
I can see everyone else’s face, but not my own?"
The second was, "How come everyone talks about
thinking, while I don’t feel like I’m thinking, but
rather that someone is thinking through me?" I didn’t
know it at the time, but I later learned that what I was
doing in those questions was confronting the deepest
mystery of my being. It was rather an awesome thing for
a boy of eight or nine to be doing, but there it was,
nonetheless. As regards the latter question, it seemed
to me that my thoughts were not generated by me, but
instead were occurring to me. I was not their source,
but I was being led or drawn to them or they to me. That’s
generally the experience we have during meditation. We
often come to meditation with our heads jammed full of
thoughts – that’s how we got the to crossroads in
the first place – but once we meditate, it is as
though a whole other source of thoughts and ideas has
bubbled up. It’s like the old Zen saying, "Muddy
water, let stand, becomes clear." Through
meditation, we go beneath our muddied thinking and wait
for something new.
As we practice meditation, we become aware of a
difference between our new thoughts and our old ones. In
the New Testament story of changing water into wine for
the wedding feast at Cana, the head steward marvels to
the bridegroom, "You have saved the best wine for
last." This is how it seems when we begin to
experience the fresh new thoughts that rise up from
within us as we meditate. They are inspiring, full of
hope, giving a sense of purpose and direction. They move
us past the crossroads by moving us above them. During a
recent snowstorm that kept most of us in the
Northeastern United States homebound, a snowbound
colleague of mine joked that if she could fly a
helicopter, she’d be at the office in eleven minutes.
That’s the sense of the higher thoughts we get from
meditation. They well up from inside us, and as they do,
they expand our vision. Our limits, so cripplingly
important just moments ago, now seem old-fashioned and
irrelevant. Notice, though, that at this stage, the
ideas may not yet yield us concrete solutions to our
dilemma. What they do, rather, is show us a new level of
thought, and give us the hope that there is more
available to us than we formerly thought or perceived.
At this stage of meditation, Bob may not be guided to
the perfect job or given the address and phone number at
which it is to be found. But he will be given the sense
that, to quote Shakespeare, "There are more things
in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your
philosophy." He’ll begin to see reality beyond
his limits, and that is an excellent start.
At that new level of thought, Bob will come to
realize the difference between reality and appearances.
When he started out with us, Bob was 100% certain that
he was experiencing reality. He had lost his job, his
income was dwindling, he was having trouble finding
another one, his health had deteriorated and so had his
marriage. That was reality to him, a hard and somber
truth, and there was no way around it. He was in big
trouble.
Now that he knows that there is a higher level of
reality and of thought, Bob is in a position to
re-evaluate the things he took to be true before. He is
learning that, though they may be true at the level of
his everyday experience, they do not tell the truth, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth as he had
previously thought. At the new level, he experiences
himself and his reality as full, flowing and bountiful,
whereas his old level revealed himself and his reality
to be empty, at a standstill and deficient. At the new
level, he realizes that he is one with the abundant flow
of everything that is "up" there (or
"in" there). At the old level, he felt cut off
from everything, picked upon, ganged up on; life had it
in for him. He can learn to see that it makes quite a
difference which story of reality one pays attention to.
3. Crossroads reveal to us the importance of
intention. Once he has seen that there are
resources beyond the limitations of his old way of
thinking, Bob must form the intention to pursue those
resources and to truly want what they offer. Without
intention, nothing really can happen. It’s like
playing pool. It’s one thing to have the billiard
balls scattered all over the table. It’s quite another
thing to have them all arranged and ready to hit with
the cue. In the first instance, there can be no game. In
the second instance, there can. Intention takes the
fresh ideas Bob has found in his inner world and focuses
their energy, making it possible for them to do their
work. If he is to get beyond his crossroads, Bob must
intend to let the truth of those new ideas take
precedence over his old ones. He must go so far as to
declare his old ideas false and renounce the power they
used to hold over him. Intention is the power to step
beyond the crossroads by rising above them. He must deny
the "truth" that his life is falling apart. He
must deny the "truth" that he cannot find
work. He must deny the "truth" that he must
yield to sickness and misery. He must deny the
"truth" that there is nothing out there for
him. He must deny the "truth" that his
marriage can no longer be successful.
