Salon for the Soul

Death of the false self

2012-01-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

Listen to post:

In a dream, I am sitting at the end of several rows of stackable chairs whispering something in God’s ear, then I slump back , clearly dead. I don’t know my exact words, but I release something and I feel the ache leave my heart.

This was a waking dream during a centering-prayer session and I literally feel the release of my heart. I know I have died, surrendering what I had been holding onto. The change is palpable.

Soon, the silence is broken by the sister signaling its end and reading the day’s selection from The Daily Reader of Contemplative Living by Thomas Keating:

"January 24

The Way to Divine Love

'Behold, I make all things new.'

– Revelation 21:5

Divine love is compassionate, tender, luminous, totally self-giving, seeking no reward, unifying everything … the experience of being loved by God enables us to accept our false self as it is, and then let go of it and journey to our true Self. The inward journey to our true Self is the way to divine love … The growing awareness of our true Self, along with the deep sense of spiritual peace and joy which flow from this experience, balances the psychic pain of the disintegrating and dying of the false self. As the motivating power of the false self diminishes, our true Self builds the 'new self' – the motivating force of divine love.

Ephesians 3:17-19

'[I pray] … that you … may have strength … to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.'"

…

Wisdom imparted at the labyrinth this morning

I am certain it can get no clearer than this for me. I am whole-heartedly searching for my true Self, casting out whatever it not truth. This dream happened yesterday and since, I have experienced the spiritual peace and joy, which balances the psychic pain of the disintegrating and dying of the false Self. I believe that is the pain lifted from my heart and it was real.

This revelation has caused me to question just about everything, including this so-called book I am pushing forward on. It feels oppressive right now. I cling to it merely for identity and to show some amount of productivity. Yes, I am called to spiritual-nurture ministry and the concept of the turtlebox [nurturing space within ourselves to welcome the divine], even teaching and facilitating it. And, maybe completing the book some day. But I think I clutch it because being a writer has provided me an identity for a long time. It’s much scarier to think of myself as a teacher, unacknowledged territory, or an artist with a message. I’ve always said art is what is in my heart. Words come from my brain. They’re easy and the way I have made my living. They buy my way into the business world. What if I want to be part of a different world? One more on the fringes and cutting edge?

Means I have to let go of what is false.

• What moments of truth have I experienced?

• What circumstances allowed them to happen?

• What of my false self was revealed?

• What of my true Self?

• Where am I currently in that dance?

ego props me up

even when I don’t realize

but that’s why it’s ego:

the auto pilot that takes over

unless I intentionally

spend time in solitude,

prayer or reflection

I don’t always have to run

off to a convent for that

regular prayer

Sundays silent worship

the deep companionship of friends

also help my true Self

emerge

Synchronicity of simplicity

2012-01-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

Listen to post:

As I was grabbing a few things to pack for this retreat, I uncovered the Journal of [Quaker] John Woolman and decided to leave it behind as I had enough books to tote. My mother, not a Quaker, had recently been cleaning, found the copy and passed it on to me. Eventually, I thought, I’ll read it, but not on this retreat. Besides, I was heading to a convent, nowhere Quaker.

In a welcoming e-mail, Susan, the retreat director, said I’d be staying in a cabin called “Simplicity.” Perfect, I thought; sounds pretty Quaker. While scouting out my one of the seven cabins, I came across, “Hope,” “Wonder,” and “Namaste´,” before uncovering mine. Why was I assigned Simplicity? I asked myself. Surely any of the others seemed to hold more significance for me: hope in figuring out my next steps in life, wonder at spending quiet time in nature and with God, Namaste´ because I practice yoga regularly and adore that word. Of course, I always want to simplify, but that wasn’t my intention for this retreat. That’s such a mundane, everyday kind of thing. But, come to think of it, I’m not really clear what my goal is, except to get away alone and write.

As I was settling in, Susan came by and welcomed me and, as she was providing a rich and endearing history of this commune of hermitages, permanent dweller Elaine arrived, asking Susan to move her truck. We were introduced and I was drawn to look Elaine square in the eyes and hold that gaze while saying: “I was led here.” Woops, that surprised me. She had a knowing face. Our gaze broke and she was off. So was Susan and I explored outside on my own.

After a rigorous afternoon crossing creeks, pausing at the labyrinth and peeking at the other, unoccupied cabins, I headed in to grab some tea and reflection time prior to the 5:30 daily prayer in the chapel only a few steps away. This is perfect, I told myself.

I picked up a journal with entries from others who have coveted their time at this cabin and was immediately mesmerized. One kept quoting Prevallet, who had some petty insightful things to say about simplicity. I soon discovered this author penned a Quaker Pendle Hill Phamplet entitled “Reflections on Simplicity.” This writer was a nun with a wonderful theological education (Ph.D) and a year spent studying Zen Buddhism in China. She also happened to teach spirituality and Scripture during a two-year tenure at Pendle Hill, a Quaker contemplative community near Philadelphia.

I mentioned to Susan after silent prayer that I had noticed the simplicity pamphlet. “Oh, yes,” she responded. “Elaine wrote that.” The Elaine with whom I’d shared a deep moment upon arriving. The synchronicity was a little too uncomfortable. In that same conversion, I also learned that a member of my Quaker meeting, Pauletta, had just spent time here. Spooky as I had brought her book of poetry, the gift of a small-press publisher/friends who had given it to me for my birthday though we’ve never really verbalized our Pauletta connection. I’ve known these friends well before I was ever Quaker.
After prayers and before and during dinner, I dove into the book on simplicity. Elaine's words, like her eyes, immediately reached in and grabbed me with “I listen for the decision rather than make the decision” in a discourse on basing them from your center, the place connected to God. And then she began to quote from John Woolman’s Journal. You know, the one I didn’t bring. And then I read more things that are exactly what I need to hear to discern my next steps and it really is all about simplicity.

So I am here, where I am supposed to be, savoring every moment. This is retreat.

• How have I experienced synchronicity?
• How long did it take me to connect that it was?
• How am I more open as a result?
• What’s the synchronicity of simplicity in my life?
• What is my usual mode for decision making?

only took me a year
to get here

can’t even really
tell you how I found it

or why I came now
of all times

except that it was
out of desperation

to be alone
and with God
and to listen

and to follow my sister
Pauletta and meet
my teacher Eileen,
be nurtured by Susan

and let my whole being
rest in the Godfulness
of this time and space

Lost identity or blank canvas?

2012-01-20T08:35:00.000-08:00

Listen to post:

Self-portrait in ink done about age 17

Express your anger, two people I love and respect have told me … more than once. I seem to chip away at it a little at a time, but there was still a locked trunk, wrapped in chains, sunken in the root of my existence. It held every incident of pain and injustice I have experienced. Locked away.

And something would seep out and I would lash out. Sometimes just by myself, sometimes, inappropriately, at others. I am not certain I understand this anger. I’ve made lists and it always goes back to not getting what I want: understanding, acknowledgment and pain preventing me from my real work.

I sat in my studio today to write in my mad journal, marked with a big green M, making that list and looking at the ink self-portrait I did of myself in high school staring at me from the ledge above my work table. I never added a face, so I was contemplating this lack of identity and equating it with all of the things that anger me. Then I began a conversation with God in my journal:

How deep does it go, God?

To your root, where it’s stuck.

How do I get it unstuck?

Give it attention, love and surrender it to me.

How, exactly?

Pretend it’s not you. Let it gently dislodge and come up through you. Do this now.

And so I did, letting screams and sobs emerge, begging, pleading with God/Jesus to take this away … without violence to my body. I’ve had enough of that. I found myself in child’s position, bowing, on my dirty studio floor and asking that this anger, this locked box, be taken from me. Then I surrendered it because something told me I must.

I wiped the tears away, snarfed my stuffy nose into a tissue and returned to the table, staring once again at the self portrait. This time, however, the empty face revealed something else:

‘Now as I look in the mirror of my faceless self portrait, I see a blank canvas: possibilities, not anonymity or lost identity. Rather a cleaned surface, purity.”

I was able to ask God for one more thing: “I don’t want to be that same angry person. teach me the way, please.”

“I will,” was the response.

• What role, if any, does anger play in my life?

• How does it control me [if it does]?

• How can I surrender that to God?

• What is my experience of surrendering anything to God?

• What is my current prayer?

Presently detached

2012-01-17T11:40:00.000-08:00

Listen to post:

Not only am I beginning to see my life as a metaphor, I am experiencing it that way and I wonder if this is real detachment.

This perspective of symbolism has been eeking its way in for awhile, providing crucial insight and helping me be more the observer in situations where I am too enmeshed. Now it's occurring in real time as events unfold and not merely as I look back. Take my 53rd birthday party, for example. Out of the blue, I decided I wanted (needed) a party and asked my husband and best friend. They were more than willing. And when my spouse asked whom I wanted to invite, I e-mailed him a most impromptu list. In hindsight, I recognize what a gift this was: inviting people I really wanted (and who were available and nearby as this was last-minute) and none out of obligation or responsibility.

I basked in the wonderfulness of this particular group during the party as they intermingled, some never having met before. I even remarked that it seemed like a dream because, how, otherwise, would this specific collection have come together. I was detached and able to see how each person there has brought her/her gifts to my life and the difference in me that has made. It touched deep gratitude in me as I have been nurtured in some way by each of them. Perhaps that was the nudge to request such a party.

Removing oneself from a situation and viewing it metaphorically improves context and clarity. As a trained journalist, this has been a tool I have often applied to others and situations outside my own. As a marketer, it is typically easy for me to visualize and map a path for another company. In journaling, I have learned to do it looking back on my life. And, joyfully, in the present, I am able, perhaps through grace, to use this perspective now ... sometimes.

A new group I am attending is about accompanying the dying and we are collectively discovering that learning this type of companionship is also learning how to live. I think it, too, weaves in the detachment/objectivity factor and looking for the patterns in our lives. If we can delve into the shadow [and what greater shadow is there than death?], then we can explore all parts of ourselves ... even the ones we know least and fear most.

The ah-ha moments seem to happen more frequently and on deeper levels in this observer mode.

Yesterday, for example, was my regular shamanic-counseling session. I floated in on the wave of a wonderful birthday and spilled that in reading a book on button pushers, my biggest foe is not human, but the psychological and physical trap of fibromyalgia. A passage in the book suggests that we often let our button pushers control us and BINGO, that's when the hairs stood up on my neck and I understood my feistiest controller.

So, of course, being with such a wise and loving shaman, we went deeper and I received a very important revelation, one I realize will take some time to sink in, process and open to. Afterward, when it was time for bodywork and before my therapist (lucky me that my massage therapist and shaman are one in the same!) returned, I felt a physical presence lay hands on me and then a warm, gel-like layer permeate my entire backside, causing tingling and comfort from my toes to the base of my spine, even in the palms of my hands. This was no metaphor. It was real and it was healing.

Currently, I am sit resting in this, but I sense some form of detachment led me here. I am grateful.

• When have I experienced detachment?
• Has it been a process or rare flashes?
• What role do I believe grace plays in that?
• What am I currently processing or sitting with?
• How can I nurture my own openness to detachment?

so easy to get stuck
stuck in what is right ahead

like I live with blinders on

repeating the same thing
over and over and wondering
why it's happening again

then something lifts
me above and I see

everything differently

and either the path
becomes clear or

I see a destructive pattern
that I can now mend or
an old habit I can abandon

and I am eternally
grateful

Threes are more interesting

2012-01-10T16:38:00.000-08:00

Watch/listen on video: http://youtu.be/EA9v1pYcFWk
In a recent Bible study, I could not keep myself from asking, "What, exactly, is the Holy Spirit?" when the group sped through (well, at least I thought so) a discussion of the Trinity. You could have heard a pin drop. I had anticipated the reaction, but could not help myself. I've never really been able to understand it. I know the intellectual definition, but I want to really know this.

I refrained from also asking where the Mother was in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Somehow, I am certain this group of experienced women has questioned that themselves.

The first response was "part of the Trinity." Which part, I wanted to know. God's Spirit, I think someone said. I explained that question had been raised several times in Quaker groups I've attended and also that Quakers believe there is that of God in everyone. That resonated with this Bible-study group. We sort of settled on the fact there are many aspects of God and this may have been a way of addressing that.

Shortly after, I began reading about the Christ. That's another concept that has been rotely drilled into me. One I wish to make my own. Is Jesus the only Christ? I have wondered. What does Christ even mean?

An enlightening comparison of Exoteric (outer expression) and Esoteric (inner teaching) Christianity that my friend and spiritual mentor gave my, compiled by the Rev. Jan Skogstrom with the Rev. Susan Hamilton, suggests those with an outer bent view Christ as one entity and those more internally focused as a human teacher and the living flame of love.

I think I have always seen the duality and, perhaps, not had to define these aspects. At a rather young age, in Sunday School, we were told to ask Jesus to come into our hearts. I did and I believe the Christ was already there. I am now certain it was the Christ Spirit that whispered in my ear that my heart was not black with sin, another early Sunday School teaching.

I love reading that in Jesus' "lost" years, other accounts and traditions document him traveling to Tibet, India and even China mastering other faiths. A several-year study of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita in a meditation group probably taught me more about my Christian beliefs than the Bible. So many teachings are universal. To me, they, too, felt infused with the Christ even though some elements were culturally and historically foreign.

In Jesus, I am finding, the mind and the heart fused and the heart became the driver. That's what I want and what I recognized during a flash while meditatively swimming today: we all have the potential to carry the Christ because that spirit is universally available. It is a living, growing presence that did not die on the cross, but, rather, was released.

Released for each of us to embody. Wow, what if we did?

• What is my spin on the Trinity?
• How has that changed, been shaped over the years?
• What do I believe about the Christ?
• What personal connection do I have to Jesus?
• Does the outer expression or inner teaching call to me?

threes are more interesting
to an artist

three flowers in an
arrangement make a better
composition than two or four

threes aren't all neat and tidy
they beg for something more,
something unseen

so the idea of a
trinity holds promise

but not when narrowly
defined

threes call for
mystery and trust

When the hatches aren't battened

2012-01-06T12:05:00.000-08:00

Listen to post:

So many ideas, thoughts and concepts are converging in my head, all mixed up and crying for attention. I'm uncertain where to turn first.

That's why I believe I need to retreat: either for real off by myself or, until that can happen, making a daily retreat in my studio. I feel at a crossroads and I had better make my choice with complete awareness. Part of me wants change and wants it now, no matter the choice and another piece, perhaps the wiser, says wait and do the work first. Acting now could be a reaction to so much busyness last month.

Last January, I retreated via a friend's gracious invitation to her condo in Bloomington, IN, and had a marvelous time writing like a madwoman, enjoying my own company and keeping whatever hours and rules (or lack of) that I desired. I do crave solid time to write. I have completed teaching eight chapters in my book – the entire experience was a glorious gift – and feel the strong urge to translate that into a better manuscript. I also need to plan and schedule the next eight.

Yet bigger things are calling. Like figuring out my real purpose and sacred contracts. Studying the archetypes that influence me and using other new [to me] tools, such as astrology and Scripture, to guide my discoveries and decisions about what happens next. I am just back from a wonderfully full and rich meeting with my spiritual friend/mentor/teacher. She was a whirlwind pulling various articles, charts and study guides from her poke. I needed her whirlwindedness as well as her understanding. I was able to tell her something I've only mention to my spouse, an ugly thought that seems to be driving me and robbing me all at the same time. She validated my anger and suggested I really let it out instead of letting it dribble out at times that may not be so appropriate (she also told me not to judge those). She said a rubber hose works well for expressing anger. It made me laugh and reminded me of the time a rather new writer friend and mentor told me that power tools are great for expressing frustration.

Thinking of these three (including the friend with the condo) as well as beginning to work with my archetypes has led me to see all of the wise and wonderful helpers I currently have in my life; some who even surprised me when I jotted them down. I am blessed with healers and mentors, nurturers and truth-tellers, companions and guides, sages and listeners, angels and mystical children. The list is starting to make me wonder why I want to be alone!

• Do I currently feel any need for retreat?
• How can I manage that in some form?
• Specifically, what am I being called to in such a retreat?
• What tools or others could guide me?
• Who are the current helpers in my life for which I am grateful?

in my mind,
when the hatches aren't
battened
things flap like
crazy

pulling me here
and there

when I can share
even some piece
with a trusted
helper, I see
my way a bit more
clearly

and with
gratitude

Surrender, Cathy

2012-01-04T07:08:00.000-08:00

Listen to post:

A New Year and new thoughts crowd out the pattern of itching to busy myself after a long holiday season. That's a good thing.

My family witnessed my whirlwind-organizing-and-pitching campaign over the past week. They, mostly, stayed out of my way. I have had rare weeks of good, solid sleep. As a result, I would bound out of bed ahead of anyone else and not stop until my head hit the pillow at night. I have been so productive de-junking and de-cluttering. It has felt cathartic after the stagnancy of too many festivities and obligations even though they have been trimmed out of simplicity.

But that's an old pattern. One I had better learn from or I will find myself right back down in the no-energy hole. So right now, I am in contemplation and examination mode. That also always hits after the holidays and, often, like today, when the kids get back to a routine. I want one, too, but also need space to decompress.

Today's agenda was simple: hit the pool, come home and spend some time in prayer, reading and reflection. This blog is part of that reflection. I stopped reading and journaling when I hit a BIG opening, which I will relate in a minute.

Last week, while at the library, I stumbled onto a copy of Caroline Myss' Sacred Contracts book. Though I was not specifically looking for it, it was no accident. Ever since I had a past-life, astrological report done in November, I have wanted to understand what my work/contract is. I know parts of it and have an inkling for the bigger picture, but am a bit stuck as far identifying the next step. And my worldly exposure still rears its head begging to know what it is, exactly, I am doing in a secular sense ... besides naval gazing (and parenting, living with a chronic condition, working on a book, facilitating a nurture group, etc.).

I am having a hard time putting the book down. The first thing to strike me was the idea of forgiveness. That's a recurring subject for me. I even co-facilitated a forgiveness worship that was powerful. But Myss' spin is that opting not to forgive can create unhealthy energy patterns. Wow, that sounded a powerful chord in me. She also furnishes the example of a young man frozen in inaction, a place I know well. She writes that he remembers a time before his birth and parts of his contract. That knowledge renders him unable to act. I believe I am frozen more because I am not yet ready for action.

Myss uses the Christian tradition (along with Jewish and Buddhist) in a way that captures my attention rather than diverting it. So much Christianity has become rote to me and the reason Quakerism's emphasis on the experiential resonates so deeply. I want to know God, not be told about God. But I am particularly taken with her examination of Jesus' life. I have always been drawn to Jesus: as a child and as an adult. I once had the experience of walking in his body and was so grateful for Marcus Borg's delineation between the historical Jesus and the mystical Jesus. I want to know the mystical Jesus more intimately. My past-life report also said Jesus was my model and guide. No kidding. My Myers-Briggs type is the rarest and the one many calculate Jesus would have had. Kind of makes me giggle because, at times, I feel so far removed from Jesus, but at others, so close. Myss suggests that when we become conscious of our contracts, we break away from the general (secular) mindset and that Jesus' "outsider status marked his public ministry." I often feel like an outsider.

I could bore you with more passages, but the point is, I am supposed to be reading this book as I ponder my next step in life. I screeched to a halt when I read about how Jesus released his pain and psychological suffering (often deleted from some Bibles because it makes Jesus seem too human) to God before the crucifixion. That IS my next step: to release my pain and suffering to God.

I want ALL of you.
You don't have to fix anything.
You can't.

You've given me your heart and body.
Now, give me your mind and I
will heal it. Thats been your battle.
Surrender your wonderful, but weary, mind to me.

Let Jesus be your example.
TRUST.

So, what else is there to do?
Oh yeah, forgive. That's what Jesus did from the cross.

I would be honored if you would hold me in prayer at this juncture of the journey. I don't know how to surrender that part of me, but I desperately want to.

