WHAT’S THE STAKE?

I was visiting with a hospice patient last week, a very sweet lady who’s been on our service for over a year. She’s close to 100, easy-going and pleasant as can be, in no discomfort. Just slowly, slowly, slowly fading out. She is able to afford full-time caregivers in addition to her attentive family and the hospice team looking out for her, so this is a gentle final verse and I expect her to make a beautiful, graceful exit.

She’s also pretty out of it. She’s not oriented to time or place or others, maybe not even to herself. She likes to chat, but the things she says may or may not make sense. She was a musician, so often we sing together, and she can still carry a tune, but she makes up most of her lyrics.

We were discussing pies last week, favorite pies, when out of the blue she turned to me and asked, “What’s the stake?” It felt like a real question, and it startled me a bit. I asked her, “You mean, what’s at stake?” She can’t really see, but she was looking right at me as she repeated, “What’s the stake?” I stammered a little as I suggested, “Well, I think it’s always our hearts, right? Our hearts are at stake.” She nodded, seeming to accept the answer. The caregiver came to the rescue, offering, “My favorite pie is lemon meringue!”

Her question has stuck with me. Both because her phrasing was a little off, which leads me to think about it from different angles. And also because it’s a question I don’t ask myself very often, not directly anyway, but which I think is really running me pretty constantly in the background: WHAT’S AT STAKE?

As I go about my daily business — dealing with important and less-important stuff, things that include others and things that are only mine — I tend to approach it all like the stakes are super high. I’m not fully aware of it; it’s running me on autopilot. But most of the time, unconsciously, it’s like every single thing is make or break, all or nothing, life or death. Getting the floor mopped and scheduling something social and writing a weekly talk with which I’m satisfied — it’s all pressing, terribly urgent, like the entire universe is riding on everything I do and say and think.

I had the good sense to soften this temperament a little when I answered my hospice patient, telling her as gently and warmly as I could, that our hearts are always at stake. It would’ve been awful to blurt out to this deeply faithful Catholic lady at the end of her life, “Our souls are on the line, the soul of the world, the fate of humanity! This is the great reckoning!!” But, frankly, that’s how I act, about every little thing, most of the time. Jeez…

It’s one potential downside to being an all-in, full-out kind of guy. While at times my commitment to constant productivity and excellence serves me quite well, it does mean that I don’t leave myself much wiggle room. When something bigger does come up, a real challenge, I have very little energy or time or interest in reserve. This week, my car gave up the ghost, so Travis and I are sharing his car while I try to find time to shop and try to find money to pay for something else, and it feels like one more freakin’ thing along with my dirty floors and the future of democracy in the United States, and I don’t want to deal with any of it. Again, jeez… Having such ruthless high stakes is not a sustainable way of being.

But I wasn’t asked, “What’s at stake?” She asked me, “What’s the stake?”

THE stake. That could be something I’m placing, that I’m setting. In fact, it usually is. Of course there are situations in which we do have to answer to someone else. But nobody else is making me feel like organizing my desktop today is a life or death situation. Nobody else is telling me that the world will end if I take a nap.

The stake is not just what’s riding on this or what’s at risk — my heart, my soul, my reputation, the weight of the world. But, also, what boundaries and supports I am establishing. We stake tents for shelter. We stake vines for support.

Maybe there’s a lesson in here about transforming a sense of high-stakes pressure into staking our claim to something else.

Re-claiming personal authority back from everywhere we’ve given it away. Back from the unforgiving and relentless, make-or-break rat race, into a remembrance of our fundamental worthiness. Even if our heart is, indeed, always what’s at stake, I’m pretty sure I could be a lot kinder with myself as I right-size the amount of heart any given situation requires. I could practice remembering that there’s more than enough of my heart to go around — for my loved ones, for my work, for my big and little projects and undertakings — with plenty left over for myself.

We set the stakes. We name the terms. We can stake a claim for our good, for grace and ease, for freedom and plenty, for joy and beauty.

I can’t wait to be with you this Sunday, September 27, 10:00am at q-Staff Theatre. With the divine Patty Stephens. XO, Drew