Spiritual Poetry: Under Fire
Tough
Four tough crows in leather jackets
hanging out on the school grounds
hurled epithets as I walked by
minding my own business.
“Outside our jurisdiction”
according to the precinct captain,
“Turn the other cheek,” advised the priest.
But I will pass the crows again
at dusk
when I return from town.
Paul Martin
How have you been impacted by adversity? Alternatively…
In general, how do you see adversity as affecting our development as persons?
You could respond with a comment. Or you could treat is as a “meme” and write something about this in prose or poetry on your own blog. If you do a meme, please let us know here in the comments thread so others can refer to it.
I don't know... I have the feeling an "Adversity Meme" won't be too catchy! I only suggest it in the spirit of "Why not?" plus I never tried doing a meme before. Is this how you do it?
Four tough crows in leather jackets
hanging out on the school grounds
hurled epithets as I walked by
minding my own business.
“Outside our jurisdiction”
according to the precinct captain,
“Turn the other cheek,” advised the priest.
But I will pass the crows again
at dusk
when I return from town.
Paul Martin
How have you been impacted by adversity? Alternatively…
In general, how do you see adversity as affecting our development as persons?
You could respond with a comment. Or you could treat is as a “meme” and write something about this in prose or poetry on your own blog. If you do a meme, please let us know here in the comments thread so others can refer to it.
I don't know... I have the feeling an "Adversity Meme" won't be too catchy! I only suggest it in the spirit of "Why not?" plus I never tried doing a meme before. Is this how you do it?
Posted by Paul at 5:22 PM Permalink
37 Comments:
..."Anyway here goes. I'm doing the Adversity meme started by Paul @ Original Faith."...
Did it @ my Tail End blog.
How have I been affected? I had my growth stunted for a few years as I harbour resentment and kept fighting my own ideas of injustice. I fought a whole system; I relished the fight and I even won some ground.
In the end, I managed to solve all my problems at the time by accepting that things went wrong and there was nothing I could do to change the past. I looked at how to repair the damages as best as I can and things automagically began to go right. I even got help from some people who I thought were against me... Either they weren't in the first place or they ceased being hostile when I stopped keeping the fight going....
sorry to read that you had a hard time. I have been affected by adversity through slander and gossip (it can stem from jealousy or a conservative nature to my liberal views ie. but I have learnt not to let these things touch me.) :-)
btw, I have linked you to my blogroll. hope that's ok.
Imitation clasp their sterile links on
Minds so lost in routinized
Intentions even
Love can spawn but
Crimes; and,
Faithless certainties, like
Clockwork, build their
Superstitious blinds so even
Faith becomes the Devil trading
Hope for fruitless
Rinds.
I shall try to come with something.
I like this one that you wrote. Seems like you can't do much about the nuisances.
It feels like God had empowered me through hard times ...
There is no other way I can explain it..I hope I have answered that
Now, paraphrasing Gandhi, I am content to be the change I wish to see in the world.
Now, paraphrasing Gandhi, I am content to be the change I wish to see in the world.
HI MATTHEW: This seems to be working pretty well...
KAI C: Thanks, sounds good.
NAMELESS ONE: I’ll check out your meme first chance I get. So here it sounds like you’re describing the kind of situation where the adversity is at least partly self created and changing our own attitude toward it can significantly make things better.
SUSAN A: You’ve “learned not to let those things touch you.” So some similarity maybe with Nameless One’s experience of adversity above. Thanks, I’ll link back to you.
ALEXANDER M: Interesting. To me this reads like a distinction between what you perceive as authentic vs. inauthentic faith.
TUT TUT: You mean your cat isn’t philosophically inclined? He or she looks like a pretty intellectual cat to me…
Sound like you, with others, see adversity as something that holds potential to thwart spiritual growth.
BLUE SKY LIZ: Feel free to comment again if you do the meme so we’ll know it’s there and people can click on it. That’s a good point – and whether the adversity is just a nuisance or something a lot bigger. If you can’t do anything about it, then there needs to be a process of coming to terms with it.
NASRA: Thanks for sharing that, and it points to how even adversities that are substantial can be put to constructive purposes. Whether adversity is always constructive, or always more constructive that destructive, may be a good topic for a follow up post.
N2: To me your two statements sound compatible – like the first might be the process for heading toward realization of the second.
you might do a variant (I'm making this up, though I'm sure it's been done) by posting the meme rules here, and asking people to link to the rules when they respond on their blog.
