Every morning, the first thing I do is come downstairs, open the blinds and thank the Creator for my view of the trees and creek. The lush, varying greens of Summer are a favorite, although those first explosions of Spring also take my breath away and the white etchings of snow-covered winter branches are the highest form of art, and the brilliant orange, yellow golds of Fall are ridiculously spectacular.
This weekend marks 13 years of living here, and I have loved the view each day of those many years.
Opening the blinds is my morning prayer. I’ve woven many forms of continual prayer into this home.
How many hours have I spent on the deck, watching the many busy chipmunks, the albino squirrels and their common grey cousins, the cardinals and woodpeckers and occasional hummingbird?
How many moments of crisis or heartbreak have I paced the driveway, arms raised to the trees, imploring their guidance and protection?
Often, I place my hands on the walls and say thank you.
Some evenings, when I’m walking up the stairs to bed, I see myself doing so throughout time, imagine my ghost gliding up and down the stairs into infinity.
Echoes of a little girl, friends and family gathering, Christmas carols fill each room.
Is it unhealthy to love a home so much, an apartment I don’t even own, a simple, aging duplex in the city?
The basement has a cupboard where my dog liked to sleep. The crayon sign my daughter made proclaiming his private space is still scotch-taped to the door. He died upstairs as I held him and I can point to the spot out front where he raised his head and luxuriously breathed in the autumn breeze for the last time on his final walk.
Today I swept the back deck, also a practice of prayer, and then lifted my eyes to the cobwebs reaching up the corners of the building, around the windowsills. Old and catching leaves.
I swept them down with satisfaction until I saw a spider scurry away and then another. Then I continued sweeping but with un-ease filling my gut as I took down their homes, maybe even killed them. This is part of the prayer, the attention to each moment, how I affect each being around me, how I am affected by each being, each place.
This place, my home for 13 years, has held me with a loving energy throughout all the joys and suffering that a decade-plus can bring. I’m a big weirdo, a sappy cornball – I know! But this home has nurtured my contemplative spirit more than any other place on earth.
Then around midnight, I was getting ready for bed when I heard the owls hooting.
They’ve been coming by this creek house for about a year now, the hooting loud even through airport proof windows. I finished what I was doing, taking my time.
Then I stepped outside onto the driveway, hearing hoots out front on the creek when suddenly something swept over me from behind, from the backyard. It swept over me and towards the creek (towards its owl lover, perhaps?) and in the rays of the street light I saw a feather drifting down, landing in the darkness, a small, slight feather I quickly retrieved.
After that, I stood on the front lawn for about half an hour, the blues long gone, the 2 owls flying to trees on either side of me, sometimes talking to each other, sometimes looking at me in silence.
Pandemic blues seemed all the smaller, more fleeting as I stood on the grass, in the dark, positioned between endless cycles, filling with ageless knowing, a part of infinite wisdom.
From The Wheel of Change Tarot by Alexandra Genetti
Imagine yourself on a sunny day standing in a waterfall. The
water is warm but refreshing. It cascades and envelops you, filling you with
love and deep peace, washing away your thoughts and revealing an expansiveness that
flows from your soul. This water is God.
You can imagine God as a being who created the world, a father,
a mother, a web of energy interlocking us, a waterfall seeping into you. Any
form of what I call God or you
call Oneness, the Universe or Mystery comes from the imagination and yet is real,
coming alive through sacred experiences and stories.
Some of us have been lucky enough to experience moments of true
peace, true oneness, true joy, connection, knowing. We name this experience – I
name mine God. The experience becomes the touchstone of our faith. It carries a
feeling so profound that it shifts our understanding of all life, our life, all
that is. It orients us deeper into love and gratitude.
We want to tell others about it, to share the experience but we don’t know how. How to put words to Mystery without sounding trite? Love, peace, blah, blah, blah. But we try, I try, I’m trying now with this little blog, with the children and teens I work for at church because I hope more people open to this experience.
And I’m trying to do it while being real. I experience God and the centeredness that comes with it – but I also experience irritation, fear, depression. Sometimes I’m thoughtless, impatient, rude. Plus, I’m a Southside Chicago girl at heart – I talk rough, am too confrontational, have a dry, dark sense of humor. I’m rebellious. I’m still me.
I also have
this waterfall of sacredness that I sometimes notice enveloping me. I draw from
it even in these scary times of disease and distancing. It helps me be kinder,
less fearful.