• Where am I right now, in the new year?
• Is action calling me?
• How/where do I find space for contemplation and reflection?
• What wisdom is being offered to me?
• What is my prayer for the current leg of the journey?

my response to
obligation and too much emphasis on
ONE day or season

is to explode and/or
find peace

the explosion may come
in activity or sniping
at others I love
though it's not their fault

the remedy is the
antithesis: quiet,
prayer and reflection

in that,
wisdom opens
and I find myself
again

in the arms
of God

Water as surrender

2011-12-29T07:16:00.000-08:00

Listen to post:

Water, for me, really does have living qualities. It has taught me much about spirituality; particularly trust, patience, rhythm and surrender.

TRUST

To some degree, you do have to trust the water to hold you. You must believe that it will support you by giving yourself to it, without losing yourself in it – if that makes any sense. Something new is created between what the water offers and what we must give up. Together, this something between is formed.

PATIENCE

Water is 11 times denser than air, so we learn our bodies move and work differently here. We can feel less in control until we trust and practice this way of being. Parts come naturally, others are learned. Experiencing being in the water over time shapes the unnatural into the familiar and, in my case, beloved.

RHYTHM

Breath may be more important in water because we have to pay attention to it. It allows us to submerge for periods and keeps the fluidity in our movement when we are aware and using it purposefully. This combination of in sync breathing and movements creates a bodily rhythm that can become calming and meditative. I usually have to burn off some frustration and busy-mindedness first. When I find the balance and my rhythm, it is magical as I glide almost effortlessly along. Even the drag becomes part of the patterned movement.

SURRENDER

Describing how to surrender is difficult because it isn’t just giving in or up. This act is more creative than that. Surrender is, really, all of the above: trusting the water to hold you, patience in being in it and finding your rhythm. When you strike that balance, there is a newness in the space. All you and something else, merged as the boundaries between skin and water recede. Today as I was swimming, I noticed it comes as what’s inside myself fuses with what’s outside. And for me, that feels divine and requires me to let go of thinking and control.

The living water is life-giving, supportive, healing, renewing, creative, loving, challenging, strengthening, soothing, calming, discharging, yet also demands respect and gratitude.

This living water has taught me so much about my spirituality. It is a tactile way I experience the divine.

Dive in!

• What is my experience of water?

• How do I surrender?

• What similarities does that share with my experience of the divine?

• Where else do I surrender in my life?

• What new emerges when I do?

as I dance

down the steps,

I find myself

gliding off

under the ropes

gracefully,

headfirst and

without my arms

like a dolphin

dipping under one

lane barrier and

into the next

the invitation

fully accepted,

I dive right in

Held somewhere apart

2011-12-26T12:49:00.000-08:00

Listen to post:

Tried NOT to dwell on the thought that I needed a second mammogram all of last week and I did well in not keeping it front and center, but it did gnaw a bit, always at the back of my mind. I presume that's natural. This is the third time in 12 years I've been called back. Each time I worry a little less, telling myself it was ok last time, but remembering my mother's sister who died of breast cancer.

I did not feel ill in any way. As a matter of fact, I have slept better and had less pain than in months. Friday morning I did all of the chaturangas (holding a push-up position as you slowly lower yourself down) without straining in yoga and slid into upward dog with ease. I felt strong and healthy.

I was greeted by Kitty, a wonderful imaging technician I had remembered from previous years. She put me right at ease. We discussed the variety of scenarios (one picture may be enough, the radiologist may ask for more or order a sonogram), but that I would definitely meet with a doc that afternoon and know my results PERIOD. No going home wondering.

As I undressed, Kitty explained that the more pressure I could take, the better the scan would be. I held my breath (easy thanks to regular swimming and yoga) as the machine pushed. Finally, I called enough. She got the film and said that was a hefty amount of pressure. I was ushered back to the closet-like changing room and told I would know something in ten minutes. I picked up the copy of Caroline Myss' Sacred Contracts I had brought along and focused on that. I was reading about her clients that began to see the incidents in their lives more metaphorically. I was particularly entranced by her series of dreams of being grounded and not allowed on a plane as she finished to complete her first book. It meant her book wasn't ready yet, even if she thought it was. I compared that to the book I seem to have been working on for ages, but know teaching it right now is more important and feeding me to create an even stronger work.

The doctor roused me from somewhere else. I had also been praying that I could handle whatever the news. It was all so dreamlike, the radiologist saying the picture was so much different than the original and that everything was normal. "Go out, buy yourself something, you deserve it, enjoy the holiday and we'll see you back in a year." He knew it had to have hit me hard. I thanked him, only it seemed like I was on autopilot and observing from above. It was all so surreal. I closed the door and as I dressed, tears streamed down. Tears of relief, tears of de-stress, but, mostly, tears of gratitude.

I had felt held in a very safe place, somewhere aloof from the chatter of the world, from the instant I entered the imaging center door. It all confirms for me that God does have special work for me, as he does us all, and this was not going to get in the way! This experience has opened me to a newer place; one I am not yet able to define.

That night I wrapped presents until midnight, awoke at 7 am (this is the kind of energy I used to have BF/before fibro) and started right back in with Christmas prep. My youngest fought me tooth and nail all day long. I still don't seem to remember that when I bury myself in a project and she's around, I can't detach myself from her. I finally closeted myself in the small kitchen bathroom and sobbed. I did not know what she wanted from me [and told her so, then we embraced] and then I knew my next action was to haul my body to the gym and swim it off ... every iota of stress from the health scare and the holidays. It was so clear: I had neglected any self care. Mechanically, objectively, as if I were not part of the decision, I gathered my gear and told my family I'd be back when it was time to go to my mom's.

The pool was gloriously empty and bathed in afternoon sunlight. After a frenetic swim, I grabbed two noodles and floated for what seemed like en eternity. Again, I felt held and held apart.

I don't know what this is, but it feels very right and the next step in wherever I am headed. I surrender to it.

• How do I handle tenuous situations?
• How have I learned to surrender into Spirit?
• When have I felt held apart?
• What did that teach me?
• To which work is Spirit currently calling me?

took a deep inhale,
then exhaled audibly and
shut the car door

did much the same
as I opened the
imaging center door

after that, I don't
recall actively participating
I sorta sailed through

conversing with the
technician, waiting
alone, reading

then hearing the
doc say the scan
was normal

where was I?

being held
somewhere apart

I believe

2011-12-25T04:56:00.000-08:00

Listen to this post:

I can live a rather Scrooge-like

existence sometimes,

insulating myself from the world.

But then I am the poorer.

Poorer without the

connections to others,

my deeper self and,

mostly, with God.

When God is awakened

in my heart, much like

in the beloved Dickens’

character, I am giddy.

Giddy with an

unconditional love

that feels like

no other.

Love for my

children is the feeling

that comes closest.

Indescribable.

I like to call it

naked-to-naked.

That’s what we named

it when we held our babies,

skin to skin.

Nestled up close where,

I believe, Spirit would

always have us.

It is we who wander.

And for me, it is the

vulnerable baby

we are reminded of

this time of year …

in the throngs of charged

shoppers and baited bargains

… the small being that someone

who loved us so much sent,

that reaches inside of me.

This baby was a gift, I

believe. God’s way of

touching us with our own

humanity, teaching us

there is a place within,

that Jesus modeled,

where we can always

be naked to naked.

When we unwrap

our Scroogeness,

we have the best

gift possible:

ourselves as

God sees us.

That’s when we

know God’s pure

gaze of love.

Death as teacher

2011-12-20T06:44:00.000-08:00

Listen to this post:

There's a shadow on your mammogram.

Those words from last Friday haunt me a bit, though not as much as if I hadn't been called back before.

Yes, it IS in the back of my mind as I wait a week for another go-round. Why do these things always happen over the holidays, a time when it isn't possible to get right back in?

Yesterday at a Quaker meeting of those interested in discussing/learning how to be with those suffering and dying, we each were asked to articulate our feelings about death and after. I repeated what I have written here: "Living is a helluva lot harder than dying" – in my opinion. I said I don't really fear death, though I am not ready.

If the mammogram proves to be something more than a shadow, I dread the struggle. As a healer friend said, breast cancer is really a chronic condition these days. "I already have one of those and don't need another," I replied.

Life is a struggle, but in that struggle is what makes us grow and become more of who we are.

I'm not sure how hard I'd struggle against death, but that's easier to state when that is not my condition. I'd probably fight because of my daughters; the thought of leaving them motherless is heart-renching. I explained in the suffering/dying group that I never have a problem at a funeral of walking up to the casket and speaking to the family. I see how others shy away. The family wants its pain acknowledged – mostly, I hate to generalize. I learned that working in the funeral industry and getting to know a wonderfully gifted and known thanatologist/grief counselor. When my grandmother died, I was about 10 and we, as grandchildren, were curious about her body at the viewing. I touched her just to see. It, definitely, wasn't her.

Unlike many of my brave friends, though, I have not been with someone at death – near death and very ill, but not at the moment of death. The stories I've heard confirm that it's been pretty peaceful; hardest on those left behind.

This seems like an odd time of year to be thinking about death; on the other hand, winter is the season of hibernation and death, preparing for rebirth in the spring. I have been contemplating what in me must die this season to birth something else. I am leaning toward my propensity to worry. Yes, I have shed some of my psychosis, but I believe it needs to die. It is blocking my ability to live in the present. That is what's attempting to come forth.

As someone once said: live in the present; it's a gift. That's what I want for Christmas.

• What currently gnaws at the back of my mind?
• How do I struggle to not let it overwhelm me?
• What deaths have I already died?
• What is waiting to be born in me?
• What do I feel about Death?

death for myself
is a completely
different matter

– in my mind –

than losing
a loved one

it seems my life
has been a series
of stripping, loss
and mini deaths

preparing me
for the final

transformation

yet how will
I feel when it
eventually calls?

no regrets, I pray
... if I learn to live
in the NOW

Shining out into the world

2011-12-15T09:56:00.000-08:00

Listen to this post:

Are you living into your name? Have you ever even thought about it? I hadn't much until Sunday's worship when I heard a message about living from the heart, which we then practiced the rest of silent worship.

It was overwhelmingly powerful for me. Mostly because it affirms where I live most of the time – a place I struggle with because it runs so counter to our culture and the direction most people are oriented. The minister spoke of compassion as being the strongest emotion/feeling we experience; that some of us have developed our vagus nerve more fully than others. Science confirms that this nerve wanders from the brain stem through the heart and into the abdomen. It affects the throat, voice box, windpipe, lungs, heart, esophagus, intestinal tract and colon. This nerve connects the heart and brain, letting the heart communicate to the brain and not the reverse. How completely interesting and affirming! By the way, Donne, our minister, says we can best strengthen our vagas by practicing even greater compassion.

So often my heart feels as if it's going to explode out of my chest. There's swirling and energy I can barely contain. It's not a medical issue because I've had that checked. I've wondered if it's stuck energy, untapped creativity or trapped emotion. But after Sunday, I realize it's that I have to let God's love flow through me, not just into me. I've been hoarding it, rationalizing that it was mine alone.

It's not. So I really focused on letting it pour out of every cell in my being, into those behind and around me, into the entire congregation and beyond.

Donne paraphrased Rumi about compassion opening the heart much like a rose flowers. She had a hard time speaking it without intense emotion. It sparked a similar reaction in me as I heard her words. I had already been toying in the silence with the fact Catherine means pure. But now I was recognizing how my heart also blooms, much like my maiden name Rose. Catherine Rose: pure rose/heart. Such a gift my parents have given me.

I want to fully live into this awareness. The revelation helps me see more clearly who I am as well as the gifts I really am called to use. Not waste or abuse. Frankly, I have been fighting who I am because I don't seem to fit most places. I mean really fit. As in feeling completely at home in all that I do and am.

Yesterday, I sailed, glowing, through the day fully aware of my gifts and using them. Today, I woke up after a late night, which threw off my entire schedule, and I began to sink into some despair without my morning swim. Then I remembered this new awareness and decided that, yes, I do need a routine, but the harder days and circumstances will not separate me from the path God has presented.

• How often do I live in my heart?
• How do I experience that?
• What was my most recent act of compassion?
• How have my gifts been revealed?
• Where is God currently leading me and am I following willingly?

living contemplatively
much of the time

it's hard to enter the
real world and

not be touched

by need and hurt –
someone else's

it pierces me deeply

and there, in my heart,
I would let that sit

taking up space inside me
building up in my heart
til I thought I'd burst

then the rose opened
within my chest,
dissolving barriers
and shining out
into the world

The juicy inner stuff

2011-12-08T09:49:00.000-08:00

Listen to this post:

Somehow I grew up with the idea that to be a good Christian, God would ask you to give up everything at home and travel far away. There was pain and suffering. That's what we were told missionaries do and we revered missionaries.

Yesterday in the car, it hit me why I have always liked theologian Frederick Beuchner's quote about vocation being "the place your deep gladness meets the world's deep need." Because God calls us where our hearts are.

For years, I have been trying to reconcile the secular world's view of success and happiness within myself and it's never worked. I've had money and I've had time, but I've never had money and time. Time, for me, is way more important: time to discover my inner self, time to build a regular relationship with God, time to nurture others, time to paint, time to write, time to heal, time to become healthy, time to spend with others, time to really listen, time to be quiet, time to reflect.

There's still a small part of me pulling to get that job, look for work and give up my dream. Mostly out of loneliness and some need for affirmation. I am trying to be faithful to where God calls me.

I am being called to surrender not to pain and suffering or moving far away, but to not only do, but believe in the work that gives me the greatest joy: writing, making art and teaching spiritual nurture all bound together by this turtlebox framework that God planted in my heart several years ago. I must trust that it will take me on the path that's right for me as well as provide the necessary resources.

I've been trying to control the process about which piece comes first, what person to approach, when something is finished or not, whether I need to back up and earn money in another way; basically, I have tried to control the business part of the process. It's much easier to let the creative part flow. Our culture doesn't recognize, let alone honor, a business model based on Spirit's leading. But I should.

I attended a new Bible study yesterday. One my mother is leading with a variety of women from different Christian traditions. We're reading Luke and I was immediately struck by Elizabeth's easy way of embracing the announcement of her late-in-life pregnancy, then going off for five months to wait. It was so unlike her husband, who was struck mute because of his disbelief. Mary was just as accepting.

Passages about these women helped me see the connection to my periods of waiting while something of God's forms in me. I am a patient person and feel as if I've been waiting a dozen years for my fruit to ripen. Elizabeth waited much of her life.

It's like I keep sticking my finger in the baking cake, it comes out wet and I tell myself: "It isn't done yet." I want to crank up the temperature and hasten it's doneness, but then it will only be a sloppy mess.

Lord, please teach me to let go of my impatience, comparisons to secular models, need for outside affirmation and revel in the joyful work you have given me!

• What illusion of being faithful have I discovered and am shattering?
• What truth stands in its place?
• Where is God currently calling me?
• Am I patient?
• Am I willing?

how does a soul
do its real work
the juicy inner stuff
that needs tending and time

when it feels alone
in doing so

when it can't
seem to find another
walking the walk

when it doesn't
produce a paycheck
or create exciting
party banter

how does a soul
leave the loneliness
and outside expectation
behind

replacing it
with God's
presence and promise?

Letting my naked soul out

2011-12-05T07:01:00.000-08:00

Listen to this post:

Images of corporate worship/pastel on paper/Cathy Barney

Yesterday's message in worship centered on giving rather than receiving. Giving in worship, not just other aspects of life. Praising and opening, not just basking in the alluring silence.

I had a message open in me, but it did not seem right then. Perhaps, now.

I don't come to worship to give or receive. Mostly I attempt to come without expectation, except to wait – which is the entire purpose of Quaker worship: waiting for God.

I do come to be. To be with God, to be with others being with God, to be myself, to be myself with others being themselves with God. I seem to live inside out, yet still manage a protective coating most places. In worship, I unwrap myself into God's loving embrace. It is one of the few corporate places I let my naked soul out.

Of course, I have safe places, such as my studio, where my soul dances naked with Spirit and, sometimes, even with trusted friends.

My buddy Caleb, really my other child (he and Lily were due at the same time), though he chose to be born earlier), at age six said it was his purpose in life to "help people's souls find their dance and dance it."

That's also what I hope worship could be: collective souls dancing joyfully in God's presence: naked, stripped of the identities, filters, fears, expectations and wounds we so often can't leave behind, even temporarily.

• What is worship for me?
• With what do I arrive?
• With what do I leave?
• What happens in the midst?
• What dimension does the corporate aspect of worship offer me?

rushing to get there
on time

never quite making it
early

dumping the kids
in their class

heaving a heavy sigh
and entering

letting the space
choose me

I like a different
perspective

settling in
sinking deep

feeling the
edges fade

finding that wonderful
space between

between wakefulness
and sleep

between consciousness
and dreaming

between hardness
and softness

and truly
being

with God

Prayer for a fearless life

2011-12-02T08:26:00.000-08:00

Listen to this post:

Fear/pastel on paper/Cathy Barney
Fear.

What’s your biggest fear? Can you name it?

I don’t remember being afraid of too much as a child and was somewhat astounded last night as several members of my weekly spiritual-nurture group talked about theirs. You know, the jumping over the floor and into bed so that the dark thing underneath doesn’t reach out and grab you.

I kinda missed out on that, secretly wishing a vampire would take up residence under my bed … though there probably wasn’t room. Weeks after my sister lost a turtle, it crawled out from there, apparently healthy and happy. I haven’t thought about that story in ages: a turtle living under my bed and not a vampire. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t afraid.

Most of you probably know my affinity for turtles and the turtleboxes I create. So, I think this realization is, somehow, important.

Back to the fear discussion, though: as an older adult, I believe I have made up for my lack of this stuff as a child. If I can articulate that fear – and I am beginning to – I can face and deflate it.

It’s not a fear of death; some days that would feel like a blessing. It’s the fear of living the rest of my life as I have the past 13 years: in chronic pain and as someone I don’t always know. She’s weak, confused, needy and unfocused.

That’s hard to see in print and not just as a thought weaving throughout my consciousness.

Weak, confused, needy and unfocused. Those are harsh words and not who I AM. That’s my fear talking, not me. I was always such an optimist (still am underneath), but have let the fibro couch me in the negative: what I can’t do, what I don’t have, how I am less.

If I can shift my thinking, even a little bit, I see through some of that. How, that despite the hardship, I have helped raise two wonderful daughters, completed two years of nurture training at a far distance and expense, delved deeper into my art, continued with some marketing clients, volunteered at my girls’ school and my Quaker Meeting, been able to spend time with my mother on her several long hospital stays, facilitated small groups for over 10 years, delivered retreats and workshops, maintained a regular blog, am writing/revising a book, traveled, pursued personal and spiritual growth, practiced yoga for 12 years, become a graceful swimmer …

Doesn’t look like less. Actually looks kinda like my glass is half FULL.

• What do I fear?
• What happens if I voice it?
• Write it?
• Dissect it?
• What’s my prayer for a fearless life?

body on pins and needles
always afraid, on hyper alert

that I can’t do or be
what I once was

my healer friend talks
about the new normal

what if I define mine?

look at what I
have accomplished
despite anything,
everything

and what I have yet
to do

that’s my prayer
for a fearless life

Loving tentacles gently holding

2011-11-29T11:08:00.000-08:00

Listen to this post:

Water/pastel on paper/Cathy Barney

W - A - T - E - R

Wasn't that the first word Helen Keller signed to her teacher, Anne Sullivan? The wonderful cool gush from the backyard pump prompted her to want to know what it was by name.

Water sparks the same reaction in me.

One of the recent gifts in my life has been the closing of the pool at my local gym for a couple of weeks for maintenance. Of course, I didn't initially see it as a gift. I was bent on finding somewhere else to swim because I knew I'd sink otherwise. I started goggling what other area gyms had pools, if they offered short-term memberships and considering my best option.