Adversity is always partly our own responses to the situation.Even in the worst situation there are choices.And even in situations when we perceive the person to be in a good situation, they may actually feel they are experiencing adversity.
One of my patients had a bleed in the vitreous humour, and in this situation we just wait till it reabsorbs. She frantically consulted 3 eye specialists who all said the same thing, and then came to see me, her BP had shot up...and she said if I cannot see from this eye I will die. And I challenged her on these words...
DR SU: You write "Adversity is always partly our own responses to the situation." That's as well and succinctly put a generalization on this subject as I've read.
I might add that adversity, when our basic needs for physical safety and well being are met, is mostly and sometimes entirely our own reponses to the situation.
I'm cautious though about using the words "always" or "never." Generalizations always have exceptions - except for this one, lol...
Some adversities are so extremely violent and painful, and end rapidly enough in death, that it's conceivable to me that our responses don't have a chance to be mediated by higher processes, whether choice or anything else.
typically too boring to read.
on some reflection, our response to adversity determines whether we will grow our shrink from adversity which we face.
also, this seems to fit with something i heard sidney poitier say recently .... all the things that people say to us - hurtful words, etc - have no effect if one knows who one is. he said it far more eloquently, but ... i think you get what i am trying to say.
fyi - his latest book is quite a gem.
regards, and enjoy your weekend.
i will write something (or dig up something) more reflective on this topic for you.
"pluck the blossoming dawn from the deepest stalk of darkness"
Anyway, I'm not sure if you deleted your last comment or if I did accidentally. I rememember its two points but won't comment on them for now just in case it was you! One involved a point of language/logic and the other brought the idea of an afterlife into the discussion - as a reminder in case it was me.
KUAN G: You mean you'll have to see what a meme is as a kind of meme? A sort of meme raised to the second power - a new way to play the proverbial meme game??
HAYDEN: Yeah, there can be too much of that...
RED M: Did you do something to your hair? Sorry, it's Kuan's fault (right, Kuan?), who made me stop being serious...
As far as hurtful words go I heard a psychologist once say something like "The only person who can hurt your feelings is you." Or (my words) the only way a put down can hurt you is if you pick it up.
Either way, it's only if you see hurtful words as speaking more to your reality than the speaker's that they hurt.
I like your quotation and it kind of helps set up my next post but that won't be till late tomorrow at the earliest -
What I mean to say is the things that happen to us happen anyway but it is how we take it which makes it worse.
The word always is one I try not to use so you are right on this!
As for dying from an adversity in less time that it would take to respond..my question would be is death the end?
Two months ago I was diagnosed with kidney failure. With no living relative with a match and not wanting to be tied to a machine for the rest of my life I am faced with the fact I may be gone tomorrow or here for another five years. The gone tomorrow part has to do with extremely high blood pressure which is a result of the failed kidneys which also results in more damage to the kidneys...a bit of a vicious circle so to speak. When the initial shock wore off I realized I would simply enjoy every single day as if indeed it would be the last. I do not write this for any sympathy at all but to give an example of how I deal with adversity. Although I have always been in tune with Nature to the nth degree I find I notice even more the most trivial things and delight in their awesomeness and although I love each day that passes by I also look forward to going Home...ok I've rambled quite enough now.
Stop by and read my scribblings if you care to...I have a hard time writing sometimes so go easy on me! lolol
I'll be coming by here more often!
~~hugs~~
I can withstand adversity as long as there is hope or the situation is manageable and does not compound and cause other problems to erupt which are not easily managed, and as long as I am not overloaded with a variety of hardships.
I have tried to teach my children to take advantage of hard times when they come and learn something valuable from them, grow from them. I have always stressed that hard times can either make you or break you. I am not sure that is always true, but it sounds good to the ear.
So far I have escaped true calamity in my life. But I know it is likely to come. When it does, I am not confident that I will be able to endure it with any measure of dignity like you are able to, Paul. I think I will probably do a lot of crying and crying out when that day comes for me.
a meme! how very modern! What next?
Whether death is the end - and the asking of the question of whether death is the end - those are large topics, that's for sure. Here I'll just venture that personally, this question used to loom very large but doesn't any longer.
JANICE T: Sounds like we're seeing the same thing here - as I just replied above to Dr. Su: "That's just how it seems to me to: that adverse things happen, but our responses have the potential to increase or decrease our experience of adversity."
The rest of your comment, which I'm glad you shared, is a good example of how even large adversity can have some significant positive result according to how we respond. If you compare our situations, they also illustrate how the specifics of our situations can call for different forms of response.