There is sometimes (often?) irony to be found in the reflectiveness and goal-setting of January. I rang in the New Year bemoaning how creatively on-fire – to the point of agitation – I was in 2019 for a vision that has met only roadblocks. Then today, I came across my New Year’s 2015 intention to feel *inspired* moving forward and had to laugh. It seems my intention kicked into high gear a few years after I had forgotten about it, and that I probably should have added something about “accomplished” to the mix.
Our intentions – whether we remember or are conscious of them – do matter. Creative inspiration and expression is something I value. Some of my happiest times have been dreaming up and then bringing to life the wanderings of my imagination. New Years 2015 I was still in the midst of emergencies (that I thought were over, ha!) that required me to squelch creative ideas and projects – and it was 2019 provided the freedom to dive back into them.
Yes, I met some frustrations – but looking back at my reflections and intentions reminded me that creativity is a core value and that it was a gift of 2019 to have the time and space to be inspired. Moving forward into 2020, I will do what I can to bring my project to life AND appreciate the process regardless of the outcome.
What are YOUR core values? What are your intentions moving forward into 2020? Join me for an afternoon of clarity, reflection and visioning at my Moving Forward in Sync with Your Soul workshop on January 18, 2020. Click here for more information and to register.
(Throughout this post, I use different names for the conscious sacred energy that exists for many people: God, Higher Power, Spirit, Universe, Divine Love, Source. Notice those names that resonate, those that annoy or shut you down)
When I was asked to lead a weekend retreat on Gratitude last winter, I knew right away I wanted to focus on Suffering – and how we can retain a grateful heart even when horrible things happen to us or those we love.
After all, it’s not very challenging to feel gratitude when everything is swell.
Telling people Suffering was my intended approach to Gratitude was often met with a blank stare.
Oprah and self-help/personal growth writers have done a good job teaching how a grateful attitude can change lives and bringing gratitude practices (gratitude journals, etc) to the mainstream.
For people who believe in a conscious sacred energy, gratitude goes beyond an attitude and becomes a prayer, a conversation with Source. Contemplatives seek to be in this conversation continually, able to praise Source in every moment…..even the rotten ones.
Sounds ridiculous to some people, but let me explain the nature of a contemplative’s relationship with Spirit. Here’s a fancy spectrum I made to show different kinds of relationship:
On the left are those who believe that God is in control of everything that happens. The poster child for this belief is the guy who CNN interviews every hurricane season to ask why he stayed put during the mandatory evacuation. “Because if God decides my number is up today, then my number is up whether I follow the evacuation or not!” You may or may not think this way- but you surely have met those who do.
On the right are those who believe in God, but do not experience God as active or present in their daily lives. They might believe the Bible is the word of God, follow God’s rules and expect to meet God in the afterlife but they don’t experience God as a loving, active presence in the here and now.
In the center are those who believe that God is in a living, two-way relationship with them. How I think of this is that
God/the Universe is constantly luring us to be our most authentic self, giving us signs,
nudging us towards alignment with our deepest values and living our unique gifts in a way that increases love, beauty and healing in the world.
In another post, I can describe HOW Divine Love communicates with us, lures us, gives us signs, etc… but for now let’s just say I believe this communication is continual, and my “job” is to try to be present to it as often as possible.
Being open to this continual conversation can keep us afloat even as we seem to drown in a miserable situation.
It helps to first understand that Source is not to blame for the misery.
The Source that sparked the birth of the Universe communicates with us but does not control us or our circumstances. The Source is Pure Love and pure love never controls, coerces or manipulates. Therefore, Source “self-limits divine power.”
This explains how Spirit does not cause nor intervene when humans are cruel to each other. Spirit is there trying to lure each of us away from war, hatred, abuse and towards loving one another.
Spirit is there comforting us when we suffer at the hands of others or from our own poor choices. We can hold onto this thread of love and genuinely feel grateful for it, even as we suffer.
(From a Christian trinitarian perspective, Source gave completely to us by embodying human form (serving as a living example of how to love while also experiencing human pain so that we know we are not alone in our human suffering) and the form of Holy Spirit (which continues to inspire, comfort, counsel and lure us into Love.)
What about suffering that stems not from the free will of humans, but from natural causes? Diseases, disasters, fatal mishaps…. how can Pure Love allow the cruelty of nature?
Pure Love is also the Creator, the spark that ignites the unfolding of the cosmos and sets evolution into motion. Divine creation has endless diversity – and one thing we can know for sure if we believe Creation reveals the mind of the Creator is that diversity is key to life.
