In That Same Vein

And then last night as I sat in a full-to-capacity balcony for the Christmas Eve service, my mind wandered to the awful thought that this old, old balcony might not be able to withstand the weight. Why my fears take over me like that, I don't know. But I had a zing to my spirit that is difficult to put into words. These zings or knowings that come out of the blue are instantaneous and have no real words to them. I have to conjure up a close facsimile in English so that I can put something down for posterity. Anyway, in words it might go something like this:

"Do you think you are God, All-That-Is, that you have to worry about such catastrophes as though these things are really your concern? You are but one physical part of the All-That-Is, as you realized yesterday morning. There are things that the All-That-Is is responsible for worrying about, although God is neither responsible in the way you typically think nor worried. But the collective I Am, the collective All-That-Is, God if you will, will deal with it. Rest easy my child."

The Trinity

I awoke yesterday morning with an interesting thought about the Trinity. As a child my concepts of the three parts of the Trinity were that God was a white-bearded old man upon a throne, Jesus was a man who walked the earth and died 2000 years ago and the Holy Spirit was given to human beings as a sort of place holder after Jesus died. (Jesus says in John 14: 16-17, "I will ask the Father and he will give you another Helper, who will stay with you forever. He is the Spirit, who reveals the truth about God.")

It is easy enough to understand that Jesus was human given the scripture accounts of his life. I have changed the way I interpret those scriptures but Jesus will always remain human. We know about God's nature through scripture but not God's physique. Hence, I have since morphed my idea of God from male to female to both-at-once to neither, God being I Am or All-That-Is. But the Holy Spirit? I have never really understood the need for a Holy Spirit if God is Spirit and not an old man. If God is supposedly everywhere, then God would already be within us. So what is the Holy Spirit's specialty and why would we need another Helper? Besides, if the Trinity represents God in three persons, all of them being God in one recognizable form or another, then all three are God and hence have been around as long as God has. Therefore, why the big announcement from Jesus suggesting the Helper needs to be invited to come on board. Wouldn't the Holy Spirit have already been around...forever...like God?

Yesterday morning I realized that part of me has never seen the Trinity as truly just three words for the same concept. That part has unconsciously believed that God, Jesus and Holy Spirit were three different beings. I awoke to what I see now was an awakening from that unconscious place and a blending of the Trinity. Just as Jesus was known as Master, Teacher and Friend God is known by different terms: Jesus, God-Incarnate; Holy Spirit, God individuated as you and me and the lamppost; and God, the All-That-Is. If I limit my uttering of the word "God" to mean only "All-That-Is", and Holy Spirit to mean the Individuation of God, then the three terms for the same entity finally make more sense to me.

Where Is God Not?

I had a wonderful image that helps me see the presence of God more clearly. Imagine, if you will, sinking down into a large enough body of water so that you are submerged fully and not touching anything. Breathing is no issue, so relax and just feel the water all around you. It touches you completely, leaving no space uncovered. Such is the nature of water, eh? And why not also God? Just as we cannot push water away from us to create a place where the water is not, so it is with God, I believe. If indeed we feel an absence, I believe that to be only illusion, not reality.

A Thanksgiving Lesson in Globs

It was so apparent to me that moving our Thanksgiving gathering to the Sunday following Thanksgiving was the “right” thing to do. I felt the decision deep in my soul and wasn’t surprised when things lined up perfectly. The icing on the cake came when I learned that dear friends would be in town that weekend and had accepted my invitation to join our family around the table. The blessings and bonuses were adding up and my anticipation of good times to come was hampered only by a familiar gnawing in the pit of my stomach (likely place for such a feeling!) that I couldn’t pull off a good meal. Cooking isn’t something that comes particularly naturally to me.

The day before the event, I began to make the things I could do ahead of time, among them the no-bake cookies the kids love. Done right, I am able to pack up individual fudge-like cookies into little boxes that the kids can take home. This time there were no individual cookies at all, but rather one heavy glob of a sugary mass that would affectionately become known as “no-bake sludge”. I hoped this cookie flop was not a telltale sign of things to come.

