A most Happy New Year to you. I sincerely hope your holidays were a blessing.

The following story I wrote to you several years ago, but never gave it to you.

I remember thinking that this story isn't good enough or that, perhaps, I should not impose this kind of message on you, that perhaps you would see it as too religious and as somehow inappropriate.

Well, (if you will indulge me, but a little) this story is religious after a fashion, but it is also real, and so am I. This incident actually happened to us, and this is what I did, and the very struggle and the real thoughts I had as it happened and as I wrote it to you very shortly after this event occurred.

I happened recently to pull this old story out, to read it again (as I often do with what I write to you) and was refreshed and renewed and refocused in mercy and in love by what I had written to you those years back, but thought wasn't appropriate.

But maybe you don't know that I write these articles not so much for you, but sincerely to you (and also to me) so that you can read, and go back, and be refreshed, renewed and refocused, just as I do with what I write.

All of life is a struggle to see and act clearly and well in the ways that are intended for us. But in this life we are clouded and dimmed in those intended ways by the veils of pride, fear, desires, cares, concerns, distractions, confusions and the myriad other hindrances that close off to us the truth of ourselves.

In pondering on and writing these articles I tend for myself to push aside those veils a bit and see in inner ways that aren't always apparent to me; and I tend to be and act better in the reflection of this more real and living reality.

In terms of our studies, this article reminds me of the Behavior Loop and its lessons regarding invitations that we learned of in the Parent Seminar, but in terms of my thoughts and focus at this moment I am writing to you of religion.

Yes, this article is of religion, but it is also of life (for religion is not a separate thing, but it is life) and it bespeaks the struggle that you and I face every day.

What I have written to you here is how I, on that day in the struggle, chose to face my life. And what I am giving you in this article, and every one that I write to you, is what I have as aid to help you in the struggle to choose how you will face your life.

Perhaps one of you will write something back to share of what you have as aid, that I and the others who read your Words of Caring may be refreshed, renewed and refocused, and that, by your Words, we might better choose how we face our lives.

All of life is a struggle, but it is also a community, and we are all in it together. The best we can ever do in that struggle and in that community is to share with each other of what we have, in aid and in love.

Be well my friends.

-- John Borland --


Receive Life As It Comes To You
By John Borland

I recently read the book, The Ladder of the Beatitudes, by Jim Forest. In the book, Mr. Forest describes a Russian Orthodox priest, Father Nicholas Preobrashenski, who grew up in Leningrad during the Soviet era. Father Preobrashenski credits his father, a man of strong Christian belief who was jailed during the Stalin years, as one of his influences in deciding to give up his position as a nuclear physicist to become a priest. “’Receive life as it comes to you,’ he always told us, ‘and never hold anyone to blame but yourself.’”

Though I yet ponder and struggle with the real meaning of these simple words, I think I was given a chance to put them into practice:

October 25, 2000 – My wife and I are awakened this morning at 2:00 AM by a telephone call from our local police department. The call is to inform us that an officer is now outside of our home. The reason – a vandal has thrown a rock through the rear window of my car.

Judy and I make our way downstairs to meet the officer and inspect the damage. A huge hole now exists where an intact window had been just a few hours before. A large volume of glass fragments now lie heaped and strewn in and around the car. Also evident in the beam of the officer’s flashlight is a grapefruit-sized rock lying at rest on the driver’s side floor.

The officer sympathizes, but offers little practical help saying, “My sergeant says we can’t fingerprint rocks.”

The officer departs and we move quietly indoors after covering the new opening. I feel perplexed, but somehow not angry. I find myself praying for the poor individual out there who felt it so necessary to do this. How sorry I feel for a person who can’t find it to rise above such a powerless action.

I climb upstairs and attempt to go back to sleep, but I have become restless and fitful.

“So,” I muse to myself, “you are not so calm after all.”

Finally I manage to drift off for a short time.

I awaken in the morning pondering further the reason I could not sleep. I am worried about what my insurance company will say and much more afraid than I want to admit that my car will not be what it was.

“Receive life as it comes to you and never hold anyone to blame but yourself.”

The words flow back to me and cause me to refocus. This automobile, this thing, has taken away my power and imprisoned me in concern for the findings of the insurance system.

But wait! My car has not taken control. By my concern for the car and my need to achieve my expected outcome – the car must again be perfect – I have given away my power, and made myself subject to the will of an agency.

This is not receiving life has it comes to me, rather it is me trying to make life fit my need and bringing with it fear and anxiety. The spillover from these emotions can have definite negative impacts on my wife, my children, my friends and my co-workers. How often it has happened before. I realize further that my feeling for the rock thrower has become more belligerent; I am blaming him for bringing on my fears.

“Receive life as it comes to you and never hold anyone to blame but yourself.”

Why, I ask myself, is this car so important to me? How much simpler it would be if I didn’t have it. Just think, no gas, no oil, no servicing, no payments, no platform on which to exercise my perfectionism and no insurance hassles to dog my dreams.

But, in today’s world, I have to have a car. Without a car, I would place an undue burden on my family and friends to get me where I need to go. The car is making me miserable, but I have to have it. Is this a paradox?

“Receive life as it comes to you and never hold anyone to blame but yourself.”

The problem isn’t having the car. The problem is my passionate attachment to the car. So why does it have to be perfect anyway?

I realize I am mourning my car’s injury, or more accurately, I am mourning the injury done to my pride.

The car has become a statement about me. If the car is great then I am great, if it is less then I am less. Dealing with insurance and having to beg rides is a humbling experience – one I do not wish to accept.

How can I receive life as it comes to me if I will only accept life as I want it to be? And whom can I really blame – or should I say, make responsible – for these feelings, but myself?

And what of other such situations? How many times have Judy or Troy or Joshua or my friends or my colleagues surprised me, hurt me, outdone me, affronted me, or in other ways been something other than I wanted them to be? And what then has been my reaction?

Too often my responses, which should have been ones of love, have been ones of anger or envy or indignation or self-justification; in effect I have sought to blame all of them for feelings that are mine.

“Receive life as it comes to you and never hold anyone to blame but yourself.”

Just as concern for my car and the insurance began to outweigh my loving prayer for the vandal, so too concern for my well-being, my comfort, my being right or my pride has very often outweighed and overwhelmed my love and empathy for others. Instead of receiving life and those in it, I have chosen to receive only me.

For no practical reason I go out later in the week and begin picking glass out of the back seat. With every small chunk I remove I let go of the car a little bit more. As I slowly work through the twinkling shards my prayer for the vandal comes back and grows stronger.

After an hour much glass still remains, but my car has shrunk dramatically in importance and my concern for the rock-thrower is uppermost in my mind.

“Receive life as it comes to you and never hold anyone to blame but yourself.”

This rock and the one who threw it started out this week to shatter my car window and, with it, the serenity of my life. But instead they have helped to shatter, a little bit, my rigid self-concern and so allowed me to see my life a little more clearly.

But what of the other rocks and rock throwers – those harsh words, negative actions and bad situations brought against me even by those I know and care for?

As always, I have a choice. I can allow the heavy rocks in my life to shatter my peace and threaten my survival so that I react in pain and anger. Or I can suffer to receive the rocks, look beyond my own well-being and so work to bring understanding, love and healing, for the rock throwers, and for myself.

All of life is a struggle, and a choice: will you receive it and the others in it, or will you receive only yourself?

YOU MAKE THE DIFFERENCE IN WHAT WE CAN DO TOGETHER!

Thank you so much for your interest in and support for Words of Caring. Please e-mail AffectiveSkill@aol.com with your questions, comments, submissions or suggestions.

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Last Modified: January 10, 2005