Journey to nowhere

Earlier this week, I felt somewhat unglued and ready for a routine. Getting kids back to school in different weeks, with one attending evening college classes as a high-school junior and shy of her driver's license, there's been a lot of chauffeuring or, rather, being chauffeured. Then labor day, a day off and a weekend of 14th-birthday celebrations for the youngest. Summer retreated with a bang. It was a great season initiated by an incredible family trip to Europe.

So slinking off to school and work routines is not, exactly, exciting. Yet necessary.

I crave more-focused work, balance and rhythm. The busyness has caused me to let go of a regular spiritual practice, even weekly worship twice, and my daily gym visits. It's like skipping medication.  For one day, I'd like to just wake up to the day and head onward, no swim, sinus care, supplement taking or gluten-free lunch packing. Just once. And not have to experience repercussions.

Yes, I know that I am whining. Tuesday, I, dutifully, headed to the gym by 6:45 am, swam less than the usual mile (I must build up again), blended and slurped down my spinach-blueberry-and-brown-rice smoothie, dropped my oldest off at 9 am, returned to take my supplements, pack my lunch and get to the studio. Once there, my first action was to light a candle, welcoming Spirit's light, and pull out my daily devotional. The bookmark was still on August 21.

The passage was about beginning the spiritual journey with a reminder that we humans center the universe on ourselves. We can't help it. The shattering of illusions, Father Thomas Keating writes, is the beginning of the journey. The real spiritual journey and the way to nowhere.

The way to nowhere. I can identify with that.

Who likes to admit they haven't the faintest idea where they are headed? Practically no one. It's not practiced in this culture. Everyone knows exactly where they are going: to work, careers, up the rungs of  the social and corporate ladders, and, even Heaven. We are so sure of it. Otherwise, what are we left with? Feeling out of control?

Societally, we are launched on an upward path. I left that long ago and never really understood it until spiritual teacher Richard Rohr wrote that the spiritual path is one of descent ... into the messiness of life and brokenness. THAT I could identify with – over and over again like a skipping record.

With a new awareness, I have begun to notice something pretty radical. When I am slumming in the sludge of life, guess who is always with me? God. I don't especially remember feeling her presence when I traipsed up and down the steps of my corporate job years ago. As I traveled, marketed, plotted and planned I felt, well, hollow. Like I was just pretending. It seemed as if we all were. The lemmings marching in sober-faced, stiff and Zombie-like (perhaps mirroring our product, caskets) each morning and flowing out each evening, together at the same time. Like them, I was probably asleep.

I have since awakened and know Spirit's presence in the depths of darkness, on the average day and the heights of contentment. She is with me when I am alone, when I worship with others, when I struggle with others. I know her most intimately through Jesus and his universal Christ energy.

I know it best when I keep a daily practice that opens me to that energy and love as I journey to nowhere.

• What role does routine play in my life?
• What happens when it's not in place?
• Where do I pencil in time with God?
• What difference does that make?
• When have I felt I was on a journey to nowhere?


beginning of the
week I am
chomping to get
organized and
feel in control
again

that holidays,
and new schedules
become assimilated
... quickly

bouncing from
one busyness
to the other

when I remember
to light the candle
and let Sprit in

Listen to this post:

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

Listen to this post:

When Spirit makes worlds collide

The idea of what lays at the center of the cross, where the beams intersect, has fascinated me since last summer. I have desperately wanted to know what, exactly, happens there, understanding it is a place of transformation, perhaps THE place for transformation.

Somehow, a stranger pressing her finger slightly into my breastbone and insisting the seed of God does, indeed, reside in me opened me to the idea of the cross as personal transformation, not just the remote Easter story of childhood.

I know the mysterious Christ energy that became available to all at Jesus' resurrection. I feel it in me, around me and in others.

Years ago, I was transformed reading Marcus Borg's "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" and the delineation of Jesus as historical figure from Jesus as mystic. Before death and after; human, then divine energy. Unconsciously, I got that. 