On the morning of the big event, I arose earlier than everyone else and began making the rolls. As the mixer labored to knead my bread mixture I thought about a conversation I had had the night before with one of the friends who would be eating with us. She had said that one of the most difficult things she had to give up when she got a divorce was their huge family Thanksgiving gathering and the blessing of many hands in the kitchen. She spoke of how deeply satisfying it was to help cook. Now I laid that thought over top of another: my mother’s idea that the perfect gathering was when none of her guests had to lift a finger to help her. Having carried all these years my mother’s idea of what it means to be the perfect hostess, it would never have occurred to me to ask my guest to help prepare the meal. Yet in a sudden epiphany, I realized that was exactly what I needed to do.

Soon my husband and our guests were sitting around the table having coffee while I stood over the mixer and shared my epiphany asking my guest if she would indeed like to help me with the meal. She seemed deeply grateful and in perfect chorus, so was I. I was now looking forward to the rest of the cooking.

But the mixer, age old and very faithful…up until now, began making a strange noise. Rather than overburden it with all the flour the recipe calls for, I decided to finish the dough by hand. I spilled the dough onto the counter and watched as it amoeba-ed all over the place and threatened to pour onto the floor. As I tried to corral the stuff, I lifted my hands from the sticky glob but they remained firmly attached by multiple stands of dough. I was stuck and the three at the table began laughing at my predicament. Finally my husband came and dumped as much flour into the mix as it took to free me and return the dough to some semblance of actual bread. I formed the dough into rolls and left them to rise.

Meanwhile, I asked my guest if she would like to make the gravy, something I have always chickened out of. She laughed and related the story of her own gravy-making woes, particularly recently when her gravy ended up as a one-unit entity, or, yes, a glob. But she said she’d try once the bird was finished cooking.

The bird. It was time to dress our fresh bird with the “liberal amount of salt” it called for. I asked my husband for help and the next time I looked, the bird appeared to have been snowed on. It looked like way too much salt but we popped the thoroughly plastered poultry in the oven. I had numerous things to work on while the bird cooked but was not too distracted to notice the wonderful aroma of baking turkey wafting through the house a couple hours later. Excited to see a nicely browning bird, I decided to peek under the enamel dome and found to my dismay that half the drumstick meat had all but melted right off the poor bird. I hastily pulled it out, thinking that leaving the stuffing out of the bird had made it cook awfully quickly. But as I reached to reset the oven temperature for the next food item, I realized with horror that I had forgotten to turn the heat back after the first 45 minutes of browning.

With the bird out, the gravy could be made. My guest siphoned out the sumptuous looking juices from under the bird and began her gravy making. When she was done, it looked like gravy, and acted like gravy and she was very pleased with herself. Until she tasted it. She hadn’t known that the bird had been salted within an inch of its poor life and neither my husband nor I had given any thought to where all that salt would wind up. The poor woman nearly gagged on the saline-saturated gravy she’d just made.

By this time the meal, such as it was, was ready. The table was decorative, the food all looked edible and none of the cooks mentioned the various kitchen fiascos as we gathered to give thanks and eat. I even tried to be thankful for dry turkey, super-salted gravy and bread that tasted like spoonfuls of dry flour straight from the canister.

It was a lesson in humility to simply say “thank you” to the many compliments from the other nine around the table. Inwardly, I wondered how they could be so gracious. But as I ate, listening to the thoughts and banter of those I love I slowly began to realize that the food, tasty or not, was not the purveyor of blessing as I had been taught to believe. By the end of that day, as I lay in bed, recounting the hours spent, I could see clearly that the blessings had added up to a glob more than the fiascos.

Two Dreams

I have gifted myself with two dreams lately. I am amazed at dreams like these and all that they have to say; now and for time to come.

The first was in October:

I have been asked to clean out the basement of my ex and his wife's house. I feel I must do this; that it is not an option to say "no". It is dark down here, tiled floor and very dirty and cluttered. I am working very hard clearing things out, sorting and organizing. I am trying to put things (that are not mine) in logical places but am being met with resistance from my ex. My system would be so much better. Why won't he let me work my magic? I am about to complete this task by sweeping the dingy floor with a broom. I look forward to how great it will look when I am done. I look around before I start. I suddenly see how huge this sweeping job will be. It hits me with great clarity that this isn't my house nor my job. I drop the broom. I need to leave. It feels good to take care of myself by dropping something that is not mine to do. I feel no remorse over what I have done thus far. And I feel no remorse not doing the rest, either. I am finished! I leave.