Then it hit, they all included some sort of trial by potential members for free, so I started making the rounds. First off was the most spa-like and the one I could least afford at three times the price of my current membership, which was about to expire. Ohhh, but it was wonderful. I could show up with nothing but my suit and everything (unlimited towels, shampoo, conditioner, soap and lotion) was supplied, including lap and warm-water pools, sauna, steam room, a luxurious locker room and free coffee. Next was an older, smaller and somewhat-aging facility with a more hotel-sized pool. Finally, an urban gym with a younger crowd, but a gleaming pool hardly used, steam room and sauna.

I received from one-day to one-month free trials at each of these. Of course, I had to endure the sales pitch over and over. Got to be a game with the manager at the urban gym; he knew I wasn't going to join and I knew that he knew.

Today, I went for the last time, even though my gym's pool has been open several weeks. I was lured by the empty pool and the heavenly steam room. All of that happening in the glorious water. It's enough to make the pain melt away if even temporarily. After a brisk swim and stretching, I lingered longer than usual in the steam, soaking up every morsel. I sat in lotus position, deeply inhaling and feeling the layers in me shift ... as if the steam had a healing life of its own. Then I lay down and felt the moist warmth invade my sacrum and lower back. Yummy. I took a hot shower and dried off in the sauna. I was going to make the most out of this last experience.

What is it about the water that speaks to me? It's aliveness? It's healing ability? The fact it renders one close to weightless? Or that it's 11 times denser than air, so is a great strengthener without risk of injury?

My recent astrological report said, for me, water and spirituality are connected. That did not come as a surprise. Often, as I tick off laps, I pray ... well, after burning off the stuff on my mind. It's as if I feel God's loving tentacles gently holding me, yet allowing me to move freely and make choices.

Here, nothing is a burden.

• How does water speak to me?
• What else has that effect on me?
• Where and how do I receive healing?
• Where do I experience Spirit?
• Where do I feel the balance of being gently held and free?

that initial plunge
is so worth it
almost all weight
removed

and I feel strangely
freed, but also held

free to work through
whatever, but held
close enough so as not
to drown

breathing deeply
dipping my head under
propelling myself as I
can nowhere else

I feel the energy
I receive it
expend it
thrive on it

and also
pray that it's
healing properties
are there for the next
soul

Somewhere deep within

2011-11-26T06:35:00.000-08:00

Listen to this post:

Seeing a physic for clarity? Who'd a thunk. Funkier yet, is my Quaker meeting sent me ... well, to scout out the fair as a potential place to staff a booth. It is the "Victory of Light" festival and Quakers believe that each of us contains God's light within. Many of us – Quaker or not, Christian or not – know it from experience.

I had always wanted to attend this event and this request sealed the deal. It also took the edge off of making it a personal journey, though it would become one. I was going as the observer.

As the observer, I was overwhelmed at the marketplace thick with readers, healers, therapists, sha-men and women, trinkets, crystals, books and anything metaphysical you can imagine. It all seemed too material upon first entrance.

I glanced at the schedule and one talk immediately jumped out at me: the past lives of Jesus. Having just come from an hour of worship, I was looking for something of depth, perhaps even familiar. I ducked in about two minutes late to hear a conversation about the many others Jesus was before he was, well, Jesus. Odd, I thought until I listened longer. The speaker was knowledgable, mentioning the Essenes, Gnostics, and Aramaic as being Jesus' original language. And then he spoke of Edgar Cayce, a name I could only vaguely recall. Cayce was a prominent last-century physic healer with a Christian tradition. Much of his work revolved around past lives. I was riveted, but a little uncomfortable. I had only toyed with the idea before.

My shamanic counselor has hinted that some of what I deal with may be "old" stuff. Now I was thinking that I should investigate this old stuff a bit. I purchased a report from the lecturer that combined my birth details (time, place, location) with readings Cayce had made for others with the same astrological data.

I am still bowled over by what it contained as well as its depth and completeness. I shared it with my longtime spiritual friend, who knows much more about metaphysics, and she was impressed.

I learned that my intertwined affinity for water and spirituality is natural because my moon is in Pisces ... ok, I don't really know what that means. In terms of the past, I have a connection to Atlantis. It is so strange that I felt called to Greece several years ago and chose Santorini and Crete. Some believe Atlantis excited between them. I was drawn to the sea around Santorini and created a ritual of leaving pain behind there because it was evident that, in this place, beauty arose out of chaos (a volcanic eruption that destroyed Santorini and may have caused the decline of the Minoan culture on neighboring Crete).

The reading affirmed and confirmed my calling to ministry in writing, one on one and in groups: exactly what I am doing! It pinpointed areas in which I am challenged and can grow and indicated Jesus is my best role model.

Venturing outside of my norm has opened new possibilities into self exploration and knowledge, shedding more light within. I don't believe this was a random experience.

• How do I experience the light within?
• When have I been called into something out of my comfort zone?
• How has that opened me?
• Opened my spiritual experience?
• In what ways do I see Jesus as model for my life?

darting in
wet from the rain
not knowing
what to expect

but being drawn
to Jesus

in the midst of
crystals, reflexology
and card readings

and finding myself
somewhere deep
within

Deliciously being cast about

2011-11-21T09:02:00.000-08:00

Listen to this post:

Expelling ashy black/pastel on paper Cathy Barney 2011

My pastoral counselor/massage therapist/shaman [how lucky and I?] says I am in my power and I am beginning to believe he's right.

But how come it's still so murky and not this even-keeled, easy way? I ask.

From a distance, it looks like it is, but when you're in it, it's soup, he responds.

So, I'm in the soup churning and bobbing and deliciously being cast about. I think deliciously is the key word. I'm not fighting it so much and, actually, beginning to enjoy the ride and the present. Currently not so attached to the future and recognizing and letting go of the hold the past has had on me. Not easy or one-step stuff.

Last night in the nurture group I facilitate, I asked a friend with an extensive knowledge of Buddhism if the state of enlightenment and not being bothered by anything is realistic. He explained that total enlightenment only comes when we all reach that space and that some practitioners devote themselves to not attaining enlightenment in this life.

Imagine that: freedom from striving.

The group also talked about experiences and times of revelation: when we are most ourselves. Those were all times we were not striving.

For months, I have been haunted by the idea of something holding me up that doesn't seem quite right. Like it wasn't actually part of me. During a recent emdr (eye movement and desensitization and reprocessing) session, that thing identified itself as a parasite that really meant me no harm, but found a fertile place to live. Followed some days later with intense massage and release, I understand I have been holding some negative emotion or pattern in me that my body has suppressed and is now learning how to let go. Slowly. Layer by layer, the trapped sentiment is being uncovered and ejected and it feels freeing and healing.

Last night, we also talked about surrender, submission and enlightenment being a process, not one grand ah-ha moment.

I think I've been waiting for everything to be aligned in the way that I had envisioned before things can happen and not recognizing it's a process. One that should be nurtured and honored while it's soupy and unfolding, knowing it may always be soup. But delicious soup.

Who's got the crackers?

• When have I felt empowered, in the flow or most like myself?
• How did it feel like soup or something else?
• How present was I?
• How can I learn to be more present in those times?
• What's my most recent revelation or ah-ha moment been?

accompanied deep breathing
peels off the ashy black layers
revealing the baby pink
of new growth

ahhhhhhhhhh

it feels so good to
expel what does not
belong

my body has
forgotten how to
relax, how to be

bit I am
remembering

letting go in my studio

Make turtleboxes

2011-11-14T12:58:00.000-08:00

Listen to this post:

Make turtleboxes.

That's IT. That's what I am supposed to be doing right now.

Not running after new clients, proving I am worth hiring.

Not looking for a part-time job.

Not worrying about making money.

Not worrying about not having enough money.

Not lacking purpose.

Not feeling useless.

Not feeling powerless.

All of those things rob my energy and define me in negative ways that aren't me.

Funny thing is, making literal and metaphorical turtle boxes is all I really want to do. It's also what God is calling me to.

So simple, but it took awhile to get here. For various reasons, I suppose.

Me and my Turtleboxes (Autumn Barney photo)

In 2005, as I was finishing a research paper, I felt I needed something more special than a fancy report cover to wrap it in. That's when the idea of creating a turtle box hit. Right away, I could visualize what it would look like: a colorful, sacred art box housed inside a turtle shape. After all, the paper contained a collection of people's experiences of the Divine I felt honored to hear, hold and share. Making the first box, the "Mother," was magical. She was greeted with enthusiastic response at our next gathering, so I decided she would spawn 25 babies when I returned in the fall: one for each peer, teacher and elder. It was a dark summer, brightened by making the baby turtleboxes.

When I shared what I was doing within my Quaker Meeting (church), an artist F/friend disclosed her affinity for the turtle and how in Native-American lore (also in many Eastern cultures I have since discovered), the turtle represents Heaven/Divinity (the domed shell) and earth/humanity (the under belly). Of course, I thought, these boxes are the space where they meet and the right container for these stories.

I have been making them ever since, pausing at times, but never abandoning the idea. In fact, the book that has been forming from my spiritual journey the past 12 years now shares that moniker: Turtlebox Stories: Nurturing the Divine within. That's where I have been placing my energies the last year and a half. A month ago, I began facilitating a small group based on the idea of the turtlebox and the contents of my book. I realize I have the gifts and call to help others, along with myself, create our individual turtle boxes (the space we create for God to enter ... I do believe God is always available, it is we who are not). There is the place in each of us where God resides and we need to learn or remember how to locate it.

I had become stuck with my book, feeling that teaching it might provide new opening or insight. And, it has. I had a recent request for an actual turtle box I am honored to fulfill and it got me thinking that it's been awhile since I've made any and that, right now, is what truly makes me sing.

I don't let myself sing very often because I was told in junior high my voice was worthless. Unfortunately, I listened. I wouldn't even sing in church. But my babies came along and they were the only one listening, so I sang to them.

Yesterday, I did something very much outside of my comfort zone: I sang in my Quaker Meeting as worship. It was terrifying and I argued some with God that I had to tell people first that I was not a strong singer. She said: "Just sing and do it now. Don't stand up. Just sing."

Now She says to make turtle boxes and I have no choice but to listen and obey because my heart knows this it my deepest desire.

• What is something Spirit has made especially clear to me?
• How am I following that?
• How did I initially argue, object or not listen?
• What happens when I surrender?
• How does that make my heart feel?

I thought it was just
something I did for
a project

yes, I loved
every minute of
doing it

and I made more

they elicited
wonderful reactions

guess you could say
they brought joy

something so
seemingly insignificant
from my hands and heart

straight from God

and now She whispers
that is my work

the work for which
I have been searching for
so very long

for now,
I am just
resting in that
revelation

Surrendering the burden of myself

2011-11-11T08:51:00.000-08:00

Listen to this post:

I am brokenness,

and also healing

I am weak, but able

to tap inner strength

I may hurt,

yet can find the

prayerful place in myself

My pain overwhelms me

until I surrender

from within

I feel diminished, devalued

and still have a piece

of Divinity dwelling in me

I am nothing

and everything

I feel alone and isolated,

yet sense You covering me,

holding me, living

in me

I may think no one

cares or understands,

then I remember Jesus

is here and he

knows the depths of

my sorrows and pain

When I am too full

of carrying the burdens

of the world, when my

back sags and shoulders

ache, I remember to

lay them down

When I believe all

is lost, that life

is just too difficult,

You help me find

peace, courage and serenity

from new depths I am

just discovering

When I lash out at

myself and others,

You gently remind me

that’s my anger, not

me because I am

also Your reflection

When all hope ceases

and I cry for an end,

that is when I feel

Your presence most

and regocnize I have

never been alone

You live within me, not

just above or around,

but inside as a

constant companion

• What's your prayer? Please share it here if you like.

Hand in hand with Jesus

2011-11-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Last night, in the spiritual-nurture group I facilitate, we talked about early, childhood experiences of the Divine. Seemed only fair as we started out three weeks ago sharing our pain, often stemming from childhood. And, last week, we did an exercise, heart play, that tapped our inner child. Participating in and witnessing that free-form play was magical – and so were the explanations of what each temporary "sculpture" represented.

I [Who am I kidding? I am not in charge, just the messenger who can manage, occasionally, to listen] wanted to use and build on that openness, which was last week's topic, this week as we explored "Deepening Connection."

Our spiritual foundations are laid so very early and we don't often acknowledge or share them, whether joyful or painful. In nurturing children (who really end up nurturing and teaching me), I have rediscovered that natural openness. They have not yet acquired the filters, wounds and baggage we adults bring.

Of course, I have an evening outline and know what the queries we discuss will be. However, I never, fortunately, seem to have time to give them personal thought. I do think that would spoil the movement of Spirit within the group and be an unfair (dis)advantage. It's not an over-thinking, but rather a deep response these questions aim to elicit.

As we were worshipping and reflecting on the question [What is an early, first or natural experience you had with the Divine/Spirit/God?], I was blank for a bit, except for focusing on the early negative memory I had shared two weeks ago. One that was a human/church experience, not of God. And then this precious, tattered book from my childhood floated into my heart and thoughts. "If Jesus Came to my House" is the story of a boy, probably an only child, desperate for companionship and rescued by a one-day visit from Jesus, also a boy. That book taught me more about Jesus than any formal schooling. By reading and loving that story, I realize now that I considered Jesus (filling in for God) as my constant companion. Of course, I was blessed with a twin sister, so have essentially never felt alone except for the times I let my pain isolate me.

This line has always spoken loudest to me:

And then I think I'd show Him the corner in the hall,
where I'm sometimes frightened by the shadows on the wall.
I always have to hurry when I'm going past at night,
but hand in hand with Jesus I'd be perfectly all right.

The black-and-white-with-a-spot-of-red illustrations have always captivated me. They're graphic and strong; no iffiness about them. When I googled the title, I came across a blog that shared the text and pages and was astounded at the responses it drew: all very similar to mine. You can access that at http://www.collectiblechildrensbooks.com/2009/04/if-jesus-came-to-my-house.html

Apparently this little book, published 80 years ago, has helped many others know Jesus as a friend when they were children. That early foundation, for me, has been a gift. One I have been blessed to recently rediscover.

• What is an early, first or natural memory I have of the Divine or Jesus?
• How has that created a foundation for my current spirituality?
• How can I tap those early experiences and bring that openness to my current practice/relationship with God?
• How has an early book, Scripture, conversation, etc., stuck with and guided me over the years?
• What have children taught me about a relationship with the Divine?

Small in stature,
wide-eyed and willing

I KNEW God
through Jesus

Understood that when
someone said my heart
was black with sin,
it wasn't true

Always felt
accompanied,
cradled and
protected

Believed in
the reverence
of nature and animals,
let them reach into
and teach me

My foundation
was set sturdily

Now, my task
is to clear the
clutter and see
that's what's still
holding me up

Please, use my brokenness

2011-11-01T07:40:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

I awoke with a new prayer on my lips and in my heart yesterday:

Please, use my brokenness.

Certainly, I have prayed for healing and for God to use me, but never to use my brokenness. Before the words formed, there was an image of a mosaic, specifically the cement binding all of the broken pieces together and I knew that's where God, silently and mysteriously, resides. If I can admit that I am I pieces and give them to God, then something transformative can happen. Nothing of my own volition can make this change. I have to totally surrender and let God work.

Am I brave enough for that surrender?

Yesterday in worship, I felt so empowered by the prayer even in the midst of messages about how, as Quakers, we should be socially active in the local Occupy movement. I wasn't sure how it even connected and I wanted to share my message, my new prayer, but it never felt right. Perhaps I wasn't brave enough. I am so broken, I thought, I can't focus, except for prayer, on another cause. And yet the prayer of using that brokenness charged me with energy and a feeling of empowerment. It brought me peace yesterday.

Today, I am totally broken and in pain in a way I have not experienced in several years. I thought I was healing and over this, I sobbed to myself. Why am I here again?

Of course, my tonic, a warm swimming pool, closed today for maintenance and I am at loose ends. I have committed to so much this week and having a lower back that feels like two boards that do not meet and prevents me from standing straight was not on that to-do list.

Back on the heels of a wonderful trip, I am helping an author-friend with his synopsis, writing a marketing proposal for a potential client and planning an elaborate Italian thank-you dinner for my girls' caregivers while we were away. Oh and sewing last-minute Halloween costumes.

That's the kind of rhythm I used to have, BF (before fibro). And what happens when I feel well and begin to jump back in? My body speaks up, radically. My body or God?

I also acknowledge that I was given a great gift of healing recently when a locked sacroiliac opened after 13 years. This could be the other side re-balancing for the slack it has carried for so long. But it could also still be God.

I have been trying to discern my path for what seems like an eternity. Merging my passion and talents with something that, well, actually pays me. That's the standard of success the world recognizes.

What does my heart recognize? I told my pastoral counselor that the way I live takes so much work because it's again the current. He said that's the way it is. A spiritual mentor said undertaking a spiritual path isn't easy. And I am so trying to understand the real-life aspect of living in this world but not of it. I would just as soon slip into my little cocoon of contemplation.

But God calls me elsewhere: to use, even show, my brokenness in a world that almost refuses to look.

• What new prayer have I been given?
• How am I living that?
• With whom may I share those challenges?
• How do I live in the world but not of it?
• What's my best method of discerning God's call?

security
success
recognition
a title

used-to-bes
for me

living under the shadow
of brokenness is
not glitzy and
often devoid of
human companionship,
understanding or
accompaniament

and yet,
it IS where
God calls and
I have no choice
but to follow
faithfully,
but not always
cheerfully
or easily

may I find joy
along this road

Moo-Maw: witty and wild

2011-10-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

Lang-Way-Ten Farm/Tad Barney photo

Listen to this post:

Happy Birthday, Moo-Maw! My mother-in-law would have been 90 today and I suspect she's celebrating with lots of cooking and family. Those were here life. She was named Patricia, but my daughters and I nick-named her Moo-Maw because she raised cattle on Lang-Way-ten Farm, which she inherited after her father died at the ripe-old age go 96. It was a long wait before she could move to the 200-plus acres of her dreams and the pre-Civil War brick farmhouse.

Serendipitously, we took a Sunday drive up to the farm in Urbana last weekend on the spur of the moment. It's currently between tenants and we wanted to visit; rekindle our memories and jog those of our daughters. The youngest remembers her grandmother, but not the farm. It was a beautiful autumn drive up 71, along 48, then 42 through Warren County, Xenia, Yellow Springs and, finally, the farm on the southern edge of Urbana. I always used to get butterflies rounding the last curve before the long drive came into view and Sunday was no exception. It's like I was expecting to visit her there as I had the last time years ago. I've never been to the farm when she wasn't there.

I entered through the kitchen and quietly gasped. It was still her kitchen: powdery blue commerical-grade linoleum, scrubbed white cabinets tipped with simple, wrought-iron handles, scalloped-wood window treatments; even her numerous mug hooks remained. I grew teary thinking of all the memories in that room. Warm ones of many mornings after Thanksgiving pouring a steamy cup of coffee as she sat on her stool and we chatted; the toddler playgroup traipsing up from Cincinnati, visiting the barns then making animal-shapped cutout cookies with her; introducing each of our babies to the rest of the family there ... the list is long.

Really, the house as changed little. Sturdy, new carpet covers the tiger-stripped floors of which Moo-Maw and her husband, John, were so proud. I was grateful for that change; it made being there easier and the fact she IS gone evident. Though I am pretty certain I felt her spirit; John's, too, but it may have been deep and fond memories surfacing.

She was such a vivid person. Nothing about her was subtle unless you looked only at the surface: a stay-at-home mom who never drove and raised six children. She was feisty and independent and could objectively look at her children. In her 70s, she purchased and learned to use a computer rather well. She loved to talk and voice her strong opinions, but always had time to listen and ask how you were. She adored her grandchildren and said the best part of parenting was getting to know her children as adults: the people they were becoming. The people she helped shape.

