Tag Archives: spiritual practices

Lessons from a Retreat

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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.

Just like the Lake.

What If Every Time You Saw a Nativity Scene…

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Mary Southard, CSJ

What if…

…every time you saw a nativity scene, you visualized the baby as a metaphor for a mysterious, beautiful energy that is constantly birthing itself  into the world?

…every time you heard a song about the nativity, you used lyrics such as ‘o come let us adore him’ as a reminder to honor this energy that is already alive within yourself and within everyone you meet?

…every time you encountered any version of the Christmas story, you allowed it to serve as a reminder that although this beautiful energy is “forever being born in the human soul,” we must constantly make room in our awareness for it – emptying our minds of the clutter, opening to the reality of the present – because otherwise “there is no room in the inn for such a mystery?”

What if the point of the Christmas story has always been that:

1) this mysterious, beautiful energy is already present “hidden inside of everything”

2) yet we’re still always waiting (longing!) to see it revealed in the world because we’re too clouded from the reality that this energy is everywhere and already birthed inside of us?

Try listening to the story and all of its details – angels singing in the sky, refugee woman giving birth in stranger’s shed, lowly field men approaching in awe – as a metaphor for a moment when suddenly the universe stops and loudly announces that this energy of love is here! alive in the world! incarnate!

Behold! I bring you great news! The beautiful energy of love is here! Alive in the world! Incarnate!

And when an evil king tries to snuff out this loving energy  – be like the wise person who followed their intuition and enabled the energy to prevail.

May each of you fully know the beauty that is already birthed inside of you.

Merry Christmas!

(All quotes come from Richard Rohr’s Advent Message video which can be found here.)

My Status Update Sucks, But I’m Still Okay

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(this post was written in Spring 2016)

I generally like to be in step with the rhythm of the seasons, but right now Spring is yelling at me to “Get up! Get out! Bloom already!” and I want to tell it to go to hell. While nature buzzes with the excitement of tree buds and hopping bunnies, inside my head winter dreariness is still going strong.

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There is no way around it. A family situation is filling my days with unpleasant tasks, pressing deadlines and big decisions that have no pleasant outcome. It’s a difficult time and frankly I am okay with settling into that difficulty and letting Spring pass me by this year.

And don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t. Because you know what? It’s okay to have periods of sadness.

It really is okay, even though the photographic evidence on social media shows your friends experiencing only joy, joy, joy. It really is okay, even though pop gurus tell us happiness is only ten simple steps away.

The truth is that we all have seasons when sadness is the most appropriate emotion that we can feel. Well meaning friends and our own inner critic may pressure us to try and snap out of it, but that only creates an anxiety that tires us even more. Feeling bad about feeling bad is self defeating.

On the other hand, sinking into full-blown depression is not the answer either and some of us (ahem) are more biologically prone to that than others. So here is what I do in seasons of sadness:

1) I let myself feel sad.

2) I try to stay in tune with my gut (intuition.)

That means keeping a handle on what feels right and what feels off for my well-being. For example, “It will be a real effort to go out to dinner with a friend tonight but it feels like that will help me get out of my head.” Or “I should really tackle another item on the to-do list but it feels like I need to rest my mind for awhile and watch a movie.”

Your gut can help you find the balance between what you “should” do and what feels right for your mind/body/spirit. You’ll know you’re in tune when you are doing a mixture of both.

3) I hold onto my thread.

A thread is made up of practices, images and beliefs that connect you to your essential self.

My thread is stepping out onto my driveway every night and looking up at the trees before going to bed. It is the mental image I visit throughout the day that I am part of a chain of spirits and ancestors long gone and future generations to come. It is the belief that love and compassion (for myself and others) is the purpose of life, the purpose of the Universe.

(Of course, first you need to find what your thread is.) You find your thread by focusing on what you know for certain to be true. Then you determine the practices, images and statements of beliefs that will take you back to that truth whenever you are in danger of becoming lost. Everybody’s thread looks different. It is what we hold onto to keep from falling down the rabbit hole of despair.

So Spring is arriving with its fresh smells and vibrant colors and my friends are posting fabulous vacation pics. Meanwhile, I’m stuck inside at meetings with treatment staff and endless to-do lists. And I’m sad about it. That’s okay.

We all have seasons of difficulty, but life goes on and we can find peace again. I have a strong sense of my intuition and I have my thread. I am okay. You are too, even if you are sad.

Doing Good Last Year and Beyond

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Did I do enough good in 2015? There’s plenty more I could have done – I never did get around to fostering shelter dogs like I planned, for example. But did I do as much as I could manage – mentally, emotionally, creatively, spiritually?

Sometimes I think of myself as fragile: burdened with traumas recent and far past that can flare up and make ordinary tasks seem Sisyphean. Each of us is fragile and strong in our own unique way, I know that. I look back on some of the things I endured, in 2015 alone, and know that I got through it with as much grace as I could muster, and sometimes that was barely any at all. There’s a lot of messiness in leaving your heart open to a family member whose mind and emotions are in dire need of healing, and yet my heart is still open to them, even if slightly little less than before. That is something good I contributed to 2015.

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But that wasn’t all. I followed the thread that the world dangled before me, for reasons I still can’t fully know. I followed that thread to University, studying theology and strengthening my connection to the spiritual realm. This year, I took classes studying Jung and his profound Red Book, the art of rituals and Mary Magdalene. I wrote papers on those topics that I hope to send off to a wider audience in 2016 (another 2015 thing I didn’t do as planned.) I also worked with people seeking spiritual direction and facilitated workshops sharing what I learned about “following the thread” that might be useful to others. Doing this work, I am privileged to witness the unique blend of fragile and strong within each soul.

Finally, I made a new friend in 2015. Someone whose journeys both internal and across the globe are opening me to new ideas for living in 2016. She has taught centering meditation for decades, and I can certainly use more centering. Knowing her has been a gift.

Will I meet other new friends in 2016? Will I continue to learn, write and teach? Will I still have love and grace to give? The outlook is good for all these things, and so I’m going to turn the page on the calendar with anticipation, gratitude and humility.

Happy New Year, Everyone!