The second dream was a month later, on the morning of my recent birthday as a matter of fact:

I am in the attic of my own home. My ex has just left with the last of his things that had been in here. My husband had things in here, too but not as much as my ex. All of it is gone and so are they. What is left is the amazing space I have created here for myself. It is a large room, very, very light with windows letting sunshine in all over the room. It is decorated in a peaceful, homey style with a rug, nice chairs and a desk. The colors are amazing here. The space is amazing. I watch myself standing in the middle of the room and hear myself declare, "I will never let anyone mess up this space again!"

I awoke from this dream clear that these men only brought into my space what I allowed them to bring; and that I am taking back conscious control of my space (my life); conscious that I am beginning to lose the victim mentality I have carried my whole life.

I believe these dreams speak volumes without explanation. They are highly indicative of my inner-child work. I am so grateful for the way God and I do this important healing work.

Good Reads

It's been over two months since I last published an entry. The reason for this is not lack of material, God knows! It's more like "where to begin" most days. I have been reading some great books, each of which has fueled so many, many thoughts. I am fortunate not to have an overwhelmingly busy schedule at the moment; fortunate in that I have plenty of time to think about the things that come to me while reading. Well, maybe that's not so fortunate sometimes, too. I can get into some pretty entangled places in my head!

Awareness/The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello. This now-deceased priest was pretty plucky delivering thoughts that shook the church. His ideas about becoming aware in every aspect of life are revolutionary in their simplicity. Not unlike, I believe, Jesus' ministry.

An Interrupted Life and Letters From Westerbork by Etty Hillesum. This young woman lived to be only 29 years old, dying at Auschwitz during WWII. She journals about her awareness of the beauty of life in the midst of the turmoils going on around her. Very pithy and real.

The Sins of Scripture by John Shelby Spong. "Uncovering the God of love beneath the Bible's texts of terror", it says on the back of this book. Spong is a retired Episcopal bishop who, like de Mello, deals fearlessly with ideas and questions that have long been stuffed into safe places in the church.

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Tolle writes another bestseller and a book that Oprah put on her own book list. Regardless of its notariety I would have read it anyway. Tolle clearly lays out the way to awareness and awakening, something so personally important to me right now.

In Search of Belief by Joan Chittister. Chittister is the female version of a rebel from within the church. Now retired, this Benedictine sister has been prolific with her no-nonsense approach to the spiritual life. I find her thoughts inspiring and refreshing. So often I find myself thinking, "Why didn't I think of that!"

All these books approach life in a way that says, "Come on now. Let's talk turkey and get real." They don't sugar-coat or throw in disclaimers to make me feel good. In most cases, they say things I wouldn't often get in church or Sunday school. But they resonate with where I am right now. They meet me face to face with ideas that are worth my time to explore. I am grateful to these courageous and faith-full people. Each wears his or her spirituality on their sleeve. I want to be that courageous.

Cutting Cords

Looking back over the past eight months or so, I realized yesterday how much work I have done cutting the cords of unhealthy attachments in my life. I wrestled last January with letting go of my beloved Riverwind. Although I have not let go of the place physically I have emotionally. I am ready to sever ties with that land if there is no other solution but to do so. I never, ever thought it possible to be in this place. And yet, it is a place of such tremendous peace. I can truly say, “Whatever happens to Riverwind, it is well with my soul.”

A few months after that, I cut an unhealthy cord tying me to a family member. Years of hurt has caused me to respond with intense anger, judgment, and fear. To cut this cord has given me not only peace but an ability to deal more objectively and lovingly in situations involving this person. Though this person may not feel it, ironically the bond is stronger when the unhealthy cord is broken, because responses and decisions made in the relationship are now being made with the healthier cords of love. I am in a much better place now.

And recently it was necessary to look at cutting the thickest cord of the three; a parental cord. Having learned from this parent certain unhealthy ways to view and negotiate life issues, I had been traveling life’s roads carrying burdens far heavier than necessary. I unloaded some of these burdens. It will take time to navigate all aspects of my life without these well-learned and familiar patterns but already I feel lighter.

