Advent Sabbath for Clarity

Today is the start of my sabbath - for a couple of days at the end of my week I step out of the fray, and regroup. We are one week into Advent, and so far the pace has been slow and calm. Today I will take some time to just enjoy the grace of the season.

My perfect sabbath is a celebration, a holiday. I keep it holy with my attitude: I don't rush, complain, or worry. Everything I do has a flavor of peace. I schedule some work, but it's work I find fulfilling, or uplifting. Simple is a great word to describe my ideal activities for the sabbath: Simple tasks, simple foods, and an undemanding schedule.

I've been seeking clearness on my next steps in my roles as activist, teacher, artist, and writer, and today I will hold these roles in my heart as I go through my simple day.

Agenda:

1. Read "Comfortable with Uncertainty"

2. Review clearness

3. Plan clearness meetings

1. Read "Comfortable with Uncertainty":

I'm looking again at "Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion", by Pema Chödrön (2002).

The theme throughout this book is training in tenderness for life, called bodhichitta. "We train in the bodhichitta practices in order to become so open that we can take the pain of the world in, let it touch our hearts, and turn it into compassion."

Chapter 12 is The Root of Suffering. "Our mind is always seeking zones of safety. We're in this zone of safety and that's what we consider life, getting it all together, security. ... We fear losing our illusion of security -- that's what makes us anxious. We fear being confused and not knowing which way to turn. We want to know what's happening. ... That's the essence of samsara -- the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places."

2. Review Clearness:

In the second half of the year I began reviewing some of the transformative habits I've developed over the years, how I get my ducks in a row. 

I've been going through the steps of discernment - the process of making deeply important decisions in my life:

-Use my practical wisdom, collect information, reflect on my values, and weigh all the possibilities for action. 

-Seek a leading of the spirit (God or Inner Guide) with an open mind and heart. 

-Seek clearness by inviting thoughtful questioning (not advise) from some people I trust.

Seeking clearness is the last step in the discernment process. Clarity - that feeling that you know what you stand for, you are sure of your objectives, you have set the best intentions, and you understand your next move - is liberating and empowering.

Most of the time we don't wait for clarity; we act on autopilot, or on other's expectations and assurances, or because the situation is urgent. Waiting for clarity seems selfish or exhausting or just impossible.

But being clear in your heart that you are on the right path is a wonderful thing to wait for; it's transformative in itself! When you have gathered all the information, weighed all the possibilities, invited a leading of the spirit or Inner Guide, and you think you know what you are being led to do, it's time to test your leading with other people.

3. Plan clearness meetings:

Many times, when I have an idea I'm mulling over, I will talk casually about it with my friends, and listen to what they say. I get to process my idea out loud, and I feel clearer. Most of the time that is enough to go on with, but - especially when I'm making big decisions- it has a major flaw: My friends don't know that I'm using them for clarity, so they might just tell me what they think I want to hear, or they might thoughtlessly tell me what their own fears and inhibitions tell them.

The Quakers have a wonderful format called a Clearness Committee, for when an individual (or a family or other group) is facing a particularly difficult situation or has a leading to test. A clearness committee of two or three other people meets with you for one or more sessions, and is tasked with asking questions that will lead you to consider the idea from new angles, and see it in new light. Reaching clearness together often means that you and your friends all find unity and insight around your project or leading, and forge a new, ongoing bond of support.

Today I'm preparing to call together an informal clearness meeting of some kind, or maybe a couple of them! Here is the process.

And just in the process of preparing - writing an essay and listing questions, I've gained a whole lot of clarity! I've sent an email to my students asking for some clarity about winter classes, and I've got a date picked, early in the new year, to meet with anyone interested in finding clarity together on a "Hopeful Climate Minute".