Something I never needed

Last session, I told my shamanic counselor that I wanted off the roller coaster. He responded that I had been on one all the time, 17 years, that he had known me. That's because you didn't know me before kids or fibromyalgia, I replied.

Well, I got lurched again last week by a job rejection that I cared about more than I had realized. Everything sounded so perfect and it would have tied up so many loose ends. I want a simpler, more abundant life and this seemed like the ticket.

I am also smarting from a friend's offer to put in a good word for me that never materialized; it may have made a difference.

I want to know why God didn't want me to have that job. How did I miss the mark? Was I aiming too low? This was a mid-level position at the salary I started at 20 years ago. Less stress, I hoped. Would I have had the flexibility to manage my fibromyalgia? Would I have come home as exhausted as I had after three hours from the second interview? My spiritual director says to look where the energy is. There was none when I left that interview.

Fortunately, two days after I received the voice mail saying they were going with "another finalist," I had planned an overnight college-visit and trip with my 17-year-old. "Maybe they just liked someone else better," she had said after the bad news. On the drive, she probed deeper, asking why I wanted that job. "Is that what you really want to do?"

"Well, no," I confided. "I really want to be a successful writer, do workshops and creative nurture," I continued. But that's hardly possible my inner critic shouted.

I had gotten that far in another round of interviews for a job I knew wasn't right, when the interviewer said: "You're a good writer. A really good writer."

I seem to need that external affirmation. I am tired of working in isolation, though writing really isn't a team sport. The response to my daughter's question is one of the few times  I have verbally articulated my dream. Is this where Spirit is pushing?

Both my mother, sister-in-law, husband and close spiritual friend were more upset than I at the non job offer. It did feel like the world's rejection for awhile. I used to always get the job ... from newspaper ads to which hundreds responded. What's different now?

Of course all of this was transpiring during Lent and the Easter Season, the time of death and resurrection. I read a Max Lucado meditation on Silent Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter, when all of the action happens. Deep things happen in the silence, he'd written, between death and resurrection.

Sitting in worship Sunday, I wondered what I was dying from. I had listened to a snippet of NPR's Fresh Air on the way over and an author was talking about Jewish pessimism, passed on by his parents, products of the Holocaust and Depression. Worry prepares you not to be disappointed, he'd said he learned, then unlearned. I remember reading that worry is a prayer for disaster. Can I let the negativity and worry in my life die, I wondered.

I opened the bulletin to the Centering Down section and was struck with the first passage

... the seed you sow does not come to life unless it has first died; and what you sow is not the body that shall be, but a bare grain, of wheat perhaps or something else; and God gives it the body of his choice, each seed its own particular body ... So it is with the resurrection of the dead: what is sown as a perishable thing is raised imperishable. Sown in humiliation, it is raised in glory, sown in weakness, it is raised in power; sown as a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body." 1 Corinthians 15:35

Falling/pastel on paper

Sown in humiliation, sown in weakness ... that sounds like my current condition. I let all of that sink in and meandered to the place where I was about to die, where I was about to let go, when I was jolted back by the thoughts of leaving things unfinished. I do think something died there on Easter Sunday in that worship.

Pretty soon, a Friend rose and talked about how the Egyptians had measured the weight of a dead person's heart to see how much remorse there had been and how, with Jesus, God taught that the physical body didn't matter in resurrection. She said a lot of other smart things, but what I really remember is her booming voice bellowing "all God want us to know is that he loves us. I love you." I heard God in her speaking to me. Broken and disappointed and struggling, God loves me. I so needed to hear that, really hear it from human lips.

Our minister ended her message quoting the Gnostic Gospel of Philip: "You must resurrect while in this life."

I do feel as if I am resurrecting, that something died and something else is birthing. That, perhaps, I can leave the worldly world and its lure of office jobs behind and move more into the spiritual world of trusting Spirit. My prayer is to trust in that process. To trust Spirit as my guide.

