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TRUTH is a warrior

Jan 1, 2014 | Hope & Encouragement, Sovereignty, Spirituality, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom

I’ve spent the last few days at a beautiful, private, and extremely quiet place. I’ve spent a lot of time looking out at the water, the mountains, and more breeds of birds than I can count. I’ve rested. I’ve read. And I’ve even written a little. I’ve spent intentional, sacred time looking back over 2013.

Consistent themes have emerged, right alongside some pretty twisty threads. I’ve focused on the themes: patterns that have powerfully, almost miraculously appeared and made themselves at home in my world and my heart. And I’ve pulled on the threads – in some cases, pretty hard; my resistance high to the unraveling necessary to weave something stronger, more beautiful, and better able to support all that lies ahead and all that I deserve and desire.

The word that has come to me, again and again, on both ends of this spectrum – themes and threads, past and future – has been TRUTH.

I have seen Her presence made manifest in powerful ways when I have been willing to speak. I have heard Her voice within me when I have been most afraid, most heartbroken, most insecure, and most alone. I have felt Her in the words and actions of my friends – women who have called me to the TRUTH they see and experience in me when I am loathe to forget.

I have had also to acknowledge that there have been many times in which She wanted to be more present. When She waited quietly (though impatiently) in the wings. When She was ignored. When I was too afraid, too heartbroken, too insecure, and feeling myself to be too alone to bear one more reminder of Her vast and magnificent presence.

Here’s what I know – and what you know, too: TRUTH will not be denied.

She comes as ruthless cure and kindest companion, as double-edged sword and heroine’s scepter, as quietest whisper and on-a-soap-box shout. And She longs to be given even more reign, more space, more permission, more room to be expressed.

Because here’s the thing: TRUTH knows that when She’s seen, spoken, and experienced everything changes.

You’ve heard it before – my very favorite-of-all-time quote:

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open. ~ Muriel Rukeyser

Which is exactly why we don’t want to tell it (and why, TRUTH-be-told, we do). It’s exactly why we hear, with great clarity and acumen, that know-that-I-know-that-I know voice within, but hesitate to let it out. It’s exactly why, when it’s spoken to us or about us we either wince or weep, hide from or herald its coming.

Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

TRUTH is what I want, what I seek, what I offer.

I’m inviting you to the TRUTH-telling you most need, most want, and most deeply long for; what you know and need to talk to someone else about. Yes, you and me, one-on-one, having TRUTH-filled conversations about stuff that matters.

Themes and threads. Past and present. Certainly, the future. The fears, the heartbreaks, the insecurities, and the loneliness. Most definitely the know-that-you-know-that-you-know voice within. And in all of these, the Sacred – present and accounted for when we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that desires. A safe place to tell your TRUTH and to see it transformed and transmitted into every aspect of your life. Exactly what you’ve been looking for. Take the next step.

******

As I’ve worked on this post, I’ve continued to look out at the water, the mountains, and the endlessly-passing-by birds (two hummingbirds are to my right, a small finch to my left, and I saw a blue heron an hour-or-so ago). I’ve felt my fear ebb and flow. The TRUTH? It’s daunting to state intentions, plans, goals, even dreams.

What if I can’t keep up? What if my TRUTH doesn’t resonate with yours? What if it results in more unsubscribes than subscribes?

But I’m hearing deeper, more heart-rending questions than these. What if writing my TRUTH leaves me feeling like a voice crying in the wilderness? What if telling my TRUTH results in more winnowing than gathering, more loss than gain; hard choices, tough calls, firm(er) boundaries, profound risks? What if living my TRUTH means that goodbyes are on the way – to patterns, to particular behaviors, even to people?

Other possibilities beckon and abound, as well. What if writing my TRUTH is what will create exactly the platform, the context, and even the content I most love, most long for, most live to create and share? What if telling my TRUTH invites opportunity, people, and places into my world that defy my wildest imagination? And what if living my TRUTH actually serves to draw me even closer to the Divine, to the Sacred, to a way of being that is more powerful, more breathtaking, and more wildly passionate than I’ve even and ever dared dream?

TRUTH makes no promise to be a gentle or barely-felt presence. She is a warrior, a fighter, a lover, and the fiercest of friends.

And this, it occurs to me, is who I want to be, as well.

May it be so.

On a Wire

Apr 6, 2013 | Hope & Encouragement, Spirituality

Early in the morning I sat on the couch, my laptop awaiting the click-click-click of my brain and its compliant fingers. Steaming coffee. Vast silence. Cloudy skies. Heavy heart.

I looked out the window and saw six tiny birds sitting on a wire.

I thought about easy it is for them to sit there, perched and pretty, barely hanging on, not a care in the world.

I thought about how when they let go, they soar. How the wind buoys them up into the heavens.

I thought about how hard it is for me to sit still. How I feel like I’m barely hanging on. How I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders.

I thought that were I to really-completely-totally let go, I would undoubtedly crash. How the wind feels brutal and even violent. How flying and any sense of the heavens feels distant, impossible, and as certain-foolish-hope.

Then I just felt. Lots.

And then I thought that maybe that’s why those six birds sat there: waiting for me to think thoughts and then think new ones and then feel – lots and then trust and then Just.Let.Go.

Think. Feel – lots. Trust. Just.Let.Go. And believe that to soar is the only possible result.

Got it.

And just then, in that moment, the birds flew away and the sun broke through the clouds. God’s honest truth.

Choose to Believe – If Only For Today

Mar 30, 2013 | Hope & Encouragement, Sacred Stories, Spirituality

Easter Sunday is the most significant day on the Christian church calendar. Marking and celebrating the resurrection of Christ is no small event; no small thing to try and understand.

What if understanding is not the point?What if it never has been? What if all that’s ever mattered is the story itself?

I’ve been pondering this nearly endlessly the past couple of days – inspired by watching the film version of Life of Pi. The story is enchanting, heartbreaking, and powerful – as all good stories must be. Even more, it’s so fantastical that you want to believe. Did it actually happen? Was it really like that? Could he possibly have seen and experienced and survived all that he did? Does it matter?

These words, from the book:

“I know what you want. You want a story that won’t surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won’t make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.

“So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do
you prefer? Which is the better story . . . ?”

Do you see?

If given the choice between a story of documentable facts or undeniable meaning, which would you choose? And more important, will you choose? For in such is where faith takes hold. In such is where hope survives. And in such is where love dwells – resurrected and pulsing.

I know: it’s a lot to accept the Burning Bush, the parting of the Red Sea, Jonah in the belly of a whale, and Job’s plight. I know: it’s a lot to accept the Virgin Birth, the healings, the feeding-of-the-5000, the walking-on-water, the death on a cross and resurrection three days later. I know: it’s a lot to accept your own stories of beauty and pain, sickness and health, better and worse, understanding and misunderstanding, poverty and plenty, silence and voice, dignity and depravity, shame and glory, struggle and celebration, hurt and healing, hate and love. But compared to what? A story that won’t surprise? A story that won’t make you see higher or further or differently? A flat story? An immobile story? A dry, yeastless factuality? No story at all?

Believe me, my point (even if only today) is not to have a discussion an argument about biblical inerrancy, atonement theory or any other multitude of theological premises. These are topics and arguments conversations I love, to be sure, but above and beyond everything else is the story. And that, today and every day, is where we must stay. It is our common ground, our grounding reality, our real (if not
only) source of faith and hope and love.

Story is the only thing that compels us; the only thing that really matters when all is said and done: mine, yours, ours…and mayebe even the one we tell/live/believe about God.

Do you see?

You can choose which story you want to believe; which one you want to have impact and move you over and over again. Even if only today, the veracity and “truth” of the story doesn’t matter. What matters is that the story is enchanting enough and heartbreaking enough and powerful enough to hold you captive, to hold you, period; to move you from despair to hope, from darkness to light, from doubt to faith, from death to life.

Do you see?

The Easter Story is invitation to choose to believe, to feel and experience what that makes possible, to cling tenaciously to faith, to hold onto crazy and illogical hope, to trust in beyond-belief love – even if only today. And maybe even more.

“Come and see.”

These were the words a few brave, believing women spoke to the disciples after discovering Jesus’ tomb empty. That morning they stepped into a story that was bigger than them – that they couldn’t possibly prove, verify, or make sense of – ever. And it didn’t matter.

On this Easter Sunday, like those brave, believing women of so long ago, I’m saying, “Come and see.”

Come and see. Choose to see. Believe the story you want, the story you long for, the story you pray for – for yourself and for our world: one of impossible-to-explain miracles, of resurgent faith, of soaring hope, of life conquering death, of resurrection, of love – and love – and love. And not just today. Always. Eternally. Really.

May it be so.

Holy Week and Les Miserables

Mar 26, 2013 | Mothers and Daughters, Spirituality

It’s Holy Week. As is often the case this time of year, I feel some ambivalence: a tinge of regret, a flood of emotion, a lifetime of memory.

So many Easter Sundays spent. A young girl in a new dress and white patent leather shoes. A mother with young daughters in new dresses and white patent leather shoes. And now, a faith-full and church-less woman with no logical reason for a new dress or patent leather shoes.

Was there ever really a logical reason for white patent leather shoes?

My now-less-young daughters came home from a weekend at their dad’s with the Deluxe Edition DVD set of Les Misérables – including the collectible book, the collectible cards, and lots of behind-the-scenes content. I thumbed through and then tumbled across four phrases, all in caps, each on their own page, boldly proclaiming the film’s Eastertide (and practically-illogical) message:

ONE DREAM CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.
FIGHT FOR WHAT YOU LOVE MOST.
FIGHT FOR JUSTICE.
HOPE CHANGES EVERYTHING.

Doctrine, denomination, an affinity for epic musicals, and ambivalence aside, Holy Week tells a similar story. The message inherent in the life of Jesus (and Les Mis) is both impossible and impractical (sort of like white patent leather shoes). But that’s exactly why we love it so; why we weep at its poignancy and power; why we silently hum (and pray) the lyrics to I Dreamed a Dream or Handel’s Messiah; why we fondly, wistfully recall our days of new clothes and shiny shoes. Because it’s the impossible and impractical, the seemingly-crazy, the risky, the beyond-belief, the self-sacrificing, and the love – Love – LOVE that touches us more deeply than anything else, that moves us, that inspires us, that invites us to believe.

To believe — even for a moment — is holy, is sacred, is resurrection for your very soul.

Believe that no form or aspect of death can contain the impossible, impractical, and wild power of Love. Believe that it is the impossible, impractical, and wild power of Love that enables you to rise – again and again. And believe that whether you don white patent leather shoes, or not, the impossible, impractical, and wild power of Love is a dream worth dreaming, a fight worth fighting, justice beyond compare, and the hope that changes everything.

It is my prayer that you will know and experience infinite and overflowing amounts of this impossible, impractical and wild Love throughout Holy Week (and always) – in unbridled, unimaginable, unlimited ways; that our world will know the same.

May it be so.

Giving Up On God

Mar 22, 2013 | Spirituality

Giving up on God: I’m considering it.

I don’t ponder this from an atheistic precipice or in a state of existential angst; rather, it’s an all-out gamble on (and hunger for) a God who supersedes my doubt, who surprises, who stays, who’s relevant and BIG and full-of-felt-love.

The argument could legitimately be made that the God I’ve known since childhood is this God. I would not disagree—completely. But it’s much more complex. That God has often been so bound in strictures of thought and doctrine and prescribed behavior that I’ve felt suffocated at times – unable to breathe deep, to imagine wildly, to believe in ways that expand my heart, my soul, my world.