Infinite diversity unfolding through creation (and perhaps all creativity) requires something important: chance.
“Biology wants a wild mix” is what a doctor explained to Heather Kirn Lanier in this powerfully profound essay. Lanier’s daughter was born with a debilitating chromosomal syndrome.
Chromosomes come together then pull apart in a process where a lot can go wrong – but this process is also what allows for the most random mix of ancestral chromosome pairs. In other words, chromosomal syndromes happen because of the same chance that allows for the greatest diversity between humans. (Lanier beautifully describes how she loves her daughter for being her unique self – syndrome and all, even though the syndrome causes suffering.)
No two people are the same. Even identical twins are born with different fingerprints because of random variations in how amniotic fluid swirls around them. Chance allows the biodiversity in our oceans and rainforests. It also allows cancers and hurricanes and lightening strikes.
The price we pay for the chance that creates our own uniqueness and the immense beauty of our wildly diverse planet and cosmos – is that we suffer.
(Lanier asks if we really want to be perfect, non-suffering robots and suggests what a soulless world that would be.)
In sum, suffering happens because of 1) free will which is necessary in love and 2) chance which is necessary for diversity.
Of course, I am not grateful for the pain of an excruciating migraine, or for my child’s sobbing grief or for a dear friend’s premature death. I am not grateful for terrible things happening, but I am grateful for Pure Love being alongside me as they happen.
At the very least, I am grateful for my present breath, and the one after that.
But we die! Why do we have to die?
Well, as a hardcore procrastinator, I wonder how much I would accomplish, create, do for others, if I knew I had infinity to do it. Seriously! I kind of appreciate having a dead- line (ha!) in which to add some love, beauty and healing to the world.
And to make me even more grateful for the breaths I still have.
Acknowledgements: This post owes much to the brilliant theological discussion about free will, chance and suffering in Sidney Callahan’s Women Who Hear Voices: The Challenge of Religious Experience as well as the above mentioned essay Superbabies Don’t Cry by Heather Kirn Lanier. There is also a nod to Richard Rohr’s writings on the divine unfolding of evolution.
Right now, we are the woman draped in roses in this painting. The trumpets are sounding for the dawn of the new year. 2017 crawls away. Soon, we will have no choice but to get up, get moving and create 2018.
But first, we rest in the liminal space of what was and what will be.
Perhaps my reflections from this liminal space will bring to mind gifts you received in the passing year…
In 2017, I joined the team of spiritual directors at Loyola Spirituality Center in St Paul, MN and listened to the spiritual journeys of people ranging in age from 18 to 67, from atheists to Christian clergy.
It’s hard to articulate just how much I love this work I do, how much I love each person who comes to my office or home to share glimpses of their heart.
While the outside world of 2017 was ugly on many levels, my work as a spiritual director keeps me tapped into the beauty of the human heart. In one way or another, each seeker reveals to me their earnest desire to be more… (genuine, balanced, whole, loving, mindful, thoughtful, open-hearted, joyful, close to the Divine, aligned with their true gifts and purpose and so on.)
It is this ache to embody the fullness of who we really are that is so beautiful, and I get to witness it daily.
Also in 2017, I spent months assisting a friend through her dying process. I walked her through her fears, held her during her final night and the next day I offered a blessing during her bedside service. I stayed there in her house with her loved ones all through the next day too, and when I finally emerged out into the public – a grocery store, to be exact – I was nearly knocked over with love for the first stranger I saw. It was weird, because at first I pictured this stranger dead, and then I saw his light shining within and all around him
and then my heart felt “we are exactly the same” – this man of a different age, race, gender and size than me – we all have these bodies that we carry around and we are all the same light.
I guess spending so much time in that veil between the physical and spiritual realm gave me a glimpse of this reality in a visceral, visible way. That is the greatest gift I received in 2017, and I credit the expansively loving nature of my beautiful friend who died.
In sum, 2017 cracked open my heart and more fully connected me to the hearts of others. That was not my goal or new year’s resolution, it is just what happened. Less poetic things happened too – financially, physically, etc – but my expanded heart and the gift of a vocation that makes it beat louder and stronger all the time keeps everything else in perspective.
What gift of awareness did 2017 bring you?
Happy New Year, Everyone and
may 2018 bring you closer to embodying the fullness of who you really are!
Are you interested in trying a spiritual direction session?
I tend to be much more reflective during this time of the waning sun.
