Tough Conversations

Solutions Through Compassionate Communication.

Breathe Deep and Pass the Turkey

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Thinking about holiday gatherings and all the joy and pain and messiness that come with families can be exhausting.

Yesterday morning on public radio’s “On Being” Krista Tippett interviewed Joanna Macy, 81, a Buddhist translator of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Macy spoke about pain and love and loss. She said not to run from the discomfort . . . “if we can be fearless, can be with our pain, it turns. . . . [W]hen we take it in our hands, when we can just be with it and keep breathing, then it turns to reveal its other face, . . . our love, our inseparable connectedness with all life.”

Macy said, “I’m not insisting that we be brimming with hope.  It’s OK not be optimistic. . . . Feeling that you have to maintain hope can wear you out, so just be present. . . . The main thing is that you’re showing up. . . and that you’re finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that.”

Our families are not perfect, we are not perfect. Nothing may have changed. Your mother-in-law may still be critical; your uncle may still have asinine opinions. That’s ok. Rilke says, “If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.”

Just breathe deep, show up, and enjoy the turkey.

Carolyn

To hear the program or download poems, go to http://www.onbeing.org/program/wild-love-world/6

Take Your Time

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Impatience is the enemy of peacemaking, especially in families. When we’re scared or hurt or under stress, it’s hard to think clearly. It takes time to listen deeply. It takes time to rebuild trust. It takes time to unravel what got us into this mess and the role we may have played in it. It takes time to discover the possibilities hidden in each one’s heart.

I recently heard Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue reflect on”The Landscape of Time” with Krista Tippett on her NPR program, “On Being.” He said, “Stress is a perverted relationship with time.” Hearing this, I thought, yes. It’s easy to forget that pressure to reach a quick resolution is ordinarily unnecessary and often unhelpful.

We need to hold time lightly. In a difficult conversation, as O’Donohue says, “We have no idea what will land on the shoreline of tomorrow.”

If an immediate solution emerges in your family discussion, give thanks for beginner’s luck. More likely, you’ll need to move slowly, gently cleaning as you go, until a new vision begins to come into focus on the horizon toward which you’re moving together.

“Possibility,” says O’Donhue, “is the sacred heart of time.”

Carolyn Parr