One More Ride in the Cadillac

“I’m not what I think I am; I am what I think.” This is one of the “Matt Beall-isms” I have heard many times over the years.  Many are in rhyming couplets (e.g. “You spot it/You got it” or “If it’s odd/It’s God”), but this one sees more like a Zen Koan, courtesy of Matt, “the real alcoholic.”

“What does this mean?” I asked Matt the other day.

“When I think of myself as a gregarious, honest, God-seeking person and then go into a meditative state or a contemplative state and evaluate that statement of what I think I am, I find it to be false because of my thinking in breaking it down.  So when I identify those things that don’t support the truth - through my actions- I change. I change my behaviors, my thinking, so I think I’m different from when I started off, so that’s why it’s constant change.  I don’t know how you’re gonna fix that. Good luck.”

“You are saying you are in a constant process of self-examination.”

“Not from a negative or positive position, but one of being neutral in contemplating.  In thinking.”

I think Matt is a lot “better” at Centering Prayer than I am, by which I mean that he is more readily willing to let go of each thought and gently return to his Sacred Word.  I, on the other hand, am often unwilling to do this, when an attractive thought occurs to me and I have the desire to explore it. For instance, this morning I was drawn into an interior conversation about whether the current administration of my former place of work is “morally corrupt and intellectually bankrupt” or “intellectually corrupt and morally bankrupt.”  I rolled the phrases lovingly around in my mind, switching out the adverbs and adjectives dozens of times, willfully forgetting that I was even doing Centering Prayer.  This happens to me all the time.

Steven and me at the Belle Isle Conservatory

This kind of thinking is probably the exact opposite of the aim of my spiritual practice as I understand it: a kenosis, or emptying myself of each thought and gently returning to the Sacred Word with the aim of making myself ready to receive the gift of contemplation, or “resting in God.” In the words of Thomas Merton, “There is in my heart this great thirst to recognize totally the nothingness of all that is not God. My prayer is then a kind of praise rising up out of the center of Nothing and Silence.”Of course, Merton goes on to say, “If I am still present “myself,” this I recognize as an obstacle about which I can do nothing unless He Himself removes the obstacle.” In other words, I am in many ways powerless to return to the Sacred Word, to let go of the attractive thoughts; I still worship my own thinking, no matter how much trouble it has gotten me into in the past. I must make every effort, gently, to let go, and at the same time I must turn the entire prayer period over to a Higher Power. As Matt said, “I don’t know how you’re gonna fix that.  Good luck.”  The answer is, of course, that I am NOT going to fix it.  Only God can fix it.  I am, as Carl Jung reminded Rowland Hazard, Beyond Human Aid, and unless locked up, may die or go permanently insane (without a spiritual awakening). 

Belle Isle, like Central Park, was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted

Read about Olmsted and Belle Isle, including the rumor that he said, "I know nothing about the place" HERE

This past weekend, we took a road trip in Cream Puff, the 1984 Cadillac El Dorado I have owned for ten years now. The Jack Carrick song “One More Ride in the Cadillac” was going through my head the entire time – and I frequently sang bits of it out loud as we drove around western Michigan, munching on blueberries and visiting historic Underground Railroad sites, watching large families, descendants of tall blond Dutch Reform settlers, with seven or eight kids named Ezra or Hosea or Haggai, eat ice cream together. That song did not make it onto the Wildflower EP which Jack released a couple of years ago, but it’s another one of the songs from his “breakup” album, which is full of sweetly poignant songs of regret, chronicling the loss of his first love. 

Listen to Wildflower by Jack Carrick 

Just before our weekend getaway, we went to Belle Isle with Steven, where he told me his own nostalgic stories of visiting the conservatory, either by himself to sit and think and write poetry, or with the ex-fiancee he was supposed to marry in the Kirk o’ the Hills, a super fancy Episcopal church in the middle of West Bloomfield. He never did marry that gal, but Insane Clown Posse did use Kirk o’ the Hills to film part of their famous music video, “Where’s God when Sh*t Goes Down?” a poignant lament of an unanswered question which all religions struggle to answer.  

