More of Spirit within

Yesterday, I burned my log, which may not sound like a big deal, but, trust me, it was. The log, with hand-cut pages resembling what they represented and bound with green yarn, was filled with all of the the things I am burning off collected over six weeks. Purification is my word for this year. The list wasn't as long as I had expected and, when I read it to my spiritual director, who proposed this exercise, they really cycled down to two BIG ideas: limitation and paralysis.

Ouch, those words sting like anticeptic. The truth can hurt. I also planned to toss out my judgment meter, which I felt was external, but Mary suggested that I may have brought it inside. She's right. How incongruent. I have been using the world's exterior measure on my interior self. I can't think of a more hopeless and destructive combination. No wonder that, for years, I've felt beaten up. Indulging in one of my vices, horror, I watched an episode of the new Rosemary's Baby. A very pregnant Rosemary remarked that she felt like her baby was fighting her. I have felt similarly about my body. That's probably where the comparison ends. Father Thomas Keating writes, of course in one of this week's meditations, of dismantling the false self feeling "like interior warfare" and resistance mounting to "faith, determination and incessant prayer."

I wonder if limitation and paralysis were my ways of controlling the fibromyalgia, which made me feel completely out of control. Is it human nature to need to control? Perhaps it was the false self meddling.

Mary filled her ceramic burner with oil, asking me to hand her a napkin to wipe up spillage. We walked to the cavernous kithen, where she pulled out a stainless steel bowl in which to conduct our burning, then to the lovely terrace overlooking the Little Miami River. As I ripped off each page and fed it to the fire, Mary had me read my notations, then say I was releasing it. I was in a somewhat dreamlike state, but complied and understood the significance. Then we talked about how when we release one thing, something else takes it place. "What is that?" she asked. Hummmm ... "faith, trust, confidence, health, joy and Spirit," I said then. Mary nudged me to include hope. A good call. Now, I would like to add adundance, grace, peace and love. These remind me of the fruits of the Spirit.

As we neared the end of the sacrifice, I commented on the whiteness of the ashes, as if purified by the fire. The day before I'd worked with my shaman and experienced white lava flowing down from my third eye throughout my body. I believe the two are related.

After the last page burned, Mary asked me to notice how small all of these fears had been. "Just look at those small, little ashes. They're nothing compared to the power you thought they had." She'd said. They just crumbled to nothingness as I tossed them over the terrace and down to the river.

With these gone, I desire to be alert and present to noticing how my new tenants (faith, trust, confidence, joy, Spirit, hope, abundance, grace, peace and love) feel. I'm betting quite the opposite of limited and paralyzed. How about open, limitless, flexible and ready for Spirit?

• What in my life would I like to release?
• What is holding me captive?
• What would I choose as replacements?
• How can I burn these?
• How will that make more room for Spirit?


I've been blaming
the fibromyalgia,
giving it credit
and power

letting it
and my false
self dictate
and block

and, as I
undertake
the purification
process and
burn them
away,

I clear room
for more of
Spirit
within

Listen to this post:

Lent, retreat, purification and truth

Growing up mostly Methodist and tuning out as a young adult, I didn't really get Lent. All of the Catholic kids at school were either complaining or comparing what they were giving up. Usually easy stuff like chewing gum or cotton candy. Nothing very persuasive or impressive. And there was the awful cafeteria fish we were served on Fridays in public school during this season.

And, I hadn't really considered it since except I am slowly building a relationship with a wonderful Episcopal minister (I think that's the right term; Mary doesn't strike me as a priest). She asked me once if I wanted her to "unpack" lent and I, politely, said yes, thinking what new could you possibly tell me. Plenty, I discovered. Wish I'd tuned in a little closer at first and taken notes. What I do recall is that she talked about 40 being such a pivotal number in the Bible: Noah's rainy 40 days and nights and the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. Google showed many more examples. Then she spoke of lent in terms of a retreat time. Then, my ears and heart perked up. I always relish the idea of retreat, whether it's away or in my studio. She explained it as a time to be silent, still and listen to what challenges Spirit presents.