• When does my life seem like a roller coaster?
• How do I examine its cause?
• What spiritual practices support me?
• How do I move more into the spiritual realm?
• Can I resurrect while in this life?


sinking in
is so
satisfying

letting the
layers melt
and remembering

remembering
who I am
my origin

my source

and then I drift
almost as if
asleep

yet awake
deep
down inside

I sink

the lines blur
and I am falling
into release
death

until I shudder
and return

renewed and
missing
something

I never 
needed

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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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Gathering the pieces

Yesterday, we took our teen daughters to the county clerk of courts to begin the process of applying for their passports; we're traveling as a family this summer. I was caught off guard when the clerk asked us all to raise our hands and swear the photos we were handing over were actually our daughters.

Quakers don't take oaths or swear, I wanted to announce.

But there wasn't time and I'd already been admonished by my husband to behave and get this over quickly. He knew the clerk piqued my ire when she questioned the paper the photos were printed on and, with a scowl, asked if we'd taken our own. "I thought so," dripped out of the side of her mouth. She had no clue what a wonderful photographer had taken them AND paid full attention to all of the rules and regulations.

I merely raised my hand and said nothing, which seemed enough for her. Quakers believe in integrity and always telling the truth, so there's no need for an oath.

There are other things Quakers don't do and I missed growing up Methodist that I am just learning. Take the practice of Lent, for example. All I remember as a child were the candles (and I could be mixing up Lent and Advent; I can't recall any explanations), a new-color cloth on the cross and many sermons building up to Easter, when everyone dressed to the nines. The words seemed so ancient and removed from me and the dressing-up business, well, a giant mismatch to what I, even as a child, learned as the teaching of Jesus.

Because Quakers value every day as sacred, Easter is often not put on a pedestal, nor is it neglected. Ever since a Quaker mystics gathering last summer, I have been fixated on the cross and what it truly means to me and my life. I want to personalize its symbolism, not merely dismiss it as part of a rote story.

Interesting that Catholic priests and an Episcopal minister have gently nudged me in my exploration and search for truth. I regularly read Catholics Henri Nouwen and Richard Rohr's daily meditations. And Pastor Mary launched me on a New Year's retreat that has bled into Easter. She's the one who gave me the word "purification" as my mantra for this year, which seems like the ideal Lenten focus. Rohr brings the idea of the false self and being separated from God to life through Jesus' pre-Resurrection journey. And, Nouwen has helped me identify the mystical Jesus, or Christ energy as I call it, in myself. I feel as if I am on a similar journey of stripping away what is not of God with the exclusive purpose of becoming closer to union. There are also elements of absorbing the world's pain as Jesus soaked in universal sin and letting that action be transformational; surrendering to Spirit.

In an e-mail, I recently thanked Mary for her guidance and even my word. She responded that she was glad it was blessing me. Blessing me? I thought. I wrote backing saying, some days, it felt like work. Her wise response: "Yes, healing often feels like work, which is one of the very few reasons this kind of work can sometimes also be a blessing."

Not the answer I wanted to hear, but truthful, I understood.

Somewhere in all of this, I had a flash that instead of looking at my body separately (this health issue and that), I needed to consider it as a whole, much like the body of Christ.

But God has put the body together ...  so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. [I Corinthians: 24-6]

I understand that metaphorically, so why not physically, in my own body. Unity in my body, wow, what a concept! No fighting or battling, competing or quarreling. Just peace. 

Could this be a path to healing?

• What did my childhood faith neglect to teach me?
• What truths did I retain?
• Where do I find truth these days?
• How do I view the concept of resurrection?
• How is it applicable in my own life?


the division
IS false

this or that,
it says

until it drives
you into
submission

breaks you
up, spits you
out, helps you
believe you
are nothing

sometimes
only then,
can you
surrender

the pieces
to be picked
up and made
whole

by Spirit

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