She stayed on the farm a along as she could, resourcefully lining up people to mow, check in on her and perform other duties. Of course, her children assisted a great deal. She was so independent that she refused to take the senior-citizen bus into town. She quit giving money to the Salvation Army when the organization disapproved of same-sex relationships (though that policy seems to have softened since) and, even as she grew weaker and closer to death, could rouse herself at the mention of George W. Bush.

Her memorial service was a party, held outside in a tent, with a rendition of Sinatra's "My Way" and a copy of her prized pie-crust recipe printed on the bulletin.

I really miss her and had buried that until I visited her bare kitchen. Thankfully, my girls still remember her sassiness and the time she mooned them as an act of rebellion. I think they inherited her vibrance, so when I get misty, I'll look to them to see her reflection and the gifts she's left with us.

• Who was a presence in my life that I miss?
• What gifts did that person give me?
• Where/how can I reconnect to those gifts and the joy of that relationship?
• How has that person influenced my life?
• What have I taken from them that I can pass on?

permanently perched
on her kitchen stool

studying a recipe,
charting birds or
taking a cigarette break

she was witty and wild
a homebody and grounded

reveling in the six
wonderful adults she
helped raise

warmly welcoming

their spouses and

adoring her grandchildren

Happy 90th Moo-Maw!

Called together, even in pain

2011-10-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Last night I returned to my roots: facilitating a spiritual-nurture group with adults.

After training in, leading and participating in groups for almost 10 years, I took a break from adults, switched to kids, but the urge to return hit hard several weeks ago and I listened!

The gift of teaching kids was planning a general outline, then seeing where they and Spirit led. I am freer in my facilitating. Another was the purity of their spiritual experiences: no baggage or jaded attitudes. Can you imaging leading a small group of them through lectio divine (slow, sacred reading of scripture)? They were as immersed, maybe more so, than adults I have observed. We read a passage about Jesus and children and ended in them feeling embraced in Jesus' arms. And there they stayed and stayed, until I broke the spell.

But a hunger for spiritual companionship and more depth with my faith community led me back here. As did the urge to begin sharing my unpublished book, making it a living project. So there was some fear and trepidation attached ... also excitement and a feeling of faithfulness. As I drove the beautiful fall backroads to the meetinghouse, knowing I'd probably have a small group, I prayed for release from the response and recognized my role was to do it ... for whomever was there.

It was small and delightful. Two trusted, seasoned Friends and a young one ready to open. Apparently, I am not the only one seeking the depth of companionship a regular small group creates.

I had a plan, ready to abandon or improvise as the dynamic dictated. There was such a natural flow of space and talk, meditation, reflection, prayer and laying it out there. The first-session topic was, probably, the hardest: pain as teacher. For a while, in my self-depricating way, I felt I had missed the mark. Really, though, how could I when I was drawing from my own experience? We did fall into the subject, which touched some nerves, yet opened us as a group. Opened us to each other; opened us to Spirit. I shared a wonderful concept form Desert Father Dorotheos of Gaza about how as we move closer to each other (imagine the spokes of a wheel), we move closer to God; as we move closer to God, we move closer to each other. It's similar to the scriptural passage in Matthew 18:20: "Where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them."

A much as I enjoy solitude and spend time on personal and spiritual-growth work, I need a group. It is just not the same as being alone, or even being in worship. It is opening one to another, leaving room for God.

Try it – you'll realize you need it.

• Where do or have I experienced Spirit in a small group?
• What dimension has that added to my spiritual life?
• Where are other places, not especially declared spiritual, that I am fed in that way?
• What, exactly, do I receive?
• What, exactly, do I give?

my heart has been bound
open only when I am alone
and safe
in sanctuary

and that has sufficed

until the longing eked out
and I needed more

worship: always

but something else:
regular companionship

something and someones God called together

when I listened and
was faithful

it was powerful

just what I needed

imagine that

Openness of being away

2011-10-15T07:01:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

It's 7:15 Saturday morning and I'm back at my computer in a quiet house. Re-entry is difficult. Every time.

How do you process all of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and memories of an extended time away? For me, it's like it's bottled up inside and must slowly leak out over time ... as I am ready. I'm often too impatient for that. I want all that I absorbed to transform me now, in a single instant.

I can, at least, discern these magical moments:

• Standing in the beautiful chapel of St. Catherine in Siena and getting shivers of recognition that I share some of her same purity of spirit. Catherine means pure and as my reminder, I purchase a rosary bracelet with her image. I want to recall the love of God she inspires.

Tad Barney photo

• Sitting on the rooftop patio soaking in the majesty of the valley below and feeling blessed to be in the company of such great beauty. Being reminded that I carry that beauty in my heart and don't have to travel thousands of miles to experience it. Returning to the golden carpet of fall and losing my breath for a moment ... here.

Tad Barney photo

• Pulling the warm, stiff clothing from the line, smelling the freshness and being linked to the legions of other Tuscans who have done the same over so many centuries; adoring the simplicity of country life as well as the connection that transcends time, culture and language.

Tad Barney photo

• Walking with my husband into see Michelangelo's David, being re-inspired at his response and my own ... again. Wondering how something so cold and hard as rock could be transformed into something so flowing, lifelike and soft and knowing God's hand guided the sculptor's.

• Getting away from the hustle and bustle of my daughters and aching for how much I love them; something that's hard in the thick of parenting. Appreciating their gifts and beauty, wanting to share every experience with them, yet recognizing this time is for me and my husband.

• Watching the moon grow fuller reach night and, with the expanding light, feeling braver to walk alone. Seeing that same light again early this morning and understanding it's always available.

Cathy Barney photo

• Re-remembering a time with my husband when I wasn't sure if we were one or two people. Life, family, roles and time often intervene, but a new space offers a glimpse.

• Racing through the Latin Quarter of Paris like a little kid looking for something, then being disappointed that it wasn't where I had thought. I was so sure. Finally asking directions, and understanding I had been right, it's just the name had been changed. Trusting my intuition.

• Reveling in the bevy of Venetian school children who descended on us to help with a scavenger hunt in finding the English names for Italian nouns. Feeling chosen, approachable and open to their joy.

Tad Barney photo

Travel/retreat allows me to become more of myself, opened deeper by the new experiences, which reflect my essence and often touch a buried memory that blooms again.

• Who am I when I am away from my daily routine?
• What reawakens?
• What is transformed?
• How does my perspective shift?
• How does God speak to me?

with gusto,
I want to grab the openness
that being away offers

hang onto it
and implant it
into the daily rhythm of my life

not forget the new or
close the reawakened

I desire to know God
and myself in those
new-experience ways
every day

Taking my travel self home

2011-10-08T05:37:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

What is it about travel that teaches you about yourself? Maybe it’s the interior journey outwardly manifested, making lessons more tangible and visible. Or that you become someone else when away from home. Or more of yourself.

It’s good to get out of one’s element and away from the regular routines, patterns and dysfuntions. Travel is exhilarating, scary, immediate, demanding, forgiving, gracious and a host of other adjectives. And, in my experience, it’s never boring.

It also breaks one’s rhythm, jettisoning soul and spirit too far too fast; confirmed by my massage therapist when I have returned, complaining that I don’t feel all here yet. It also takes me a few days to feel all here, wherever my destination; one or two to release where I have been and another one or so to begin to feel where I am presently.

Being present; that’s my goal in traveling … well, beyond the first day or so.

So when I shake off the sleep of travel, I begin to open to what is before me. New sights, a different tongue or dialect, unusual foods and a reticence to fully engage with language. I am always shy at first, but each time discover that if I can utter the first hello in whatever language, differences melt. Smiles are universal.

I have been trying to define my style of travel: not luxury, or tour group, not quite Rick Steves and not youth hostel. More internet, nearby market, stay with a local and in one place awhile to absorb it, only visit the places and museums that speak to me. Maybe it’s slow travel, like slow food. I like to savor the experience. On my last trip to Italy, I was on art overload. Too many museums and too much art too quickly. As I noticed the burnout, I chose to enter a room, gravitate to the ONE piece that moved me and study only it. There’s always one that calls. Just as there is always one menu choice that grabs me or local food specialty that seems to have my name stamped on it.

When I traveled alone, I wondered how meaningful an experience is if not shared. On solo trips, I especially use my journal and later it jogs memories, but there’s no one with whom to discuss it or help me remember. Having a travel partner also lets me be lazier: all of the decisions are not up to me, neither are the screw-ups. I don’t always have to be the one to ask. I don’t have to eat alone.

I am not certain what I am learning about myself this trip, except just to soak it all in and be present. That’s so much easier away than at home.

• How does travel change me?

• What have been the best experiences?

• What did I learn from the worst?

• What do I know about myself as the result of travel?

• What can I bring home from my away-self that will enrich me?

up for hours

on pure adrenalin, excitement

and anticipation

the truncated sleep and protracted

sitting numb my body

my mind races

to the next place

until I can settle into

where I am, who I am

and be myself

somewhere else

then take the new parts

of that person

home

Wild wholeness

2011-10-02T05:23:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

It's been a rather sleepless week. I am certain the limitless list of details in leaving my daughters with a string of wonderful caregivers for almost two weeks has something to do with it. So do hormones ... although the mix of valerian root and melatonin did not work for long enough stretches. Maybe the anticipation of Italy contributes as well.

In the midst of self-soothing in the wee hours, I hit upon something that, well didn't put me to sleep, but awoke me to better possibilities in life. I am choosing. Choosing to accept the annoyances of aging and chronic pain as part of the package AND not letting them shape who I am. Choosing to keep anything negative out of my physical, mental and emotional space. Choosing to trust. Choosing to forge ahead with the career of which I dream. Choosing Spirit. Choosing Jesus. And, in doing so, choosing myself.

Years ago, I had a vivid, disturbing dream. I was biking a country road with a curve, when a whirlwind kicked up and the road sign burst into flames with a shimmering image of Jesus and the words "chosen one." Last night's insight into choosing (as opposed to letting things happen) reminds me of that dream. Several years later, I had another haunting dream. I was having a heart-to-heart with my favorite aunt, now dead, in a beautiful church vestibule when the exquisite stained glass windows parted, unearthly music flowed and I felt Jesus' presence. My aunt said: "You had better choose."

Intuitively, I have sensed what these dreams means, but not so intellectually or fully. I am beginning to believe that if I don't make a conscious decision, something will make it for me, maybe as much by non-action as action. I also know, this has been a time of deep interior work that must be completed before I move on. It's part of the healing and wholeness process.

I sense this trip to Italy is a piece; which one, I am not sure. It may be the joy and living in the present. Last time I traveled there alone. I clashed head to head with Italy's wildness. She comes on her own terms: take it or leave it. After timidly arriving, I chose to dive in and was rewarded. This time, I know her better and myself. Maybe, my wildness will blossom within Italy's.

I can only hope, pray ... and take action.

Ciao.

• What choices have I not made?
• How has that affected me?
• What choices are currently awaiting me?
• Am I in a rhythm of action or inaction?
• How do I discern the difference?

long, sleepless nights
Jesus, my deceased aunt
Italy ...

all flowing together within me,
waiting to untangle

at the right moment
when I am ready

to open

into my wild wholeness

Just showing up ... to pray

2011-09-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Thankfully, I experienced deep, rich worship yesterday. The kind that often arrives after more than an hour in silence. I am transported no place and yet every place. I am vaguely aware of my physical surroundings, but I burrow inside. The stray cough, pen dropping or pew creaking are now my friendly reminders that I am in worship, not merely distractions. That wasn't always the case.

That space is so wonderful, words can not do it justice. I really think I need to paint this space. What I can say is that is healing to the core, as if I have collapsed on God's or Jesus' lap. I don't need to do, say or be anything. I just need to be and that, my friend, feels so freeing and radical from the material world.

I am certain my journey this day was facilitated by our minister's message on prayer. She spoke of the time, ritual, presence and gift of viewing God view you. I have referred to it as experiencing God's pure gaze of love. Everything else melts.

About seven years ago, when I was introduced to Centering Prayer, I was given a rather precious gift and, fortunately, I think I understood that at the time. A wonderful Quaker teacher, Chris Ravndal, offered a session on "No-Strings-Attached prayer," just show up, he said. He walked us through the simple and profound steps to this method and, for the first time, I found myself on God's lap: limp, wounded and so grateful to be there – much like Jesus on Mary in Michelangelo's Pieta´. It was as if a portal opened. I found the aperture to my heart shifted ... as if I even sensed it had one since, I am pretty certain, it closed up tight after childhood. Following that experience, though the hole has undulated at varying widths, it is permanently opened and I almost always feel that Divine connection. That doesn't mean I am especially enlightened, free from worry, fear or always act from my highest self. I still stumble and bumble, emotions clouding the door, but I do so knowing that I am never alone. That I am part of God and She, part of me ... always. Of course, my awareness fades or my mind and feelings take over, but the passage remains clear, linking myself to the Divine.

My next piece of work is recalibrating my sense of where God is when I pray. My brain wants to place her outside, but my heart knows She also resides within.

• How have I experienced deep worship or prayer?
• What facilitates that?
• How do I clear the time and space for that connection?
• How does the experience transform me?
• What is the current state of my heart's aperture?

This piece comes from my in-process book: Turtlebox Stories: Nurturing the Divine within

Centering Prayer

There are specific instructions for centering prayer, a resting in God, defined by Thomas Keating, you may wish to use. I was lured to the practice by an experienced Quaker teacher, Chris Ravndal, who asked merely that we “show up – no strings attached.” He, too, had his own technique, which I have simplified. Choose a quiet place, work out your willies with some stretches, then sit in a straight chair, feet planted, knees apart, arms resting on them palms down, eyes closed. If you feel the need (and I often do) chose a simple word or your breath on which to focus. Often, the word is my intention, such as enter, open or heal. In emptying thoughts, gently return to the word, not punishing yourself for the natural transgression. Wait, breathing and focusing. I give myself at least 15 minutes as it takes me awhile to settle. In the waiting the transformation happens. You find yourself opening in unexpected ways to unanticipated places. I am told it is most beneficial when practiced daily. It always helps me even when used sporadically.

[Centering Prayer in Daily Life and Ministry by Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington, 1998/2006 The Continuum Publishing Company, New York]

Messy palette of awareness

2011-09-23T04:34:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Is life a cluster of unrelated loose ends or do those ends seem to connect when we are listening and aware?

I have to confess to almost a week of roller-coasting with doors opening, closing, then opening in a different direction. I don't appear to be any closer to my goal [and I am learning who am I to judge? My vision is very narrow], but it certainly has been an interesting ride.

Some of it you know. Like whirling off a marketing package to a local business, then bumping into the owner two days later. I danced, dreamlike for a couple of days until I called his office. I never got a live person, but was patched through three times to his secretary, who finally left a voicemail saying he's rarely in this office, so she passed my materials on to their "creative" person. No name or contact info. I called back to ask who, specifically, only to get voice mail. I hung up, called the general number and asked who did marketing. "Jim," the operator said. How about creative services? "Jim," she parroted. The guy I have been trying to get to again. Finally, she gave me the name of someone. I Googled this person and found her on Linkedin. She is real. I guess I should confess that I scoured the internet for this company's corporate structure before I settled on sending it to the Big Guy. There's none on their website, in local news articles or anywhere.

So, I screw up the courage to call this person and a live voice answers. But quickly tells me that, yes, my materials landed with her and no, there are no positions open for my qualifications. "But I'm only looking for part-time or freelance," I brightly respond. The voice seems to soften. "So, shall I keep in touch ... I know you'll be opening a second location?" "We have your things on file," she says.

I hang up deflated. Almost immediately the phone rings. I check caller ID because I am not in much of a mood to talk. The listed name makes me smile and dive for the phone: Renee. I was in her first class of yoga students. She touched me deeply, we share the same Myers-Briggs type and have stayed in fairly close touch over the years. Our journeys also seem to echo each other's. Ostensibly, she's calling to arrange a time to return something she borrowed. We both know that's just the excuse. She's struggling and knows I understand. We often give each other permission to duck out of life and care for ourselves, to lay down our guilt and perfectionism because we personally know the burden of carrying so much. After a few minutes, I share my recent upset. "You know," she says, "my neighbor does [such and such] for that company." My ears and heart perk up. She knows someone there. Not just someone, it turns out ... the someone I have just spoken to. She says if she runs into her, she'll mentioned she knows me.

What in the world does that mean, I wonder:
– That I keep trying?
– That I attempt a different approach?
– That I hang it up?
– That I continue to seek out the big guy?
– That I get more creative?
– That I write nice thank-yous to the secretary and person with whom I did manage a live conversation?

"Why isn't it clear and easy?" I ask Renee. "Well," she says, "that's been my prayer lately."

I am holding several ends in my hands and seeking guidance on how to weave them. Something is different this time: I am aware I have the ends and I hold faith that they will – eventually – connect somehow.

• Am I in a period of scattered loose ends or beginning to sense some connection?
• How can I discern next steps?
• How have I used or can I use prayer in this discernment?
• Do I have a human sounding board I can tap?
• How can I deepen my awareness in the midst of unknowing?

I had forgotten the exhilaration
of the roller coaster

exciting highs,
dizzying lows

a messy palette of
vibrant colors,
constantly changing

and preferable

to the dull greys of hopelessness

at least now I recognize the ends
may connect

When God's magic unfolds

2011-09-19T14:35:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Coincidence, karma, sychronicity or grace? I'm not sure what this is, but it's really happening and, I wonder, if it has something to do my my purposely attempting to live in the present. Well, not that I have much to do with it.

• Last week, after days of deliberating, I sent off a package to a place I would love to work, where my gifts and interests would be a definite fit and I would like to be. Friday night, as we were having dinner in one of our favorite spots, the person to whom I addressed my package was sitting a table away. I approached him, mentioning I'd just sent him a large black portfolio-type envelope that could not be missed. A free-spiritied conversation ensured, ending in my writing my name and contact information on a scrap of paper (I really think had I had a business card with me, it would have looked planned or like I was stalking him) for him, agreeing we'd connect after he got the package.

What are the odds?

• Yesterday, after clipping a newspaper ad out about 10 days ago, I attended a retreat workshop based on some spiritual teachings new to me. A Quaker friend introduced me to the practice about six months ago, or I would not have noticed the ad. I go, enter a bit late and look around to see a former language teacher from my high school. I sit where I can find a free spot and, soon, we are asked to shuffle ourselves. This is a workshop on change, after all. I gravitate to the table where this teacher is and introduce myself. She remembered me, though I was never her student. During a small-group exercise, I extraneously spit out I have fibromyalgia. I am really here to clarify my vocational path. "Let me tell you something," she says at my interjection. "I had fibromyalgia for 12 years and spent a year with a message therapist deeply working all of the negativity out of my body. It's gone now." I almost have no response because that's about how long I've had it. "I used to laugh at it and say, get out of me," she adds, A few minutes later, we are asked if our original intention that we jotted down on a notecard has changed. My hand involuntarily shoots up and the speaker points in my direction. "I am now realizing my has thanks to a comment from a group member," I announce. A shiver runs through my body as I recognize God has called me here for something bigger than vocational change. She has placed me here in a step toward healing. I exchange e-mail addresses with this teacher and we pledge to stay in touch.

What are the chances?

• I also remember several weeks ago searching for a book, one I have meant to read for 10 years, but seems so pertinent now, among my Quaker meetinghouse stacks to be interrupted by the hired minister who "happened" to be holding a just donated copy of exactly the book I needed.

How probable is that?

Do these things happen all of the time and yet we are only aware in rare moments? Do they happen only when we are opened?

Last week during one particular lap swim, I glided effortlessly the entire 44 lengths. That's rare, but I especially noticed and felt like I was encountering the wonderful flow of the living water. Usually, it seems like such a struggle. But my recent mantra has been one of acceptance and detachment, no more fighting and envying what I don't have.

Is that the difference? It's hard to know which is life and which is dream, but I'm not sure it matters as I am in a lovely space: the present.