And today's Thomas Keating meditation fits right in:

"Biblical Desert: Interior PurificationSit alone in silence ...Lamentations: 3:28
Lent is the season in which the church as a whole enters into an extended retreat. Jesus went into the desert for forty days and forty nights. The practice of Lent  is a participation in Jesus' solitude, silence and privation ... The biblical desert is not so much a geographical location – a place of sand, stones or sagebrush – as a process of interior purification leading to complete liberation from the false-self system with its programs for happiness that cannot possibly work ..."
– March 4 from The Daily Reader for Contemplative Living: Excerpts from the Works of Father Thomas Keating

It's as if he knew my word for the year, the one Mary handed me last week, is purification.

Yesterday's meditation focused on how the Gospel calls us to be responsible for our emotional life, recognizing its weaknesses and how it interferes with us truly listening to others. "The work of Lent," he writes, "is to face the unconscious values that underlie the emotional programs for happiness and to change them ... with a discipline of contemplative prayer and action."

I love that, within the established church – perhaps not mine – there is a season for this work! You know, on the surface, Catholics and Quakers appear very different. Symbolism and ritual have no place in physical Quakerism and yet, when you look to the mystical aspects of both faiths, there is so much similarity. I'd guess that 75 percent of the "convinced"Quakers I know (not born into it) were Catholic. I've even heard people call themselves Quatholic!

I did pay attention to yesterday's message about taking responsibility for our emotions and their programs of happiness. I pulled out the microscope and looked at that coupled with this notion of purification. What I saw was sobering. I have built a life for so long based on pain, injury and woundedness. My lens was colored and I hadn't even noticed. At bedtime, a book I borrowed eons ago, called out to me. "The Prosperity Secrets of the Ages" (Catherine Ponder) was loaned to me by my wise spiritual friend Char. I had attempted it once before, agreeing with the first few pages, but putting it away. Last night, I couldn't put it down. It's the next piece in my purification puzzle. Blessing is God' way, cursing is not. I hadn't thought of my point of view as cursing, but it has been. I have been living with a filter of negativity. Understandable after 15 years of chronic pain, but no longer tolerable.

I began saying all manner of blessings last night and slept the best I have in over a week. Tuesday lap time is often prayer time, so midway through, I began blessing everyone and everything I could think of. With 88 laps, I still had more to bless!

I'm achy today, but it's so much easier to tolerate with this perspective of blessing. It seems like the self-fulfilling prophesy. Could it really be so simple?

I have chuckled over the past weeks as I hammer out a "Pain as Spiritual Teacher" workshop, beginning to see that my nemesis, woundedness and pain, is becoming my gift. Ah, the Wounded Healer!

• What meaning has Lent held for me?
• How has that changed over time?
• How can it become contemplative for me?
• To what challenge is God calling me right now?
• How am I examining that in stillness, prayer and silence?


no time for
my normal
get-away
January retreat

sick and
missed Mary's
new-year session

knowing I
need this so
centrally

and learning
there is a
season for it

the time I
always seek
rebirth and
resurrection

Listen to this post:

Dance between comfort and challenge

Seems I am living on a trajectory of learning. A sliver of finger has appeared and I am very grateful. The compounding lessons have opened or, perhaps, I am opened. All is so intertwined, I don't know beginning from end.

Things began to unravel Wednesday afternoon, the day I awoke feeling a bit under the weather and, well, cranky. I almost put off the appointment I scheduled a month ago with the Episcopal pastor who is walking me through a New Year's retreat I had missed because of  touch of the flu. This was a follow-up to my work. I spent an afternoon braving through the first half, identified blessings, burdens and patterns of last year, stymied to forge ahead to this year because I had not selected my "angel" word. As Mary says, my new word for the year. I was anxious, but asked her to select. We could never quite cross paths, so opted for a quick check-in Wednesday and time for me to get my word.

I wanted to know what it was, but she said most people like to tangibly receive their word, so I'd have to physically retrieve it. She was playfully teasing me, but serious. I am patient.

When I wandered into the beautiful, large church, but one that also feels like home as my girls attended pre-school and many summers of Bible school here, Mary caught up with me and we entered her office together. She handed me an envelope. Gingerly, I fingered it, neatly undoing the glue. The art card contained an owl and Mary had taken the time to look up the entomology of the word in several languages. Before I got to that, however, the small piece stamped with an angel and my word fell out. Purification, it read. Not what I was expecting. "I've done this many times and no one has every had that word,"Mary said. "Thats' why I checked it meaning."