I am being purposefully evasive about details. But I can say that in all three cases cutting cords has been life-giving. It is as though I can breathe more deeply. I am freer to respond to life issues in more peaceful, thoughtful and loving ways rather than with my usual knee-jerk reactions. I took a very honest look at the places in my life where I have felt pinched by fear, squeezed by anger, and manipulated by illusions. These places have been telling me something and have been trying to get my attention for years. Why has my first reaction been anger or fear or grief or jealousy every time some specific thing happened? And why did I not see that these raw emotions themselves were red flags? I guess we just don’t see the patterns most familiar to us, either the “good” ones or the “bad”. But when I did take an honest look at these fears and angers, I realized what they were, where they came from, and the illusions they bore. I felt the grief, the fear, the anger involved in each of these three cases. And after I had spewed out all the dark, raw emotion I could feel, I awoke the next day knowing something had changed inside me.

It is difficult to move freely in life when we are tethered. A horse hasn’t much freedom when it is encased in tack. The animal is at the mercy of the driver or rider. I was at the mercy of the cords binding me. I responded to the demands of the emotional responses I have always had in certain family situations. I was no more than a horse being driven. Now I am free of tack and bridal. I have my own head. I am free to respond consciously. And can now take full responsibility for my actions.

The Cycle of Suffering

Ideas offered by Don Riso and Russ Hudson in a recent article in “Radical Grace” periodical left me pondering. They talk about suffering as being a product of our attachments. Personally, I am attached to the idea that my spouse “should” know how to be a perfect active-listener for me, giving perfect feed back as to what I have said so that I know he has truly heard me. I constantly hit the wall of this attachment when he fails to hear what I mean and instead hears what he thinks I mean or what he needs to hear based on his own illusions and attachments. It hurts when I hit this wall and feel unheard. And I suffer. My natural inclination is to withdraw and rehash the painful situation. I hash and rehash the “rightness” of my perspective and the “wrongness” of his. I am a pro at this sort of circular, ineffective mental activity. Rehashing the situation is the mind’s futile attempt to be “right” when there is no clear “right” or “wrong” in any situation. Where there are two people, there are always two “rights” and two “wrongs”. To insist on being entirely “right” in any altercation will only cause more suffering.

But there is another way to deal with suffering. Unhook from the attachment and suffering vanishes or at least diminishes. Riso and Hudson say that in order to be successful at detaching so as not to suffer, we have to learn to consciously suffer! This is a strange dichotomy. To be conscious of anything means to turn toward that thing and pay conscious attention to it. Turning toward suffering, seeing it for what it is, and feeling it intentionally, can illuminate the causal situation so as to be able to see the problem from a more open perspective. Often we can see the belief or illusion that we are attached to. And often this belief is an illusion that is narrow and self-serving. For instance, in my personal example above, if, instead of rehashing the “rights” and “wrongs”, I turn deliberately toward the pain I feel and stay with it, not judging it, but allowing it to speak to me, I am often able to see things from my husband’s perspective enough to see that there are two distinct personalities and opinions at work and that neither is “right”. If I can see that there is no “right” or “wrong”, and detach from the illusion that both of us have to see the issue from my “right” perspective, these expectations and my suffering end.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor points out in her book, My Stroke of Insight, that physiologically the body needs only 90 seconds for the chemical component of any emotional feeling to run its course and dissipate from the blood. After that, a feeling stays with us because we choose to allow it to. She says, “The healthiest way I know how to move through an emotion effectively is to surrender completely to that emotion when its loop of physiology comes over me. I simply resign to the loop and let it run its course for 90 seconds. Just like children, emotions heal when they are heard and validated.” In other words, I can choose to allow the suffering to remain with me indefinitely or I can choose to consciously feel the pain, become aware of the illusion behind the pain and detach from the illusion.

Of course, a huge component in learning to detach from attachments is cultivating a very real knowledge of the unconditional love of God, Presence, Creator. Love is what makes any of this possible at all and as I become detached from illusion I need to become attached or reattached to this Ever Present Love. With this knowledge and awareness of Love comes compassion. And with compassion comes the willingness and desire to re-enter into suffering from a different perspective. We become available to another’s suffering or even Universal Suffering because we no longer need to take center stage with our own personal suffering. I cannot be available to productively help another if my real agenda is (the deep truth be known) to be recognized and placated for my own suffering.