• When have I felt swept up?
• To what do I attribute that?
• When has sychronicity played a role in my life?
• How was I opened in that time?
• What keeps me open?

accepting what is
not fighting it

is not the American way

we fight for what we believe
we fight for what is right
we fight for our God-given rights

we fight all of the time

addressing a past grievance or
one we perceive may happen

past and future

we don't learn the secret
of living now

when we do,
God's magic unfolds,
sweeping us along

Everyday teachers

2011-09-15T17:11:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

When I am open, almost everyone I encounter has something to teach me.

Tuesday morning, one of my water pals mentioned the "new normal." Ever thought of that? Me either until this gifted healer said she had been working with a new client struggling to get back to normal. "I couldn't tell her she won't ever get back there, instead, I am working on her visualizing a new normal," one, my friend said, that incorporates the aches and pains of aging and being in a new place physically.

This concept has opened so many possibilities for me – all positive. Instead of grasping for the past or hoping for the future, embracing a new normal brings one to the present. I also believe it may bring one out of the pain or physical change with some distance and detachment. That space between our being and our physicality is important to honor, I am learning.

The same wise friend struggles with sleep and says she has learned to "befriend" her insomnia as time to meditate, pray and be alone without interruption – no phone, doorbell or e-mail to answer. "It's so peaceful in the middle of the night," she said.

I can't imagine a more healing attitude. She's had a lot of experience with pain, acceptance and wisdom. A bus struck her down and broke most of her leg bones when she was small. And yet she effuses a gentleness, patience and grace.

In the sauna after yoga Wednesday, a yoga buddy with fibromyalgia who has also battled the early stages of breast cancer says she's ready to look for a part-time job. "I find," she said, "that the less I do, the less I want to do, so I keep moving."

It was that thought that drug my butt of bed this morning and to yoga through the haze of yesterday's migraine. Her energy, enthusiasm and zest never cease to amaze and inspire me. Cancer, she once told me, has shown her show blessed her life has been. Though she recently retried to Florida, retuned for treatment and, eventually moved back, she accepts that "I got to live my retirement dream." No bitterness, just pure, joyful acceptance. In that same spirit, when she lost her curly blonde locks, she sported dashing berets that only she could pull off. I think she's on the lookout for the next adventure.

Yesterday, when a new friend and I gathered for lunch, we learned how similarly we struggle toward wholeness and that we share parallel journeys. It's a blessing of relief to encounter another who seems flawless on the surface, yet readily showed me her imperfections. We can be mirrors for each other. After a serious lunch, we took off on an unexpected adventure, which we plan to do more often. We both can use more humor and levity in our lives. I have already learned from her not to compare myself against others that I am who I am and there are others like me.

Last night, a very dear old friend called just to tell me about the funky dark bar that has become her Cheers, where everyone knows her name and she feels at home. We had discovered that alley watering hole together decades ago. She stirred memories of spontaneity and thoroughly enjoying life sans the entrapments of age and complication. We have not spoken for months and I was so anxious to tell her about my approaching trip to Italy. She, too, enjoys travel. I had hardly gotten it out of my mouth, when she screeched that she was going to Greece at the same time. We will miss each other returning through Paris by only a day. She reminds me that I have a fun-loving side and adore artsy friends.

During that conversation, a close college friend left word in a voice mail that the father of one of our freshman-corridor buddies just died. She was in tears, I realized, because he had been her paternal presence since her father died quite some time ago. I was touched because we haven't spoken in over a year, but it was just as if she'd knocked on my dorm door for a heart-to-heart. We'll need to do that, but she stirred in my deep gratitude for the love and wisdom I have been shown and continue to receive through friends.

• What wisdom has recently been imparted to me?
• How do I open to that which may be offering itself from everyday sources?
• How do I nurture circles of friends?
• How may I depend this connections?
• Do I remember to practice gratitude for the friends and wisdom they bestow?

some days,
I feel like a loner:
ugly, grouchy touchy

I close myself off
giving nothing,
taking nothing

other days,
better days

I open to the wealth of
companionship and wisdom
surrounding me

because I am
I am:
beautiful, serene and
desperately
want to be touched

Giving away abundance

2011-09-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Abundance is not about receiving, but, rather giving, I am learning. Late into the night, I awoke continuing a recent pattern. Instead of dreading the experience, I decided to befriend it as a wise healer has suggested. Amazingly, when I did, my breath began to deepen and push out the swirling energy lodged in my chest.

I'd had a reiki session earlier in the day and the practitioner did a lot of sweeping. "I just felt like you had so much on you that needed to be [re]moved. For awhile your exhales will be deeper than your inhales as you shed, but watch for the moment when that changes and your inhales become longer. That's when you will begin to take in something like a wind sweeping through."

So the long exhales took over in the night, sweeping the swirling up, not down where I had been focusing them. Up into my throat. A voice suggested I work on giving rather than receiving and I felt a much-needed shift in my body and psyche.

I am slowly experiencing the process of the shedding exhales and, meanwhile, contemplating giving. My morning swim was all about breathing and noticing. Paying attention to how much better it felt to release [give]. In the sauna. which I have affectionately named my prayer box, the concept of giving again embraced me, replacing the fear, withholding and scarcity mode in which I have been operating. It feels wonderful: freeing, opening and my path, not a dark detour.

About two weeks ago I had a revelation about my vocation and my faith community that was big. Too big, I now realize. I have been discerning it – wisely, for once – and see that inspiration was the whole picture, not the manageable steps I need to move forward. Those involve merely giving for now with trust (via a little nudging) that if I can give for the sheer joy of it, abundance will follow through grace and no action or thought of my own.

I am to revel in my freedom of giving, casting off the shackles of seeking to receive. One of the tools I hold is the practice of gratitude. When I look at all that I have been bequeathed, it bolsters my courage to trust I will have the energy to give because it emanates not from my broken body by from the Source.

Perhaps 2:30 a.m. is my prime prayer and meditation time. Who'd have thought?

• What is my experience of giving?
• Of receiving?
• How has that affected my perception of abundance?
• How and when do I experience abundance?
• How do I practice gratitude?

hoarding is,
well, unhealthy

it closes us off,
builds walls and isolation

grows fear, anxiety and separation

we are meant to share,
give and, by doing so,
receive

in community
through community
and for community

then, we are truly
nourished

even in our solitude

Magic of the mosaic

2011-09-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

My mantra lately seems to be broken open. It was even the theme of our minister's message yesterday. She spoke of it in the context of 9-11, how, immediately following, there was an outpouring of love and kindness [light] that, eventually, faded into revenge [darkness]. We were, she says, broken open.

I have been broken open time and time again. We all have. I've experienced it recently and it's not an easy place, let alone one our culture acknowledges. The darkness of re-grounding, examining and sifting through what's been broken is, however, necessary if we expect to grow personally or spiritually. I believe it's where our country is as well, though we refuse to cast off the past and what no longer fits. As we cling to old institutions and attitudes, we'll never transform. Just this afternoon at the movie kiosk I had a pleasant exchange with two strangers, the more silent of whom said: "When will America get back to what it was?"

My hope is we never will. And, personally, I know how easy it is to slide back into comfortable, if harmful, patterns. When I told my shamanic pastoral counselor about a recent inspiration for merging my work with my faith community, he responded: "Yes, this is something you have to do, but you have to be prepared, otherwise, you'll go to the place you always do. I've seen you here before."

That's a place of stepping back and down, dishonoring my power and spirit and not trusting for "way to open" in Quakerspeak. It's a place of fear that I almost recognize as home because I know it. I admit, I am afraid of sharing my heart and its work in my spiritual community. It would be much easier to slink backwards. I fear they will say no or not affirm what I feel is my ministry with funding. Of course, they would hardly say no to my volunteering. But what I am after is my vocation and that includes an exchange of my energy for another form of energy.

That's where my work lies: to trust God enough to go to my community and ask for what I need. Not hint or wait for them to approach me, but me to ask boldly, fearlessly and with no attachment to the response.

I am beginning to see the magic of the mosaic in myself and others. A reforming after the breaking apart: so many tiny, colorful pieces, dancing side by side, the jagged edges smoothed by what holds us together. Our healed wounds binds us more strongly than before our cracking because the salve is Divine, connecting us more deeply to Spirit, ourselves and each others. If only we'll let it.

• How have I been broken open?
• What is my usual response?
• What happens when I surrender into it?
• What challenges me to trust and not follow the path of least resistance?
• How does my personal trusting help change the world?

the route I think is easy
just because it's known
require so much more of me
than I realize

shadowing my light
and drawing me further from
the Truth

which creeps in when I surrender
imperfect and in pain and
ask for help

the only kind that can
heal AND transform
my wounds

Awakening the bubbling true self

2011-08-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Broken open: not a subject of comfort for most of us and, yet, that's what has been lain before me. Certainly not by choice, rather necessity – the necessity to survive with my soul in tact.

Last post, I wrote about an inability to worship, then involuntarily sharing that, as if something were guiding me, in my faith community. The results have rippled within and without. I am reminded that I do belong in this community even though I have clung to the outskirts in my woundedness. Reminded that I am loved, cared for, honored here for my whole self ... even the one that falls apart publicly. Reminded that I need community. An effervescent bubbling has internally erupted out of the fault within my heart and spirit. One that pumps, thumps and wants to go somewhere, but not just anywhere.

It is that bubbling, I believe, that reconnected me with a book I have always meant to read: Quaker Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak, Listening for the Voice of Vocation. I want to find out who I want to be while I am growing up instead of taking on work that is short-lived and incompatible with my soul. I happened upon the book while [re]searching something else on the internet and told myself I'd borrow it from the meetinghouse library Sunday after worship. As I was perusing the shelves, the minister [well, Quakers consider everyone a minister; our congregation is a hybrid and we have a hireling (paid) minister] came in with a book in hand just donated and asked if she could help me find something. "We do have a copy of one of his books, but I think it's checked out. However, we just got this one," she said. Instantly we both knew it was the one I needed. Synchronicity of Spirit?

bubbling i/ii/iii – pastel on paper

I am slowly savoring each page; it's as if the man knows me, my life and circumstance.

Right off the bat, he describes being so unformed that the only thing holding us together is an exoskeleton when we are "trying to live someone else's life or to live by an abstract form," which, he writes "will invariably fail – may even do great damage." Exoskeleton? That's my word, the one I use to describe the hold fibromyalgia has on me. How can he know?

And that faithlessness to our true nature, he says, is wreaking violence.

Wreaking violence? That reverberates in unknown interior places. The reverb makes the bubbling in my chest grow, spilling lower to the places I store my emotions; the personal-power and self-esteem chakras a recent check determined are closed or weak. The froth has nowhere to go but down, swirling with heat and opening my solar plexis and root.

Palmer writes about exploring liabilities, limits and shadow as well as strengths, virtue and the light, letting our lives tell us things we don't want to hear because "the dark journey strips ego of the illusion its in charge, so the self can emerge." This is where I have been living, in what feels like the negative, though Palmer also says that "vocation at its deepest level is something I can't NOT do." He relates the wisdom of a plainspoken, life-experienced Quaker who says she has learned as much from "way closing" as "way opening," terms Friends use for Spirit's direction.

"There is a great gulf between the way my ego wants to identify me with its protective masks and self-serving fictions and my true self," according to Palmer and my experience.

A bit of brokenness, I understand, is exposing the masks and fictions as well as their harmfulness to me and others and forcing me to consciously choose the nature I felt behind in childhood. The nature I have fought against and, in doing so, caused great emotional and physical pain.

And yet, the nature I know is mine and that I am embracing once again. The bubbling is my true self awakening and being acknowledged.

• How have I been broken open?
• What has it taught me?
• In not following my true self, how have I caused violence?
• How can I reverse that?
• What gulf exists between my ego, expectations and my true self?

lodged right in my heart,
so tightly knitted,
I didn't know

until one day
it burst open
bubbling,
warmly

trickling
its way down

soothing, healing,
un-numbing

the parts of me
forgotten, locked
and frozen

and now that my
real self and
creativity are joined
again

the sky's the limit,
no matter what
the damaging ego has said

no matter

Stopping the story spinning

2011-08-26T14:51:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

I know I'm a gifted storyteller; after all, I trained and worked as a journalist. For years, I spun the most positive stories for businesses. I began journaling 12 years ago, exploring my inner stories. Now, I'm finishing a book about my spiritual journey and how its individual movements are universal. I'm constantly listening for and composing stories.

And the internal stories have taken on their own life, projecting truths, realities, emotions and suffering that do not exist. My ego spins them, causing separation between me and others, me and God. The reel loops and loops, casting me as the victim.

A good example of this exploded into my life last Sunday. For the first time, I sat in Quaker worship and could not worship. I have never had that experience. Sure, it has taken most of the hour to settle, or my thoughts would sail in and out, but I always centered at some point. Not so Sunday. My chest was pounding, much like it does when I have ministry to share, but it didn't feel like worship. And it wouldn't die down. There was something grasping my heart that I had to let go. At the end of worship, in the time set aside for joys and prayer concerns, I stood, almost against my will, and in a weak voice asked for prayer for "forgiveness issues" with which I was struggling. I could hardly get the words out before the tears formed, muffling my voice even more. I sat down, quivering, yet managing to hold the other spoken joys and prayer requests in the silence. That, I could do.

As soon as the service was over, a handful of caring souls were at my side, softly rubbing my back, praying, asking what I needed, silently hugging me and sending their loving energy to me. I believe the entire room was.

I don't want to analyze what happened, just accept it with the awareness that seeing a dear F/friend (code for Quaker Friend and personal friend) really opened me and my heart. His presence allowed my soul to pick the scab off my heart and let the wound air. Publicly would not have been my preference, but, apparently, it was Spirit's.

Sight of him, with whom I feel intrinsically connected, reminded me of my communal concern for a number of members who have left the congregation hurting, seemingly disappearing without much pause. That has been my interest for a long time. One, I sometimes have felt led to personally remedy. I had not realized, though, that it had become mine personally – that I experienced a painful episode here. I felt unheard and have been dealing with that hurt, finally stuffing it down. I believed it was gone ... til Sunday.

Vocalizing that concern, being heard and loved, no matter what, in this community lifted a heavy burden. As I remarked at what a mess I was, a kind voice instantly responded: "We love you just the way you are here." My mind, body and spirit needed to hear that. It echoed my all-time favorite movie line from "Bridget Jones's Diary," which I had just watched, when straight-laced Darcy tells let-it-all-out Bridget: "I like you just as you are."

Yesterday, I had a pivotal phone conversation with one of my Quaker mentors who said the reason I had not received feedback after the painful episode was because no one wanted to contribute to my stress.

I had never considered that, only that they did not value me, my gifts or my work, they were not happy with what I had offered, they only wanted all I had to give ... you name it, the lies about the situation have all played out in my head. In the silence, I construed so many negative and harmful story possibilities.

A recent horoscope, which I read about twice a year, said what the silence offers me is good for me, even when it's nothing. Instead, I have woven that silence into something it was not.

My desire is to learn to accept, even revel in, what is offered me now and do so without all of the story spinning. Eckhart Tolle writes in "Stillness Speaks" that deleting the stories will simplify life. I want that, though I will use my gift to deeply listen to others' stories.

• What stories do I tell myself?
• How can I see the untruth in them?
• When have they caused suffering to me or another?
• How has that erupted or called out to me?
• What practices help me to diminish that tendency?

I'm so good at the spin,
I don't even know I'm
doing it

today, I'm paying
attention

I caught myself
thinking the woman
who cut me off in the parking lot
only wanted to get somewhere faster,
not caring about safety – hers or mine

then, I remembered:
I have no idea of her intention

maybe she was rushing to meet a school bus,
take groceries to an elderly mother or
just not paying attention

I began to realize the ridiculousness
of the spinning, how much
energy it sucks

then, I let out a big
belly laugh and, God,
it felt good

NOW I've WON

2011-08-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

I am being stripped. No, not because it's summer, although the thought is appealing.

I am being stripped to my core, I believe. Stripped of health, career, income, identity and ambition to name a few. Not easy things to lose in this culture. I have fought tooth and nail to cling to those standards and yet leave they must. The fighting and holding tight have only made me miserable. I hadn't understood this until I've taken my time to read, revel in and contemplate Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks.

Today's passages focused on suffering and that the light can only fully shine through when we are free of psychological suffering and the mind-made ego has been dissolved. Within the stillness of witnessing another human die and totally giving into that natural transformation, realizing there is nothing to do, we receive the benediction of peace.

The end of suffering, Tolle writes, is living as if we choose whatever we feel or experience. What a radical thought. I've been bumbling around in victim mode, cursing my woundedness. I have tried to practice gratitude and see the silver lining, but it wasn't until today that I realized why I should accept whatever surfaces: because I can't change it, only my attitude and the pain it causes. If I can detach and become observer and not live so rooted in my bodily pain and mindly story-spinning, I can free myself of so much dead weight. Namely, my ego. I have so completely convinced myself that I am irreversibly damaged, when that is so far from the Truth. That's my egoic trap, miring me in the self doubt that has plagued and paralyzed me.

I am not my body or my mind. I am something freer, more connected and eternal.

Years ago when a friend of my parents' mentioned at a wedding reception she didn't feel anything like the 70-something-year-old face she saw in the mirror, I didn't understand. I have begun to since. Part of me is blossoming while the other is withering. Actually, my body is not withering, aging, yes, but not withering as I have projected. I swim a half mile almost every day. There's no way I ever could do that when I was younger. Maybe I didn't experience pain then, but I wasn't pushing so hard and, honestly, things were more lubricated. But I was asleep.

Physical pain woke me up and set my course. Then my mind chimed in and I have been trapped in that endless loop. Now, something outside and within has awakened and wiped the tarnish off the mirror so I see the role of ego more clearly. I choose not to participate in that ruse anymore.

If I stay in the NOW, I've WON – my new mantra.

• How does ego rule me?
• Where am I trapped?
• What have I glimpsed of freedom?
• What has been stripped from me?
• To what do I cling and why?

take it
take it all

it's not mine
anyway

the desire and envy
jealousy and drive

my identity or the constantly
spinning story in my head

I only want
what's now

the place I am
connected

Unshrouding my light

2011-08-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Last week, I had a blog half written in my journal about my fixation with the darkness. And I am still inclined to share that, although this morning's meditation landed me in my grandmother's pocket Bible from 1956 on this passage from John [12:35-36] in Jesus' words:

"... Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not wither he goeth. While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of the light."

On reflection, the wisdom that came to me was this:

I must let my light shine, not shroud myself in darkness, that which is not of Spirit.

My thoughts on darkness were sparked by an Eckhard Tolle passage in "Stillness Speaks" that the most sacred thing in life is death. I don't fear death, rather, I believe, I fear living .. the pain, the struggle, the separateness.

As for darkness, I could always walk up to the casketed body, feel what had been there and know what to say to comfort the bereaved. As a child, I touched the yellow waxiness of my grandmother [whose Bible I was directed to], unconsciously knowing this cold, lifeless, dull form had represented her, but was not her – now or ever.

It was harder as a young adult when the reclining figure was my best friend. Still, I approached and my heart sent a prayer elsewhere.

Vampires have always transfixed me, long before Edward and Twilight: Nosferatu, Dracula, Barnabas. All, creatures of the night, banished from sunlight, burned by Holy water, sucking the life from others, sleeping in coffins and condemned to eternity. And yet, I recognized their humanity, pain and desire not to be so ... alone.

My mother said I found the perfect job when I went to work for the casket company. I felt honored to give elegant names to gleaming, velvet-lined metal caskets, contemplating the comfort it would give those left behind, but do little for the departed spirit. Watching bones burn was less romantic, yet a reminder of dust-to-dust and ashes-to-ashes. I enjoyed the company of funeral directors, who cut loose at conventions and felt their care of the living and non-living a calling. I learned a lot about grief from the national expert who consulted for the company and the miscarriage I experienced while working there.

I've always read in the dark, much to my mother's chagrin, showered without flicking the light switch on and spent much of the past 12 years exploring my inner darkness.

Yet the light in which Quakers worship draws me like a moth. As does the flaming inner core that yoga and meditation reveal.