I journal, read through old journals, sort through old photos, paint, meditate, revisit favorite well-worn books, think about what I want to experience in the new year and so on.
The moon from my front porch
In other words, I go deep – reminiscing, ruminating, then reformulating how I want to spend my time on this earth, in this body.
It’s part of living in the rhythm of the seasons, keeping in step with the encroaching darkness.
How do you keep in step with the rhythm of the seasons?
Back on Halloween, my friends and I came together to honor Death, the dead and the season of dying and letting go. We can’t hide from Death, so we might as well face it together, with wine and good food, sharing by candlelight and even a little shouting under the moon.
My dining room on Halloween
Letting go was more than just a metaphor for me this Fall, as it was the time I had to let my daughter move into young adulthood and I adjusted to a newly empty nest. It was also when I accompanied a dear friend as she transitioned into hospice care.
Face it – we have no choice but to let go – of youth, health, loved ones, certain ideas about ourselves and what we’re here to do, rigid plans – all of it has to go sooner or later.
Ashes to ashes and so on.
From a Halloween Puppet Festival
Halloween confronts death, and the Fall season with its falling leaves reminds us to let go of whatever is dying in our lives.
Then November comes, Thanksgiving in the USA, and we express our gratitude for whatever has remained.
Grateful turkey
I let go as my daughter moved into her next stage of life and then on Thanksgiving she and I came together and celebrated our familiar, yet evolving relationship with the familiar foods and rituals of Thanksgivings past. It was nice.
Now Winter Solstice is approaching. The Holiday Season. The days are getting so dark and we are moving so far from the sun we fear we may never see it again.
This darkness drives us a little mad, and many start to maniacally shop, throw holiday parties and do all they can to be merry, merry, merry.
Some, like me, settle into the darkness, appreciating how snow silences the outdoors, how the quiet turns me inward until I find that the whole universe is inside of myself – the history of the world lies in wait to be found deep inside of me.
Oh, I like to make a little merry too. I go to some parties. I buy gifts. I sing loud in the car to Elvis’ Merry Christmas, Baby. I put up a big, fat Frasier Fir and fill it with lights and beads. I get out the ornaments made by my daughter, from my own childhood, and from my grandmother’s tree. I bake gingerbread cake.
I enjoy all of that. I like to put some light and sparkle into the darkness, and make it cozy with warm smells and familiar music.
But I also enjoy making plenty of time to settle into the darkness. Reminiscing, ruminating, and reformulating. Going down deep where I can feel the Divine and appreciate that the Sun is always there, even when we can’t see it.
My daughter will move away and still be my daughter. My friend will leave her body and still be my friend. I know these things by going deep into the darkness where true faith, peace and calm are found.
The sun will take command of the sky again soon, but in the meantime, let’s appreciate the darkness and all that we can find there.
I’m watching an American Experience episode about Walt Disney on PBS. He certainly was a flawed human, but I’m fascinated by his early designs and models of Disneyland and how deeply satisfied he was when his vision finally came to fruition. He kept an apartment underneath Disneyland’s Main Street USA, and could be found walking the park early mornings in his bath robe.
Six months after Prince’s sudden death, people are flying across the globe to visit his home and studio, hear the music he was creating and absorb his energy. Just as he had hoped.
A few days ago, I met with a dear 90 year old friend, who after serving as an important spiritual and meditation mentor for decades in our city, is retiring out of town. She presented me with beautifully printed booklets of her writings and icon paintings.
Meanwhile, a dear longtime friend, my age, has entered into hospice care. The trees around her house are filling with ribbons placed by friends and loved ones, each bearing a blessing for her. Messages are pouring into the house, telling stories of how she has impacted the lives of others and positively influenced her community. I read some of the messages aloud to her, and she smiled.
As I sit here only middle aged and in fine health, I can’t help but wonder:
What can I do for my loved ones and my community?
What can I create that will surpass me?
I also wonder about the connection between the quality of the relationships we nurtured, the work we’ve done in our communities, the creativity we brought to life – and our comfort with death and dying.
After weeks of hospitals and family crisis…today was a new day. A better day.
It started this morning as I was sitting on my deck drinking tea and reading the paper, when an older woman on a little indoor-type scooter, scooted right up to me in the backyard. This was very unusual, as I live in a secluded spot at the end of a driveway that’s about a block long.
I didn’t even hear her, I just suddenly saw her head scooting by the rail of my deck.