If God is, as I have been taught, full of unconditional and endless love, then my experience of such should be defined by freedom, grace, and ease, yes? Instead, many of my learned patterns take me to compliance, obedience, aspiring-toward-perfection, penance, offerings, and yes, that prescribed behavior; the manifestation and “proof” that I am good enough, worthy enough . . . enough, period.

I do not believe these things to actually be of God, still, they are the predominant ways through which I’ve come to not only measure my own worth, but also the health/status of my relationship with the Divine. And yes, I can intellectually argue myself out of all of this, but that does not lessen its grip; its ingrained, deep within, at-a-cellular-level hold on my heart.

I should be quick to say that I’ve also had profound personal experiences and seasons of belief that have been incredibly meaningful and even miraculous. It’s not a binary – my thoughts of God: all good or all bad, all true or all false, all worthwhile or all folly.

It’s complex: this God thing. And some days, it exhausts me; other most days it’s the only thing that sustains my hope.

Lest you are worried, it’s not actually giving up on God that I’m considering; it’s giving up on the work of considering God. It’s my desire, intention, and prayer to fall into Open Arms, ease, acceptance, flow, and grace; into a Presence that strengthens and soothes; into a God I inhale and exhale as naturally as I breath.

And maybe this is that:

If God is God, then I can trust that He/She/It will not give up on me.

Inhale. Exhale. Yes.

A Woman’s Faith

Mar 14, 2013 | Spirituality, Women's Voice & Power

It takes faith to be a woman. Whether married or single; a mother or not; a lover and/or friend; self-employed, other employed, or unemployed; a home owner or renter; physically fit or not; old(er) or young(er); extroverted or introverted; religious/spiritual or atheist/agnostic; sister, cousin, aunt, daughter. Each of these requires something more of us, takes something more from us, and calls forth something more in us.

This is not the Faith of our Fathers: a rock solid, immovable system of belief in a male god, a hierarchical church, a patriarchal theology and all the tenets therein.

This is the faith of our Mothers: oft’ unknown and unnamed by them, but ours to carry, to name, to memorialize, to grieve, and to heal. This is a faith that is fluid, highly adaptable, feminine, and grounded in a belief in self.

This is a woman who knows, relies on, and makes her substance known/seen in every realm – living out loud in unconscious, gracious, natural ways. A woman who understands her power, her presence, her passion. A woman who imbues life and wisdom in every conversation and relationship. A woman who gives a resounding, “Yes!” to all things beautiful , tender, vulnerable, courageous, and justice-
focused.

A woman who risks everything for what/who she loves. A woman who sacrifices and suffers much on behalf of her own heart and the hearts of others. A woman who can see the impact and ramification of her words, her thoughts, her actions and chooses integrity, compassion, and generosity at every turn.

A woman who extends herself and others grace. Who does not hide in places of shame or silence; rather, can and will acknowledge her goodness (sometimes fleeting and floundering, other times bold and amazing) and her truest voice. A woman who knows patience – with self and with others.

A woman who is real. Afraid. Tentative. Hopeful. Dangerous. Weighing. Balancing. Walking a tightrope. Hanging on by a thread. Loving with abandon. Getting burned. Making mistakes. Achieving greatness one moment at a time. Believing in herself. Laughing. Weeping. Comforting. Knowing. Holding.

The Sacred Feminine with flesh. The power, knowledge, and beauty of the ages woven into her heart, her mind, her soul. Undaunted. The goddess within. Not an entity outside ourselves in which we place our belief, our trust, our hope. She is seen and experienced in a strength, a power, a beauty we know in our bones – even if only faintly – as an echo, a whisper, a breeze.

This knowing, this belief, this faith is intuitive, resonant, and wholly ours. We imbibe it/her. We inhabit it/her. And she inhabits us.

Have faith, woman. She is here.

In Me. In You.