‘Best Laid Plans’ - Rev Adam Slate

‘A Letter to Life’ by Charlie Ayers

My one dear Life, I write to thee,
To set forth what I hope you’ll be.
I think my wishes, fair and few,
Lie well within the reach of you.

Apair of boots, a loaf of bread,
A lamp to light the path ahead.
I don’t ask much, you must agree-
These small requests seem fair to me.

A pleasant home, not grand nor tall,
With climbing roses on the wall.
A shelf of books, a fire bright-
A modest list, by any light.

Some loyal friends, a handsome spouse,
Bright happy children round the house.
A love that never fades with age-
I think that’s fairly standard wage.

A growing fortune, year by year,
Immune to hardship, debt, or fear.
A house abroad, a yacht, a plane,
The humble fruits of honest gain.

A touch of fame would do no harm,
Crowds won over by my charm.
My name called out to much applause-
I’m sure you’ll find sufficient cause.

And finally, Life, one small request:
To live forever, more or less.
Still young, still rich, still loved, still spry-
I’d hate to peak and then just die.

And so, content with what I’d penned,
I signed my name right at the end
And sent it off without a care,
Quite sure that Life would find it fair.

Half expecting some reply
Commending how I’d aimed so high.
Until one damp and dreary day
A letter found its winding way.

I slit the seal and gave a grin,
Expecting compliments within.
Instead, the page presented me
With this astonishing decree:

Oh darling girl, I’ve news for you-
This life you crave won’t quite come true.
You ask for comfort, love, and praise-
I mean to set your heart ablaze.

No endless wealth, no gentle ride,
No world with hardship set aside.
I will not keep you safe from grief,
Or grant you joy beyond belief.

You’ll lose some things you long to keep,
Know lonely nights and sorrows deep.
You’ll curse my name some winters through,
And say I’ve been unfair to you.

But oh, the things that you will see,
The person that you’ll grow to be.
Who after every bitter fall,
Still chooses hope, despite it all.

And yes, a love will come one day
Not grand at first, but one who’ll stay
See every flaw you’ve come to fear,
And whisper softly, “I’m still here.”

And children too, though not as planned,
Will place their futures in your hands.
Their sleepy heads upon your chest
Will teach your aching heart to rest.

You asked for wealth, applause, and fame-
Most strangers will not know your name.
But those you love will know it well,
And speak it softly when they tell

Of how you held them when they broke,
How much you gave, how gently spoke.
And when your time at last is through,
The world will still be changed by you.

For life was never meant to be
A thing you tame or bend to thee.
Its gift was never gold or glory,
But that you got to live the story.

Introduction

Unexpected events surprise us all the time. Some are small. Bumps in the road of our day-to-day life.

I am pretty good at creating my own bumps in the road. This week I missed an event I wanted to attend because it was during the day, and it was in my personal diary and usually during the day I am just looking at my work diary. I also went to town hall to drop off a form and when I got there I realised that there was something else I needed that I had left at home.

Sometimes it is not my fault. On my way back to town hall later that day, the overground was disrupted and I had to piece together a combination of walking and buses to get there on time, and I was definitely not dressed for a lot of walking and hot buses!

These kinds of things come up on an almost daily basis; unexpected annoyances that can be anything from a little to significantly disruptive.

Then there are those things that we wrestle with as an ongoing part of our lives. Medical conditions that flare up at times we cannot control. Jobs with unpredictable schedules or gig work that can dry up quickly and unexpectedly. Social isolation that can be okay to manage most of the time but occasionally hits us with a rush of loneliness. Challenging personal relationships that can suddenly dissolve into conflict. Receiving social benefits that do not quite meet our needs and without notice leave us struggling.

And then there are surprises that are life-altering and heartbreaking. The loss of a job, having to move house when a landlord sells the house we have been renting, a major health diagnosis, or the unanticipated end of a relationship or death of someone close to us.

All of this is part of what it means to be human. Cars break down. Relationships end. We get sick. And as Unitarians, we honour that we live in a world steeped in mystery that often eludes our understanding.

These constant sojourns with the unexpected are not detours on our life’s journey; they are the very essence of it. We cannot separate them any more than we can separate breathing or aging from living in a body.

How many of us have been hit by something unexpected in the past week or two–big or small? How many in the past few days? How many this morning?

Life is the unexpected, and the unexpected is life. 

Managing the World Around Us

There are things we can do to mitigate the impact of unexpected circumstances, through planning and preparation. I wonder how many of us are intentional about the time and energy we spend trying to do this?

I am thinking of Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper. In this story, the ant is constantly working, collecting and storing food, while the carefree grasshopper plays, sings, and enjoys life. Come winter, the ant is ready and the grasshopper is not.

In the original story, when the grasshopper shows up at the ant’s house cold and hungry, the ant points out that the grasshopper must now face the consequences of its actions and refuses to help. In other versions, the ant does give the grasshopper some food. But the main contrast in the story is of the ant spending all its time preparing, and the grasshopper spending all its time enjoying life.

We all know people who are more willing to take life as it comes to them, and others who plan, organise and stay on guard against life’s surprises. Neither is right or wrong, and they both have their benefits and pitfalls.

And most of us are not on the ends of this spectrum. We are somewhere in the middle, looking for the right balance.

Some of us find value in to-do lists and well-organised diaries. Some of us with means are intentional about setting aside a certain level of emergency savings or buying insurance for ourselves and our belongings. And these are all great ways to protect against turmoil in our lives. 

