Category Archives: spirituality

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Be Still and Know

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A gray morning.  I woke up too early, stumbled through breakfast in a fog, rinsed the dishes then lay back down in bed to “hit the reset button”.  I closed my eyes and thought of Lake Michigan.  My grandmother owned a cottage on the lake.  My childhood summers included a few weeks there each year.  My favorite thing about that time was that much of it was unstructured.  I could wake up, pull on a sweatshirt, walk barefoot out on the cement porch, let the screen door thwack closed behind me, and be on the beach without a backward glance.  Alone on a stretch of sand with the water as still as a bathtub, I could see “sand waves” under the surface and shiny stones just resting there in patient silence.  I wanted to be like one of those stones this morning.  Still and ancient, reflective.

photo credit: Gael Kurath, U.S. Geological Survey

I thought of a phrase this morning, as I realized what day it was.  “March first, ask questions later.”  That is not the way I want to live.

Breathe.  Be still.  Be quiet.  Settle like a beach stone.  Reflect.  Listen to the birds.

How do you post silence?  How do you publish peace?  How can I share the feeling of vastness that sweeps over me when I look at a calm horizon?  If you’ve ever stood in the early light and heard the rushing of your own heartbeat in your ears, you know.

You know and understand.

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What’s Important?

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When I hung around with evangelical Christians, I would frequently hear this phrase: “be in right relationship with”.  That was a core value in life.   I agreed then, and I still agree in some ways.  I very much resonate with the value of relationships.  I am “a lover” by temperament, so to speak, and being engaged with the universe is supremely important to me.  I also have a huge desire to be “right”, but that is exactly the thing I’m now trying to dismantle.  I was a compliant kid.  I was afraid of my father and of all authority.  I wanted to be “good” and “correct” because I wanted to be praised instead of punished!  Now, I find that being “right” is not all that great of a goal.  First of all, it can lead you to be self-righteous and judgmental.  Second, how do you even know what is “right”?  Is it “right” to do everything an authority tells you to?  What if that authority tells you to harm someone else?  See, it gets tricky.  How about if I just say that I want to have a good relationship with everything?  I think that covers it pretty well.

One relationship that I am really working to improve is my relationship with God and Christianity.  It has gone through a huge change in the last few years, one that has many of my friends scratching their heads.  Some of them are downright disappointed in the change and have told me so.  Some have just stopped communicating with me.  I am most in awe of those who are openly listening, talking, challenging, and engaging with me as I rework my theology and practice.  Yesterday was Ash Wednesday.  Instead of going to Church, getting ashes imposed on my forehead, and beginning a 40-day penitential practice (which is an indication of how I participated in that relationship for 47 years), Steve & I finished reading T.S. Eliot’s poem named for the day and discussed post-modern cynicism.  Despite Eliot’s conversion, he doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about life.  This morning, we had breakfast with his Aunt and talked about her church experiences with fasting and confession and Bible study.  Today, I got another e-mail from an old friend who is willing to discuss my journey and walk with me in it.  I’ve known this person since I was about 12 and she was 17.  Replying to her became my top writing priority for the day.  So, I’ve decided to use that material for my post today.  First, a photo or two to open the mind:

What is the value of a sparrow?

A cardinal far from the Vatican

My thoughts for today:

I feel like I have a continual discourse going on in my brain about my relationship with Jesus and the Church.  On any given day, other people enter that conversation and keep it going.  At breakfast, it was Steve & his Aunt Rosie.  As we walked to the library, it was just Steve.  Now you’ve entered the discussion.  Welcome!  Come, have a place on the panel!
The Church.  So much of it is about the social aspect.  Sometimes it acts like a group of people who are all friendly, who share affinities, who enjoy being together and taking care of each other.  Seems there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m sure that’s not all Jesus meant the Church to be.  What happens when that group disbands, moves away or dies off?  Kind of like your Presbyterian congregation.  Or what happens when that group gets visited by people whom they don’t care for?  People of a different kind who don’t fit into their social circle?  How do they behave?  Is that what Christianity is about?  There is so much intolerance, so much judgment, so much exclusion, that it just seems to represent the worst of society as well.
Theology & Philosophy.  The Church getting down to what it actually believes about the universe.  And why.  I was taught by my Episcopal parents that there are 3 legs on the stool supporting what they believe: Scripture, Tradition and Reason.  My dad held up the Reason leg when he talked about Science. In the face of overwhelming evidence about evolution, for example, there’s no need to dismiss it.  It can be worked in with the other legs.  Scripture is about the story of human life, the salvation story, the emotional story, the behavioral story.  But it’s still a story, a Myth.  It is about Truth, but it isn’t literally true.  I don’t think it’s “true” that we are all sinners, or that we are all fundamentally separate from each other.  If you look at the biological universe, we are all very much interconnected.  I don’t know if there’s any evidence to prove that a historical Jesus even existed, much less that he was resurrected from the dead and will come again.  I still love Jesus’ teaching, whether he’s fiction or fact.  I love how he goes straight to the religious teachers of the day and preaches in their faces about how they have undermined values like compassion, inclusion, humility, spirituality, and forgiveness.  I think if it were possible for him to reappear in the US today, he would go straight to the Conservative Republican Christian Right and do the same thing!  Tradition seems to be aimed at behavior, how we live together.  The thing that is so tricky about behavior is that it needs to change, it needs to be responsive and responsible.  Most people think that Tradition is about keeping things the same.  I think that keeping core values is a good thing, but the way they are expressed should be flexible.
The thing I miss most about The Church is choir!  Singing!  And I have always loved Gospel more than classical, deep down.  Yesterday, Steve put on a new CD; I immediately recognized Odetta’s guitar and voice and purred with delight.  He laughed and said, “Priscilla wants to be a big, black woman!”  It’s so true!  I love the soul, the familiarity with humanity and suffering and the confidence.  I don’t want to be brainwashed or shamed or coerced by guilt.  I want to be free and respected for what I am.  And what am I?  A white Anglo, in part. But I am partly a big, black woman as well because we are all connected here on earth.
Anyway, that’s where the dialogue has me today.  I want to tell you again how much I appreciate you taking the time to engage with me in this part of my journey.  It means a lot.  I really get turned off by the tendency, especially in politics, for people to circle the wagons or form a fortress from which to sling rhetoric while refusing to actually come out peacefully and discuss something.  You know what I mean?  And the media just makes the whole situation worse, little Tweets & comments here and there but no real engagement.  Thanks for being willing to be real, to put your story and your thoughts and your experiences in writing and listen to mine as well.  I respect you for that.  I think that’s how Jesus was, too.  I think of the stories in the Gospel of John especially, of conversations with Samaritans, women, disciples, beggars, and Pharisees.  He didn’t just knock off a sound bite for the media and move on.  And as much as anyone stayed to hear more, he kept interacting.  What a great example!

 

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A Bigger World

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I’ve been thinking lately about my ego and my mood cycle.   Two days ago, I wrote “I feel that expansive, fecund, open sense bubbling up in me, settling me down, inviting me to nurture and set free.  Then, a while later, I feel a feisty urge to grab hold and wrestle with my circumstances and force them to conform to some idea in my brain.”  Right now, I’m in the restless part of my cycle, and my ego is eager to get to work on something.   It gives me a sort of shimmering sense of dissatisfaction, not like something is “wrong”, but like I’ve been sitting too long and want to stretch.  I don’t want to get into the habit of simply indulging my ego with any old thing whenever it prods me, though.   Steve often talks of feeling like he’s “treading water”, too.  He told me this morning that he wanted to work on “pointing his canoe”, which is his metaphor for re-establishing direction and putting energy into venturing forward, so I asked him if he uses some kind of ego energy to address that.   He said, “It’s not like that.  It’s more like gathering your courage and discipline to step into a bigger world.  I think the ego is a smaller world.”

I immediately got my pencil and notebook and wrote that down.

A bigger world.  A world that is beyond me, beyond my control, beyond prediction.  A bigger concentric circle.  I do think we tend to pull back into our tiny, lower-case universe, the one where we feel safe and comfortable and powerful.  We can’t really help that tendency, but we can acknowledge it and try to point our canoe in a different direction.  I am really inspired by people who do that, and through the network of blogging, I have met a few who I think are paddling away.  Maybe they’re not the people you’re thinking of.  They aren’t the extreme sportsmen.  They aren’t the world travelers.  They aren’t the social superstars.  They are the suffering, the ones who have met their limitations and crossed into the unknown.  They blog about living with their illness, their addiction, their recovery, their brain damage in a way that definitely requires them to gather courage and discipline and step into a bigger world, a world which they don’t master.  And sometimes they whine, and sometimes their posts are incredibly boring, but I keep visiting them because I think they are truly onto something.  I suppose that I am hoping to witness their breakthrough flight, when they will soar high above the rest of us into that bigger world of awareness.  I’m not sure what that will look like, but maybe I’ll recognize it anyway.

I am working on writing a memoir on my husband’s illness and death.  Four years ago, he had his last surgery.

The story of how he came out of anesthesia is perhaps a glimpse into that bigger world.  My oldest daughter wrote about it in her Live Journal that evening:

“When I saw him after the surgery, painkillers and low blood sugar had rendered him almost completely unresponsive. We tried everything—tickling him, turning his insulin pump off, talking to him, poking him—but the most we could get from him was a groan or a slight shift of position. I told him I was pregnant. Mom said they’d called a rematch of the Super Bowl. I even took a picture of him, threatening, I think, to mock him with it later. Nothing made any difference until I had to leave for work. I squeezed his arm and said “Bye, Dad. I love you,” and in a sleepy, submerged-sounding voice, he said “Love you.” We couldn’t get him to say or do anything else, but every time someone said “I love you,” he would immediately mumble it back.”

So, I think of Jim, hovering somewhere between consciousness and death and knowing only one response: “I love you”.   This is the Universe you don’t control.

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What is Love?

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Yesterday, I read a travel post about a European romantic trend called Love Locks.  Apparently, an Italian novel whose title translates to “I Need You” has spawned the custom of lovers affixing padlocks to public fences, bridges, gates and whatnot as a sign of their everlasting love.  This idea really rubs me the wrong way, so I’m sorting out my thoughts to figure out why.  Of course, this is about me, not about judging any of the couples who have participated in this ritual nor about anyone else who thinks it’s romantic.  So, what do I know about me?

First of all, I worry about the accumulation of stuff.  Seeing all those padlocks encrusting a surface reminds me of the proliferation of manufactured gadgets and things that we humans often allow to run unchecked.  Apparently, many city officials also consider them “an eyesore”.  It occurs to me that if they were something natural or biodegradable (like flower petals or garlands?), I would probably not feel this instant repulsion.  This may be just the surface of the aesthetic mismatch, however.

Second, I think a lot about symbolism.  What does a padlock say about love?  In all fairness, I have not read the novel, so I am probably missing the finer points.  I understand the desire for security in a relationship.  I was married for 24 years, “until death”, and I positively flourished under the safety of that bond.  But now that Jim has slipped all surly bonds, I think that anything everlasting must be a bit more mutable than metal, more plastic than any tangible material.  The words of a song by John Denver keep floating to the surface of my consciousness.  The title of the song is “Perhaps Love”.  Here’s a bit of the chorus: “Some say love is holding on and some say letting go; and some say love is everything and some say they don’t know”.   I guess I have to say that lately I’ve been sitting in the “letting go” camp.  Out of necessity, obviously.  I did the struggle of holding on.  I found it to be an ego thing, ultimately unsustainable.  Letting go, opening up, imagining expansiveness is a way to include a lot more without confining it to an embrace.  I believe love wants to include a lot more by nature.

Two nights before my love died was Valentine’s Day.  We celebrated at home with champagne and salmon in the company of two of our daughters.  My oldest brought out a book of Pablo Neruda’s poetry and read this one (Love Sonnet #92):

My love, should I die and you don’t,
let us give grief no more ground:
my love, should you die and I don’t,
there is no piece of land like this on which we’ve lived.

Dust in the wheat, sand in the desert sands,
time, errant water, the wandering wind
carried us away like a navigator seed.
In such times, we may well not have met.

The meadow in which we did meet,
oh tiny infinity, we give back.
But this love, Love, has had no end,

and so, as it had no birth,
it has no death. It is like a long river
that changes only its shores and its banks.

Translation: Terence Clarke

I cannot imagine trying to put a padlock on a wheat field or on the desert sands, on the wind or on a river.  I cannot imagine putting a padlock on time, even though that’s a concept we made up, just like the padlock, as a way to try to control things.  I do know that the impulse to lock down an experience is very human and very old.  The ancient story of the Transfiguration of Jesus comes to mind.   Jesus and three of his disciples (Peter, James and John) climb a mountain, and there the disciples have an experience of seeing Jesus in glowing white raiment talking to Moses and Elijah.  Good old impetuous Peter gets all excited and bursts out with an idea.  “Let’s build three booths (or tabernacles)!  We can put each of you in one and hang on to this experience for a while longer, perhaps invite others….”   He is silenced by a booming voice from the clouds. “Listen!”  When the cloud lifts, Jesus stands alone, and they decide to keep quiet instead.

I am beginning to recognize a kind of flow, a yin and yang of contrasting energies, in myself.  I think it has something to do with my biological cycle, but it also manifests in a mood cycle.  I feel that expansive, fecund, open sense bubbling up in me, settling me down, inviting me to nurture and set free.  Then, a while later, I feel a feisty urge to grab hold and wrestle with my circumstances and force them to conform to some idea in my brain.   I could say that I am still loving with both energies.  I used to tell my children that I disciplined them because I loved them, and I believe that’s true, but I think there’s an ego love and a non-ego love.   They are both part of me.  One is not “right” and the other “wrong”, but I think that the non-ego kind is more beneficial in the universe.

Valentine’s Day is a few weeks away.  It’s a time when many people are thinking about love, romantic love.  I keep challenging myself to think bigger, to open up.  I hear the voice booming from the clouds, from the trees, from the water and the air.  It asks me to Listen.  So I guess it’s time to shut up.

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Peace On Earth

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It is Day #23 in the December countdown.  Today’s gift is Peace.  Ahh, peace.  Take a deep breath.  Relax the muscles around your skull; feel  your ears and eyebrows pull backward; close your eyes and roll your head. Do you feel a sense of well-being?  Julian of Norwich claims that God himself spoke these often quoted words to her, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”  Do you believe that’s true?  Do you believe that’s possible?  I do, although I don’t always act as though I do. I forget.

Wikipedia uses these phrases to define peace:  “safety, welfare, prosperity, security, fortune,  friendliness… a relationship between any people characterized by respect, justice and goodwill… calm, serenity, a meditative approach”.  Where does peace come from?  Buddha, the Dalai Lama and many others will tell you that peace comes from within, not without.

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.” – Black Elk

But perhaps, there are things outside of you that will remind you of the peace which dwells within you.

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.” – John Muir

Do you feel peace in your mind and body and soul all at once?  Do you descend into peace from your head down?

“I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.” – Helen Keller

I suppose each of us must find his/her own journey into peace.  Anxieties and conflicts are particular and personal.  Facing each one head on is not a passive task.  Making peace is not for the weak of heart.  “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”  Is God about making peace?  Is making peace the work of the Universe?  Is it perhaps that joyful effort that gives life meaning?

“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”  – Martin Luther King, Jr.

If we can make peace between ourselves and God, ourselves and Nature, can we then make peace between ourselves and others?

“If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.” – Thich Nhat Hahn

“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.” – Mother Theresa

Steve constantly reminds me that in every situation, especially in those that cause anxiety and conflict to arise, I have 3 choices.  I can hide/run away.  I can try to change the situation.  I can change myself.  The first option doesn’t exactly make peace; it simply avoids confrontation.  You can hide away all day long and still feel the fear of whatever it is that scared you.  So, why do I often employ that choice?  Because I lack courage and I’m lazy.  I sometimes pick that choice first to give me time to screw up my will and motivation.  I don’t want to get stuck there, though.

Trying to change the situation requires engagement.  Making peace with hunger, poverty, sickness, and distress this way requires an understanding of  causes and effects on all different levels.  It requires negotiation, and it requires cooperation.  You don’t always get all that is required to change a situation.  Not all situations can be changed.  Death is the big one that comes to mind here.  You can’t hide or run away from it, and you can’t change the situation so that you don’t have to experience it.  Now what?

Change yourself.  Sometimes the only way to make peace with something is to change your thinking, your belief, your approach, your attachment, your aversion, your ignorance or some other aspect of yourself.  “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!” is the simplistic way to say it.  If you’d “rather fight than switch” (old cigarette commercial – pop philosophy at it’s finest), then you have chosen to fight, not to make peace.  Our egos make it really tough to change ourselves.  Sometimes we’d rather fight, sometimes we’d rather die, sometimes we’d rather do anything than change ourselves.  You have to ask yourself very seriously what your ultimate goal is to get past this one.  Is your goal to keep your ego intact or is your goal to make peace?   I’ve come across a lot of phrases that address this ego dilemma: “take up your cross”, “turn the other cheek”, “deny yourself”, “die to self”.  I think that dogma is probably more an ego thing than a peace thing.   If you can’t let go of your religious beliefs in the interest of peace, then your religion is more about yourself than it is about God, in my humble opinion.   I love the part of the movie “Gandhi” where he counsels a Hindu man who is distraught at having murdered a Muslim child.  “Raise a Muslim child and make sure you raise him as a Muslim, not as a Hindu. This is the only way you can purge your sins.”  This is true wisdom about peace.

Give peace a chance. It requires your will, it requires your strength, and it requires you to lay aside will & strength.  I am looking forward to enjoying the peace that my family and I have created.  We are still creating it, and will be our whole lives long.  That’s what children of God do.

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Joy to the World

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Gift of the Universe #22:  JOY!

I truly believe that joy is available to everyone.  No one is denied the opportunity to be joyful.  Many people on this planet will never have a full stomach or adequate shelter or enough material wealth to climb out of poverty, but believe it or not, some of those very people know joy.

“Joy is not in things; it is in us.”  – Richard Wagner

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.”  – Joseph Campbell

My late husband was ill for many years.  He went under the knife for open heart surgery when he was just 31.  He suffered a host of medical problems stemming from diabetes, always believing that he would get the disease under control.  When he realized that was not going to happen, he said, “Okay, I’m sick.  I can be sick and miserable, or I can be sick and happy.  I choose happy.  Pain is inevitable, misery is optional.”  I really admire him for coming up with that maxim, and for embodying it.  The night before he died, he called me at work and asked if I’d like to go out to dinner.  Our daughters were out for the evening, and he took the opportunity to enjoy a ‘date’ with me.  We went to a local sports bar & grill and enjoyed veggie appetizers and sandwiches.  Our youngest called from rehearsal to say she was not feeling well and was coming home early, so we went home to be with her.   Jim was tired, so he took his medications, hooked up to his dialysis machine and CPAP and watched some TV.  When I came up to bed, he turned off the TV and the light.  We fell asleep holding hands.  He never woke up.  And he never complained.  Some people claim that “if you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything”.  I don’t buy that.  Jim didn’t have health, but he had joy and love and he knew it.

Many people would foreswear food, health, housing, and money in order to find joy in an ascetic lifestyle.  Mendicants, yogis, monks, and priests of different faiths have adopted austere practices in order to experience the bliss of enlightenment.

“Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”  – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.”  – Julian of Norwich

This is a deep and serious topic, and much too heavy for me to write about today.  My brain is circling closer to Dr. Seuss and The Grinch who puzzles how the Whos could be singing without “ribbons and tags, packages, boxes and bags”.  Perhaps joy means a little bit more than the glee we feel when we get a shiny, new present.  Happiness is fleeting.  Joy is deeply felt.

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”  – George Bernard Shaw

I’ve got to say that the way I have most felt this joy of being used for a mighty purpose and force of Nature is through mothering.  I know what it is to be thoroughly worn out and joyful.  I know what it is to feel like nobody is devoting himself to my happiness and not to complain because I am finding so much joy in devoting myself to someone else’s well-being.  Not that I didn’t complain occasionally (hey! I’m human!).  I always felt that mothering mattered.  That I was truly making a difference, a big one, to at least four people in the world.  I smiled at my babies even when I was not feeling joyful, and joy emerged.   Never underestimate the effect of a smile.  Check out this Still Face Experiment by Dr. Tronick on youtube.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” – Thich Nhat Hahn

My joyful (and crazy!) kids

Are you smiling every day?  I’m sure I am.  I even busted a belly laugh today as Steve was describing a Giotto fresco…of Mary and Joseph… kissing at the gates of Bethlehem…with Snoopy in the background.  He speaks like a nerd who knows everything, and then I realize he’s bullshitting me.  I fall for it all the time and then get to laugh at him and at myself.  Steve’s identity motto, which he came up with at a psychology school retreat, is “I am the joy in change and movement”.  I am really benefiting from his perspective because I am often afraid of change and movement.  I so don’t need to be.  There is freedom in allowing joy into your life.

Let Heaven and Nature sing…and see if you don’t find yourself singing along.  Rejoice, my friends.

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Have Some Divinity

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The premise is this: for each day in December, instead of counting down on an Advent calendar, I’m counting the free gifts we all get every day.  Today’s gift is divinity, but I don’t mean the candy.  I mean The Divine, The Sacred, The Holy and experiences of them.  Don’t we all have the opportunity to receive that every day?  If you look for it, will you find it?  I think so.

So, what is sacred?  How do you recognize the divine and holy?  In art, there’s always a halo or a sunbeam to give you a clue.  What about here on earth?

‘Namaste’ is the Sanskrit greeting recognizing the existence of another person and the divine spark in that person, with the hands pressed together in front of the heart chakra.  I think the divine spark exists in every living thing as the breath of life.  Every encounter with a living thing is an experience of the divine.  We hardly ever act like that is true, however.  But we could.  Native Americans and many African tribes have hunting rituals that celebrate the sacred exchange of life.  The hunted animal is divine, sacrificing itself for the life of the hunter, and the hunter shows a holy appreciation.  Often, when I look at macro photography of living things, flower stamens, insects, mosses, I am compelled to worship the divine in the detail.  Life is sacred and beautiful.  Looking closely and deeply is a way to practice recognizing that.

Seeing macro, but lacking the lens

In a dualistic world view, the mundane and the divine are polar opposites.  One is worldly, one is sacred.  If this world were imbued with holiness, if God became incarnate and entered flesh in this world, those opposites would run together like watercolors.  Many cultures believe this is the truth about life.  The waters under the firmament and the waters above the firmament are separated in one telling of the creation story, but the Spirit of God was moving over all of the waters from the very beginning, even in that story.  The understanding that divinity is everywhere has inspired people all over the globe for centuries.  This place we inhabit is special; it’s valuable.  It’s all holy.  This is the beginning of respect for the Universe and everything in it.  Somewhere in Western history, that idea lost its power.  Earth and everything in it became base and fallen.  Good turned to bad and life turned to death.  I’m not sure if that new idea has been very helpful.  I rather think it hasn’t.  And I don’t think it has to be that way.  It’s an idea, after all.  So if it’s not a helpful idea, why support it?  How would you rather live?  In a fallen world or in a world where the sacred and divine can be found everywhere?  Just wondering out loud.  I’m not saying that one idea is right and the other wrong.  The glass is neither half full nor half empty.  It’s a glass, and there’s water in it.  The rest is conceptual.  Why argue?  Choose how to live with the glass and the water.   As for me and my house, “I choose happy.”  (One of Jim’s conclusive statements.)

I hope this gives you something to ponder for today.  If you like, you can add a scene of Edmund Pevensie in Narnia being asked by the White Witch what he craves.  “It is dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating.  What would you like best to eat?”  “Turkish Delight, please your Majesty!” he responds.  What if he had said, “Divinity”?  Same story, nuanced.  I would like to taste the sacred in this world, and I believe it’s here.

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I’m Touched

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I have an image in mind as I parade out these gifts for each day of December.  Described beautifully by D.H. Lawrence in The Plumed Serpent, it is that ritual wherein the devout remove the icons and statuary from inside the Catholic Church, bedeck them with flowers, and hoist them onto portable platforms so that they can move about the throngs of people and allow them to worship, touch and reverence these symbols of their blessings.  So here is the thirteenth symbol of a holy experience – we write it ‘touch’.

It occurs to me that taste involves a certain amount of touch.  Foods caress your lips and taste buds.  That involves direct contact with substance, as opposed to sight, hearing and smell which seem more indirect.   Touch is all about that direct contact with substance, and it can happen anywhere on your body.  Fingertips are often the first touch sensors that come to mind.  They are sensitive and yet resilient.  They detect temperature, pressure, texture, shape and probably a million other bits of data.  The temperature sensors are interesting.  I remember an exhibit station at the Exploratorium in San Francisco that alleged that you could not tell the difference between intense cold and intense heat by touch.  It sounds like nonsense, but here’s how they proved it:  two metal coils were intertwined evenly.  One coil was extremely cold.  The other was vaguely warm.  When you touched them individually, that was evident.  When you touched them together, you immediately drew your hand away because it felt like it was burning hot!  Apparently your brain combines the intensity message with the heat message and warns you right away to back off.  Of course, I wanted to test how long I could endure the sensation, knowing that I wasn’t being burned.

My sister and my daughter are both certified massage therapists.  I think they are perfectly suited to this profession.  They are caring, intuitive, kinetic, and highly skilled.  They are also whip smart at math and able to comprehend systems and memorize terminology.   You probably don’t think about that as you enter a spa, and maybe you have stereotypes of “massage parlors” somewhere in your consciousness.   That’s the mystery of the grace of touch.  It transcends all that scientific knowledge and meets you on a very intimate level.  “How’s this pressure?” they ask you, and you only need to respond by relaying your comfort.   “I don’t know what you’re doing or why, I just know that it feels good.”  And I’ve also learned that it feels good to them, too, in a different way.  They get in touch with their own bodies, how they perceive what’s going on beneath the skin, how they balance their own weight against you, how they move down a long muscle or manipulate fascia.  It’s very rewarding work.  It’s also tiring.  Schedule a massage, enjoy the experience, and tip your masseuse well!  If you live in San Francisco or DeKalb, I have one to recommend.

Intimacy.  Touch is a wonderful conveyance of feeling and thought.  It may take a while to trust it for many of us.  It’s sad that in our society it is often manipulative, dishonest and damaging.   The touch of someone I truly trust can instantly change my mood.  When I was in labor for the first time and about to deliver, I was approaching a very intense experience of the unknown.  I knew that I would have to surrender my control in order to get through it, but I was scared.  Jim was very interested in all that was going on down at the doctors’ end, the episiotomy, the vacuum forceps, the bells & whistles.  I felt a bit abandoned by my “coach” until he came close to my face and laid the back of his hand on my cheek.   I relaxed completely in that instant, and Susan was born.  I will always remember that touch.  When I stand at the sink washing dishes, I love it when Steve comes up behind me and kisses the back of my neck.  It sends a shiver through me every time.   To be in contact with someone I love gives all my labors meaning.  My body doesn’t live in a vacuum; I am interconnected with everything in the universe.  I like to be reminded of that.

warm, furry, soft, silky

With all the holiday greetings being sent around the world this month, it’s nice to know that people “reach out”.  It would be my hope that we also get the chance to really touch.  I’d take a hug above a twitter every time.   And I miss having a cat to stroke, big time.  I admire animals for the way that they instruct us humans in some basic lessons in touching when we are often too uptight to understand what they know instinctively.  For all the cuddles that they elicit from us reluctant brain-heavy types, I am in awe.  Especially from men who are often not permitted to indulge in touching.  I love seeing my son being physical and affectionate with the dog and cat he lives with.  It reminds me of when he was young enough to have stuffed animals.  He had quite a collection, and he enjoyed their softness openly, frequently nuzzling into a huge plush dog named Buster.  Today, he is interviewing for a job at a kennel.  I think it would be great for him to have an opportunity to spread that gift of loving touch to some lonesome boarders.

I am grateful for the ability to feel the universe around me in so many different ways, externally and internally.  Thanks be!

Unknown's avatar

Sunday Poetry

by

Church Going by Philip Larkin (1954)

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

I love this poem.  Every time I come to it, I recognize myself – awkward longings and reverential questions, sentimental habits and a hunger to be wise, anachronistic and timeless seriousness.  My spirituality is in transition.   I went to Church every Sunday for 47 years with very few exceptions.  I haven’t been for the last 2 years.  I am working on embodying a more inclusive philosophy, a less social practice, and a less dogmatic and judgmental religious outlook.   I do miss singing in the choir, though I have put lots of good music in my life, and found many holy places in which to look up and many opportunities to practice love outside of the Church.  I feel rather like I’m cutting apron strings and finally growing up.  When I was a child, “Children’s Church” was another place where grown-ups told you how to be and said, “Repeat after me.”  When my children went to church, they had what was called “Catechesis of the Good Shepherd” which was a Montessori-based religious ed approach.  The children explored their own innate spirituality through play, manipulating figures of shepherd and sheep and acting out rituals with candles and vestments and various other items.  I think the idea was to give permission and encouragement for the children to experience their own connection with the stories they were told and express their own emotions about them.  So anyway, I suppose there is an evolution of spirituality within a person’s lifetime.  It’s different for each person, of course.  To stay in the routine of church going without engaging in any new dimension of thought or experience would be a deadening of the dynamic, though.  I want to have a living faith, and I’m experiencing a new kind of life now.  And I suppose that I am also rationalizing in order to give myself permission to be absent from Church.  It’s a complicated relationship.  Maybe more like being a daughter than I imagined.  I’m still trying to mature.

Unknown's avatar

‘Tis A Season

by

When I was a kid, I always had an Advent calendar to count down the days from the first of December until Christmas Eve.  I had the same tradition with my own kids.  The secrets hidden behind each door were often Scripture verses.  It was important to tell the story of Jesus’ birth and make sure my kids knew that was “the reason for the season”.   There are other little treasures we could open each day, though.  When my son was taking German in high school, they sold Advent calendars with chocolates in them.   My father used to make us calendars out of magazine pictures and various old rotogravures with fortune cookie strips for the daily message.  We made our own calendars for each other, too, with simple crayon symbols behind the cut out doors.   The season has multiple images in my mind, and now I’m trying to figure out what it means to me at this point in my life.

I will always have respect for Jesus and the Christian story.  They were supremely important in my life for many years.  My spirituality was formed around them.  I think it is good to examine and re-examine beliefs, though, and strive for genuine and authentic expressions of experience.  My experience is expanding as I age, and I want to include more of those experiences in my belief system.  I want to include respect for other cultures, other religions, other parts of the planet and the universe.  I have a sister who is Sikh, a son who identifies with Buddhism and Native American spirit stories and a father who once taught science.  There is a lot going on all over the world in this season.  What do I want to acknowledge or celebrate?

My youngest daughter has always loved this season.  She used to go to the local Hallmark store in the middle of the summer to look at the Christmas village set up there.  What was that about?  Sparkly, pretty, cozy, homey, yummy expectations of treats?  Possibly.  Peace, love, joy?  Possibly.  Emotions?  Definitely.  Why not focus on pleasurable human senses and emotions?  Up in the northern hemisphere, we are spinning away from the sun and plunging into a cold, dark time.  Light becomes more precious, warmth becomes holy, food is life itself.  Why not celebrate that dependence?  We are sustained by the sun and the producers of this planet that make food from its energy.  Evergreen trees remind us of that.  Gifts remind us that we receive from the producers; we are consumers.  Gratitude is the attitude of the season.  Giving is the action that sustains us.

I sent a text message to each of my kids this morning saying that the gift for Day #1 this season is sunshine.  The sun is shining here, showering us with Vitamin D and all kinds of other goodies we need to be healthy and happy.   We are blessed, saved, sustained, given life in this universe by an amazing set of circumstances that we did not originate.   However you acknowledge that and whoever taught you to acknowledge that deserves attention.  May you be happy as you think and act in awareness of this.