THE CIRCLE Tuesday, July 22, 2014 This blog was written almost exactly two years ago. I find its lessons to still be true. I share it with you again this morning, just in case, like me, you might need to remember. Here it is, edited for clarity: Draw a circle. Any piece of paper or cardboard or napkin will do. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just round, as in a circle. It doesn’t matter how big you draw the circle at first. That will almost certainly change, maybe even by the time you finish reading this, certainly by the time you die. In the circle, in no particular order (it’s a circle), write down all the things that affect your life over which you have actual control. It’s OK to make mistakes. You will want to make these particular mistakes less and less as you go along in life but if you don’t make the list out of fear of making a mistake, you may never draw the circle and make the list. Outside the circle, write down all the things that affect your life over which you have absolutely no control whatsoever. Use caution. You may be surprised before this exercise is over how many things you put in the circle at first and then move out and how many you choose to move from the outside in as well. You may find that what goes inside the circle, though a smaller list, is actually harder to determine than what goes outside. Making that list is likely the closest we’ll ever come to experiencing the sacred in this lifetime. You and you alone must make your own list. As I have gone further and further down the road, the circle that encloses those things over which I believe I have control has gotten smaller and smaller. Big circles make for unbearably heavy loads. There is virtually nothing over which anyone has absolute control. It’s the fantasy otherwise that gets so heavy. We have influence over many things, certainly. Control? Ain’t gonna’ happen. Never. As in never. This has been my experience, especially in times of conflict or grief or loss or anger. The more stuff I put inside that circle, the more over which I believe I actually have control, the more likely I am to live a life of desperation, anxiety, fear, anger and disappointment. The smaller the list, the greater the peace. When I think back on some of the things over which Nancy and I have argued from to time, I feel the need to either laugh or cry. We once got in an argument over the shape of a toilet (my bad). I lie not. A stupid toilet. I can’t really remember how the argument started. What I now know is that the argument went from birth to death on the wings of a bird named Idiot, soaring high and then right into the ground on the updrafts and harsher downdrafts of my arrogant nanosecond long assumption that I could and should control what Nancy thought about the shape of toilets! The toilet wasn’t the issue. It was my thinking that was in the toilet. Can I control the shape of toilets worldwide? Why would I want to? Is the shape of toilets of greater importance than the one who has loved me unconditionally even as my shape has constantly changed? The Apostle Paul once said that he had learned the secret of being content in any circumstance of life (Philippians 4:11). Faith, hope and love are spiritual gifts of God to humanity. Contentment is the only spiritual gift that has to be learned. Contentment is a secret that has to be discovered, one discontented soul at a time. It’s discovered deep within one’s own soul while the hurricane of life’s uncertainties roils out of our control just outside the circle. Reinhold Niebuhr is generally credited with authoring the Serenity Prayer. “God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Those things outside the circle, those things we cannot change, may deserve the energy of our prayers. They never deserve the energy of our lives that should be exclusively devoted to that over which we actually have the power to make a good difference. What’s inside your circle right now? The rest? The stuff outside that circle we can’t control? We surrender that to God. Then, and only then, we learn the secret.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 11:26:29 +0000
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