Freedom in dying to Spirit

Strangely, I've been meeting death in a number of ways lately. During and since Lent, I have worked to surrender my false self, a death in itself. In Quaker worship a few weeks ago in London, the congregation mourned the passing of a Friend and asked the following query:

Can you accept death, make time to grieve, gain freedom and comfort others (grieving)?

In response, one member said in accepting his cancer, "you just get on with it." I took him to mean you make your peace with it, death and God. Another cited a line of poetry: light gets in through the crack. I Googled the reference and came up with a line from Leonard Cohen's Anthem:

There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. 

As I have been slaking off jet lag and the luxury of a jam-packed two-week vacation, I watched a movie over the weekend about a widower who can barely tolerate life without his spouse until he meets a new friend. At one point, he tells her she is the crack in his dark world.

The notion speaks strongly to me, then in Quaker worship and, now. In worship, I was moved to consider the death I have been living. I admitted I had been struggling and just "wanted to get on with it as the Friend across from me said – or, better, without it. I find the advice to grieve very helpful. To take the time, so I can live in the light, my light, and follow Christ's path (freedom), so I can get on with that."

One more Friend ventured: "Accepting death means living in the present. There's only now."

I returned to the London Friends Center to spend precious time with a slight book published in 1661 by my Quaker ancestor. She, too, called for death, the death of  a Godless society. She was overcome with the message, to the point of publishing a book, presenting it to the King (Charles II) and addressing the whole of England, whom she felt lived under great darkness. She begged, pleaded and prayed for England to turn toward the light before it was too late. Her words are just as relevant today.

I walked to the British Museum, processing my time with the book, grateful to have experienced it personally. There, I headed toward the Elgin Marbles for a quick visit. Strolling the great halls of white marble, unearthed from their true homes and on display, I felt death: the ancientness of the pocked stone, the costumes of long ago and the unlikeliness of these magnificent figures lounging in a staid room and not atop the Parthenon.

A few days later, participating in a Night of Adoration at Sacre Coeur in Paris, I encountered the resurrected Christ and the other side of death. During my midnight silent prayer shift, I focused on the image of Christ overhead, painted in white and gold on the dome, his heart shining and the rays of what I call Christ energy radiating to all. To me that is the promise of Christ: we each are completely loved. And I believe that is the freedom mentioned in the Quaker query. Love is enduring and conquers even death.

I am repeating that mantra as I mourn the very recent passing of my childhood Methodist minister, who also happened to be serving temporarily at my Quaker Meeting when I was led to return. It was such an easy and natural transition that I know God's hand was in it all.

Spirit,
Let me grieve for the life I am leaving behind.
Let me cut the strings.
I want to be free.
Free in your love and
the wisdom that Christ's
energy continues to radiate
through me and out into
the world.
Let me live in and of that loving
energy.


• How have I been acquainted with death?
• Have I allowed time for grief?
• What freedom lies at the other side?
• From what must I die psychologically?
• What is my current prayer?


full of living
on a joyful holiday

I was surprised
by the dose of
death

it has sobered me
into recognizing
its truth

there is real
freedom in
dying to Spirit

and fully knowing
I am loved
completely
truly
for eternity

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Your fault, Stuart

Weeks ago, I am not even certain how many, Stuart, a F/friend (that's how we Quakers address each other since we are also known as the Religious Society of Friends) I met last summer at a mystics' gathering e-mailed and asked "how things were going?"

The last time we spoke, which, really was also the first time, it was in a goodbye embrace and an admonishment from me for his having opened the door at the gathering with a prayer of "help me." I've blogged about that experience previously (http://salonforthesoul.blogspot.com/2013/06/lay-it-down.html).

It's not that I haven't wanted to answer. I have, but there were no words and I was still in process. Who am I kidding? I will always be "in process," but I knew at the time things were shifting and I wasn't ready to name the shift or even attempt to understand what was happening. I just wanted to let it flow and Spirit have her way as much as I could push my ego aside.

Lent was happening, really happening for me.

Saturday at a beautiful, full and rich Easter Vigil, the preacher, my spiritual director, spoke of this time as waiting-room "liminal," which had been her introduction 20 years ago to the ritual. I clearly identify with the idea of liminal and feel as if I have lived here for 15 years, managing to deal with fibromyalgia. She further described it as the space between the room we have left and the one we have not yet entered. Though we are waiting, alternately anxious and patient, we have the option to shape where we will head next. That comment broke in and grabbed me by the throat. What have I been shaping? I wondered, remembering that I was experiencing an even more liminal space within my longer bout.

My shaping hasn't always been so graceful, pleasant, beautiful, positive or peaceful. Chronic pain is a hard place sometimes, even for the usually patient. Yet, these weeks before Easter have been nothing short of miraculous, if even on a small scale. I've been able to give up a few things and gain some spiritual depth in exchange:
– On my shaman's massage table, I experienced the cross as it seared into my chest and I intimately and fleetingly knew God's overwhelming love for me, moments after she released an awful darkness trapped inside my hips.
– I have begun to shed my former partners of fear and doubt, replacing them with trust and empowerment.
– My word for this year, purification, is happening on many levels from cellular to spiritual, physical to mental.
– A naturopath has helped me see cleansing my body of toxins may ease my pain.
– A low-dose, generic antidepressant recommended by a fibro friend and prescribed by my primary-care doc, has me sleeping, really sleeping for the first time in years. With that deep, relaxing sleep, my pain has vastly decreased!
– All because I was sick on New Year's and missed the retreat, I have come to know its leader in a more personal way; such that she is my new spiritual director.
– Her spirit has gently nudged me toward Lent, where I have felt so attached in discovering for myself what Jesus and resurrection truly mean. I have been playing with the idea of the cross since summer and the mystics' gathering when a dear woman helped me locate the seed of God within myself.
– As my mind and body have cleared, I can almost use the word healed, I am able to surrender to Spirit more deeply than I did on the bench in worship during the mystic's weekend. So many things are up in the air in my life, but it's okay, because I am following Spirit.