She was looking all around and saying “What a secluded spot you have here!” “What big, beautiful trees you have!” “Your flowers are beautiful!” “What a perfect place to sit and have your tea!”
She was like an angel dropping down into my cup of caffeine and saying “LOOK! THERE IS BEAUTY ALL AROUND YOU! JUST LOOK!”
Of course, she also could have been casing the joint for a future crime spree, but I was so happy to have this unexpected visitor, I grinned the whole time we talked about flowers and trees and squirrels and then she just scooted away, back down the driveway.
Afterwards, I walked by the creek and saw this autumn leaf dancing in the breeze. I watched it twirl and spin and then stand still in mid-air! Ah, it was hanging on by a thread – an invisible spider web thread.
It reminded me of the thread that holds onto me, even when I’m too tired to hold onto it.
I watched this magical orange leaf dancing on its thread, took pics and felt grateful that I am held with a sense of purpose and peace.
I next saw the sun sparkling off the water just so and thought “I am okay.” I have no idea what the future holds. I worry sick for the crisis in my family, oh, how I worry.
But I don’t have to worry alone because there are angels all around, scooting right up to me and reminding me of the beauty and hope in the world. And there is an invisible thread that connects me to all that is.
What unexpected moments have you seen as a love note from the universe?
Prisons are on my mind these days, both the literal prisons where law enforcement confines people, and the metaphorical prisons which make us feel that we are trapped outside of the life we wish to live.
A young member of my extended family is currently awaiting prison sentencing – he is possibly looking at 25 years to life. The truth is he was born in a sort of prison – a crack house, to be exact – and was not given the care, education or even basic nutrition to develop his mind in a way that would lead him anywhere but to a life of crime and incarceration. At this point, the best we can hope for him is a correctional facility that will at least provide safety, access to education and decent food. His story is a devastating one.
I, on the other hand, was born free. Sure, I have a few complaints about my childhood, but the reality is that I was given tools to develop my mind and create a life of my choosing. Did I always see it that way, though? Or did I allow myself to feel limited by prisons of my own making?
There were definitely periods of my life when I lived as if I was in a sort of prison. Like when I held onto the desk job way past it bringing me any fulfillment, or when I stayed in a romantic relationship that was harmful to my spirit.
What situations are currently confining your spirit? Can you break free of them?
How can you more fully live and appreciate the freedom that you have?
Overall though, I think I used my freedom to create a meaningful life and positively impact some of the people around me.
I could have done better and the great news is that I can still do better!
After all, I am still mostly free – with a few exceptions, like the health issue that prevents me from air travel. But I’m mostly free and while it’s common for health issues to create some limitations as we age, it is even more common for debilitating mindsets to confine us throughout our lives.
What limiting mindset have you placed around your life?
Some common self-created prisons I see around me are: deep-seated beliefs that we lack the ability to accomplish what we hope, anxieties that paralyze and lead to inaction, and resentments that cloud our judgment and make us feel that change is not worth the effort.
The Washington Post recently published an article with fascinating interviews of people who were released from long prison sentences one year ago after being granted clemency by President Obama. I highly recommend reading the article, because it reveals an array of attitudes and approaches to new found freedom that can get you thinking about your own life, your own freedom and how you do or don’t appreciate it.
For example, one of the interviewees, Alex William Jackson, who was sentenced in 1999, said:
“It’s natural to be angry. But when I went to prison and had time to sit down and really reflect and internalize the principles of religion, it had a transforming effect on my life. I didn’t take lightly the blessing and gift that the president gave me in commuting my sentence. I came home and I was immediately able to do the things I envisioned doing when I was incarcerated — being there for my mother, being able to establish myself in the community.”
So the question is: What blessings are YOU taking lightly? What are you envisioning for the next stage of your life?
Another interviewee, Norman Brown, sentenced in 1993, said:
“In April, I was able to go to the arboretum. It was magnificent. We went to the cherry blossoms…When I was incarcerated I would see movies and read different books, and I would say, I want to try that. Walking on the beach, the walking through the parks. The eating out around a pond…Being right up on a flower and smelling it and breaking it off and maybe giving it to your woman. These things, when I get a chance to do them, I’m going to do them.”
How are you making the most of the freedoms you have been granted in life?
I am so fortunate, because I am not writing this from a jail cell or hospital bed, and my health is pretty good right now. Today I am going to use this freedom to swim, write this essay, help my daughter with something, and do some research for a project I’m working on.
You’re free!
What are you doing with this freedom you have right now?