Occasionally, my mother sends me a Henri Nouwen passage from a daily meditation to which she subscribes. I think the one she passed along today aptly describes some of my perceived darkness:

"If indeed the spiritual life is essentially a hidden life, how do we protect this hiddenness in the midst of a very public life? The two most important ways to protect our hiddenness are solitude and poverty. Solitude allows us to be alone with God. There we experience that we belong not to people, not even to those who love us and care for us, but to God and God alone. Poverty is where we experience our own and other people's weakness, limitations, and need for support. To be poor is to be without success, without fame, and without power. But there God chooses to show us God's love.

Both solitude and poverty protect the hiddenness of our lives."

http://www.henrinouwen.org/Resources/Meditations_and_Reflection_Emails/Meditations_and_Reflection_Emails.aspx

All of these messages seem to confirm my need for shadows and hiddenness, but I can't neglect the yang to the yin: the light to which I am also utterly attracted. I believe it's time for me to unshroud my light as I feel I knoweth not wither I currently goeth.

• How do I live in the light?
• In the darkness?
• What begs to remain hidden?
• What cries to be revealed into the light?
• If this light is with me now, how am I called to show and share it?

the flame from my meditation candle
is not stagnant

its singularity is flowing, a
graceful dance

guided by another force

seeking the heart,
my heart and its darkness,
joining it to
God's

Summer of my discontent

2011-08-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

This long string of hot days has suffocated me, made me crazy, feeling cooped up inside and disconnected ... from nature, Spirit, my calm self. I feel like a package tied too tightly with thin string and I am busting out all over, constricted and ready to blow at any minute.

Who is this person?

In summer, I feel as if I am on call ... to the world, taxiing this kid to camp and the other, somewhere else, visiting the hospital and completely ignoring my studio, the place I am free.

I am carried away by the tide as if I had no choice. And yet, I do.

I re-installed the AC in my studio Friday and am trying to meditate daily, grounding and reconnecting.

My wise spiritual friend has likened my dilemma to a strong river flowing with too many tributaries draining its energy and flow or the chaotic cornucopia of requests calling my gifts to action. I seem to think I have to tackle them all, then become paralyzed by doing them superficially without depth, meaning or, most importantly, my heart.

I am too open, not discerning what really is mine to do. That discernment seems to be birthing something. I feel the pain and long months of a seed growing slowly, but surely. It's been the summer of my discontent, but something deep is surfacing and only recently have I been able to articulate that it's I want my vocation back; perhaps not what it was prior to mothering, but something new that is mine. Something influenced by my experiences outside the workplace.

I have slowly revised the book I am writing – it's getting better and better – and crafted a tighter, more focused and more-me book proposal. My spiritual friend sent me an intention for publishing she had run across some time ago in a workshop. It's exactly what I need:

I am now announcing that I am [completing] a book and sending this announcement out to anyone who is a publisher and to anyone who is involved in bringing this work into publication for those whom it will serve best. It is my intention that the person to publish this book discover me and be brought to me and I promise that I will be available for that recognition. I understand that I have very little to do with this. That part is not mine. I understand that I am to broadcast the announcement like I am sending out a birth announcement and that a response will be sent to me. In this I trust.

There it is. Out there. My prayer now, is one for trust and patience ... some joy, too.
... also open to any suggestions, contacts, etc.

• How has being inside or sweltering outside affected me/my groundedness?
• How can nature center and focus me?
• Do I know another person who can also help me in that regard?
• How can I be a spiritual friend?
• What intention is it time for me to announce?

locked inside my house
feeling every movement
and breath of another

I could scream
can't concentrate
hard to meditate

and the vicious circle builds

I am anything but grounded

a palpable, almost painful, energy swirls
in my chest, fighting for release,
birth, but it's not time yet

its laboring for calm,
peace and wisdom
to come forth

111 E. Spring

2011-07-31T09:04:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

When I was 18, I stumbled into a very special place: 111 E. Spring. Not much to look at on the outside: grey stucco, two inviting porches topped by two balconies and a lived-in look ... across from the legendary alley that led uptown. But that's not what drew me.

As a wide-eyed freshman on my own for the first time, I wanted to delve into this new life headfirst: on my terms. So, when two well-dressed, smiling young men showed up at my dorm's lobby to escort those interested in attending their fraternity's little-sis rush, I declined. I had already tasted other rushes, mostly for the free food and beer, shying away at the meat-market mentality. But these guys were different right off the bat. The showed up, not expecting us to arrive drooling at their door and thankful for the privilege of being rated, berated, accepted and snubbed. Rather, they offered an invitation to see if we fit.

Of course, at the time, I didn't see it this way.

111 E. Spring was off the beaten path and fraternity row – thankfully. It became my home away from home for four years, though its after effects linger and color my sense of community and belonging. All of that was stirred this week as I reunited with four of my best buddies from those days.

We were a motley crew, someone noted last night. That's the truth and beauty of the matter. We were such a diverse, eclectic mix under the guise of being middle-class white kids at a prestigious Midwestern university. Ok, so there was a little more diversity, but not much as this school attracted students from the same pool.

Look beyond skin color, economic and educational status, and there were all sorts of personalities: the partiers, the studiers, the artists, the scientists, the business majors, the studs, the wall flowers, the geeks, confident seniors ready to take off and new pledges finding their grounding. We played hard, worked hard, held each other up and, generally, grew up together.

As a little sis, I was not a member of the fraternity, more an auxiliary, which meant I had no part in rituals or decision making. Except that we ran our own organization and were encouraged to interact with the brothers. I never felt less than or excluded. Of course, many people believed it was merely a dating or convenience service. Some of that existed, but, in the bigger picture, it was a group of young adults forging their own community for the first time.

It worked, I believe, because we each arrived with our quirkiness and were able to accept that in one another. We were not get-in-the-most-popular fraternity or sorority material, nor did we want that. Just about everyone received a nickname, one that stuck, which meant we were open to re-creating ourselves. I loved mine, Rosie, and still feel different when anyone calls me that. It was at 111 E. Spring that I felt accepted and valued for who I am, not what I do, how good I am, what I look like, etc. I shone here because we were mirrors for each other, reflecting back the brightness we witnessed and experienced. I was stunned one year to be named the fraternity sweetheart. I am by no means beautiful or fit the typical model, except this group rewarded my inner beauty. That was a rare gift.

Last night, surrounded by my guy friends from 111 E. Spring, I felt that same sense of unconditional belonging. I have struggled in my faith community desiring that. Our rooting in old patterns prevents us from being that open, accepting and optimistic as when we were young. Since re-experiencing that, however, I plan to resurrect that part in myself. I believe the mirror still exists to reflect our brightness to one another no matter our age or circumstance.

• Where have I felt a strong sense of belonging in community?
• What helped create that?
• If I don't have that now, what can I change to create it?
• How can I resurrect the openness of young adulthood right now in my life?
• How can I nurture those kinds of relationships?

wide eyed and ready

now I wonder what for,
thankfully then, I didn't stop to consider

only dove in
into the sea of life

along with others
doing the same

and recognizing that
in each other

I don't want to hesitate
next time

Overwhelming the Responsible One

2011-07-28T17:54:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

A bacterial infection and two rounds of antibiotics finally have my full attention. My body has been speaking violently and I had no choice but to listen. In the throes, however, when I screamed at God that I couldn't take any more pain, it stopped.

It was enough to know I am not alone and, certainly, not unloved or unheard. But, boy, I am sick of the pain. Literally. Enough to take on some deep wading, wrung out as I have been.

When all I could do was pick up a book to read and nothing more, I happened onto "The 12 Stages of Healing" by Donald M. Epstein, D.C., loaned to me by my spiritual friend weeks ago. It was laying dormant in my get-to stack.

I was ready for this book and the work of identifying where I am in the healing process, places I am stuck and have stumbled. It has made me realize that what seem like isolated chaotic incidents do form a pattern: one deeply rutted and imbedded since childhood, maybe before. Lately, I have wondered what this suffocating sense of responsibility I have is; it paralyzes me.

I would wager I am about half way or so through the stages, though I have been some of these places before and will be again. In case you're curious, they are:
1) Suffering
2) Polarities and Rhythms
3) Stuck in a Perspective
4) Reclaiming our Power
5) Merging with Illusion
6) Preparation for Resolution
7) Resolution
8) Emptiness in Connectedness
9) Light Behind the Form
10) Ascent
11) Descent
12) Community

Yesterday, I completed several of the exercises at the ends of chapters, one of which cautioned "You may have all of the acknowledgement you ever wanted." The doc was right. By simply asking my shadow/suffering what it wanted and why, I was flooded with a string of responses that, first, stunned me, then gave me a giant AH-HA moment.

My shadowy suffering said it wanted to hurt me for locking it up and putting it away. Then, I knew exactly that a cause of my fibromyalgia is my inner child calling for attention by creating tension. It was tired of hiding in the shadows of my adult, responsible self for years, never getting a chance to shine. I truly believe a miscarriage before my daughters was symbolic of this child coming out, that I must not hang onto her, but open the door and grant her freedom, integrating her into myself.

I joke that my youngest is a wild child and I'll write a book called "Letting my Lily out" some day, but she really is teaching me not to lock those wild parts away. To, occasionally, let them overwhelm the Responsible One.

In working through this with my intuitive counselor/massage therapist, I did something so uncouth that I can't even believe I am writing it: I spit onto his floor, expelling old patterns I had been holding. He told me to do and it was, almost, involuntary. God, it felt good to get it out and break the social morays. Made me wonder if I ought to start chewin' tobacco ... only a fleeting thought.

• How has my body spoken to me?
• In what ways do I pay attention?
• What old patterns do I hold?
• What is the state of my inner child?
• How can I let my Lily out?

wretched, curled
into a fetal position

expelling the poison
to the point of
pleading for it to stop

recognizing the
process is my path
to wholeness

casting out the tar
of what's not me,
clearing room for
all that is

Breathing into the golden bubble

2011-07-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Remember the golden bubble of God's love I wrote about last post? The one I had briefly and rarely experienced, yet was so confirming of her strong, pure love. Well, I had another epiphany while swimming this morning.

Sometimes I think the gentle rhythmic body movement of stroking, breathing and gliding empties a lot of irrelevant thoughts, making room for deeper ones. This morning, in that meditative place, I realized that the golden bubble is always there, protecting and surrounding us. Can you imagine? It boggles my mind. Always there, whether we recognize it or not.

Most people would describe me as positive, hopeful and optimistic. And, for most of my life, I have been a glass-is-half-full girl. And yet living with a chronic disease, though by no means live-threatening, has slowly cracked that optimism, which makes me forget where I came from and the gifts I have been given. And that God's love is constant, plentiful and powerful.

In my forgetfulness and unawarenness, I waste too much precious time and energy fighting for what I already have been given. I lapse into worry, anxiety, fear and shallow breathing. I become shallow. I just read that the latin root of the word spiritual means breath or to blow. When I breathe deeply, plumbing myself, I retrieve a piece of that feeling of love and remember again. Remember who I am, how I am, that I am loved, and love.

Just now I am recalling a sweet revelation I had while falling asleep last night in that liminal place between consciousness and coma. I had fallen asleep earlier in response to some new antibiotics for an infection I am fighting, then awoke and tried to return. But the thoughts worked their way in and I couldn't find the peaceful place in which I succomb. Money entered my brain and, of course, delayed the onset of anything helpful. Then my thoughts softened, almost dreamlike, and something told me my frustration about not earning money in the present moment is because I am trapped in the eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth mentality.

It seems that I am always "paying" for something though never being paid. But if I can look beyond the almightly dollar and into the exchange with depth and gratitude, I can see that I receive far more than repayment in cash. That things are working within me that don't even relate to materialism. That my current gifts are great and cannot be purchased; only earned with spaciousness to struggle, be myself, work through my weaknesses, learn to trust and open to experience the golden bubble and know it is always in place ... whether I am aware of it or not.

The key for me to remain openly aware, I firmly believe, is a regular prayer/meditation practice that, somehow, always falls by the wayside come summer. Today, I did so after my first cup of coffee, returning to a yogic meditation book from years ago. I started with the practice of ahimsa, non-violence, and worked with using it on myself, then others and tapping places within myself of acceptance and forgiveness. The accompanying meditation suggested visualizing an open, pink lotus in your heart, shooting rays of love, first through your own body, then out into the world. It made me see that when I can be gentle with myself, including drawing boundaries, then perhaps, I won't need the shield of fibromyalgia to let me know those lines so loudly. I ended with these words on my heart:

I am loved.

I am love.

I am.

•When can I feel the divine golden bubble protecting me?
• What spiritual practice enhances that awareness in me?
• How can I release negative thoughts or painful patterns?
• Do I remember to breath deeply often enough?
• How do I practice ahimsa?

Garden of beauty, not blemishes

2011-07-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

I wondered last post if a weed has a soul. I believe it does, but it takes an extraordinarily open heart to see it.

That notion arrived when a friend shared how her grown son, who has been troubled since childhood, came to live with her in the past two years and has made a marvelous, even miraculous, turn-around. She said society considers him a weed, but he has shown her more of God's grace than anyone. It seems she has always known the color and full petals others perceive as dullness and thorns. She has seen him the way God views each of us.

On several occasions, I have been given flashes of what that powerful unconditional love feels like. We each need a dose from time to time. Able to fully unwind in the loving and trusted hands of my massage therapist/pastoral counselor, I experienced a golden egg of energy enveloping my body and pouring directly into my heart. I had no doubt what it was or its source. Momentarily, I knew a love so deep and boundless I can't forget. A love that is always there and sees the beauty, not the blemishes.

I wish I had the gift for always seeing others and myself in that manner. Parental love is comparable and I recognize my gift to see deeply into people, but it cowers in comparison to what Spirit offers. Its current is so swift and so pure it washes every doubt away.

Again, this Sunday's message focused on the garden and, particularly, how the roots get tangled and it's hard to tell the plant from the weed, the good from the bad. The minister used the example of German business opportunist Oskar Schindler. On the surface, he led less than a model life, betraying his wife and playing into the Nazis. And yet, he used his skill and cunning to protect his Jewish laborers.

Was he a weed?

There's something very interesting growing up in the center of our garden. We assumed it was a volunteer from last year and let it be. It's grown very erect with buds that resemble mini sunflowers. Apparently it's a tree that many consider junk. I, however, have enjoyed watching it emerge with no help, strong and tall as the vegetables, which, with much tending, have staggered, stumbled, and some, succombed to the elements.

It makes me think I should replant my metaphorical garden and this is how I would go about it:
• By tending the good;
• Weeding out the negative;
• Having a clear vision;
• Developing defined tasks;
• Making time for play and joy alongside the work; and
• Practicing gratitude.

If I am honest, I sometimes produce the fruits of worry, anxiety, doubt and fear. I would like to replace them with love, kindness, compassion, freedom, creativity, joy and color. To do so, I need to start with myself by:
– Trusting;
– Making room for daily time with God;
– Knowing when to say no; and
– To accept everything else as a gift.

A TALL order that may become my new spiritual practice.

• Where do I see weeds?
• What happens when I look more deeply into them?
• What lessons are there for me?
• How have I experienced divine love?
• What difference has that made?

carefully planted
seed by seed
into moist, organic earth

illuminated 24/7,
gently moved to larger pots
and, finally, the prepared garden

rain has rotted some
heat exhausted others
bugs chewed off nourishment

as we pick, spray, water and prune

yet this lone hitchhiker
stands tallest in the ground
straight, purposeful and
unconcerned

how can it be a weed
just because it was unwanted, unplanted

If a weed has a soul

2011-07-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Gardens have been on my mind for a number of reasons: one is that ours has been a particular struggle this year [everything has had an issue of one sort or another] and Sunday's message in worship focused on seeds, weed, gardens and the notion that a weed may not be what it seems. In fact, weeds are more like humans than any other plant. They grow where they please, even in terrible conditions, are quite stubborn and multiply quickly. Though the master gardener (God/Spirit) may weed the garden, she can see the same potential in the weed to bloom as in any showy flower.

In that vein, we were asked to imagine what plant we would be. My wonderful friend next to me wondered out loud if she were an orchid. "I think a big, giant colorful sunflower, grown together with others and kids playing underneath," I offered. She smiled, then asked what I might consider for myself. An herb, Rosemary, no doubt about it. Didn't even have to think as it IS my favorite. "Yeah, growing out with a quiet presence," she said. I had thought more of its ancient roots and healing qualities, but rather like her take.

The deeper I entered into silent worship, the more the idea of companion planting struck me. You know, when you plant things next to each other that nurture one another, like tomatoes and basil or eggplants and peppers. The idea of depicting each of my communities (faith, neighborhood, family and circles of friends) as gardens is something I wish to explore more fully. I think as companion plants, we are charged with helping each other: nourishing the weak, leaning on the strong, negating pests and disease for one another, encouraging growth, recognizing one another's beauty and belonging to something larger than ourselves.

I also don't necessarily find weeds a foe (though in the garden and some beds, I do remove them); rather, they fascinate me with their obstinance and ability to grow anywhere with so little care and nurturing. Sometimes, I wish I had more of that in me; however, I think I would be less shaped into the person I am becoming. But if a weed has a soul (ok, take this as a metaphor), in what state is it with no tending, no companioning, strictly fending for itself ... alone?

Think I'll stick with my companions.

• What plant would I be in the garden?
• Who are my companions?
• How do I companion?
• What do I see as a weed?
• When have I experienced beauty or awe at a weed?

prickly and thick
so much so
the deer are repelled

yet fragrant, soothing, beautiful
and alluring to bees
when flowering

restorative and healing
dancing on the palate
in stews, bread and
exotic dishes

hailed as the cure-all
from weddings to
funerals

I desire the essence
of the rosemary plant

Bright lipstick and big earrings II

2011-07-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Apparently my friend Patia has a bigger circle of fans than I knew ... thanks to the response from the July 3 post about her big heart and its complications. http://salonforthesoul.blogspot.com/2011/07/bright-lipstick-and-big-earrings.html

I just returned from a visit to the nursing home where she is recuperating for another week before she's able to be home alone. It's been years since I visited such a facility and not much has changed. Hallways were cheery, staff, friendly and activities tailored to every taste. But so many vacant faces searched for recognition, any acknowledgment. A simple hello elicited a thaw in the frozen features, transforming emptiness to awareness, then smiles. It's heart wrenching.

And Patia knows it. There's no way she belongs in this place other than to get her strength back. She is far too vibrant and young. But she's working hard.

"You know, God wants me here and not just to get better," Patia told me as she cozied her wheel chair closer. "I make a point to reach out to all of these people; they need it."

Leave it to Patia to know she has a job besides the monumental task of bouncing back from heart surgery. As I awkwardly wheeled her to her room and back, she said hello to everyone we passed, often making a personal comment. "Do you know all of their names?" I wondered out loud ... remembering the woman two weeks ago so frustrated at her shotty memory in the icu (intensive care unit). "No, but I recognize every face. They need someone to talk to them."

I confessed that her plummet after surgery into what she called a living hell shook me to the core. She momentarily teared up and responded that is where she had BEEN. Not now.

Though her room does not overlook the courtyard and gazebo, Patia is grateful for the rocks and sliver of blue sky, her small connection to nature. It was tough in icu not knowing what time it was, let alone which day. One sterile, gunea-pig day melted into the next. Even the rootfop view gave her no grounding. As we discussed the adequateness her current quarters, she mentioned she'd seen the flash of a cardinal today. It thrilled her. Nature is her sanctuary. Her house, a former church (how fitting) has a beautiful meditation garden she tends. I told her that every time I see a red bird, I believe it's a sign that I am on the right path.

Patia agreed with her bright smile and hearty laugh that it may be hers as well.