So, clearly it still is Stuart's fault that all of these things are joyously happening.

In his e-mail, he admitted to the Holy Spirit commanding him to stand in that June worship by "making use of my brokenness, plant(ing) the seed-word 'help' in many of our hearts. From things I heard about and witnessed as the weekend progressed, it seemed that this seed grew according to the need of the heart in which it was planted."

Maybe it was the next couple of sentences that caused me to delay a response. "... what a beauty it was to witness you being called to turn your life over to Christ ... For a while as the worship ended the Spirit allowed me to feel a bit of the awe of your experience. It so exercised me that I had to retreat to a corner of the room to be apart from the crowd till the sense subsided."

"Turn your life over to Christ" – what language is that? God merely told me to surrender and I did, though it seemed very awkward and not beautiful as I argued like a teenager before finally giving in.

And then, there was my fascination with the center of the cross. My experience on the massage table of fusing with it and finally, during Saurday's vigil after we left the parish hall in darkness, our way lit by the candles we each held, traveled to the knave to hear a loud knocking on the sanctuarty door, it being opened and a flood of light and wondrous music pouring out, I felt the joy of resurrection. For real. Mine and Jesus'.

The next day in Quaker worship when others shared their Easter experience, not all positive, I knew ministry was forming in my heart if not yet on my lips. I was struggling to articulate that, for me, Easter is about the Christ energy (or consciousness as some would call it) that emerged in the transformational resurrection. The energy that I know and is accessible to all. God exchanged his human self-son for a mystic energy found within each one of us. I am now ready to claim it.

So if claiming my Christ energy is the same as turning my life ever to Christ – and I think it is – then I am definitely in.

So, to answer your question, Stuart, things are going incredibly, miraculously well and I still believe in some small way, it IS your fault. You only spoke what was in my heart and for that I will be forever grateful.

• When has a plea for help from Spirit spoken to me?
• When have I made that plea?
• How did I know it was heard?
• What miracles has Spirit worked in my life?
• How do I know the Christ energy?



some Quaker guy
who lives in Maryland
near my sister

blurted out
"help me" 
in worship

I'd never
met him, so
how could he
know what was
in my heart?

and, ever since,
nothing has
been the same

thankfully

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Spiritual nakedness

Lay your burden                                                                                                                         at the feet of Christ.

Give yourself                                                                                                                         unto me.

With those words murmured into my heart during worship, I was able to begin to truly surrender. I have been moving toward this process since June, when Spirit commanded me to lay down on a pew in a Meeting that wasn't my own and surrender.

Sunday, I did lay my troubles at Jesus' feet and gave the rest to God. Suddenly, I felt jolted awake, really awake. A golden light invaded me and I experienced a wonderful lightness. For me, this is surrender.

And, I believe I must do it every day. Every, single one.

For years, I have "played" with the relationship among me, God and Jesus. I've always known Spirit, but it was Jesus who mystically reached me as a pre-schooler, secretly signaling, when an adult told me my heart was black with sin, NOT to listen. Again, when, as a junior-high student I sat in an evangelical country church listening, then seeing Jesus' image in my shiny, new amber ring. I was jolted into paying attention. Again, the night before my father-in-law's funeral, when I dreamt I was bicycling up a hill as a mini tornado kicked in and a road sign that read "chosen one" burst into flames, then morphed into a shimmering image of Jesus. Again, a few years later in another dream as my now-deceased aunt and I were conversing in a quiet church vestibule and she said "You had better choose." Instantly, the gorgeous stained-glass window parted, Jesus' image fluttered and achingly beautiful, but unearthly, music commenced.

The past two years I have discerned the message of Jesus' resurrection; it's a personal message for me. I now it unconsciously, but desire to articulate it so mind, body and spirit connect with it.

This recent message to hand Jesus my burden and give God the rest moves me to understanding. I have felt so broken for so long and so responsible to fix it. I have begun to see we are all broken and that, perhaps, I am lucky to know my brokenness so intimately. It is through our brokenness that we may approach Jesus, for the Christ energy truly understands and has the ability to absorb our brokenness, freeing us to more wholly give ourselves to God. Jesus is, indeed, the wounded healer through whom we may find our way to God.

As Quaker founder George Fox said, I know this experimentally. I know this from experience, directly from God. God has been revealing this message in bits and pieces and, finally, the puzzle is complete enough for me to begin to get the bigger picture. Although I know that as soon as I say that, things will shift and I will feel that the more I know, the more there is to know.

For now, however, I am satisfied to understand this simple concept of accepting my humanity, giving the dark parts to Jesus and saving for Spirit what is of God.

Wow. So simple and probably I have been told and read this so many times in my life. Only now I begin to understand.

Thank you, Jesus for taking my woes, wrongs, dis-ease and darkness, freeing me and helping me re-claim my spiritual nakedness so I may return to God.

• What role does Jesus play in my life?
• How do I understand the Christ energy?
• How does Jesus prepare my way to Spirit?
• When have I given my true self to God?
• What is surrender like for me?


so serenely simple
and in my face
forever

but the filters 
and the world's
messages

puffed up the
ego, which told
me not to trust

managed to help
me forget my
childhood experience
of Jesus' truthfulness

which has always
been available

I am ready,
again

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