Both of us face severe medical problems. Yours poses immediate threat to your life; mine, nearing its thirteenth year, is long term degenerative and over the past few years it has imposed limits on what I can do that are so severe that my quality of life is very low.
Each of us is reponding postively but the nature of our positive responses is quite different owing to the differences in the adversities we face.
"SUZY SAID" (not to be confused with SUSIE Q) Help! You didn't leave your URL so if you don't come back I can't find you. I must have clicked on your blog from the comments thread of someone else's blog...
SUSIE Q: It sounds to me like your perspective has developed along much the same lines as mine - now you look back and see as mere annoyances things that once looked to you like substantial adversities.
Because my day to day life is very hard - at basic physiological levels - as compared to that of your average person living in a wealthy nation, I'm barely bothered by many things that I'm sure that even most mature adults would view as real problems. But it's been a similar process.
And it has been a process, believe me. Between 1995, after the thing had lasted about a year and a half and wasn't going away, and 1999, I cried far more in each of those years than in all other prior years of my adult life combined. I went almost literally overnight from a youthful, active 37 to a 38 year old who had to lead the life of someone who'd reached old age. I had to let go of a whole way of life.
After that came years of anger that were actually more the result of things I went through with our health care system than my declining condition itself.
I rounded a corner several years ago and found more peace and strength in these circumstances than I ever would have thought possible. Not, by any means, that it's all easy now. But I've definitely gotten back on track.
Because of everything I had to go through, I'm sure there's nothing special about me with this and that the same depth of peace and sanity is there for everyone.
We live in a world of relativity. Some events are either happier or sadder, more horrific or less so than we hoped. Others may be all that we hoped for. I’ve never been attacked so viciously that I was brought to the point of sudden death (obviously) or lived through a war first hand but I’ve lost loved ones to death, lost my home and a good many of my belongings, been through a time when unrequited love made me miserable, endured a divorce, and suffered through difficulties that affected friends and family members. I’ve never have had to exist in a vegetative state but I was incapacitated for months by an injury to the spine. I’ve been told that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and in some ways, that is true. One develops strategies for dealing with things that cause pain, both physical and psychological. If we focus on the strategies rather than the adversity itself, we’re more apt to find solutions. So, what strategies work? Our strongest power lies in our ability to think. For those of us whose minds still work (an adversity that destroys our ability to think is worse, I think, than sudden death), our path to overcoming hardship lies in changing the way we think about it, to look for an opportunity in misfortune, to see in ill health a chance to learn how to heal ourselves, to look at harsh conditions as a chance to discover ways to improve the conditions of others. My grandfather believed that there was nothing so bad that something good couldn’t come of it. He taught me to look beyond my own difficulties to someone who was worse off. In helping them, I would also help myself.
PAULINE: I agree with your overall views on this, and that's a good point about the special difficulty posed by adversities that directly impact the brain.
Emmanuel
He grew up in a country
Bordered by the Red Sea
A child who saw many things
A child should never see.
Bombs played his lullaby
Shrapnel was his first toy
Starvation was his bottle
Silence his greatest joy
Emmanuel
It means “God with us”
The tanks controlled the sidewalk
The schools, they all shut down
Then one day, the soldiers came
And shot all the men in town
The soldiers raped his mother
And his younger sister too.
While he hid in the closet
What more could he do?
Emmanuel.
It means “God with us”
The nightmares are so vivid
With screams of terror and despair
And memories of the smell
Of rotting bodies in the air
Lord, were you with us then?
Did you see the violence?
If so, why did you step aside
And watch in complete silence?
It makes it very real when you actually know a good person to whom something extremely bad has happened.
That said, I think that for most people living in stable, materially well off societies, adversity tends to work as you describe.
On adversity, I would have to say ... "If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all." (Born under a bad sign, Jones&Bell)
I have had truly awful things happen to me my entire life, abuse, rape, drug addiction, abusive relationships ...
I have always just looked around to find someone I could help. There is always someone hungry or scared or running from something. Their stories are so much worse than mine.
As I have aged, I realized that I have been blessed throughout my entire life with answers to my problems that come in time.
It looks like this:
adversity->struggle->-answer
I have been able to observe this same path throughout my son's life. He does not see that he has been blessed, but I tell him each time. It will sink in sooner or later.
At the same time, if adversity is severe or prolonged enough, it can take away more than it contributes. And of course there are examples of this every day in the news all over the world.
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