• When has another person inspired me by their response to adversity?
• When was a time I could see the silver lining?
• How can I remind myself that I am not alone in such difficult times?
• For what can I be grateful right now?
• What prayer can I offer for those feeling alone and forgotten?

it was a long walk to her room,
yet miles away from the hospital setting

still nurses, aides, long corridors
and wheel chairs

yet a different rhythm
one of life and activity

but of lives already lived
and more vicarious activities

less of a hopeful recovery
and more of a peaceful decline

NOT where Patia belongs
... except that's where she says
God wants her right now

Praying to the porcelain God

2011-07-11T05:20:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

With the flush of a toilet, I had a flash of insight. No kidding. People in my house don't like to flush the toilet, neither do those who frequent the women's changing room at my local pool. Tell me what that's about.

It gets old cleaning up other people's, well, shit LITERALLY. When I said this out loud to myself, it hit something big, really, really big. All of my life I have been cleaning up for others, worrying myself about what I can do to make things better, how I can accommodate even strangers so that I am out of their way.

Last summer, when I took a half dozen Alexander Technique lessons from a very gifted teacher, she told me to "stop holding the door and moving out of the way for people. It takes too much of your energy," which she knew I didn't have. The technique is about moving fluidly, efficiently without extra effort or pain.

Yesterday I was taxi-driver galore, carting kids to lessons, the pool and home from friend's houses. Seems to be the pattern this summer. No wonder I'm not getting much work accomplished. I'm so wiped out that I don't have anything left for anyone, including my ill friend (who IS better) and myself. A couple of weeks ago when I needed a week just to rebound, someone wondered why I could not visit the hospital all week. The answer is: "because I couldn't." I know my energy robbers and parking in what seems like another state, walking as far as humanly possible across the hospital's suburban acreage, then from the very front of the building to the extreme back just to visit was taxing. And it's not that I'm out of shape; I swim a half mile daily ... just to have the energy I require. Then there's the sterile environment with florescent lights that used to trigger migraines, now they just make me cower, which is an improvement. All before I even get to my friend. I am used up with little to give her. But I force a smile, say a prayer and have enough for her.

I found four hours yesterday (after I swam at 5:30 a.m.) to work at a nearby Starbuck's, was deep in thought and transitioning as I packed up and some invisible guy materialized to ask me what I was writing and tell me his deep desire to write. My good-girl persona would not brush him off, but my sense of self preservation knew this could be an entanglement, so I was honest and said I had to go pick up my kids. Funny, my friend said he was flirting. I was so engrossed I didn't even get that. The only pickup on my mind was of my kids.

This string of messages about doing for myself first seems to be knitting itself together into a very loud and clear call. I am ready to listen and respond appropriately.

• What unhealthy patterns have I created?
• How can I extricate myself?
• How can those of us with the "helper" mentality disengage from the harmful aspects of this persona?
• How can we do so with no guilt?
• What might my prayer be for greater balance in my life in this regard?

lined up
blue doors swung open

and I know
whichever I choose
will require something of
me to clean up after the last person

how can I temper my anger,
channeling it to fuel, not foul me?

Bright lipstick and big earrings

2011-07-03T16:37:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Today, she was sitting up, her back toward me, as I wandered into her sterile home of the last week. The icu (intensive-care unit) is not a place anyone should spend that much time. At least she was out of bed and the nasty tube that had looked like a hasty trach, out of her chest. I understood it performed some necessary function, but its placement and subsequent bruising only added to my friend's smallness.

Patia is, by no means, a small person. She's 5'10", vivacious as a toddler, with a booming voice and a heart of gold. In her weeks of revolving-door visits to the er, the fourth floor, and, now, the icu, she has captivated the nursing staff and her docs. But not this week.

I have watched this shiny, radiant soul tear up, wail and wonder what God is asking of her. In the ten years of our friendship, it's been apparent that knowing what God wants in her life is her anchor.

When I discerned and was clear to lead a spiritual-nurture group for adults and kids, Patia briskly walked over to me, plopped down, looked me in the eyes and said "God says I'm supposed to be in this group." I believed her and only mentioned that I wanted it to be for her and not because she felt the children needed her. She has been our child caregiver at the Quaker meetinghouse for those ten years and watched my Lily in our home over two years as I attended nurture school periodically in Philadelphia.

I've never known anyone else named Patia and I've never known anyone like Patia. She's not every adult's cup of tea ... unless you take the time to know her. Young children gravitate to her and their parents eventually figure out why. Patia is a child in a way most adults are not. She doesn't realize she's shouting when she's especially joyful. She lives simply, loves fully and is immune to contrived social nuances. I'd stop short of saying what you see is what you get, because she has depth, drive, determination and strives to learn. She "gets" more than most adults realize. She worked for a degree in early-childhood education over the course of years and with measured perseverance. That may not sound like much until you understand she fought her way out of special education in high school, cheered by her mentor, her grandmother. She asked the school to outline the steps necessary to move up and met those benchmarks.

In her mid 50s, she bought her first house and meticulously cares for it, along with her beloved companion dog. She was married young until she felt her husband wilted her independent spirit. She says God did not bless them with children, but gave her so many more working in daycare and privately.

She has taught me so much about faith, listening to God and keeping a steady path. Which is why it pains me to see her questioning, let alone hurting. From personal experience, I know this is part of the spiritual journey. It's just kinda hard when your role model appears human.

Patia's medical problems stem from her heart, but so does her whole being. I am prayerful she is being reshaped carefully and look forward to the return of her boisterousness.

• Who inspires my faith?
• What examples of faithfulness have I witnessed?
• Have can I apply those to myself?
• What happens when I look deeper into people?
• What have I learned from unexpected sources?

red-headed and bubbly
bright lipstick and big earrings

that's how I remember
my friend

the long face and tears
are just temporary

as she gives into
the pain of the repair
of an out-of-sync heart

today, I told her
she is loved just as
she is, in this moment
of streaked cheeks
and little hope

God is big enough
to hold it all and
restore it all

Holy wholeness

2011-06-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

I love it when single concepts, phrases or thoughts that haunt me, eventually intersect and intertwine, given enough time, to illuminate me. Take these, for example:

• The Bishop Desmond Tutu quote a Bloomington Quaker said had stuck with him.

There is no peace without reconciliation. There is no reconciliation without forgiveness. There is no forgiveness without giving up hope for a better past.*

That simple. salient idea is mind boggling – to me. In my dis-ease, that's really where I've been living. It seems natural in our woundedness to focus, even obsess, on changing what harmed us ... in the past. No wonder healing is so illusive. I just think I'm looking forward when I'm truly stuck wallowing in the unalterable. What if I let go?

• The words on the page of the intriguingly unfamiliar Jewish prayer book that reached into my soul during my daughter's and my first bat-mitzvah ceremony:

We become what we worship.
.

So if we worship the past, that's the only place we'll ever be. The same holds true for fixating on the cause of our wounds. However, there's great hope for transformation in opening our attention to what is mutable. Mostly, our attitudes and thoughts, eventually, surrendering them.

• My Quaker minister's message that the original (Greek) definition of sin means missing and, in another portion of her homily, that all of our parts are holy.

I would run from the word sin until I read Quaker author John Punshon's explanation as being out of sync with God. The idea of missing something rings true to me in the same sense. And the fact that all of the parts of ourselves are holy is a concept I am only lately learning to embrace. I have withheld my imperfection from God, but now understand surrender requires turning everything over.

• An insightful friend's response in ministry to that message of her veteran patient only coming to terms with a second amputation after hugging the "missing part" and sobbing. The spirit and soul of this broken body were glowing and powerful, she said.

When surrendered, God shows us holiness in our imperfection.

Together, this string of singly profound wisdom pushed out something deeper, which has been working in me for weeks:

If we worship
the brokenness
of the past,

We are missing
the mark
and not living
into our
holiness, wholeness

• How can I let go of the places I live in the past?
• What have I become as the result of what I truly worship?
• How does the idea of sin as missing change my perceptions?
• In surrendering to God the parts of myself I have withheld, how have I experienced my imperfection, my humanness, as holy?
• How can I live more fully into holiness, wholeness?

* In trying to verify that specific quote, I stumbled upon many attributions for the phrase "giving up hope for a better past," including Lily Tomlin and Anne Lamott

Murdering the martyred-mother mantra

2011-06-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Two epiphanies entered me on the massage table yesterday. Two biggies and all I really expected was for my body to relax, deeply.

The first came as my therapist/counselor was suggesting I think about the "the light" illuminating the darkness. OMG, I internalized, that's all I seem to have wrestled with lately and it's so much work. I'm tired of feeling heavy and then it hit. Conceive of the lightness as transforming the heaviness, not as working on the darkness. BINGO. Uncoincidentally, or maybe not, I began a cleansing diet this week and there's, hopefully, literal lightness there as well. I want summer to be weightless and playful, so this suits me just fine.

When in Bloomington, IN, recently on a writing retreat, I visited the local Quaker meeting for the second time and was compelled to speak, once again. As I uttered the words, responding to another worshipper's ministry about the evil darkness the parents of a missing coed must be facing, I realized that I don't necessarily view darkness as evil. I said something along the lines of:

I live in the darkness

and have realized the

difference of evil darkness and

the darkness of unknowing.

The place I surrender, recognize

I am not in control. There's

only one thing to do: trust.

As those words rolled off my tongue, I recalled that I had spoken about darkness in some context last time. And a kindly Friend approached me afterward, thanking me for my words and also remembering. "I guess I have the space [luxury] to enter the darkness when I am on retreat," I responded.

But now, summer is in swing and I want to enjoy it by putting the hard work aside and basking in the lazier, sunnier days.

And then, in the throes of deep body work and relaxation, a voice called out: "Put yourself first PERIOD." I haven't been in trying to be all things to all people and I burned out big time. I taunt myself into self care under the guise of having the energy to do something for the next person to ask. How out of whack is that? What is my ego keeping me from?

Several years ago during a School-of-the-Spirit [a Quaker nurture ministry program] session, I read Jesus' version of the golden rule and understood my version had been: "Do better unto others than yourself." Ego tells me that's selfish and my helper enneagram feeds right into that.

Time to reverse some flawed thinking, which, I believe, flows right into the message of lightness. I'm murdering the martyred-mother mantra, replacing it with the new, improved and lighter to-thine-own-self-be-true slogan.

• What effect can I let this summer have on me?
• What's my conception of "the light?"
• How can I push, refine or redefine that in a manner that's more nurturing?
• What's a negative personal mantra I carry?
• What more beneficial one I can replace it with?

the voicemail
e-mails and
personal encounters
weigh me down

when I feel
the heaviness of
duty dictates that
they come first

when, however,
I come first,
the needs of others
are a joy to hear
and answer

A ravishing tigger

2011-06-21T10:11:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

It’s day four of my solitary summer adventure, soon to not be so monastic as my family joins me tomorrow. The Amstel beer and bottle of Valpolicella, eating well and meeting a lot of interesting folks, definitely, disqualify this as monastic. Nevertheless, it’s always wonderful to regain a sense of who I am and a more playful rhythm when I am alone.

It helps me remember myself separate from the identities I take on when around people I love and know well. It’s that enneagram #2/helper thing I do and it’s sure a vacation to leave that behind.

I have been working, though not as intensely as I was last January when I visited for a week. It was easier in the bitter coldness and bulging white blanket to remain inside with a fire lit internally and externally and write. This community was almost vacant and lakeside walks turned up little more than birdcalls, deer tracks and crumbled geodes as company.

Right off the bat, I met am amazing woman who is this cul-de-sac’s go-to person. She shares her recreation key with me and we’ve had some nice conversations poolside. She’s a five-year breast-cancer survivor, who takes none of this natural beauty here for granted. Everyone seems to know Donna.

Yesterday, I wore a bright orange skirt and matching scarf, ready to cheerfully greet the day. It was quite the conversation starter and I reverted to just being me, Rosie. Brenda is a costumer who runs a jammed closet-like vintage shop on Bloomington’s square. Her concoctions of new and old are divine. Around the corner, the young guy running the shoe store made me feel like a queen trying on $150 shoes that I did not buy. I can’t remember the last time I was waited on in that manner. I sat on the comfy couch and pretended, knowing full well I would not get this pair. He didn’t seem to care, yet treated me as if I were his best customer.

I had a nice chat with the IU (Indiana University) student in the fair-trade shop, exchanged pleasantries in words and energy with the guy in the holistic space next door and generally enjoyed the day, paying attention to most all I met. Usually I’m in too big of a rush. The cashier in the department store where I did buy a pair of shoes, for $25, had the most stunning aqua eyes and I told her so. I was noticing and noticed.

I ended my outing with an iced coffee, meeting five-month-old Mohammed and his father, who was tending him while his wife was at the nearby salon.

Today, not physically dressed in orange but still feeling swept up, I made my way to the famous Saturday farmer’s market and was not disappointed: brown eggs, fresh cheese, organic meat, Indiana sweet cherries, garlic skeins, lush bouquets, Amish farmers, the guy who sold me black and raspberry bushes, students, starving artists (one from whom I bought a painting), intellectuals, upscale bakers, klezmer musicians and a woman in Laura-Ingalls-Wilder dress doling out just-popped corn from a bloated copper kettle. What a melting pot (ok, so maybe predominantly a white melting pot).

I am beginning to see everyday can be this way: a feast for the senses with many connections. Some deep, others for the moment only. It’s about experiencing each moment joyfully, with an eagerness and openness that so often get left behind in our hurry to the next task.

• When was the last time I really enjoyed being myself?

• What were my interactions like then?

• Was I noticing and being noticed?

• How can I remember that place in myself?

• How can I greet the day as myself, with eagerness and openness, instead of feeling bombarded by my to-do list?

the short orange skirt

and matching beaded shawl

made me feel like a ravishing tigger

I was

the princess trying on the glass slipper

the activist concerned about workers in Ghana

the seamstress interested in vintage costuming

the gardener learning about berries

the artist supporting another

the foodie who bought the local cheese

the visitor who felt welcomed

I was me and

all those I encountered

Abandoned Shell

2011-06-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

The day did not start out well. I awoke tired and hot, remembering that I could not get the internet running last night and I didn’t have a current pool key. So much for working and swimming. Alone in the woods. Perhaps I don’t need my computer or the pool today.

I pry a kindly woman from her condo, who offers to show me how to open the pool gate: maybe I didn’t turn the oversized key just half way. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t budge, but am grateful someone wants to help. As we leave the pavement for the grass, as she walks her small, fluffy dog to the pool and I follow, I spy an abandoned turtle shell by the dumpster. “Hey, think I could take this for my kids?” I ask knowing full well I intend it for myself. “Sure,” the woman says with a smile.

Not a half hour earlier I was writing about turtle shells, trying to craft the tightest summary of my book Turtlebox Stories I could manage.

About seven years ago when discerning how best to present a research paper for a session of School of the Spirit* I was attending, I hit on the idea of a turtlebox [yes one word]. It had an interesting ring because the ear is more accustomed to hearing box turtle. I had collected, mostly in person, the precious stories of people’s experiences of the divine and a boring, old paper did not seem appropriate for something so special. These personal and sacred stories cried for a container that matched their uniqueness. Thus, the turlebox was hatched.

I used a nine-a-and-half-inch, oval paper-mache´ box as the basis, painting it a myriad of bright colors. I knew the lid would be even more special: the shape of a turtle’s shell, head and legs, also painted, but with layers of pastel, loved trinkets, Mod-Podge and my signature squiggles. The top was attached to the first turtlebox with Velcro, to make sure it would be protected in flight. As it sat in our large classroom at the convent, it drew a lot of attention.

So much so, that when I returned four months later, the mother turtle was accompanied by 25 babies: one for each classmate and instructor. Honestly, making those that summer was my sanity. It was a dark time and the project lifted me from that place.

Somewhere along the way, a friend clued me into what Native Americans believe about turtles: that they are the meeting place between Heaven and Earth. The shell is the dome, pointing upward and the body touches earth. I had no idea, yet was immediately struck with the “rightness” to hold those stories. Eastern cultures also share that view.

So here I am NOW with a real turtle shell to examine, admire and wonder what happened to its owner. Somehow, it feels like a gift for me. A tangible sign that I need to forge ahead with the book that’s been 12 years in the making [ok, I wasn’t so aware that’s what was happening the whole time] and never seems to get done. Maybe it’s time for me to take off my shell and share it, not hord and refine the life out of it.

And all I could think of this morning was being unplugged and not wet. This is far better!

• What made me cranky today?
• Did I let that cloud any gifts or thoughtfulness from others?
• If I didn’t, what shifted in me?
• If I did, how can I shift myself next time?
• What stories lay in my personal turtlebox?

PS My key did not work, but the kindly woman is letting me use hers and I am still struggling to get inet access; this will get posted when I do …

*School of the Spirit is a two-year Quaker program of spiritual-nurture ministry that, at the time, met four times a year. For more information, visit www.quakerinfo.com/sos.shtml

You can see the stories I collected at www.turtleboxstories.com. I am re-vamping the site to make it more interactive, but you can still read the current offerings.

Playing in my heart

2011-06-13T18:22:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

A long day all ‘round.

Just could not get out of the house and on the road. The kids’ first day home for summer. A sick friend needed an ear and another, a chat. The packing waited.

The GPS was missing and I forgot the Google map, but I took the back way anyhow and, when lost, winged it, mostly. I do have a sense of direction, often bypassed with all of the high-tech toys. I like listening to my own voice rather than the GPS we not-so affectionately call blabber-mouth.

I took US Route 50 out of Milford to within a half hour of my condo destination, just south of Bloomington, IN. It’s funny how perceptions and realities shift when crossing a border – any border. Indiana just seems different than Ohio and, as I swayed along country roads, I tried to articulate why. This Hoosier state knows who it is and is comfortable in that skin. It’s the heartland of America, middle-of-the-road, crossroads, country, comfortable as a pair of faded jeans and unconcerned about appearances. There’s a consistency of life here: solid, small-town and what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

When I could get a radio station – my antenna broke long before I ever noticed – I had the choice of country or country. I settled on country and decided I could write my own song – about this trip.

I started and repeated, so I wouldn’t forget, then made a pit stop at McDonald’s, skipping the food to sit at a table and write the lyrics on the back of a gas receipt. I also used the video function on my camera, photographing the symbolic parked train parallel to the highway for a good distance. Upon playing it back, I realized the microphone was in the front, so I used just the audio. I think I have the beginnings of something:

A woman alone

got a journey to make,

Choosin’ the long way ‘round

with somethin’ to be found

Life’s been demanding,

but no reprimanding

The solitude calls from within her walls

Been singing her song for ever so long

But the ears can’t receive

what the heart has to grieve

Bit of dying happens ‘long this path

so something grows from the aftermath …

Not so terrible for a first song.

And the day was perfect Midwest summer: so hot it stifles your insides like steamy, unbaked cake batter and taps the memories of childhood when the heat was secondary. The day is open to playful possibilities.

The three-hour trip took five, but who’s counting? I only minded the 40-minute traffic jam around Lawrenceburg. Gave me time to wonder what, exactly, the casinos have done for the town … except snarl movement.

So NOW, I am here … alone and on retreat for a few days, Maybe I’ll be able to finish my song. [No promises of singing it, however!]

• How often do I recognize that the interruptions are part of the journey, maybe even the journey?

• When I do, what shift occurs within me?

• How can it turn a bother into a gift?

• What song is currently playing in my heart?

• What title can I give it?

Watering the desert of loneliness

2011-06-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

When I shared the current iteration of the book I am finishing – it seems I'll never be done – I was disappointed by the strong reaction of a friend to the first chapter entitled "Pain as teacher." I had struggled with that title and it, finally, seemed such an apt fit. "I'd choose another word, people don't want to read that. I know I don't want to think about the pain of chemo again," she told me.

I stopped in my tracks and yet I've had to consider her suggestion because I value her experience and opinion. In sitting with that episode, I have realized that I probably can't change the title because it has been my reality.