At this point, let me say a word about denial,
because I can already hear you thinking, "This guy
is encouraging people to be in denial." Here’s
where the force of intention comes in. There are two
kinds of denial: one without intention and one with
intention. The first is what we call "being in
denial." It is only in the second kind of denial --
denial plus intention -- that we are able to get beyond
our fork in the road. If someone suffers from an
addiction, sees the signs and refuses to accept the
seriousness of the problem, that is denial, but it is
not the kind of "higher denial" that I am
talking about. The kind of denial they need to make is
to deny that they must necessarily be forever held
hostage to the circumstances that they see or the past
they have had or the narrow future they envision. That’s
the kind of denial I am talking about. It’s very
different, because it requires looking directly at the
phenomena you are trying to overcome, not turning a
blind eye to them.
So, then, we want Bob to set an intention in order to
move past his crossroads. And the precise intention we
want him to set is this: "I intend to accept the
view of reality gleaned from my inner wisdom as true,
and I intend to find the view of reality gleaned from my
previous outer experience as false." He is saying
yes to abundance, limitlessness, freedom, and the realm
of all possibilities. He is saying no to lack,
limitation, fatalism and obstacles.
To do this is to cross a Rubicon. I am reminded of
places in the New Testament where Jesus reminded
disciples and would-be disciples that in order to follow
him, they had to leave father, mother, homes and riches,
anything that would tie them to conventional ways of
thought. That is why, before healing people, Jesus would
take them off to be alone with himself. He knew that the
conventional and often negative thinking of those around
the one to be healed could prevent the healing from
taking place. By the same token, Jesus promised those
who could accept this challenge that they would have the
things they had left behind in abundance, plus eternal
life. That’s why we refer to this spiritual thinking
as "higher" thought. It requires a release
from the lower, but far from destroying the lower
(though it appears to), it transforms the lower by
revealing possibilities heretofore unseen in it.
4. When we realize the importance of intention,
we can look back and see that the crossroads were really
a mirage. Once we have grasped the importance of
intention, we have the ability to get past our
crossroads. Once the ideas of the spiritual realm are
accepted as true and the ideas of the realm of everyday
experience are accepted as false, the ideas of the
spiritual realm are empowered and enabled to exert their
influence upon us. At this point, there is very little
we need to do except sustain our intention and watch.
What will begin to happen is that occurrences will begin
to unfold along the lines of our intention far more
readily than if we had tried to jump in and make them
happen. Literally, we will find ourselves receiving
guidance from the things that happen to us every day.
With our old vision, we would have said that these were
unrelated and accidental; and we probably would have
given them no notice. But now with our new vision, we
are allowing being to unfold according to its own lines,
its best lines; and we allow it to teach and guide us.
In our everyday world, we are often praised for being
the captain of our ship; in actual point of fact it is
much more interesting to be disciples of being,
watching, learning as we go, finding the right
information and opportunities opening up before us just
as we need them. Rumi, the Sufi poet and mystic of the
thirteenth century, said it well: "We fritter away
all of our energy devising and executing schemes to
become that which we already are." In truth, we don’t
have to go out and build reality from scratch; all we
have to do, really, is to intend to let it happen around
us. It will.
If my friend Bob were to ask me what to do about his
crossroads, I might share with him the story of how I
got my present job as radio co-host of "Religion on
the Line" and Director of Radio Ministry for the
Archdiocese of New York. Back in 1988, I was an
associate pastor at St. James Church on the Lower East
Side of New York City. I was floundering a bit, having
just recovered from a near-fatal illness and an
unfortunate misunderstanding with my colleagues at my
previous parish (see my Good News for Bad Days:
Living a Soulful Life, Warner Books, 1998 for
details on both). I had always been a great lover of
radio, and long had had the dream of becoming a
broadcaster, though I never dreamed it would be possible
for me as a priest. One Sunday morning, I went down to
the rectory kitchen to make breakfast. I turned on the
radio, adjusted the dial and heard a program where three
men were having a conversation. It turned out that one
was a rabbi, one a minister and one a priest; and it was
fascinating. Listening further, I learned that the show
was called "Religion on the Line," and that it
was on WABC every Sunday morning. I remember thinking to
myself, "Wow, I’d really like to be on that
show." That was about the long and short of that
thought. It didn’t occur to me to do anything about
it, and I more or less went about my business in the
parish.