Hence, the cycle: suffering, awareness of and detachment from illusion, compassion, reenter suffering.

Disconnected

I have returned home after being in Maine to attend a week-long silent retreat again this year at Living Water Spiritual Center in Winslow. This is a picture of room #8, my home-away-from-home for seven days. In it, I received what Spirit had to offer.

I felt disconnected this year as I headed for the retreat center. And dragging along behind that feeling came guilt that I felt this disconnection at all. Somehow it seemed to me that I should be in a heightened state of spiritual connectedness as I walked into the building; a symbol, sort of, of my right to be there, of my religiosity. The center was once an active novitiate for the Sisters of St. Joseph. Now ecumenical, it is sponsored by the Sisters and feels and functions primarily Catholic. As I drove to Winslow, I pondered why I was feeling disconnected from God, people, and myself.

In one very real sense, my disconnectedness was obvious. I was sick. Only three hours before heading north on the Maine turnpike I started feeling symptoms of the flu; wacked-out stomach, diarrhea, feverish. It was all I could do to get there without having to stop along the way. Any connectedness to my body was exiting quickly.

Then, too, my previous two weeks had been very intense, first hosting my daughter and her three and four-year-old very, very active boys in my home, then driving them non-stop 18 hours to Maine, then stepping right into the care of my 88-year-old mother for a week. I was pretty pooped.

Before all of this, I had just finished school and entered into the transition between school and professional life. Emotionally, I was drained by the middle of May.

So, as I lay on my bed that first 36 hours of the retreat, not able or even wanting to eat, drink, walk or read, I stared out the window and wondered why I was there at all. And then my frustration began to build. First of all, I had looked forward all year to the meals Leslie cooks there at the Center. Amazingly healthy and tasty, the food fits perfectly the diet I maintain. Leslie even tailored the food last year to meet my specific requirements. When you experience that much silence at a time, mealtimes are a coveted event three times a day. Now, I couldn't imagine eating so much as one bite.

The view out my window that whole week was bleak. It had rained in Maine for some ridiculous number of days and the thick clouds offered only one color: gray, except for one mid-retreat day when a beautiful storm blew in. So, even if I had felt up to walking, I had no interest in being drenched. And the books I took just lay by the bed, as uninviting as reading the "begats" in the Bible. I was miserable. Couldn't eat, couldn't walk, couldn't read. I felt sorry for myself, lonely and drained.

I found the energy to write about my feelings in my journal, pitiful as they were. And then, about a half hour after that exercise, I had a sudden quickening in my spirit, the likes of which I have come to listen to with all ears. It was God speaking to me and I knew it. What I heard was: "Your limitations are temporary. Your confinement is self-imposed. Your mother's limitations are only going to worsen and her confinement is permanent." This changed my outlook for the rest of the week. I began to get better. The Center catered to my every need with all the tenderness a group of nuns could be expected to give. And on the last day I felt my first normal hunger pangs.

And I thought about my mother and the health issues that are slowly dragging her down. She had told me the week before that she really, really wanted to get down to the river. I understood that; the cove behind her house is a very spiritual place for me, too. But after my spiritual enlightenment in the midst of my bemoaning, I not only understood my mother's request, I felt it. I felt her pain at least in a spiritual sense. I felt it because it resonated with my own pain at least in that one moment. And it served to reconnect me.

What's In a Space?

What’s in a space? A place to practice guitar? A place to catch up or do business on the computer? A place to read? To chat with someone on the phone or in person? To meditate? To do spiritual direction? To just be?

All of the above! My den/office/meditation space is done! I am SO excited!

Goose Family Visits the City

This is not a picture I took but it almost could have been. I was the first car to approach a large intersection in Dayton this morning. There were five lanes in all directions and these are streets that even in the wee hours see their share of traffic. I couldn't believe that I was so blessed as to be able to see a family of Canada Geese in the crosswalk right in front of me as if a policeman had been standing on the corner telling them it was their turn to cross. Cars around me dutifully stayed their distance and probably watched in awe as I did, thinking we were witnessing something one rarely sees.