Wow, I wondered. what does this mean? Grateful to get my word, it took awhile for my real reaction to take hold, which it did as I left her office. Tears welled. "Really, God, this word? I am so tired of this journey of constant spiritual discomfort and learning!"

Mary's interpretation:

"It's root word is 'pure’

 which in old Fr. 'pur' meant

simple, absolute and unalloyed.

"in Latin ‘purus’ meant

clean, clear, unmixed, unadorned

"in Sanskrit 'pavate'

mean tcleanse

"Middle Irish 'ur' meant

fresh, new

"Old German ‘fower’

meant to sift”

What she hadn't known is that Catherine, my name, means pure. How could I say it doesn't fit?

We talked about it a bit and when I told her the word I had distilled last year's lessons into was truth, I could see purification as the next step. Thanks, Saturn, I murmured sarcastically, remembering how that planet rules my sun (Capricorn) and, in alchemic terms, means the transformation of lead to gold via a deep, interior process.

"Pivotal for me last year,"I found myself confessing though not for the first time, "was an experience at a Quaker mystics retreat when a woman I hadn't known gently touched below my windpipe and told me that's where she experienced the seed of God. In the moment, I did for the first time. I could always identify it in others, but failed to do so in myself." That's where last year's word of truth emanated.

So with the truth, it's time to do some sifting, casting off and, as Mary said, seeing with new eyes. "It can mean for the scales to fall from your eyes, for you to have new insight and perspective, to see Reality."

I rallied myself that evening to make my monthly archetypal astrology group. I can't imagine missing and I could not wait to share this word with them. Atypically, when we checked in, I began. Lots of nods because they knew it fit my path. The night's topic was discerning our soul's path from our ascendent, the sign that was rising when we were born. Char, a dear, wise spiritual friend and leader/collector of this group had prepared an affirmation for each of us based on our ascendent. Mine resonated very closely with my purification word.

"The deeper purpose of Cancer (my ascendant)," a  handout from Char read, "is to selflessly nourish others through compassion and unconditional love. To realize the highest purpose, the Cancer Soul needs to transcend fear ... this is achieved by keeping one's attention on one's inner light, which encourages it to grow."

Yes, I sighed when I read this. And my task this year is to burn off the fear and doubt, that which no longer belongs – purification.

Affirmation of Cancer

I was born under the sign of Cancer

I accept all its power, potential, and gifts

for I am the star in a sea of stars,

I am the water and the moon,

I provide the haven, the safe haven, in the universe.

My deep and powerful emotions

enable me to be the Universal Nourisher

so that all that's new may grow

safe and loved, secure, well understood and cherished.

I am the womb of the new.

I am patient, the Master of the Ties of emotions and moods.

Through my amazing ability to focus power and attention,

I easily navigate the ebb and flow of emotional atmospheres.

I induce and bring new life up from the deepest caverns of consciousness

into the bright light and power of the Sun.

I give birth to new life on the upper spirals of existence.

I ascend and the Sun shines on me,

because I, above all, below all,

nourish the present moment and protect it,

harbour it so it may be cherished later.

I am emotionally brave, magnetic, strong, and persistent.

I care and I share and so people trust and depend on me.

I make them feel safe and secure, needed and protected.

I hold the family of man together. I am that unity.

I rule with a loving, loyal sympathy

the public mass consciousness on the planet.

My love is so exquisite for all men and women that I overcome

and meet all challenges. I am brave, and I feel

I have more energy than I need and can change rhythm at will.

Though I respect tradition,

my quiet power can transform all that is old into the new.

I am prosperous, self-reliant, shrewd, thrifty and methodical.

I nourish and cherish my destiny;

I can change my destiny

Now I choose to shape my future

in a balanced dance between comfort and challenge

http://astrologybybeverlee.homestead.com/CancerAffirmation.html

My dance IS between comfort and challenge and where I find my partner, Spirit.

• What word would I choose to describe last year?
• And, this year?
• Where am I in the dance between comfort and challenge?
• Where do I find God in that?
• What have I learned about myself or journey recently?


back and forth
my pendulum swings

sometimes I am
way off kilter

others, I barely
move

it had felt like
utter chaos,
me, the pawn

until I recognized
my steps were always
guided,
I had been
invited

to the dance
between comfort and challenge

 Listen to this post: