Human fault lines

'"Techno-hubris" is a term I read a couple days ago as the media tried to explain why Japan would build nuclear reactors along quake fault lines. Watching and listening to the reports of nuclear reactors failing as a result of the 8.9 quake, many of us just wonder why would they take such a horrific risk?   The answer is so human, it seems almost silly considering the consequences - the ego of our individual self easily falls prey to hubris.


Hubris in it's simplest definition indicates pride but actually, hubris is much more than the sensation of feeling 'proud', hubris is the  pride of the ego - the arrogant, presumptive pride that takes our creative wondering what would happen if I .... and runs with into the world not taking into consideration the long term consequences  to a world containing more than just "me."


We humans are funny and complex creatures.  We want to succeed with our new creations: it is our nature to desire to bring our ideas into Life, but we do not necessarily enjoy the process of blood, sweat and tears which is the true path of all creativity.  Our ego provides an easy way out of this dilemma. "Forge blood and sweat, just do it and whatever you do is okay because you did it!  Because it is your unique creation it is wonderful."  Those are the words of our ego. The older I get the more obvious it becomes that my ego is about 8 years old!


Of course there's the reality that doing something new and difficult often requires an attitude of just do it! in order to begin.  As a place of beginning something new and scary just do it! is fine. Why doesn't it work for us to continue creating from this beginning place? Because that initial place of just do it is full of fear and fear is the fuel of the ego's hubris.


The hubris of our ego is found in the next part of the phrase of just do it - the part we don't actually say aloud.  The complete phrase is just do it and damn the consequences!   Our ego really does not care what about consequences: it's MY brilliant creation so it's just fine!  See why I say that my ego is about 8 years old. An eight year-old really does not care how their behavior impacts other people or life in general. An eight year-old just wants to do what they want to do.


The ego of my inner eight-year old is my human fault line.  I call it my fault line because an eight year-old, no matter how intelligent they may be, has little experience and therefore no capacity for true wisdom which is the ability to combine knowledge and experience and then apply what results judiciously. Judiciousness implies consideration of what may be affected by my behavior.  Eight year-old children are not naturally judicious as they are almost always willing to damn the consequences in order to get what they want.


When I build life according to the demands of my ego which by nature is willing to damn the consequences, I am building along weakness: the places within myself that are fearful of being worthy of acceptance; the places within myself that are terrified that I will never get what I really want; the places within myself the perceive life as a limited resource - these are the places within myself that have experienced disappointment, humiliation and rejection. 


 Disappointment, humiliation and rejection are personal experiences of pain that create 'cracks' in our psyche. Our personal response to these 'cracks'; these openings or splittings within our Spirit have the capacity to define how we experience life in general. 


There are two primary means of dealing with Spirit-cracking caused by pain.  One is an ego response which has an immediate infusion of the sensation of "strength", which is arrogance: "they" are stupid: "they" are less than I am and therefore do not understand me: "they" are  not are deserving of what I am, therefore what happens to them is of no consequence.  If we respond to our pain by agreeing with those ego responses then an attitude of presumptive arrogance develops as part of our perception of living.  This is how hubris can begin to take hold within a person - or nation.  


Hubris may appear outwardly strong with it's swagger and aggression but since it is built on the weaknesses of the many guises of fear, hubris is always internally weak.  Swaggering or not, hubris is a fault line capable of creating 'earthquakes' within our Spirit when too much pressure is exerted.  These personal earthquakes are not pretty: rage, greed, cruelty are outward manifestations - deep depression and anxiety may be the inward manifestations.  Being human, none of us are exempt from these expereinces at sometime in our living.


The other response available to the pain of disappointment, humiliation and rejection is that of seeking the ways and means of discovering and creating love.  Love is the opposite of fear. Oddly however, we frequently perceive love as "weak" because love tells us to respond to our painful realizations from the point of view of imperfection.  


Love suggests an awareness that each and every one of us is imperfect and therefore capable of hurting others.  Love evokes the awareness that we also have caused others to experience pain, disappointment and humiliation and therefore our own healing requires the discovery of forgiveness and compassion directed toward our own self.  When we are able to understand the need to forgive ourself, we begin to create the compassion and forgiveness needed to extend outward to forgiveness of other people.


The route for discovering forgiveness and compassion is one entailing our blood, sweat and tears.  Forgiveness which creates understanding and therefore compassion is difficult - it is just plain hard work. Work we do not want to necessarily undertake because the work itself is painful since it requires us to let go of our outward persona suggesting that we are not like "they" are. Our ego is quite vocal about telling us to avoid pain at all costs because it does not wish to lose it's position of superiority in life.  


Courage, which is true strength, can only be found by digging beneath the ego's persona because courage is found in the heart.   Paradoxically, it is the perceived 'weakness' of choosing the difficult work of love that creates true strength.  


Building our lives along the crevasses within our heart by choosing the route of compassion and forgiveness is paradoxically, the way of creating true strength.  When we choose to perceive our pain as that which is part of being human rather than as that which was 'done' to me, our world widens and we come to understand that we are all connected in this imperfect world.  


Each time - each moment - no matter how small or how infrequently, that I am able to choose this perception of living: love rather than arrogance, I am filling in those 'cracks' in my psyche with love rather than fear.  Little by little, fear is transformed into the creativity of love.


Creativity arising from the heart - from the courage of one's heart - always adds beauty to the world.  Perhaps as we people become more and more sophisticated in what we are able to create, we might consider a new criteria for birthing things into the world: will this idea - or action - or new creation add beauty of goodness to Life?

Naked

The good news I realized yesterday after posting is that I have learned to shush my inner 'critic' while writing.  The bad news is once the posting is out into the world, my inner critic wakes up and natters on and on for the rest of the day about all that was not right with what I put out into the world. Usually by late afternoon I'ved resolved that that was my final foray in the world of blogging. 


If instead of my inner critic nattering yesterday, my inner-editor could have been a bit more vocal before I hit the 'post' button, I would not have been so discouraged.  Rereading yesterday's posting I discovered my ability to use tenses incorrectly was alive and well.  As I said yesterday, one trait I share with my mother is the fear of not being good enough and really, there is nothing quite as effective for encouraging this fear as posting one's inner thoughts for the world to read.  I felt very naked yesterday afternoon.


Naked, that is, exposed.  Unprotected.  Ah - unprotected captures the sense of shame I felt yesterday.  Not simply revealing who I am without my costume of persona - my persona is the ever-confident Mary - but rather feeling unprotected by having the persona stripped away by my inner critic: 'she calls herself a writer but she can't use tenses properly'!!!  "She still writes about the pain of her relationship with Mom."


Okay, I'll try using more clarity. My mother was an amazing woman: so committed to her beliefs she birthed eleven children into the world. So strong and intelligent she began a business that continues successfully with my brother. Such a seeker and lover of learning that she was willing to question and learn and travel the world right up until she died. My mother was in many ways the kind of woman I desire to become - and in many ways am.  But all of this does not change the reality that our relationship was difficult and painful.  


Relationship and love are two very different realities.  It is quite possible to love deeply and yet not have a compatible relationship. It is also quite possible to have a compatible relationship with someone you do not especially love or love deeply. Sometimes in life one has deep love and intimate relationship - but not always or even frequently.  Love and relationship are great paradoxes of living. The older I get the more life seems to be shrouded in mystery because my experiences of living seem to contain more and more paradoxes. This is one of the big problems with awareness. 


Awareness is a strange experience.  Those of us who seek consciousness or awareness begin this quest  believing it will bestow clarity and make life easier to understand. Instead, in my experience anyway, the clarity of awareness reveals the paradoxes of living: the depth of the intrinsic mystery of living.


Here's a paradox I've discovered about writing. When I articulate my experience of engaging this mysterious thing called life - which is what I do when I write and blog, I use words to part the veils - the curtains - covering windows into our living. The intention of doing this is so an 'ah-ha' of insight may be glimpsed and a bit of clarity; a piece of the puzzle of living, drop into place and give someone permission to explore that piece of their life.  


I understand this 'giving of permission' happens only if I am willing to be as totally honest as I am able, with my experiences of relationship and life.  It is not "I" who gives permission to explore insight, it is the degree of honesty in what I share that enables courage: courage to explore the depth available in living one's life.  


Courage - couer: from the heart. Sharing the truth in ones heart: success, pain,  confusion, learnings and triumphs as well as all the children of these experiences, is how the veils covering the depth of life are parted.  Another paradox here: depth of living that is, creativity, requires this parting of veils: delusions and denials, yet these veils also allow me to feel safe and protected in living.  How do I live while feeling exposed? I know of only one answer - I must live from the truth of my heart.  


Another paradox: the strength for honesty comes from living from the truth in my heart yet I do not always like what I see in my heart.  I would love to ignore or deny the pain - the conflicts - the inconsistencies of my human heart.  I would love to clothe these 'uglinesses' with layers of frothy pretty words.  But I cannot do that and honor who I am and the gift I have been given to use in life.  


Embracing the truth in the sentence above is both a joy and grief.  A grief because I feel naked - exposed and unprotected - in it's truth, a joy because it is my truth.


Truth is 'fact' and a fact of my Being that I am Called to expose myself through the use of words.  Expose myself by sharing my experience, my strength and my hope with words.  Exposing oneself with words is also called being a 'writer'.  I did not know this truth of being a writer when I fell in love with words and committed myself to learning the craft of writing.  


Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers says it takes 10,000 hours of deliberately engaging an action in order to become a master.  I have put in more than 10,000 hours of deliberately engaging the discipline and practice of writing and I am much, much better than when I began - although my inner-editor still takes naps and I forget to use tenses properly.  I know that I am, for me, a master because I have experienced of the paradox of becoming a 'master' which is the firm desire to become more proficient. A master knows there is much more to discover and learn. 


I am however, not yet a master at blogging. Blogging is all about a willingness to expose oneself publicly: a willingness to part the veils - the curtains - and feel the breeze on my skin telling me I am standing naked where I may be seen.  Standing naked I am profoundly aware that possibly I will not liked or admired once the lumps of cellulite are seen on my skin.  


If I believe doing this - writing publicly - is a purpose of my Being, then I must continue blogging, continue to expose my lumps of cellulite and trust that in time - like maybe another 8,000 hours of time - I will become comfortable being exposed.  


Today I have begun the process of becoming more comfortable by 're-naming' something I wrote. I saw I 'named' the conflicts and inconsistencies I found in my heart as ugliness. Ugly is not a perception I am willing to continue carrying and so - because I saw it - I used my editing skills, crossed out the word and wrote the word human: conflicts, pain and inconsistencies are not ugly they are simply human.  And being human is a beautiful (if not paradoxical) experience.  Beauty comes in many forms.


If I hadn't parted the veils, if I hadn't seen that some of my human characteristics as ugly, I would not have been able to change my perception.  Which is the intention of parting the veils - to see clearly into the mystery.  Yes, another paradox and a wondrous one - each moment of life carries the potential of seeing with clarity into the mystery.  For that experience, I'm willing to shiver in my nakedness.

Gifts from the Women before me ...

I never expected that I would look like Mom.  We were so different: she tall, me short; she dark, me light.  We did not understand one another; never 'got' each other. Ours was what is referred to as a 'difficult relationship', mostly because we were so different.  Recently though, in photos of myself or when I catch a sudden glimpse in a mirror, I see her in my face.  Very strange how I needed to live well into my fifth decade before I could accept my mother as a living part of myself.

Accepting Mom as a living part of me is odd because mostly I spent my life knowing how different we were.  Yet, in my fifty-eighth year as I see her etched in my face I am understanding that deep inside my personality we are similar: I share her fear of never being good-enough.  I share her 'seeker-soul' and love of new learning.  I share her dry humor and wit.  Deep, deep within myself her energy of Being, the energy of the woman who gave me life, continues to stir and mix with my own energy and is brought into a new kind of Being: a Beingness of Life much bigger than either herself or myself with our differences that caused each of us pain.

Today is National Woman's Day and these thoughts floated to consciousness as I was reflecting on the woman who came before me and shared their living - their liveliness of Life - with my life. Today I am aware in a new way of how four women helped create the Woman who is me.

Four is not a very large number, yet the depth, color and texture of  those women paradoxically makes four seem like a very big amount. First is Mom, the woman who gave me life and then did her very best to nurture me into Being.  As a mother myself I now understand the difficulty of nurturing someone who is so very different and yet so very loved: I understand the hard, sharp edges of that reality and the dark abyss of such love.  What I know today is that it was love that eventually won our tug-of-war of non-understanding.  Love always wins if we allow it to.

There was Gramsy - Mom's mother - with whom she had as difficult a relationship as I had with Mom. Between Gramsy and I however there was a kinship of understanding.  Again, I had to live many decades before understanding that the kinship between Gramsy and myself was our abundance of creativity.  It was with Gramsy that I felt an understanding of who I was decades before I could give words to describing what had intuitively connected us.  Decades before I had the courage to live from my creativity and passion it was Gramsy who provided the nurturing of those seeds of my Being.

My Aunt Arlie was the third person of the Trinity of Women who nurtured me into Being: Mom, Gramsy and Aunt Arlie.  Three women who were as different as personalities could be yet shared a sisterhood that, again, it took decades of living for me to understand. To my child-eyes, Aunt Arlie was the 'wild one; red hair and loud laugh are the textures of Aunt Arlie I carry with me. Gramsy had an innate dignity: my mother had innate authority and Aunt Arlie had a wildness I longed to have the freedom to live from.

A cherished memory I carry in my heart is of these three women, sitting outside with their bridge table set up over our blow-up swimming pool: feet dangling in the cooling water as they laughed and bid for hours while we children ran wild in the Michigan summer.  This image lives deep in my heart where it sits with my childs longing to have what they had.  That longing of childhood is a reality for I share that same deep connection of laughing-love with my four sisters. A love so fierce and deep I am aware that it is a living energy of Womanhood threading back through generations to Eve.

My friend Randy came from outside the family circle and entered my life in my fourth decade - a decade of Womanhood where I have come to believe, a 'mentor' for the next phase of living is essential. As women, in our forties most of us are completing a cycle of living where many of us have lived in 'service' to the needs and expectations of other people. I believe that the next phase of living for most women is a new kind of living in 'service' to our Spirit. It is a very difficult transition and without someone to encourage and mentor us, almost impossible to make.  That person for me was Randy.  Randy was a God-mother of my soul for it was from her I received the gift of absolutely unconditional acceptance of who I was.

Randy's personality was a combination of the Trinity of Women  I had grown from as she carried their innate dignity, authority and wildness mixed with her audacious flair for living.  Randy LIVED - audaciously, thoughtfully, elegantly, outrageously and creatively.  She shared her gift for this way of living generously and in her generosity and acceptance I began to discover my own bravery and the courage necessary for living deeply.

Living deeply as a woman engages the life-death-life cycle of Seasons and embracing this cycle of living takes strength and courage.  It is difficult to learn to not just cling to what is wiggling with life; it is difficult to allow what is alive to finish its course of living and die. Both living and dying is required for new life.

With two of these four woman I was given the privilege of taking part in their final days of living and in their moment of dying. With my mother and Randy I was gifted with seeing the fullness of a life as it completes it's circle. The gift shimmering within that Circle is almost unspeakable in its beauty - and it's lesson: you and your life is mulch for future life.  In the ending of their life I was admonished to be aware that the gift of myself - my life - is for the future of Life.  The life-death-life cycle continues in renewed growth whenever a life is lived from passionate creativity.

Passionate creativity of living. Today, as I reflect and meditate on the gifts of these Women I am aware that as different as each was in personality, each was alike in that they lived their life passionately: each engaged Life as fully as they were able to from who they were, and this is the gift of living: their 'mulch' of Living left behind.  Generously and imperfectly they LIVED.

Wholeness and well-being is found in generous and imperfect living and each of these women lived their life generously and imperfectly and in so doing they created new life.  And the new life they created continues to create new life even as their lives have been completed.  Thank you Mom.  Thank you Gramsy.  Thank you Aunt Arlie.  Thank you Randy.

Losing one's bearings ....

You know those maps at the mall with the arrow pointing to a singular spot amid all the rectangles and squares with the words "you are here"?  Even people like me who are directionally challenged when looking at maps take comfort in the simple idea that their 'position' in space has been declared. 


Having noted what is around the arrow and matching the information to the intention for being at the mall - voila! - the path from point A to point B becomes obvious.  Well, over the past month (since the last time I posted a blog) the arrow on my map disappeared.  


Yup, the arrow indicating where I was in time and space was suddenly gone.  It disappeared as though a cosmic hand had carefully placed the cursor over the arrow and hit delete.  I had lost my bearings.


Bearings is an interesting word rarely used in ordinary speech which is also interesting because bearings indicates both our position and orientation to living.  Since we are generally both simultaneously somewhere and headed toward something, you'd think that thinking about where one is and where one is headed would be a common part of our thinking.  For most of us however, routine gets in the way of awareness.


Routine is a form of the word 'route'.  Routines are our routes through our days and our weeks.  People often grouse or complain about the sameness of their routine but truthfully, most of us like - in fact prefer - what is familiar and therefore comfortable which is exactly what a routine is: familiar.  Grousing or not, routines allow us to feel safe and secure because we 'know' how to experience the paths they place us on.


One of my cherished routines is my early morning time of quiet and meditation.  I have begun my day by deliberately placing myself on this path for over twenty years.  While the experience of 'placing' myself on this path is familiar and comfortable, as the years passed, the experience of 'being' on the path has never been especially predictable.  


One of the reasons for this lack of predictability is because one of the effects of daily quiet time is awareness. Daily quiet or meditation is a form of cultural sensory deprivation.  When I take my coffee out onto the patio and sit in the waning darkness there is really nothing happening except me: just me and my thoughts.  I sip my coffee and stare into the sky. 


I say hello to Venus always shining brightly and almost always muse on the fact that this planet we associate with love is what shines most brightly in the early morning sky.  Venus competes in brightness only with the moon which is the orb associated with feminine energy. I muse on how these forms of light are generally missed in life because they occur before the sun wakes most of us to the day. 


I 'see' these thoughts of mine in the early morning as there is absolutely nothing to distract away from the awareness of myself as the one creating response - there is no other person to absorb my chattering mind. I am, in this early morning, forced to either listen to myself or to sink beneath the noisy chatter and 'hear' the whispers of Life beneath the noise of my self.  


One of the 'whispers' I heard about a month ago was from the end of the Christmas/Epiphany story.  It's the part of the story little attention is paid to because in many ways, we become emotionally exhausted from both the story: angels, pregnancy, doubt, travels, rejections, birth, shepherds, more angels, kings and gifts, not to mention the festivities we surrounded this story with, that we pretty much don't pay attention to the true ending of the story we celebrate.


The story of Christmas ends with King Herod getting all paranoid - jealousy is the most destructive of emotions - about a 'King' being born that he issues an edict that all boy babies under a year are to be killed.  Horrifying.  It is a horrifying aspect of the story and very difficult to hear and therefore respond to.  Joseph however had a dream and was told respond to this awareness by 'returning by a different route.  "Do not return the way you came."


We - today - know the wholeness of the story and so if we listen to the story and hear our response, we tend to say 'well duh!  of course you need to return by a different route. Well duh, that's how you keep the baby alive.'


Joseph however was like we are in life, he was in the middle of the story and so the totality of the story was yet unknown.  Joseph simply had to trust the words of the dream - or not.  We always forget the option Joseph had of the 'or not.'  


It is not easy to take a different route.  Different indicates not known.  Possibly longer.  Definitely scarier.  Unknown and frightening are not choices most of we humans care for: we prefer  routines with their known streets of familiar potholes, messy intersections and series of lights which we learn, if timed correctly will synchronize for easy passage.  


We prefer routine - our expectation of knowing our experience - so much that it is actually difficult to pay attention to the whisperings that tell us that if we continue on our familiar route through living the 'child' may be killed.


What I have come to believe in this past month of feeling lost  is that we are occasionally asked to return by a different route as a means to letting go of the storylines we have unconsciously placed within our true story - within our actual experience of living. 


Storylines is a Buddhist concept of understanding that the human mind tends to fill in what is not known with hypothetical if - then storylines and the bigger the unknown, the more scenarios we tend to create.  The problem with creating storylines is twofold: storylines remove us from awareness of experiencing now and by removing ourselves from the now, we become incapable of living creatively.  


Living from the creativity of our possibility is NOT like the map at the mall with blocks of living clearly labeled.  Creative living is much more akin to the emptiness of early mornings on the patio with Venus, stars and the moon faintly glimmering in the dark. Creative living is always about possibilities lurking in what is not yet known. It seems that periodically we need to willingly lose our bearings in order for the creative unknown to reveal itself.


I did not enjoy losing my bearings and feeling lost as it was very lonely.  


I felt lonely not just in terms of relating to other people but lonely for the pieces of my story, which had not actually been experienced and yet I had unconsciously filled in with various storylines.  As I slowly let go of my expectations of the future of the experiences which had birthed my spirit-child, emptiness began to expand around my self.  


I would love to say that this emptiness was pleasant, but it was not. It was difficult to remain on this path and not create storylines for what was happening.  All I could do was allow what was, be.


The dictionary says that the word be when used with transitive verbs creates the action of effect.  I know this to be true: awareness - consciousness -  creates response.  As long as I believed - trusted - the emptiness I was experiencing was in fact fertile with what was coming from the Source of All Life which is goodness, then I could live with what my human mind perceived as emptiness.


Losing my bearings was in fact, not empty but a transitive experience of that word be: I was becoming - coming into a new sense of Being.


This is already ridiculously long so I will save the next chapter of this story for another post.  Thank you for remaining with me not only through this lengthy post but through past month - it is impossible to grow beyond the familiar without the energy of relationship surrounding and upholding us even when unseen. It is in fact, the unseen inlets and outlets of love that are the transitive verbs - energies - which allow for each of our becoming. Thank you for your invisible energies of care.

Chaos of change ....

...that if one cares deeply
about something or someone
            new,
one throws a kind of energy out 
    into the world and
a 'fruitfulness' is drawn in.


I found those words on a scrap of paper - one of the many scraps of paper found as I created absolute chaos in my little apartment clearing out my workroom so Adam, my middle son, can move in for a few months.  Thank God I believe that when my heart and gut are aligned in an intention, as long as I remain open and willing, I am given what I need.  What I needed in the mess I had created was encouragement. Which was exactly what I received when the words above appeared.  Especially since they (quite literally) floated out of a book when the apartment had taken on a form of utter disorder.


By disorder I  mean nothing was where it belonged.  Or to be more accurate, things weren't where I was used to them being.  The comfortable and familiar pathways grooved into the apartment as a place of my being: working, relaxing and sleeping were now rearranged: changed; shuffled; altered - and a mess.


Openness or hospitality to change is not especially natural to human beings.  Hospitality indicates welcoming: opening the door of self to what may be new, unknown and strange. Deep within this self who is opening the door to the unknown lives a primitive creature who, upon hearing the door hinges creak, suddenly awakens and whispers danger Will Robinson - be alert: don't be too quick to think this situation is good!!  


Technically, this whispering creature is called the reptilian brain: a bit of self concerned only with survival. We human beings developed this bit of self when being eaten by wild beasts or being overwhelmed by strangers who might want our bit of territory was part of everyday life.  Those of us alive today are descendants of those persons who had a well developed reptilian brain as evidenced by the fact they lived long enough to propagate more survivors.  We carry this ancestral knowledge of survival.   


Although our bit of reptilian brain is primordial and ancestral, and although as humans we have developed well beyond it's need to be active in our everyday living, it remains ready to jump into action when alerted to major alterations to safety and security. This tiny bit of self defines safety as that which is known; familiar and comfortable.  Therefore, the unknown is to be challenged and so we are alerted to this challenge by feelings of anxiety churning up uneasiness about what is happening.


And a lot was happening within my comfortable and familiar living space.  To begin with, for three days I changed my comfortable and familiar ritual of living and after a short bit of quiet time, I threw on some clothes, put the brace on my foot and tied on my sneakers and began pushing and pulling furniture around.  I sorted my buttons back into their containers.  I pulled books off shelves and sorted them into piles of stay or leave.  I took paintings off the walls and rearranged where they live.  I pushed, my bed which for seven years has been against one wall, into a space against a different wall so I now sleep facing a different direction (not a small change to one's Spirit.)  I consolidated my altar space so it no longer sprawls across the armoir and onto the other bookcase and so now is much more compact.


Because Adam will move into what was my workroom containing thousands of buttons as well as my writing/art table and all my art supplies they also needed a new home.  Only one space existed as a possibility and that is my bedroom.  This reality was actually the most difficult to wrap my brain around because I have never used my bedroom for anything but sleeping.  Now it is a room with my buttons and button table on one side, my bed in the middle and my writing/art table on the other side.  Everything appeared strange, unfamiliar and very, very new.  


Waking up the first morning in this room arranged so very differently I knew it wasn't the 'room' itself that felt so strange - it was my sense of 'me'.  The door I opened when I said yes to this change was indeed welcoming a stranger - an unknown me. Which is why I had heard my primitive brain whispering it cautions to be alert and felt the uneasiness in my gut churn with anxiety: I was stepping into a true unknown for it was time for me to shed my old skin and grow into a new becoming.   


In order to become, one must "... throw a kind of energy out into the world"  The energy needed for fruitfulness is a willingness to enter what is not known.  And so we open the door and graciously invite this stranger of an unknown self to enter, trusting that as new ways of being are discovered and learned, a "fruitfulness is drawn in." 


Fruitfulness is such an old fashion kind of word, but it evokes an image I like: seasons evolving as sun and moon energies draw forth fruit which will ripen and be eaten.  I like the image the words have given me.  When I sit quietly, drinking in the image of trees full of spring green leaves and fruit buds sitting inside the blooms, a sensation of peaceful excitement replaces my dis-ease and I am encouraged in my yes to change.  


Actually, now that most of the disorder has settled I find that I really, really like how things look.  New space has opened up in this little apartment and what I believe is that new life will ripen and grow. Yes indeed, as the mystic Hildegarde once said, "All is well.  Yes, all may be well.


{If you are interested, the quote is from a wonderful book titled The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.   Strange title but wonderful story I can highly recommend.} 

Heroines and Heros

When I was a little girl I wanted to be Clara Barton, Louisa May Alcott, Florence Nightingale, and a priest.  I was told I couldn't be a priest - because I was a girl - but girls could be nuns {hello, not the same!}and that nursing is a good choice for a girl. Also, writing might be a nice hobby but not much of a career. Maybe you could become a teacher, after all teachers used words a lot (hello, not the same! but teaching -ing not er - sounded interesting : writing and teaching do go together). Yes, teacher or nurse would be good careers for you.


Except I wasn't asking for career counseling. It took me forty or so years to understand that saying I wanted to be Clara, Louisa, Florence; a priest or teach, wasn't about a job, I was talking about how I wanted to live.  


I was a kid who voraciously read biographies.  How people lived out of who they were; their passions, their personality and temperament, their circumstances of life and most of all, what they did with those combinations fascinated me.  My appetite for stories of persons and their ways of living was insatiable.  Especially delicious stories were stories where I glimmered some piece of myself. Which is how I came to say that I wanted to be Clara, Louisa, Florence and a priest (I loved the stories of missionaries and saints.)


What I was really saying when talking about Clara and Louisa; Florence, being a priest and teaching was how do I discover the way of living I saw in their stories? How do I become a heroine?  Lives that resonated with me were stories of being heroic in life. How do I become brave enough to be heroic with my life?


I'm willing to bet the word heroic brings to mind great deeds of valor: actions that save lives like when someone rescues another from a burning building or digs through the rubble of an earthquake or shields another from harm with their body.  Heroic action indicates someone who is willing to risk their body and/or life to save another.  How do they do that?  How does one have that kind of courage? Bravery is the action of courage.  


Courage is a lovely word that derives definition from the French word couer meaning 'heart.'  Courage lives in our heart.  Since we think of our heart as the place of self that houses and grows love, then logically, courage and love must be connected.  Which they are if we ask ourselves what the action of love is. The action - the active form - of love is kindness.


The only math I've ever been adept at is adding ideas to ideas in order to form an equation of conceptualization {this is the mathematics of a writer or one who teaches - you may well flunk algebra with this kind of brain.}  If therefore, bravery is the active form of courage and courage lives in the heart with love, and the active form of love is kindness, then bravery and kindness are directly connected. The ability to be brave and the ability to be kind are manifestations of being engaged with love.


One of the very simple precepts I live by is we manifest what we engage. Without being aware of what I was discovering, I actually learned this truth spending a childhood devouring biographies.  The wisdom available from biographies is that the whole arc of a life is shown as story and so we see how someone engaged life and what the result was.


How and then result. Using my mathematics of conceptualizing, if I wanted to live bravely: brave = courageous; courageous = heart/love; love = kindness, then I needed to choose a way of living based in active kindness.  


Once I realized that kindness was connected to bravery, I was greatly relieved because there was no need to wait for burning buildings, or earthquakes in order to be brave and heroic.  I could be brave simply by choosing to respond to life: my self and other people kindly.   


We learn by doing and so decided if I wanted my life to be one of bravery then I would need to live with kindness. I discovered that deliberate kindness - as the basis of living - is not especially easy.  I discovered that how I treated myself was pretty much how I tended to treat other people. When I am judgmental toward myself, I am judgmental toward others.  When I focus on my disappointments, I focus on how others disappointment me.  When I focus on my hurts then I tend to be easily hurt.  When I treated myself kindly, then I treated people and events with kindness.


I also discovered that living from kindness is risky.  When we respond with gentleness we risk being perceived as soft.  When we respond with understanding we risk being fooled.  When we respond with generosity we risk being taken advantage of.  When we respond with friendliness we risk rejection or misunderstanding.  When we respond graciously we risk rudeness.


Risking does more than denote bravery.  What we risk our selves for is what we become.  That is the nugget of truth I learned reading all those biographies: the ultimate choice of our living is the question: what am I willing to risk in order to become?  

Daring to be happy

Just needed to share this bit of news: today begins National Happiness Week.   Just think, an entire week devoted to an awareness of being happy.  When it comes to happiness, I've always resonated with the words attributed to Abe Lincoln " Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."  There's a real nugget of wisdom in those words, happiness is an attitude you choose.

Attitudes are all about our expectations and expectations are what we anticipate will occur in life. Attitudes are actually magic threads  weaving experiences of living into a story.  I think of attitudes as magic threads because attitudes are created from the power of deliberately choosing our thoughts.  Our thoughts - how we choose to see life - are the energy propelling us forward into our living.

So, given that take on Abe's words, this is the week of deliberately  choosing the energy - the qualities - of being happy.   A quality is the distinctive attributes - components - of something.  So what are the components an attitude of happiness? 

Heading to my dictionary I discovered the the distinctive qualities or attitudes needed for choosing to experience happiness are: pleasure,  cheerful, glad, delighted, pleased, enjoyment. Here's an explanation of what each of those qualities 'look' like.

Pleasure - feeling satisfied or fulfilled.  What experiences today were satisfying? Take the time to name them (easier to repeat if we remember to name) and enjoy the pleasure of feeling satisfied. Dare to be pleased with the day's moments of pleasure. Dare to feel pleasure.

Cheerful - disposed to see the good and therefore in good spirits.

What you 'see' is what you become.  Make up your mind to take time to see the things that speak goodness to you -  breathe in the goodness of what you are seeing. Dare to see moments of goodness and breathe them in and filling your Spirit with goodness.

Glad - eager to give joy.  Isn't that interesting, being glad is about giving - sharing - sending forth.  Joy is awareness of blessing. Choose a blessing to give today.  Feel the gladness of sharing your goodness. Dare to deliberately see yourself as a blessing to life.

Enjoyment - the awareness of appreciating. Appreciating is about acknowledging, that is recognizing and then saying thank you.  How many thank yous can you say out loud today? Dare to be extravagant with your joy.

Pleased - experiencing favor: support and approval. The interesting part of this quality is that 'courtesy' is the way in which support and approval are expressed.  Today choose to be courteous to yourself thereby experiencing support and approval for your unique you. Dare to be pleased with you .  Dare to name what is pleasing about your life.

There was a second part to the definition of happiness that I think fits well with Abe's words: knowing you are fortunate or lucky.  

"Fortunate and lucky," sound a whole like having an attitude of gratitude which I nourish with another idea all God asks is for you to be open to the 100 blessings placed in your day each day and everyday.  Knowing you have one hundred blessings today just waiting to be found is a pretty strong clue to knowing you are fortunate and lucky.

Willingness to being open to your one hundred gifts or blessings sounds like a great garden to plant the seeds of happiness in.  What are the seeds?  All the qualities listed above.  Which ones are you willing to plant into your mind and life this week? How daring about living happily are you willing to be?

Four statements ....

"I was wrong."
"I need help."
"I am sorry."
"I don't know."
"In order to be effective as a detective, you must learn to speak those four statements as a natural part of your life.  Not just during an investigations, but about your life."


Those words belong to Inspector Gamache, the central character in Louise Penny's marvelous mystery series centered in the village of Three Pines Canada.


I love a well written mystery because it is essentially a story about the living we human beings engage in, and the series by Louise Penny is the best I have found in years.  Penny's ability to weave philosophy, art and poetry through her stories populated by a wonderful cast of human beings is delightful.


One of the delights I find in reading Penny's books is I know while reading her books, I will grab an index card and pen and write a phrase from the story so later after leaving Three Pines, I'm able to reflect on and contemplate the meaning of her words.


The four statements spoken by Inspector Gamache to his trainee, have spent a lot of time in the 'mulling and musing' space of my mind.  One reason I have been reflecting on their meaning, is that I believe if we are to evolve and grow into wholeness of being our individually unique person, it is useful to engage our experiences similarly to that of a detective: we need pay attention to what life presents us and look for clues to it's meaning.  Being a 'detective' with our life is a path to learning.


Detectives - good detectives anyway - are aware that they do not as yet understand the story they are being presented with and therefore, in order to engage the unknown, they need to become as open and as unprejudiced as possible to what they are seeing.  Generally, the first order of business therefore in simply 'seeing' what is presented is to have an open mind.


Having an open mind is neither easy nor an especially 'natural' state of being.  An open mind is not 'natural' because as part of our living we develop an ego that is designed to keep us self feeling safe and secure.  One of the primary means to feeling safe and secure is to define experiences of living often in dualistic terms. Although most of we adults have forgotten the particulars of our definitions, the initial defining of life occurs by dividing experience into easily understood categories of good and bad, right and wrong, success and failure.  These dualities of extremes are part of the socialization we do for children so they can function in the world with some degree of competence and safety.


As our experiences with life increase our human tendency is to simply add categories to the unconscious columns of good/bad; right/wrong; success/failure we designed while quite young and so categories of people, occupations, status and even events tend to be lined up under the early columns of designation for what is good and what is bad.  It is from these columns of designation that for the most part, we develop a belief system which generates our attitude toward living.


What I have just said is an extremely oversimplified description of how our individual ego does it's job of keeping us feeling safe and secure so we are able to get dressed and leave the house each day.  The problem is that unless we make the choice to deliberately explore what we have written in those columns that define how I see life, after a few decades of living, our tendency is to get stuck in the rigidity of old ideas.


Old ideas are just that - old - meaning they have been around a long, long time and have not necessarily gone through a process of discernment to see if they need to be renewed or refreshed or redefined or maybe even just plain thrown away.  We all have old ideas because it's the ego's job to keep those beliefs in place - that's the job description we gave it when we were quite young and learning how to cross the street, play with other children, keep from being punished and learning how to acquire rewards from those who had authority over our lives.


By golly, those learning's were important! Living from them not only have I stayed alive, I have relationships, I am respected and I am successful! So back off and mind your own business. 


That's pretty much how our ego responds to the idea of changing what we believe.  And since it's so adamant in it's declaration and may well seem quite correct in it's assessment of respect and success, why would we change?  Why did Gamache tell his trainee that she had to learn to say, I was wrong.  I need help.  I am sorry and  I don't know? Why did Gamache tell her that she needed to use those phrases over and over until they came easily and naturally?


Because each phrase is, in the early stages of learning to use them, a means of shocking our ego into silence.  Each statement is a means to opening our self to right now and what we are seeing in the now.  Each statement  is a means to opening ourselves beyond the confines of a rigid way of seeing and behaving.


I was wrong, allows us to enter into the truth of being imperfect and therefore enables our ability to change and grow.
I need help connects us to other people and opens us to gifts and strengths that another may have and we do not. The words acknowledge that I cannot effectively do life alone and from only what I know.
I am sorry keeps our relationships current and truthful which means that we are freed from the rigid stance of guilt or arrogance, allowing openness and choice.
I don't know activates wonder and curiosity and both qualities create mental and emotional openness for understanding which is required in order to learn.


Learning how to engage and use each of those statements is a journey to being open to experiencing the now of our living granting us the gift of mindfulness: present to what actually is without wearing all our blinders of old ideas and fears. This learning is a journey however.


Journeys take time. A journey of learning is an experience of time that is much more like traveling by covered wagon from Ohio to Arizona than our current option of boarding a plane and getting to our destination in hours rather than weeks and months.  


It's been about four months since I first read those statements, wrote them down, began exploring in my journal, and discovering their energy and power for my life.  After four months they are more prominent as a means for discernment and quite useful when I become emotionally chaotic.  Are they as yet easy and natural?  Not quite and not all four statements.  However, I am committed to the effort of discovery and that is the key to remaining on the journey. As I said at the beginning, I love mysteries and  I want to be a good detective - no, I desire to be an excellent detective - so, I'll just have to admit, as yet I don't know all I wish to know and discover.

But what IS it?

"It is what it is!"  I had been using that catch-all phrase a lot the last couple weeks as a way to describe my experience of living and working with a foot that each day I worked on my feet, moved from sore to downright painful.  I kept throwing the words 'it is what it is' into the air around my life, first to describe my foot pain, then to describe how I was feeling about being in pain and suddenly I discovered, in a surprisingly short amount of time, 'it is what it is'  became my attitude toward living.

On the surface, an attitude of "it is what it is," appears somewhat reasonable.  "It is what it is" sounds as though I was accepting the reality of what I was experiencing as my living. However, the day I found myself leaving the store with tears 'leaking' from my eyes because the pain or 'discomfort' of being on my feet for eight hours was no longer simply in my foot but had taken over my body I 'woke up' and realized that "it is what it is" was actually a form of denial rather than acceptance.


Not only had I been denying the reality that there was something truly wrong with the foot, but I was also denying that my experiences of living with the foot pain had woven itself through my being and I no longer lived my day as intentionally as before the pain began.  "It is what it is" had become a way of removing "me" from the pain I was experiencing but since the pain became a daily experience, I inadvertently also began to remove "me" from my experiences of living: Unconsciously I assumed an attitude of being passively powerless.


Passive powerlessness is an old, old - very old - survival behavior I learned as a child where an acceptance of my powerlessness for controlling what I desired by becoming a compliant 'observer' worked quite well.  I became quite adept at minimizing experience by simply observing rather than actively 'engaging' or participating in what was happening.  Throwing the words 'it is what it is' into the Universe as my expression of living, I realized is simply an adult version of childhood powerlessness.  Ironically my awareness of what I was doing came to a head during the journey to Epiphany.


Epiphany, as I've said in previous blogs is my personal favorite feast of the Christian Liturgical calendar.  Epiphany is for me, both Christmas and New Years wrapped in the beautiful package of a feast celebrating "naming":  the Magi arrived and 'named' what had occurred in the stable in Bethlehem.  For years - possibly decades - I have used the time around Epiphany to 'name' my experiences of the previous year and in the naming, discover my learnings and then use these awareness to begin a new year.  


Learning makes me very happy and so a season - the season of Epiphany - devoted to awareness of learning is a happiness.  My expectation, that is what I anticipate will occur, at Epiphany is similar to a child looking forward to Christmas: I know that goodness is on the horizon.  Most years that is.  


This year however, as Epiphany approached I was busy denying what I had been experiencing: my sense of powerlessness, my reverting to old survival attitudes, the exhaustion that was mental and emotional as well as physical from dragging myself around in pain, was all summed up in my catch-all phrase it is what it is. And then, to add insult to injury, the previous week, Arizona had a deep cold snap which made sitting on the patio before dawn miserable and so I had not been doing my meditation time in the way that was familiar.  Not good.


Ah, but I discovered, Goodness is always available if we are just willing to be open.  My personal ritual of willingness is the discipline or practice of my early morning time and the cold snap snapped and I was back out on my patio looking at the light of stars shining through the dark sky.  "Thank you for providing light even in darkness."  My words of opening myself to the Source of All sprang from me and I felt myself loosen and I as I loosened the armor around my heart (we armor ourselves against pain) and in the small opening of the loosening, my heart heard: and so what is this "it" of it is was it is?"


What is the 'it?'  The 'it' is what I engage as my experience of living.  " move back into your experience Mary: name it. You are no longer a child: as an adult you have the power to 'name' what you are  experiencing in life.  You also have the power to look at what has been 'named' and make choice. You also have the power to act on choice responsibly.  Stop being a fearful child!"


I heard those words in the early morning of Epiphany .Later that evening as I sat in the quiet of my living room 'naming' the wholeness of my current state of living with an injured and painful foot and the ways of denial I had used, I had a little epiphany.  The word 'epiphany' is defined in the dictionary as profound insight.  Profound means containing truth and I realized that by 'naming' what was happening on the 'inside' of my foot experience, I was finally telling myself 'the truth' of where I am right now.  And it was this truth of my experience of living right now that I offered as my gift 'to the child'.


"Treat yourself with kindness."  That was what I heard last evening as I sat having finally 'named' the truth of feeling powerless and wrong and as though I had failed.  Be kind to yourself.  Kindness is a form of gentleness and therefore is without judgement. I realized I needed to let go of the judgmental feelings I had assumed toward my experience of living - that 'judging' myself was simply another way of denying or avoiding what I was experiencing.  Another leftover old defense mechanism of powerlessness because when I 'judge' I lock myself into guilt.  Naming what "is" however, creates discernment for making choices.


Once I was willing to name and then willing to offer what I had named as the truth of what is, I became open to receiving the gift of gentle kindness which is the energy of the Source of All love and goodness.  Yes, my feast of the Epiphany had a rough beginning but oh, what a nice ending: a new learning of the gift of naming - a new way to begin my New Year.

Pondering the journey

A person reading yesterday's blog about peeking beneath the Epiphany story of the Three Magi asked me an interesting question, "does everyone know they are on their journey?"  I mulled the question for quite awhile and while one answer: all of living is a journey, is an easy response, the reality of our awareness of living our personally unique journey is not easily answered by anyone except our self - and often, the discovery of our own 'yes' is not easy because our journey may seem so ordinary we disregard the purpose of our living.


Although the question came from the Epiphany story, the story that appeared as I mulled the ordinariness of living our journey - our purpose for being alive - was the story of Mary the mother of Jesus.  Mary's story - as far as I'm concerned anyway - is one of the most profound of the ancient stories. Yet, despite what I see as extraordinary , most what we are presented as her story is a handful of pretty pictures with her profound living hidden in untold blah, blah, blahs.  The angel Gabriel appears, Mary says yes; blah, blah, blah; tells Joseph and then Elizabeth blah, blah, blah; sits on a donkey while 9 months pregnant journeying to Bethlehem, no room, stable, shepherds, choruses of angels, the Kings appear blah, blah, blah and then 33 years later she stands at the foot of a cross where her son has been crucified.


From my perspective the profound story of Mary's journey - her reason for living - was in those 33 years of untold blah, blah, blahs that took her to a place where she had the courage to stand at the foot of the cross and receive the body of her son when it was taken down.


I have often been alternately annoyed and amused that generally Christians acknowledge Jesus as human but as a rule, skip right passed the meaning of being human and  head into the theology of his being the Christ - which I might point out did not occur until after he finished his human living.  During his 33 years of living, if the stories we tell of Jesus are true and he was in fact God Incarnate: God within human form, this indicates Jesus in fact grew and developed like the rest of we humans.  Jesus was an infant, a toddler, a preteen (and capable of being snarky from what I read in the story at the Temple), an adolescent, a young man and finally a man "with a career" - he was Rabbini: a teacher -and, as a matter of fact, a politically rabble-rousing teacher. 


The important point here in noting Jesus' humanness is that someone had to help him become. Mary, Jesus' mother was not a 'holy' uterus:  Mary was the woman who brought Jesus into being and supported him into his becoming. Becoming is what human beings do as the means to growing in order to embrace their person in it's wholeness of personality and giftedness and then answer a Call for living which is evoked from this embrace.  It was Mary who raised Jesus the human being: taught, disciplined, explained, praised, disciplined and supported the person of Jesus in order that he might embark upon his journey. What an amazing story! Mary's amazing story of living.


And this amazing story of living is not told partially because religion skips over Jesus' humanness but also not told because it appears so ordinary - ordinary because it is our story - our story of living our days nurturing and sustaining and thus, growing, what we love.  Yet, as each of us with even a little bit of awareness knows, the willingness to grow love is not an easy journey despite it's ordinariness, as growing love demands us to learn how to respond to something much bigger than the wants and desires of our singular self. It is this learning that  defines our journey of living from the purpose of our life.


There is a single line in the bible story of the visitation of the Magi  (I think it's in John) which offers a glimpse into not only Mary's story of living, but is also the key to our living: 'and she pondered these things in her heart.'   As I read those simple words, my own heart contracts in empathy for I get it: I get the pondering, the wondering, the contemplating - the hope {often tinged with human fear}- that I have seen what I need to see and then placed this moment of awareness within my heart so that I might do what I need to do - that I might learn what is needed in order to live the purpose of my life.


It is what we ponder and tuck into our hearts that creates our journey for it is these 'tucked away' awarenesses from which we make choice - and is our choices in living defining our journey.  It takes great courage to choose to live from our heart. The 'world' will tell us that what is important, is outside of our heart. But the counterpoint to that view is why Mary's story begins with the Angel Gabriel: this story shows us her saying 'yes' to living from her heart. Yet, her yes and our yes is simply the beginning of living - one moment to tuck into the heart - and like Mary, most of our living from this yes, will be so ordinary, no one even thinks it is the story. 


Yet, if we, like Mary say our yes, tuck it into our heart, ponder the experiences of our heart and then go about responding to what happens in our day in the the best way we are capable of, then quite possibly we are living the same story as Mary: nurturing, nourishing, sustaining and growing love.  Which is, a rather extraordinary story.

Peeking beneath the story

I think the most interesting parts of stories are the bits we don't give words to.  I find this is particularly true of old, old stories like the arrival of the Magi.  Traditionally when telling the Epiphany story the spotlight of plot focuses on their arrival and presentation of gifts to baby Jesus. A spotlight focused on this singular image makes a certain amount of sense because this is the scene where what happened in that stable in Bethlehem is named: the promise of God has been fulfilled.

Shining the spotlight on the image of camels and kings and treasures is quite lovely and the image may evoke an exclamation of: 'Oh, that's what all this means.' But truthfully, most of us don't bother exclaiming that phrase of amazement because the great majority of us have spent little time exploring the wholeness of the story.  

What most of us hear in this story is "blah, blah, blah there were three kings; blah, blah, blah they saw a great star; blah, blah, blah they traveled on their camels; blah, blah, blah they came to the stable in Bethlehem and presented their gifts of gold, frankincense and myhhr; blah, blah, blah."

From where I sit in life, the amazing part of the story has little to do with those boxes of gold, frankincense and myhhr, the amazing part of the story is what is told - or could be told - within all the blah, blah, blah's: 

What belief did they have that was so powerful they were willing to leave their kingdoms to follow a star?  
What had they been doing to prepare themselves to both see the star and embark on the journey?
What did they experience on that journey?
What happened after they left the stable?


I know lots of people would respond to those questions by stating flatly "well, you know the story probably isn't real anyway.  And if some part of it was real, then it probably didn't happen that way."  And both statements could be correct, but the wonderful thing about ancient stories that remain alive is that whether or not the facts are true, the story contains truth. 


"True" means in accordance with fact, however, 'truth' indicates the quality of excellence existing in what is spoken.  The quality of excellence is this story {from my point of view} is that when I have come to believe that my life has a purpose, then the means to fulfilling this purpose is a journey requiring both the patience and work of preparation; the openness and willingness to learn to wonder and therefore be able to 'see'; the willingness to leave one's 'kingdom' in order to follow the Light that will guide us and then, finally, when we arrive at the 'place' upon which the star - the Light - rests, we are then able to offer what is left: the gift of self: a self recognizing that God is incarnate - dwelling within - human form.


Emerson said, "I am the organ through which Spirit executes It's will and Creative Power."  There is no creative power greater than the recognition of God Incarnate - God's energy dwelling within my human form.  To recognize this great Light of Truth however is a journey of living: a journey where we learn how to absorb this wondrous reality into the fabric of our life so that when the 'star' appears in the darkness of night, we are prepared to follow it's light.



When we - each of us - is able to say our 'yes' to knowing we have been created for a purpose; when we then say 'yes' to the work of preparation for the journey, and when we then proclaim our 'yes' to a willingness to embark on our journey, then indeed, the promise of God is fulfilled.