Mom (or maybe Dad Goose) led the procession. Nine goslings followed in a fairly straight line and Dad (or Mom) walked beside them all, corralling as necessary. When they were safely beyond my path, I stole a quick glance at them as I drove by to see that the babies, though almost as big as their parents still had fluffy-looking backs and were, I presume adolescents. Even though these were older babies, I would guess that they couldn't have lasted in the air long enough to have flown with their parents to wherever they were going and that walking was the best choice. But given the nature of the paved roadway they chose, I could only say a prayer that they would not get hit.

It struck me that what they were doing either took great faith or a naïveté that allowed them to walk, not run, in the midst of humanity like that. How provided for they were! In fact, due to their large group size, they were probably highly noticeable and thus somewhat protected. Still, it was a gutsy thing to do, in my opinion! It wasn't hard to feel the presence of God right there in the midst of the city streets.

Vulnerability

I had a dream last night that I can only admit was a cry of vulnerability. I've had several dreams lately that have seemed unlikely to me, given my opening sense of who God is. I would think that as I open to see God as All That Is, I would feel more surrounded, more secure, less vulnerable. Awake, I am growing into an awareness that God is the air I breathe, the people in my life, all of nature, and all of everything. I am learning to trust that God and I are in fact inseparable, one and the same, and that God is closer than my crying out, my thoughts or my prayers because God just IS. God, the great I AM. The only thing that changes from the illusion that I need God to "come" to my rescue and the fact that God is already Come, is my awareness of the latter. More and more I am aware of this never-without-God state that I and everyone else is really in.

And yet, perpetrators have come into my dreams with the intent to do harm. They never accomplish what seems to be their intent and something always comes to my rescue. But I awake with a disquieting sense of foreboding and anxiety. My thoughts, especially when I am awakened in the middle of night by such a dream, launch off into all sorts of "what if’s" and "beware of's". I am often escalated into places that make my heart and my thoughts race and as I try to calm myself enough to return to sleep, I wonder what on earth brought that on.

In a chat over breakfast, I heard myself say, as though I'd been thinking this all along when in reality it was just then coming to me, that perhaps it is because of my opening spirituality that these dreams occur. Maybe, as I realize that everything is God, even that which includes what I judge as "evil", I am realizing that there are seemingly no boundaries to stop evil from getting to me. If I live with the illusion that God stops evil and that if I am "prayed up" and in good standing with the Boss-Man evil can't get me, then I can buy myself a measure of imagined protection. But if instead, I understand God to be the Creator who gave Divine, Complete, Total Free Will to all of creation, then I am no more protected from evil than the next guy, "prayed up" or not. What praying does for me is help me be more aware of the presence of God everywhere, more palpably aware that help is everywhere.

So, I wonder if in the transition from thinking of God as One who is "up there" and separate from myself, to One who is With Me Always, I will be prone to bring to my consciousness, via dreams and other waking fears, the reality of feeling vulnerable that I have always carried with me. The new reality says that although I am indeed vulnerable and cannot be protected from “evil”, I can develop a solid understanding about how present God really is in the midst of evil. I can develop a solid understanding that all circumstances, “good” or “evil” are really only subjective reasonings anyway and with God’s abiding presence, ALL things work for good.

Welcome!

It is Memorial Day, 2009. Hubby is painting the den per my request for a place to see clients in spiritual direction. And I have puttered around today doing this and that. One of the "this's" is to create this blog; a new blog created after my three years of school.

I learned so much in school. I learned the art of spiritual direction, yes, but more than that, I learned about myself. I visited my strengths, weaknesses, gift and shadow elements. It was said that we students would need to learn how to sit with ourselves before we could begin to sit with another. Put another way, we cannot expect another person to go to interior places and feelings that we are not willing to go to ourselves.

My hope is to continue the journey of self awareness while seeing clients. I will certainly do that through reading material, continuing education classes, sitting with my own spiritual director, and prayer and meditation. But all of life is filled with the Spirit. There is no day that is not infused with Spirit, no person who doesn't embody Spirit, no bit of nature nor any thought, word or deed in which Spirit does not dwell.

And so, as I breathe, I question. As I question, I search. As I search, I become aware. As I become aware, I breathe.

Welcome to my world.