One of the lousiest feelings we have in life is when we get totally stuck. Or thwarted, confused, rebuffed, turned down, ignored, abandoned.
One of the most hopeful and helpful things we get in life is a growing realization that, somehow, deep down life, being stuck is optional.
A great example is that woman in the Bible with the really sick child. She comes to Jesus for help. She's not a Jew, she's more like an enemy of the Jews. But her daughter's serious illness trumps reticence and social norms.
At least for her--though strangely not for Jesus.
When she asks Jesus for help he says, "It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to dogs."
Whoa. What?
People speculate a lot about what Jesus was up to when he said that. Some say he was trying to teach his disciples how wrong discrimination was by this shocking response. Some say it was a teaching moment not from Jesus but for Jesus.
Anyway, it's the woman I'm thinking about today. Trying to put myself in her shoes. Trying to slow down and feel the sting of Jesus's words. Being called a dog. Being sick with worry about my child. Being consumed by hope and fear.
Most of us know that kind of insistent, jangly, obsessive drivenness we have when we're facing such real life terror and longing.
What a remarkable confluence for this woman. Her daughter's achingly sick, and a renowned Healer, some say Messiah, has ventured into her territory. She get's 'an audience' with him. And then...?
Hard to imagine a more painful kind of "NO" than the one she gets.
We're not told what's going through her mind. But whatever it is, I want some of that.
She literally does not take "NO" for an answer. She begs. She begs to differ. "Even dogs gets scraps."
And Jesus says, Wow. What strong faith. When you get home you'll find your daughter is whole again.
We're never told the woman's name. Maybe we should call her Saint Chutzpah. Or maybe St. Second Opinion.
As long as we breathe and are conscious, we never are finally stuck or totally thwarted. Not that we always or even usually get exactly what we want--like St Chutzpah did.
The trick is to keep negotiating. Like a mountain climber negotiates a mountain. Or a mathematician a sticky equation.
Our usual focus is on the path we want and have envisioned. This imagined path is often blocked. When that happens we feel blocked.
There are many doors that do not open. And the more important they seem to us the more we will we feel thwarted, rebuffed, turned down, ignored, abandoned. And STUCK.
But we're not walking on a ready-made path anyway. The only part of our path that is fixed is the part behind us. The path ahead is negotiable. Always.
This is where mindfulness can be so helpful. It trains us to slow down. To suspend our fixed notions for a few moments. To stay patient and to be curious about what our fixed notions actually are. Are they wise? Accurate? Are they fixed?
Then, slowly, we usually find we can remove our gaze from the path that might have been--and discover the delicious possibility of being able to open our minds and hearts to Something Else, the path that may be.
Then, in the Presence of this Something Else, we can look around. Listen. Consider. Reconsider--imaginatively, even playfully. All these small actions can be part of larger discernment and prayer. Little bits adding up to bigger life.
The main trick is to be able to remember and to trust, right there in the middle of a fog of stuckness, that this kind of negotiating, this kind of navigating, is always possible.