Some find that these strategies are at the expense of spontaneity, and tend to shy away from them. They may find that carrying notebooks or organising information on their phone just is not worth the cost/benefit to stay on top of everything.

Our neurodiversities and other emotions also shape how we approach this. If we find we can feel anxious about surprises, structuring our schedules and trying to anticipate the unexpected can be genuinely comforting; if we have trouble staying organised, trying to impose contingencies to avoid surprises might be more stressful than the surprises themselves.

The question is not whether to exercise control in our lives to protect against the unexpected, or not to. It is whether that control serves our living, or impedes it. We each need to make our own choices about this. And hopefully respect the choices of others in our lives who make different choices. 

Acceptance

And we can take this same spirit of acceptance and apply it not just to how others approach the unexpected, but to the unexpected itself.

By that I mean that—however we decide to plan for life’s surprises or not plan for them—we can appreciate that they will happen. They will always happen. they are unavoidable regardless of how good our plans are, whether we strive for financial security, or surround ourselves with material comfort and emotional protection.

I am probably one of the only people here who has seen the film ‘The Mothman Prophecies.’ It is not a great movie, but it stars Laura Linney and Richard Gere, two of my all-time favourite actors, so I have seen it a few times.

Gere's character has lost a loved one and becomes consumed by the belief that something is communicating with him about it. Linney plays a local sheriff investigating his strange experiences. 

Toward the end of the film, she tries to convince him to let go of his obsession which is isolating him more and more from the people around him. She says: ‘Planes are going to crash. Earthquakes are going to happen. People you know and love are going to die… and no matter what that voice tells you… there's nothing you can do about it.’

I think appreciating this uncertainty is one way we can develop resilience both to weather change and also to lean into the opportunities that change offers us.

In my life before becoming a minister I managed the budget process for a large medical practice that was part of a university health system. It involved working with many different medical specialties on their individual budgets, and then combining them, and finally merging our budget with several of our partner organisations that had different and often competing priorities. 

Since my team was responsible for analysis and reporting, we were constantly being pulled in to identify financial trends, dig into underlying data, or model different scenarios. For about three months we were constantly on call for unexpected requests that could bog us down for anywhere from a few hours to a few days.

Except the requests were not unexpected, were they? This was an annual process, and I tried to build resilience among my team by helping them to see that these ‘surprise’ projects were not sidetracking us, they were the role we should expect at budget time. If we could see these requests as fundamental to what we do, they would not be so unsettling.

As humans, we may be able to frame our perspective around life’s surprises so that we see them as part of what we can expect, rather than roadblocks. Unexpected projects are part of having a job. Traffic and road closures are part of living in a big city. Conflict is part of human relationships. They do not have to derail us.

That does not mean we cannot be hurt, feel challenged, or grieve the events we encounter. It only means we can also know that they are the things that form the texture and contours of our lives, that shape us.

Serving Others

And there is an unexpected gift here. If we can accept that the unexpected is a part of life, it can create space to turn more of our attention outward.

When we spend our time, energy, and resources protecting ourselves against life's surprises—building predictable routines; developing our emotional armour; insuring ourselves, both literally and figuratively—it turns us inward toward our own security, our own readiness, and comfort. And quietly, even without us realising it, it can crowd out the question of who else might need something from us.

Think of the ant in Aesop's fable. Its whole life was preparation—planning, storing, securing its own future. And when the grasshopper arrived cold and hungry, the ant found itself unready to be empathetic or charitable. All that preparation had made it ready for winter but not ready to help its neighbour.

As people of faith and conscience, resilience is not only a personal asset. When we are less preoccupied with protecting ourselves, we can free up some of our attention, energy, and generosity to direct toward others. We become more available; more willing to be inconvenienced. More capable of asking, ‘What do you need?’ and meaning it.

Conclusion

If our goal is to save time and energy, to remain comfortable, to protect ourselves, there are lots of ways to do it. And there are also lots of good reasons. We all do it from time to time.

But we may also want to stay open to what life wants to show us. The protagonist in Charlie’s poem—the writer—lays out what she desires for her life. Food and warmth, a home, a beautiful and stimulating life. Predictability, safety, and security.

With a wink to the reader she also tosses in things like fame, wealth, and immortality, as if to acknowledge the ridiculousness of making requests for our life the way we might request a favourite song from a DJ.

Life comes back with a much more nuanced proposal. Few promises except that there will be both good and bad surprises. That sorrows will accompany joys. That there will be times when the writer will curse how unfair life can be.

But what else does it promise? That these surprises will come with rewards that make life worth living. That it will set our hearts ablaze. That we will discover in ourselves strength and grace that can only come from weathering pain and hardship.

That we can grow love by sharing our vulnerabilities, disappointments, hopes and fears with each other. That we may not know fame but those whose lives we touch will remember us and know we love them. That regardless of whether we have our own children, we can impact future generations with our choices. That our lives matter.

The poem tells us that Life is not meant to be a thing we tame or bend. Its gift is not wealth or fame but that we get to live our story.

Choose well. We should choose well when deciding how much to insulate ourselves from all life has to show us. And how much we are willing to be surprised by it.

Years ago I heard a story about a king who sets up his throne on the beach, and spends his time ordering the tide not to come in, vastly overestimating the control he has over the world around him. I assure you, there are much lovelier things we can be doing on a beach–like splashing in the waves, watching the sun rise or set over the water, and sitting in the sand in awe of the ocean’s untamed power.

May life wash over us with its full spectrum of colour, beauty, and wonder.

Blessed be.