On a recent night, I sat by some trees on Lake Michigan, the waves crashing so loud on rocks below me I’d have to yell to be heard over them. Fireflies flashing all around, clouds and stars swirling above, crickets chirping between crashes, mosquitos buzzing. A calm night with only a gentle breeze yet so much noise and movement: the bugs and birds, water, even the stars seemed loud.
I dissolved into it all. Nature so loud and always moving, changing. Not still. I’m part of nature, always moving, changing, transforming. My mind swirls with clouds and stars, flashing thoughts, nerves buzzing, moods loudly crashing and slamming into awareness.
It’s all one dance and I’m part of it.
Night after night, day after day, for 13 days, I experience the water’s constant change. Exploding loud and crashing waves or gentle ripples like a rocking cradle. Sometimes bright blue or shimmering green or moody grey.
I am a moody, moody person. Even by myself, on retreat, no conversations or internet or news and here comes a crash of joy, a wave of anger, a ripple of sadness. Ha! How freeing to let the waves roll over me, laugh at their bluster, see them dissolve on shore leaving behind either nothing or maybe a pebble, a rock, something to take a look at and see what its message is.
Every day and night for 13 days, I watched, prayed to, swam in and learned from the water. And not just any water: MY water.
How funny to be a visitor to this town in Wisconsin, my first time here, and yet this is MY lake, the Lake Michigan water that flowed through the pipes of my Chicago childhood home, hydrated and cleansed me. The sprinkler water my friend and I jumped through on hot summer days. The lake I told my problems to as a teen as soon as I could drive the 20-some minutes there, or as a young adult when I lived close enough to walk. The lake I swam in with friends or cried to alone. The very lake my grandfather fished, my great-grandparents lived by as soon as they got off the boat from Poland.
We recognize each other, the lake and I. This lake knows me, it knows my people, my ancestors and where I come from. It shows me that everything moves and changes, my mind buzzes, my moods come and go. Yet at my core, I am recognizable through the ages, a consistent presence, an essence, a stillness beneath the noise.
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.
When I was a little girl, my December ritual was to sit alone in our living room beside the twinkling tree lights and imagine myself into the coffee table manger scene. I visualized myself with the shepherds underneath a Bethlehem sky full of angels until the angels and the tiny God lying among the ox and cows felt real, became real to me. I wasn’t spiritually advanced, I did the same thing with the Santa’s Workshop pop-up scene that sprang to life when I opened our Ronco Christmas album cover. Both these imaginings were how I felt “The Christmas Spirit”
When I grew up, I experienced some heartbreaks that made the Christmas season too painful and I avoided much of it. Adopting my daughter and getting to play Santa for the first time dissolved those pains and I turned the car radio to the Christmas station. When O Holy Night played, I cried through the whole song knowing I was part of the weary world who at long last was given a thrill of hope.
Photo Credit Below
I unpacked the manger set from my childhood and imagined myself into the scene again – but now the rich metaphors of the annunciation, nativity and epiphany unveiled truths of my own life. These Christmas stories – together with long winter nights and a longing for the sun – are a powerful gateway into a deep part of my psyche. The part that holds my most painful wounds, my most naked need to be seen, valued and loved as well as my deepest capacity to fully love those around me.
Now I am a new grandma with a precious baby, a daughter and a son-in-spirit to love until my heart explodes. When I held my newborn grandson fresh from the womb – the angels singing at the Bethlehem birth became real for me in a whole new way, as did the desperate love of the parents and onlookers at the manger. My wounds still hurt, my needs still poke me with longing, my capacity for love keeps expanding – and the stories of Christmas and the returning sun still offer me beautiful new ways of exploring these truest yearnings of the human heart.
It is from this experience with the stories of Christmas that I created the Spiritual Imagination and the Nativity Series at Loyola Spirituality Center in St Paul starting Dec 4th, 2019. My intention is to carve out a time and space for participants to explore their own Christmas imaginings using music, art and guided reflections. Click the link for more info and to register.
Even if you’re not able to join us, I invite you to spend some quiet time with the sacred stories of the season exploring the rich metaphors they offer.
I’m very slowly making my way through the book It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn about how family trauma is passed down through generations.
Did you know that when mice are given an electric shock (mean scientists, I know) every time they smell cherry blossoms, their descendants TWO generations later will jump at that smell – even though it was only their grandparents who experienced that trauma! Lots of other real life human examples too (but that one intrigued me.)
Then I think about the state of our world -and how maybe all the unresolved family and ancestral trauma everyone’s lugging around is reaching a boiling point.
Would the world be different if more of us took responsibility for healing the wounds of our own families? Connecting with the family spirits – living or dead, imagining what we know of their lives, offering compassion, acknowledging their grief, anger or regret that we blindly carry inside ourselves -and then doing the work of healing.
Not turning a blind eye to what we pass onto our own kids, pretending everything is fine or feeling victimized or holding grudges against certain relatives or projecting judgments onto other people’s families – or any of the other ways we sidestep the hard work of our own healing – but actually doing the inner work, facing the family demons buried within.
Warning – it’s really hard! Lots of tough stuff to face, our own shadows, deep grief and pain we don’t want to see. So much easier to just stay in our comfort zones with good enough.
Maybe that’s why there’s so much anger, anxiety, depression choking the air these days.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? – can you see how trauma has rolled down through your family?
Do you think personal healing affects the larger world? (whether or not you have kids, or they’re grown or not?)
(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.
During the breaking newscast of the Notre Dame fire, the words
“They were creating a giant prayer…” in reference to the creation of the cathedral caught my attention.
I cried.
I cried again later during another news report which said, “Firefighters directed much of their efforts towards saving the artwork stored at the back of the cathedral.”
It moves me deeply to know that my fellow humans value art, beauty and history to the point of risking their lives.
Years ago, I cried while watching a documentary about Afghan professors rescuing art from the taliban. And while reading about US soldiers rescuing art from the nazis.
These acts of heroism speak volumes to me about what it means to be human and what it means to care about the legacy we offer future generations.
But
the people who cried on 4/15/19 and put their resources and power towards saving Notre Dame,
my people – the ones of European Christian ancestry,
allow corporate greed to destroy God’s art.
Indigenous peoples go to court to save the Amazon from oil company greed. Image Credit: Mitch Anderson/Amazon Frontlines
Imagine the state of our planet today if
those who claim to believe that God created the forests, valued natural Creation as much as the Creation of our greatest human artists.
Imagine too the state of the world if we recognized the Sacred in every culture.
What if we saw God in the history and traditions of every race and continent? What if those saving Notre Dame did all they could to stop the destruction of the Sacred in all its expressions around the globe?
During yesterday’s fire, I was privileged to know that the wealthy and powerful shared in my grief, and were doing all they could to stop the destruction of the Sacred art and history of my own spiritual ancestors.
Today I ask what if the wealthy and powerful did all they could to stop the destruction of the Earth and of all peoples?
I have quite a few spiritual direction clients in their 20s and that has me imagining what life might have been like if I had a spiritual director (or even knew they existed!) when I was that age.
How vividly I remember the energy and angst of launching after college! On fire to make a big splash in the world, while paralyzed with uncertainty about how to do it.
(It did not help that I had much less self-awareness than my
current millennial and post-millennial clients.)
I imagine Kay, Joanne, Liz, Joan – lovingly wise women I
know now were spiritual directors back then – entering my life, deeply
listening to my jumble of contradictory thoughts and telling me:
I see you for the beautiful soul you are.
I see the Sacred in your journey, in all of its crazy twists and turns.
Being the cornball that I am, I tear up imagining my young
self receiving that message.
By my 20s, I had built sturdy walls around myself – walls I now realize make perfect sense given the inherited and personal trauma I carried – but at the time I barely noticed the walls were there, and when I did I made them into evidence of a personal failing. I thought I WAS the walls.
Now I imagine someone peeking through to the scared, radiant soul veiled within –
not a therapist looking to fix (although therapy helps too,
yay therapists! Unless they subtly or unsubtly feel living in awareness of the
transcendent is a symptom, a problem – boo those therapists!)
a spiritual director peeking through and focused on seeing the Sacred within me and around me and connecting me to all that is.
Wow, imagine that!
Me at 23
So when I was 23, I had a life-altering mystical experience.
Fortunately, even without a spiritual director I never doubted
what happened, but how joyous it would have been to talk with someone who
understood I had received an incredible gift.
And how impactful to have been asked questions by someone who
understood the gravity of that gift and how it can become a burden.
That same year, I had an incredible nighttime dream – I died
and God asked me a question that would determine my eternal existence. I didn’t
have anyone to help me explore that Divine question and so I explored it myself
– leaping off in one wild direction and then another…
and that’s okay, it was my journey –
not having a spiritual director in my 20s was of course okay,
AND also it brings me a warm peace now as I imagine my younger
self having a spiritual companion.
When I was in my 20s, I was deeply aware of my connection to
Divine Love. I meditated, journaled, explored various spiritual paths and traditions
(there were also years, starting in my late 20s, when I went
off the rails, severing my attention to the Sacred, my authentic self….)
before ultimately discovering all wisdom paths lead to the same Spirit.
THAT was a fantastic discovery!
So, it all worked out, even without a spiritual director.
But lately my imagination has been gifting my younger self
with one and it feels wonderful.
If you would like a spiritual companion, email Carolyn (at) SpiritFullDirection (dot) com to set up a free introductory session – either on-line or in person in St. Paul, MN. I meet with people of all ages, all spiritual backgrounds and beliefs.