Then, last night in desperation to get to sleep and away from my non-drowsy ten-year-old, I picked up a book from the spirituality pile sitting on my bedside table. It was Henry Nouwen's Reaching Out: Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. I have no idea how it came to be there; it's not my book. Anyway, he, too, gets right to the heart of matters in addressing the uinversally individual condition of loneliness, suggesting that one can not be engaged in a spiritual life without recognizing the poles between which we vacillate. The first movement is loneliness and solitude and our constant movement between them is our spiritual life.

In that loneliness lives the pain that no one cares for or understands us. Pain, he calls it. Pain.

It's pain our culture anesthetizes and that we personally avoid by busying ourselves. I know that it calls to us anyway and, when unaddressed, clamors for our attention. And there's really only one way to deal with it: dead on by looking deeply into ourselves. I don't doubt that anyone goes there unless forced. No one else can do this work for us. Nouwen calls that the "false expectation that we are called to take each other's lon[e]liness away ... by burdening others with these divine expectations ... we inhibit the expression of free friendship and love and evoke instead feelings of inadequacy and weakness."

He's not messing around here. However, he does offer a path: "find the courage to enter into the desert of our lon[e]liness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude."

When I muster that courage, I have been gracefully rewarded. Two weeks ago, during Quaker worship, I was able to sink pretty deeply pretty quickly, which is not always the case. I was so rooted, I had a waking dream of Jesus standing behind me moving me with love, not words, toward an ancient, stone wash basin. It was a baptism: a cleansing of my heart of all that is not love. An act I did for myself motivated by love: from Jesus, for me, from me and for all others.

"The real spiritual guide," according to Nouwen, "is the one who, instead of advising us what to do or to whom to go, offers us a chance to stay alone and take the risk of entering into our own experience. He makes us see that pouring little bits of water on our dry land does not help, but that we will find a living well if we reach deep enough under the surface of our complaints.

I recently found my well. I pray I have the courage and trust to return.

• When have I felt lonely?

• What does it feel like, exactly?

• What happens when I open to it?

• How does it direct me spiritually?

• How have I experienced my inner well?

hurrying off to worship

probably a cross word or two

muttered to the kids in the car

... opening the large

wood-and-glass doors

and something begins to happen

I feel my heart again

its beat vibrates more strongly

as I sense the presence of others

soon, I'm not there anymore

but in a room of stone

with

Jesus, moving me forward

without words

to an ancient basin,

where I cleanse my heart,

leaving room only for

love

Women without borders

2011-05-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

I am a lump, undefined by strict boundaries. As such, you'd think I'd be loose, sloppy and carefree. Not wound tight as I am.

I've always had this propensity, but motherhood let the border patrol completely off duty. I wanted to give my kids everything. I have since learned that philosophy only works when they're infants. You, really, can not spoil a baby. A toddler or teen is a different matter.

As I opened the door for my daughters, however, I forgot to close it at all. And it catches up with me: first physically, then emotionally. I know I am not alone in this so-called condition. I believe it's particularly found among women, though not exclusively, and very much so in mothers, always called to nurture.

There was a time not so very long ago that I thought God was calling me to be open ... to everything. And I was. I found I had little time for myself and no structure or even discipline, save for my regular exercise. I understand that discernment is necessary in all matters, not just some. We're not created to be open 24/7, though some of us lack the necessary protection. I've had that conversation with a friend, who also happens to have fibromyalgia and be male. He says his therapist is always telling him to acquire those filters. We laugh because we have no idea how, nor did we realize we were missing them.

I'm even sensitive to the always-open agenda of technology and don't know where my cell phone is half of the time. I already feel on call, I don't need to actually be. A few years ago, my niece experienced a bout of poor sleep. Then she confessed to sleeping with her phone and checking it at night when it vibrated with a new text message. No wonder she was tired; she was always at attention. That taught me a valuable lesson. Even e-mail, facebook and texts have that effect on me. I am learning to impose my terms.

I LOVE voice mail. Just because it is convenient for someone to call, it is not necessarily so for me. I am the only one in my house that answers or listens to messages from our land line and they all just wait for me to jump when it rings. "I'm busy and will get to it later," I say. "If you're so interested, why don't you answer?" They never do. A new friend recently wondered why I had not answered her cell call. "Did you leave a message?" I asked. "No," she replied, "I thought you'd know it was me." An older friend had to explain to her how and why I unattach myself.

I really need to learn how to unattach myself from actual people and requests when solicited. My fear is that if I don't respond, they will think less of me – even when I'm not up for helping. Something else tells me that they'd totally understand if I explained. Sometimes I'd just like to say no and not feel obligated to explain. Would that work?

• Where, exactly, are my boundaries?
• How have they shifted over the years?
• Is it time for a recheck and/or reshifting?
• How much of my identity is wrapped up in how I respond to others' needs?
• How can I detach myself from that persona and discern where God is calling, not necessarily other people?

I'm the once brightly wrapped gift,
paper ripped off and crumpled,
box flattened

and yet I lay there
waiting
at attention to give

knowing I am unwrapped and
crumpled and, really,
incapable of giving right now

how can I pick myself up
and out of view,
saving my gifts only
for when I can rightly give –
with love and energy

Voices of ego

2011-05-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

A week or so ago, the message at Quaker meeting centered around which voice we hear when we are worshipping. I thought it was a provocative topic. Last night, I watched the movie The Soloist about a musical prodigy and former Julliard student, who ended up homeless in LA playing a two-stringed violin. He is also schizophrenic. Lately, I have been wondering about all of the voices in my head.

Where is the line between Divinity, humanity and madness?

I am also slowly reading Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks, focusing, most recently, on that nature knows how to be, a lesson for we humans with the constantly churning thought patterns. Exactly where is the balance between using our brains, while not letting them control us? I imagine the control compunction resides in the ego. I often hear the "you should," "you aren't," and "do more" voices that I am consciously attempting to, if not shut down, quell to some degree.

It was interesting hearing the voices from the movie, The Soloist. They almost sounded real and I think that is the point.

"I'll protect you from their eyes and ears.

They're listening to you. They can hear your thoughts, Nathaniel. I can hear your thoughts.

I can still see you. Run, you'll never get out. There's no hiding.

Nathaniel, you've never been here. I'm here now. You never have been; you never will be.

My voice is all there is, Nathaniel. Follow my voice. Run away from these people."

...

One woman in The Soloist, living in a shelter, says she's not sure she wants the voices in her head quieted because, sometimes, they calm her and medicating them away might also remove that.

The person delivering the Quaker message talked about the political voice, the social voice and the others which may call us.

Either we have an entirely schizophrenic society, which may be possible due to cultural over stimulation, or our thoughts are too much in charge. So, just how do we pinpoint these voices/thoughts and discern the real from the unreal, the sacred from the demonic, the sane from the insane, the path from the detour?

For me, stillness and silence are the antidote. When I am overstimulated and busy, it's hard to hear my own voice let alone what Quakers call the "still small voice within," a name for God. Often stilling my body then calms my mind and I reach the zone ... a sweet place where I am aware of the present, but transported to safety, quiet and calm. A resting place for mind, body and spirit. For me, it happens in worship, meditation, when I am painting or journaling, walking a labyrinth, after yoga or swimming when I am still. My mind must be unengaged. It's almost like I am outside myself, detached and merely observing, dreamlike. No matter the length of the still trance, I feel rested as if my entire being totally relaxed into something safe.

• What voices do I hear?
• How do I discern the divine from the rest?
• How does stillness change that?
• How can I achieve stillness?
• How can I balance a controlling brain with stillness on a regular basis?

OMG you didn't get that done,
forgot about this and ...

I am learning this is
my ego talking

not me

busying myself in
unawareness cranks
the chatter dial up

breathing, slowing
being in nature

turns the volume off

and I remember

who I am ...
what's important

The faucet's always running

2011-05-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Though I adore her, I have to disagree with Tina Turner. Love is not an emotion, not even second hand.
Love is the Ultimate Truth. It's the medium in which we are created, fostered, live, die, transition and transform. It is the constant. Love is above emotion; it's what feeds our souls, makes us soar, dream and do the impossible.

We don't often experience love as truth. Arguably because, as humans, it's almost impossible to love unconditionally. Although my children have taught me much about Ultimate Truth.

I felt it live, real and close up yesterday, staring into the intensely gentle eyes of my shamanic counselor. I blinked and looked away a few times because it was so powerful, yet I didn't want to break the spell. It completely filled me: every nook and cranny, every ache and pain, every empty and lonely spot.

"Look into my left eye," Gary said. I gazed at his one eye.

"No my left," he chuckled. Know I would trust this man with my life and do anything he suggested. He has brought me back to my life many times.

So I complied, at first without my glasses, looking at the fuzzy darkened circle directly across from me. Everything else melted, though I was bodily aware of being there. The facet was on full force streaming into the middle of my chest and quickly dissipating toward all of my wounds, like warm, healing helium infiltrating my mind, body and spirit.

I remembered who I was ... fully.

We broke and Gary said sometimes it's so much that it's scary. To me, it more consuming, merely requiring TOTAL surrender.

We practiced a second time with my glasses. I experienced the same, except with more visual clarity. I think I preferred the blurry edges because my heart came forward faster.

Gary recently spent five days in Hawaii one-on-one with spiritual teacher Ram Dass and I noticed the change, though Gary always provides whatever I need even when I don't know or haven't learned it yet. I suspect that is where he was taught the eye-gazing-feel-real-Love practice.

I had been collecting pieces of this constant entity all week:

In days at the hospital being with my mother and observing her patience, the gentle care she received as well as how she accepted it. And again Monday evening when I met a close friend in the ER of the same hospital [thought I'd gotten at least a one-day hiatus from this place], who inspired the staff with her happiness while her heart raced through the roof. "I'm an angel of God," she told them. They believed her. She's closer to God than anyone I know. Never mind that's she's unemployed and has no health insurance. Love transcends those barriers.

And through the transportation of music at Friday's Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra last concert with Maestro Paavo Jarvi. The notes just move through that man unlike anything I've ever experienced. His body is an instrument itself. One violinist threw her entire being into the performance and I wondered how exhausted she'd be after. All of the musicians did ... probably following their leaders example. That, however, was secondary to the energy and power of the music. Creation and a collectedness made tangible. That was echoed two nights ago at my seventh-graders' band concert. The focus and delight of the budding musicians was every bit as powerful as the professionals.

I feel like my cup runneth over this week – even in the midst of seemingly nonstop caregiving and the not-so-conducive institutional atmosphere of the hospital.

I am beginning to believe the faucet is always running whenever I need a drink.

• How would I describe my experience of pure love?
• What happens when I have?
• What other kinds are there?
• When have I felt like the conduit?
• How am I able to give and receive?

the little trickles
were thrilling, filling
and healing

I almost missed them,
save for the spark

but the rush of the
BIG gush was almost
too much

asking of me
only one thing:
surrender

yes, I answer

Climbing back into life

2011-05-16T08:52:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

What if life is ALL there is? That we don't own life, but are life?

Reading Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks bring me here.

What if it's not something to be used up and gotten through. But something to savor, enjoy, revel in and discover your essence NOW and just be it. No projections. Who and how would we be then?

I would be creating beauty, nurture, love and peace in the world and myself. I would be as compassionate with those that have more than I do as I am already with those that have the same or less.

I would not let myself feel inferior, rage into self doubt or deprive myself of joy and the worldly tools to get there.

I would have ONE system. not a spiritual one AND a secular one. Not an inner one AND an outer one. Not an unmasked one AND a masked one. Not a true me AND a social me.

I would understand that I can and should use the material world to enhance the spiritual one, recognizing that I am the bridge between.

I would see every experience through the eyes of love and wisdom instead of drowning in isolation and defeat.

I would learn to take the harsh realities as moments of spiritual growth and transformation.

I wouldn't judge those moments or my response, but accept them as a part of the process of living.

I would see that living fully is constant change. I would become more fluid and soften into that current.

I would know I am the current. A part that must intimately know and show itself to others in the current, bumping up against, encouraging and nurturing them to do the same. So that we would all shine together as one.

Can you image the power and intensity of that?

I am wondering if that's what life is all about.

• In what dualities do I live?
• What vision of oneness can I create?
• How much energy do I expend being something other than my true self?
• What if I focused that energy on being me?
• What if we all did?

we climbed out fresh and new
open, vulnerable, willing and loving

the more time we spent in this foreign place,
the more it molded us

we forgot our origins, replacing
the sense of connection with isolation

working hard at being our own person,
separate, distinct and removed

we walked sleeping through life
swayed by what lay on the surface

until that thing in us
called out, demanding
we pay attention

sometimes it was pain,
discontent or just plain lonliness

we were created to be connected
and that urge will propel us

back into the flow of life,
just being

being where we belong with each other

Running amok as myself

2011-05-11T10:22:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

I am tired of stumbling through growing pains. The kind that happens as I move from one stage of myself to the next. It seems like a constant process these days: layers peel off, wounds rise to the surface demanding attention, examination delivers new insight, I feel positive about my direction and then it starts all over again. In the long run, I know [or at least I tell myself] this is all good and leading somewhere. Otherwise, I'm not certain I could stand any more of this shedding, cleansing and rebirthing. It's exhausting work. So, in the midst of this, I cynically and not too seriously scribbled down what I thought could be the opening of an autobiography [you know, for when I'm known and remembering when ...] written now. Here goes:

...

Ima Mess. A new moniker to name my persisting condition. It's just too much work, too much energy expended to pretend.

I really can't think I'm alone in this charade. At Monday night's neighborhood book club, we discussed whether any of us has hidden behind stereotypes. Easy talk about politicians, sales people and celebrities. Yet, I pushed the "us" button, hungry to understand if there were any universality to my current state of mind.

One brave soul volunteered her occasional jaunt into invisibility, attributing it to many moves during childhood, creating a constant "new-kid" syndrome.

There were gasps at the revelatory question that escaped from my lips: "Don't we all feel like that?"

Apparently NOT, the awkward silence responded. Some discussion of the difference between introverts and extroverts ensued and it dawned on me that, actually, it does not occur to everyone. A JOLT.

...

That's as far as I've gotten it on paper. Maybe that's all it will ever be, but the mother of all questions remains: "How many people show – consistently – who they really are to the world?"

I've been reading about inner selves and social selves, the tension, how to create balance, when to let your inner self out and how to effectively use your social self. All I really, really want to do is let my inner self, probably a child, run amok with no worries. Just let it happen. My pastoral counselor says my age gives me permission to become even weirder. I think he's saying the same thing.

My sleep has been deeper lately; I know because am dreaming. Dreams laced with messages that are freeing me from the yoke of how I see myself, the patterns I have inherited and social conditioning. They're providing the same message, which reminds me of a verse that flew out of my pen and onto the paper several years ago for my youngest, but that seems to be especially useful right now:

MORE OF WHO YOU ARE

Be MORE of who you are.

Not less or who anyone else says you are.

Listen deeply, inside, to know who you are.

Not outside.

Listen to your heart.

To me.

To love.

Love is always the answer.

Live in love.

Respond in love.

Act in love.

Love.

• How much energy do I expend trying to be somebody?
• Who is that somebody, exactly?
• How has it felt when I have been able to let myself out?
• Who serves as an example of that for me?
• Is invisibility any better than being someone else?

Line between faith and lunacy

2011-05-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

Listen to this post:

Wednesday was an inspiring day and I mean inspiring. As in INSPIRATIONAL ... when the pieces of the puzzle begin to form a pattern you recognize, instead of the usual lunacy.

A close friend cautioned that it's not lunacy, but rather faith I have exhibited. Faith, I shirked. “You keep going even when you don't know where it leads," she said, “like how courage is doing something even when you are afraid.” Hummmmm; the meaning is still trickling in.

Lunacy or faith?

• When I began journaling 12 years ago even though I was the journalist who never journaled.

• When I added a visual journal.

• When I understood there was truth to be shared. Widely shared.

• When I shipped it in purple wrapping to Oprah, with postcard follow-ups, finally screwing the courage to call. “We don’t accept unsolicited materials,” the flat voice answered, triggering a flash of stacks of unopened packages like the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

It wasn’t ready yet, I now know.

• When I queried a handful of New York literary agents, almost neglecting one because of her reputation for not responding. I heard back in three minutes:

Dear Cathy, I'll read a section (attach it) but I have to declare I just took on a very similar work which may directly conflict with this work.

I complied and was gently deflated with:

Dear Cathy, thank you, but I feel certain, now that I've read this material, that there is a direct conflict. I'd try another agent who handles spiritual or send it … directly.

It wasn’t ready yet, I now know.

• When I met with a top spirituality editor, who praised the writing and the art, but said to re-focus and re-submit to the agent.

It wasn’t ready yet, I now know.

• When, after a good re-packaging, I did:

Dear Cathy Barney, Many thanks for contacting me about your revised proposal. I would be pleased to take a look. Attach the proposal and chapters which are ready to review.

...

Dear Cathy, since the proposal is the selling tool, I'll wait and when you have the proposal ready send it.

...

Dear Cathy Rose Barney,

Many thanks for sending your proposal which I have now read. With so many projects on the market with this theme (in particular FINDING YOUR OWN NORTH STAR) I don't think I will be successful with it. I thank you for the privilege of reading your work.

And when I asked what she would recommend:

It needs to have a special unique message.

I was crushed. Reading those e-mails now, I see they weren’t as stern and severe as I had initially believed.

Your red balloon awaits

2011-05-02T09:49:00.000-07:00

SEE CLIP BELOW TO 'HEAR" THIS BLOG

Last night, I found and watched one of my all-time favorite childhood movies, Le Ballon Rouge [The Red Balloon], on Netflix. I remembered it from a Kugla-Fran-and-Ollie CBS Children's Film Festival episode.

Set in mid 1950s Paris, the half-hour almost non-verbal film traces the adventures of a young boy who "happens" upon a luscious and tempting giant red balloon. It's unlike normal balloons in that it's wider, rounder, redder, shinier and is just waiting for this particular boy. Of course, he's smitten and immediately takes the rein. He knows it's his. As he approaches school, he asks someone in the street to hold it while he's in class. He needn't have bothered because the balloon waits for the boy and is always within his reach when it desires to be. It hovers around the second story when the boy's nanny whisks it out the window. It's ready for him mornings when he goes to school and again when it lets out. It comes when he calls. Obviously, it instills envy in other boys who try and fail to collect the balloon. As it mysteriously eludes them, the boys' resolve intensifies. Eventually, they capture the balloon and tether it to a rock. The boy to whom the balloon belongs spies it over a garden fence and wonders why it doesn't come when he calls. He discovers it's chained and undoes the lashing. Too late he the opens the gate and finds the boys pelting it with rocks. One hits the balloon and it begins to shrink, turning warty and dull. Just as it exhausts its next-to-last wind, an unkind leg squashes the thing into the ground. The small boy is left alone to mourn. The cameras pan to locations throughout Paris where dozens of balloons of all colors escape from children, vendors and shops, collecting and flying to land just within the lone boy's grasp. He ties them around himself and they lift him away.

I was so moved last night at the metaphor of the red balloon being our biggest dream or deepest desire. It waits for us until we are ready, when we can find it. It is our dream and no one else's. People can and do make fun of it, envy it, and try to banish it, yet they can't seem to separate us from our red balloon. It is always with us, hovering nearby if we are engaged otherwise. It lifts us, amuses us and totally engages us. We follow it willingly.

Then, some day, someone does manage to deflate it. We are devastated, alone and grieving. And yet, that's not the end. If we're patient, a new dream emerges, one even grander, bigger and more encompassing. One we could never have imagined. It lifts us off the ground and transports us somewhere else. Somewhere dreams are possible.

But only if we pay attention and see it waiting or us.

• What's my red balloon?

• How did I find it waiting for me?
• How have I had to protect it?
• How have I been faithful in following it?
• What has grown up out of a red balloon that has burst?

one day, you just notice it
never mind that it has been hatching, forming and waiting
until you were ready

it's just there, clear as day
glinting and glistening to the point
you can't ignore it.

the only action is to claim it
proudly, boldly and with
everything you have

trust where it will take you

Le Ballon Rouge highlights:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYxIPhjDcf8&feature=related