A Meditation on Disappointment
Listen: “Rain” by grandson (with Jessie Reyez)
On Saturday, January 22, 2022, I rode my mountain bike on some icy trails at Smithville Lake in about eighteen degree weather. While I was doing a ten mile loop (1.5 hour ride), I slid out on some ice, crashed, got back up and kept riding. No big deal. It’s happened hundreds of times through the years. I have been mountain biking through the winter on snowy, icy trails for over a decade. I got back to my truck and realized that my phone had fallen out of my winter cycling jacket. I had to retrace my route. I wasn’t sure where the phone fell out but guessed it was where I crashed.
While retracing my route and searching for my phone, I crashed again at about three hours into the ride. The phone was on the ground in the snow about right where I crashed the second time. However, this time I really hurt my right shoulder. In fact, based on the pain level and my inability to move my right arm, I was guessing I tore it up pretty good. I was angry. Very angry. I even said a few choice words—a string of them if I remember correctly. “F#K@S&T%D$M!!”
As it turns out, I tore my rotator cuff, and I am scheduled for surgery on my birthday which is March 10. After over twenty years of riding my bike competitively, crashing innumerable times, and walking away with just bruises and stitches, I am now, at this time in my life, hurting myself more seriously. Almost two years ago, I hit a dog while cycling and broke my right collar bone. These are my two worst cycling injuries on record, and they come at a time in my life when I am starting a new nonprofit, trying to rebuild my broken world, and struggling against financial calamity. Let’s just say, I am immensely disappointed.
This disappointment builds on a long streak of over three years of deep disappointments in my life. I can’t seem to stop hurting myself—emotionally and physically. And, frankly, I am not responsible for all the pain in my life; The Universe, God, People, or Whatever have seemed to conspire together to add pain on top of pain. I am truly tired of pain these days—self-inflicted or otherwise.
Trying to figure out how God is involved in all of it can be endlessly exhausting. Believe me, I have spent countless hours my whole life reading, studying, preaching, and teaching on suffering in all its mysterious forms. My sarcastic summary goes something like this: What’s my fault? I get credit for everything that goes badly in my life and try to take responsibility. I shouldn’t have ridden my bike on icy trails. What’s God’s involvement? God gets credit for everything that goes well in life. I’m grateful I got to ride my bike with minor injuries for so many years. What’s the Universe’s part? The Universe gets credit for everything I can’t explain in life. Shit happens. Deal with it.
I’m sure many of you have struggled in life when bad things seem to pile up against you. Why me? Where is God? Why do bad things happen to good people? I am thinking of the good people who are living in the Ukraine right now (2022). I am thinking of a friend who is dying of cancer at a young age right now. I am thinking of a former church member who recently died because a tree fell on him. Even when we can blame ourselves for certain bad consequences, the scales of justice seem to be skewed disproportionately against us in certain seasons. Karma, it seems, has screwed us again.
Prayers don’t seem to make much difference at times. I’ve practiced praying for protection before I drive, before I travel, before I do most anything for over forty years. I always pray for protection before I ride my bike, drive my car, or hop on a plane. (Driving is by far the most risky thing Americans do most every day.)
When I feel deep disappointment (or Great Sadness as William Paul Young calls it), I usually begin to question all kinds of things: with whom or what am I disappointed? Am I disappointed in God? What if there is no God or God’s not at fault? Am I disappointed in The Universe, People, Myself, or All of the Above? I usually have a litany of cliches and platitudes that start ticking off in my brain:
“It could be worse. Be thankful it’s not worse!” (I am. Believe me, I am. I don’t want worse.)
“Make a gratitude list.”
“Make some lemonade.”
“God works everything together for good.”
“One day at a time.”
“It will get better.”
The simplistic nature of these cliches and platitudes can irritate me. I’ve spent decades reading every conceivable idea from every religious tradition on the nature and causes of suffering—Christian ideas, Buddhist ideas, Muslim ideas—and they all seem to leave me pondering with more questions. At the end of all my thinking and reading, I’ve never gone—“Oh, now I get it. It all makes sense to me now.” Still searching for that magic bullet.
Perhaps prayer is still important even if it doesn’t solve anything or prevent anything. (Hang with me for minute.) Maybe prayer helps me sort my feelings, my thoughts, and my motivations. Maybe prayer, meditation, and contemplation simply help me get in touch with reality. Maybe prayer puts me in touch with the unjust nature of reality and all suffering. There is a suffering in which all of humanity and creation participates (Romans 8:22). If we are to embrace the beauty, creativity, love, and grace we find in The Universe, Humanity, Creation, and God; then perhaps we must start with the prayer of forgiveness.
Richard Rohr has suggested: “Faith is simply to trust the real, and to trust that God is found within it—even before we change it.” This kind of faith puts us in touch with “ultimate and humiliating realism, which for some reason demands a lot of forgiveness of almost everything” (Falling Upward, p. 63). “Forgiveness of almost everything”—forgiveness of God, the Universe, Myself, Others, Circumstances, Accidents, Injuries, Genocides, Tornadoes, Diseases, Pandemics—interesting way to think about it. Not to live in passivity and inaction, but to move forward in life with the grace of acceptance without the burden of bitterness. It’s another way of making peace with what is—dealing with life on life’s terms.
Rohr reflects: “Our first forgiveness is not toward a particular sin or offense. Our first forgiveness, it seems to me, is toward reality itself: to forgive it for being so broken, a mixture of good and bad. First that paradox has to be overcome inside of us. Then, when we allow God to hold together the opposites within us, it becomes possible to do it over there in our neighbor and even our enemy” (“Including Everything,” cac.org, August 31, 2017).
So, I think I need to pray, meditate, and contemplate some more. Take a walk in the woods. Be grateful I can still walk. Be grateful for frozen trails in cold winter woods in the Midwest. I love snow-filled, frozen trails in the winter. Thankful for breath and life. And at the same time, allow my heart and prayers to go out for my friend dying of cancer, for the family and friends whose loved one died because a tree fell on him, and for those who are suffering in Ukraine at this moment. I—no we—we can do this. Together. For each other. We are not alone.
Shalom
©realfredherron, 2022