Watch ICP "Where's God?" with scenes of broken-down Detroit and the beautiful Kirk o' the Hills

"Where's God when Sh*t Goes Down?"

Why do such terrible things happen to good people?  I once asked Matt Beall this question, and in his great wisdom, he gave me the only real and true answer that exists:  “They just happen,” he said.

My sweet sage in South Haven

 Stephen Colbert told Anderson Cooper that he had learned to be grateful for the terrible things that happened to him (even the things he desperately wished had not happened, most especially the death of his father and two brothers in a plane crash when he was ten years old) because his suffering made him more able to empathize and be present to the suffering of others. Watch the interview in a link below:

"Stephen Colbert Moves Anderson Cooper to Tears with Powerful Words About Grief"
 Steven Colbert is Catholic, and identifies his own suffering with the suffering of Christ on the cross – something all Catholics are encouraged to try. Thomas Merton also makes this identification  when he recalls his own debauched first (and only) year at Cambridge: “In all this,“ he writes of his plunge into hedonism and dissipation, “I was stamping the last remains of spiritual vitality out of my own soul, and trying with all my might to crush and obliterate the image of the divine liberty that had been implanted in me by God. With every nerve and fiber of my being I was laboring to enslave myself in the bonds of my own intolerable disgust.”  Every alcoholic and addict will identify with these words. Indeed, as Merton adds, “There is nothing new or strange about the process.”

The newness comes with Merton’s next sentence: “But what people do not realize is this is the crucifixion of Christ: in which He dies again and again in the individuals who were made to share the joy and the freedom of His grace, and who deny Him.” So even when, or perhaps most especially when we create our own hell, this is Christ crucified.  And like the sh*t that goes down in the ICP song, “it just happens,” and we are powerless to stop it until we reach out for help.

Which brings me back to the connection between letting go of thoughts during Centering Prayer and my Cadillac.  Thomas Keating teaches us the four R’s – Resist no thought, Retain no thought, React to no thought, Return ever-so-gently to the Sacred Word.  

We had a “for sale” sign on the Cadillac when we were at Belle Isle.  $2850. After spending thousands of dollars for a remanufactured Jasper motor and a rebuilt transmission, I really don’t want to put any more money into it. It needs new trim pieces, a new headliner, a new rubber seal around the sunroof, and the electrical system seems like it’s threatening to go out at any time. A man came up to the car, his eyes alight (later I realized he had been smoking weed, watching the ripples on the Detroit River, before we drove up).  “My dad had this exact Cadillac! He took me and my brother on a road trip down to Texas!”  He offered us 2500 dollars cash and we accepted, exchanging phone numbers and making an appointment to meet at the licensing office Monday morning.All weekend I was singing that song about one more ride, feeling sad and nostalgic.  I tried to think of Cream Puff as a thought in the Centering Prayer period: “Retain no Cadillac,” I would say to myself.  I even tried to compare it to the kenosis of Jesus, which we try to emulate in both Centering Prayer and in our lives. “Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to” (Philippians 2:6). Though my Cadillac was amazing, and got me through hard times when my kids were teenagers, and though everyone who had owned an old Cadillac, from my former therapist to my stepson, understood the allure, the feeling of driving a boat or riding on a cloud, though even people who had initially scoffed, like my son who initially said it was a “grandma’s car” and ended up driving to the prom in it and writing a song about it, I did not want to think of my Cadillac as something to cling to. I wanted to have the same mind in me as was in Christ Jesus, as Paul tells me I must, I wanted to pray the Merton prayer and believe that my desire to please God, however clumsily, does in fact please Him, so I was willing to let go.

Of course, when I texted the perspective buyer on Sunday, I received the following reply: “I regret to inform you that I became far to [sic] overzealous about the car. As clearer heads have prevailed I am going to have to cancel the deal on the Cadillac – good luck with it.”

My prospective buyer had been restored to sanity. And so have I – the “For Sale” sign is coming down.  After all, we need something to drive around next year – Detroit 2020 in style!

See you in 2020!