A few months later, my pastor, Monsignor Kevin O’Brien,
encouraged me to take a course in broadcasting at New
York University. He knew of my love for radio, and
thought I should consider putting it to use. It turned
out to be a very positive experience, and whetted my
whistle as far as radio was concerned. Among my
parochial duties at the time was my tenure as Chairman
of the Board of the Lower East Side Catholic Area
Conference. At the time, we were looking to develop our
ministry to Chinese Catholics (Chinatown is part of the
Lower East Side), and we were planning a day-long
retreat for our Chinese Catholics in one of our
churches. At a meeting, someone suggested that the radio
program "Religion on the Line" would be a good
publicity vehicle for the retreat. I called the Catholic
priest on the program, and he generously invited a group
of Chinese Catholics and me to be guests on the show. As
I was leaving the studio after the interview, I
mentioned to the priest that I was interested in doing
radio, and that if he ever needed a substitute on a
Sunday, I’d like him to think of me.
Months went by, and I had just arrived at a new
assignment when I received a call from Joseph Zwilling,
the Director of the Office of Communications at the
Archdiocese of New York. Joe and I had never met, but he
wanted me to know that the priest who was hosting
"Religion on the Line" had to be away for the
summer, and had recommended me as a possible substitute.
Was I interested? The answer was obvious.
As a result of that summer’s trial by fire, which I
loved, I decided to start a program of my own, which
would be called "As You Think." I went to Joe
Zwilling’s office to meet him and to let the
Archdiocese know what I was thinking of doing. As I
walked into his office, it hit me: "I would really
like to work here." My next phone call from Joe
Zwilling, a few weeks later, was to offer me the use of
a spare office in his department to work on publicity
and fundraising for "As You Think." As time
went on, I joined the office on a part time basis, then
full-time as an Assistant Director, and later still
received the title of Director of Radio Ministry.
Somewhere along the way, I became full-time co-host of
"Religion on the Line," which position I have
thoroughly enjoyed for eleven years now.
Was I lucky? Yes and no. From one point of view, I
was and am very fortunate, indeed. But it was not
"dumb luck." Along the way, I kept being
guided to new intentions that, without any doing on my
part, arranged meetings, situations and events for the
highest good of all, including mine. Behind those
intentions was my overall intention to do the work God
gave me to do. That intention opened up the doorway to
God and all of the other doors that opened thereafter.
What’s the message here? Let’s go back to
Flannery O’Connor: "The writer operates at a
peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity
somehow meet. His {or her} problem is to find that
location." The crossroads that right now may seem
to you to be impassable and impossible, seen from
another point of view are the meeting of time and place
and eternity. Your meeting. Relax, realize that you’re
not getting the whole truth from what you see. Open your
mind and heart to the possibility of a higher truth, a
truth that replaces limitation with opportunity,
impossibility with infinite possibilities, and despair
with pulsating hope. Deny the truths you have been
living by. Affirm the intention that your higher vision
is the truth. Go back to your life, and let yourself be
guided.
© Copyright 2004 Father Paul A. Keenan. All Rights Reserved.
Father Paul A. Keenan: Popular speaker, author and
radio co-host of WABC Radio’s "Religion on the
Line," Father Paul Keenan likes to talk and write
about the issues that matter to people. Widely
experienced as a national and local television and
radio news commentator, he is the author of Good
News for Bad Days, Stages of the Soul and Heartstorming.
As Director of Radio Ministry of the Archdiocese
of New York, he supervises, produces and writes for
various radio and television programs. In addition, he
serves as a parish priest in New York City.
Father Paul Keenan, came to his
now-ten-year-old career in New York broadcasting after
having been a college teacher and administrator and a
parish priest for many years. He hails from Kansas City,
where he graduated from Rockhurst University and
completed an M.A. in Moral and Pastoral Theology at
Saint Louis University. He was ordained to the
priesthood in 1977, and went on to complete an M.A. in
Philosophy at Fordham University.
Father Paul is also known for
his work on the Web. He hosts his own website (www.fatherpaul.com)
and contributes regular articles to various other sites.
He is a regular columnist for the monthly newspaper,
"Catholic New York." His other talents and
interests include reading, cooking and being humble
servant to his three cats, Teddy, Lionel and Midnight.
|