Last fall, I was assimilating the concept  into my own life:
"What's at the crux? An invitation to go beyond the cross, into it and through it ... away from the symbol and to the idea of bearing a cross to freedom. The cross was man's constraint, meant for death. God uses it as a metaphor for new life."
http://salonforthesoul.blogspot.com/2013/11/beyond-cross.html

Monday, when I went to visit my shaman/pastoral counselor/massage therapist apparently I was ready for the next step. I hadn't seen him for almost 10 weeks, so there was a lot floating through my mind body and spirit. He suggested we begin with breath work and coached me through the dizziness, which always makes me want to stop. But I trust him and blew through. No one likes losing control, but it is the bridge to deeper work. He guided me into the breath of fire, urging me to really move my sternum. The hot breath was diving deep into my heart and beginning to dislodge gunk with guttural sounds. Wildly, Native-American music magically moved my mind elsewhere, out of the way of body and S/spirit. Gary had invited spirits from all directions to attend and I felt their presence: eagle, bear, ancestors and wind, also my own personal guides, Mike and Aunt Anne.

I found myself in child's pose, surrendering.

I pressed the palm of my right hand deep into my sacrum/lower back and said I wanted "it" out. My shaman helped me breath and scream it out, gently massaging the spot as my body and something else took over. I don't have a word now for it, but I believe it was a negative energy, a darkness trapped in my body. Not of me or Spirit. As I sensed release, I automatically flopped over on my stomach, arms dangling at the sides and my chest pressed hard against the massage table. I felt the intersection of the cross searing into my breastbone, my heart and me. Then a wordless glimmer of the mystery of what happens there, the transformation. Nothing I can explain, except I have never felt more loved, so wholly and completely down to every last cell in my being. It was God's way and I broke into tears of joy, knowing this is surrender.

As the session drew to a close, Gary sat for what seemed like eternity with his hand gently on my back as I returned into my body. I broke the silence and Gary asked "Do you know what that was?" "What?" I responded. "It's your process," he said with a twinkle that made me giggle.

I've experienced a rather profound week when I think about it. Later that day, after I spent some time outside re-grounding, I met one of my favorite people, our former Quaker minister. Early in his ministry, he'd make a monthly visit and we'd chat over tea and busy toddlers. He was the first person I could ask about Jesus and evil and he'd honestly tell me he wasn't certain either. On Monday afternoon, he and a small group of Wilmington College Quaker-Leaders met me at my studio for an introduction to labyrinths. They plan to build one as a service project. They walked the Artsy Fartsy Christmas light spiral in the empty classroom across the hall, then we headed to the Milford Spiritual Center for another experience. While the kids hiked the riverbank, Dan and I became reacquainted. Boy, have I missed him. What a gift this afternoon had been. Sliding down the hill almost to water's edge in my five-finger shoes was just the grounding I had needed.

Tuesday, I spent completing the last half of a New Year's retreat I wanted to finish before meeting with the retreat leader Wednesday. It was about being with the word she had given me a few weeks ago: purification. Meditating on it and listening to Spirit's intention for me and the word. Though I had been reluctant to initially embrace it, I have since discovered it is my word. Yet the listening taught me a new meaning: freedom. Purification means freedom from whatever debases, pollutes or contaminates. And, since Monday, I was free of some darkness.

I couldn't wait to greet Mary for our appointment and express my wonder that she knew Gary, my shaman. She's only been here a year-and-a-half and I wondered what an episcopal minister was doing with a shaman. "When I was in Philly, I worked with a shaman, so I asked around when I got here and I met Gary. He's great." My worlds were colliding.

She loved that he had suggested I add more fire to my life, even with the simple act of a daily candle lighting. We discussed how it tied to the idea of purification and burning off. I recounted Monday's experience knowing I was safe here.Then I shared the five-lines (cinquen) summarizing "God's new thing" this year for me:

bold, trusting
energetic, content, balanced
becoming, embracing, loving, freeing
empowered

And Mary gave me scripture from Isaiah 43:

“... Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

When you pass through the waters,

I will be with you;

and when you pass through the rivers,

 they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,

you will not be burned;

the flames will not set you ablaze ... "

And then she asked if I'd like her to be my spiritual director. Such blessings this week.

• How has Spirit come alive for me?
• How have I experienced God's love?
• Name a transformational experience.
• How was I changed?
• How do I continue to surrender?

Listen to this post: