fbpx

Sacred Conversation with Your Heart – #1

Apr 24, 2017 | My sort-of Sermons, Spirituality, Women's Wisdom, Writing

Today starts a 6-part series that’s all about Sacred Conversation – not with me, but with your heart. Each post will offer another aspect of the topic, the practice, and its significance – along with reflection questions and prompts to invite you into the most important (and ongoing) conversation you’ll ever have. 

*****

We are surrounded by conversation all day, every day – at the very least, words and talk and verbal noise. At home and work, in the car and on the bus, in stores and on streets, on the web – on TV – in music – on blogs – in books, in neighborhoods and across the globe. Sometimes we engage. Sometimes we listen. Other times it’s just din. 

And then there are the conversations that take place endlessly, continuously within. In my experience they can be far harder to engage and sometimes seemingly impossible to hear. And – they long for both: your hearing, your engagement, your response. These are conversations with your heart. 

Did you know? Your heart speaks. It listens. It asks. It tells. It knows. It feels. It advises. It desires. It hurts. It hopes. It loves. 

Your heart invites you to ongoing, articulate, and beautiful sacred conversations with your deepest, truest self. 

And these are conversations worth having. 

So…let’s begin at the beginning. 

*****

PART ONE – INTRODUCTIONS 

Every conversation between two people begins with some kind of introduction, a greeting, a hello. For it to move past this point and take on meaning and value, we must want to hear more, want to know more; we  have to determine how the  other wants to be known, how much they are willing to share, how they speak, even  what they don’t say. If either party is reluctant to listen, to hear, to understand, to learn, the conversation ends before it’s even begun. 

Conversation with your heart is no different. 

Do you want to hear what your heart has to say? Do you want to know it well? Do you want to learn the unique ways in which it expresses itself? 

I’m speaking only for myself when I say that sometimes my answer is “no.” 

Sometimes it can be far easier to turn up the volume on other aspects of life than to listen to the heart’s quiet whisper, deep desires, and patient but persistent beating as it waits (and waits and waits) to be heard, acknowledged, trusted, and followed. 

Because here’s the thing: When you really listen and engage in conversation with your heart you find yourself face-to-face with powerful truth: words, sentences, and emotions that graciously ask for response and ongoing dialogue; powerful truth that compels honesty, risk, and change, that will not leave you unchanged. 

Knowing this, tell me true: Do you want to hear what your heart has to say – directly to you? I hope the answer is “yes.” 

REFLECT:

  • Imagine listening to your heart’s introduction of itself when you say, “hello.” How does it respond? Is it outgoing? Shy? Reticent? Enthusiastic? What can you learn of it already… even in these first few words? 
  • If, even for a moment, you could silence all the voices, pressures, demands, disappointments, and expectations that swirl within, what do you imagine you might hear – even in this introductory stage? Single words? Fragments of sentences? Any images that come to mind? 
  • Listen. What does your heart want you to know, to hear, to consider? Write any and everything that comes… 

Easter 2017

Apr 16, 2017 | My sort-of Sermons, Sacred Stories, Spirituality

I will not be attending Easter services today.

I will not witness the rows of shiny, white patent-leather shoes, frilly dresses, and uncomfortable neckties. I will not gasp when the black shroud is dramatically pulled down from the cross. I will not hear the Hallelujah Chorus. I will not see the lilies.

I will drink coffee. I will reflect. I will probably write. I will enjoy the Mason jars filled with orange tulips on my kitchen table. And later, I will decorate Easter eggs with my daughters. I might even open a bottle of champagne.

I’ve been pondering all of this; what it means and feels like to be disconnected from this Sunday’s tradition, but still umbilically tied to its rituals, its in-my-DNA tug and influence. I’ve pondered even more of how Easter is not exclusive to the church; how if it offers meaning, if it matters, then its value remains and must be made known in ways that are rich and relevant for me.

And oh, how rich and relevant it’s been.This whole week, has been rife with symbol and sign (as all weeks are, really). This Holy Week (as all weeks are, really) has called me to story; to death and darkness, to sadness and loss, to questions without answers, to a can’t-see-how-it’s-gonna-happen-but-still-I’m-gonna-trust kind of hope, to perseverance, to risk, to courage, to voice, to confidence, to places and people who call me to more. This whole and holy week has called me to life; to my life.

And isn’t this, above and beyond all else, what Easter is about – church, religion, or no?

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” asked Jesus when he encountered Mary in the graveyard. Indeed.

My holy and whole life (and yours) is to be found and experienced where life dwells: in deep breaths and coursing blood, in muscle and bone, in earth and water, in conversation and silence, in laughter and tears, in  friends and foes, in facing fears and choosing love, in the sacred stuff of every day.

So breathe in and rise up. A new day dawns. Light gleams. Stones move. The earth quakes. Buried, silenced, and shrouded ends. Tombs are emptied. Veils are torn. Angels appear. Graveclothes are shed. Death does not have the final say. Song breaks forth. Miracles occur. And resurrection always comes.

[I first wrote this post for Easter of 2014. That’s astonishing to me. Seems just as, if not more relevant today.]

Somewhere between Kali and Jesus

Mar 1, 2017 | My sort-of Sermons, Sovereignty, Spirituality, Women's Voice & Power

I am Kali Ma.
I stick my tongue out of my once silent lips.
These eyes, no longer mild,
Are furious daggers of fire.
~ a portion of a poem by Tanya Geisler

These words do not describe me. At least not as much as I wish they did and want them to.

My tongue is restrained behind my lower front teeth, afraid to breathe in too quickly for fear of the icy-cold pain that hits nerve endings and makes me wish I’d never opened my mouth. And my eyes? I wouldn’t say they are mild, particularly. I watch. I observe. I see – a lot. But fire? No. Any furious daggers thrown would more likely be at me than at you, others, or this world. In other words, I’m no Kali Ma.

I can still clearly picture various pieces of art that hung on the walls of rooms I frequented – my bedroom, throughout our home, at church. Two come to mind – both of Jesus. In the first he is holding a small lamb in his arms. In the second, he is standing on a flowered hillside, surrounded by small children – all different skin colors, shapes, and sizes. (Red, brown, yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, went the accompanying song.) Both images are gentle. Both show the weak cared for by the Divine, the Divine as male.

And both intentionally served to remind me who I was – the lost sheep, the doting child; to remind me of my place in the scheme of things – silent lips, mild eyes. Hardly Kali Ma.

As I’ve reminisced, I’ve added more images to the queue – not framed and hung, but planted firmly in my mind. Yes, Jesus gentle-and-mild, but also women relegated to the shadows, who “belonged” on the margins, who were subservient and obedient and shamed if not. Added to these, the 60’s and 70’s plethora of happy moms, twig-thin models, and doting secretaries on billboards, in magazines, on TV. Unexposed to Gloria Steinem and 1st-wave feminism (not to mention goddesses of any kind), this infant, then girl-adolescent-young woman didn’t see much – if anything or anyone – who embodied or even considered Kali-like strength. Her antithesis, in many ways, has been my learned ideal.

Along with the pictures were stories told – almost all of Jesus. I rarely think of them these days, but they remain deeply embedded in my psyche. Sometimes for good, to be sure; but often in ways that have kept me sheep-like, childlike, beholding, and in need. In need of a God, a shepherd, a man. After all, he’s the one with the strength; he’s the one with the voice, the knowing, the wisdom; he’s the one with power. Not me. I need to be found, loved, embraced, and saved. (I don’t believe this anymore – the sheep, the child, the need – but that doesn’t mean the roots of such don’t remain and even reveal themselves in ways I’d rather they did not. In ways that are shockingly un-Kali-like – even now, even today, even all these years later.)

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like, what I would be like, if a picture of Kali Ma had hung on those same walls, if hers was the tale I was told.

What if hers was the image I displayed in my college dorm room then in first and subsequent apartments? What if she was the painting I’d kept ever-present in my many homes throughout the years? What if she was the face my daughters grew up seeing, asking me to tell them her story until they knew it by heart, until she was the one who dwelled within theirs?

What if, indeed.

Kali Ma conjures something far different than what I saw modeled, what I was taught.

Aggressive and unapologetic, her eyes gleam and spark. Her red tongue protrudes – ready to hungrily lick anyone who dares to draw near. The skulls that hang around her neck are hardly comforting, but reveal her fearlessness, even of death. All illusion is sliced away. Any wish for greener pastures or nurturing companionship is erased. Though a fierce, mother-like goddess, she does not abide a childlike state. Instead, she compels my strength. She demands my voice, my knowing, my wisdom. She exudes power and insists that it is mine.

She calls me to find, love, embrace, and save myself – and my world.

Oh, that I would.

And of course, I do. But not as much as I wish and want. Especially right now. It feels as though there is no time to lose, no time to waste, seemingly no time at all. As I ponder and muse about my past, all hell breaks loose in my present.

Xenophobia, violence, greed, racism and evil run rampant. Contempt and complete
disregard seem to reign. We desperately need Kali Ma. We desperately need Kali-like women.

Even so, something in me holds back – uncertain, unsure, unable to rise up and speak out.

Maybe the why of it doesn’t matter. Maybe all my attempts to unpack and unravel and understand are distractions from doing and choosing and acting. Maybe there’s nothing to inculcate or imbibe where Kali Ma is concerned. Maybe all I need do is live as if she is already inherent within me. Trusting until I believe. Having faith.

I’ve heard that before.

Do not misunderstand. I am angry. I am resolute and firm on so much that is just not acceptable. I am hardly docile, meek, or mild when it comes to my opinions about the destruction that is imminent, if not already at hand. Still, I feel more like sheep than wolf, girl than goddess, patriarchal-bound woman than pussy-hat wearing siren and seer. I unwittingly reside in this middle place – between contradictory beliefs and ideals, between conflicting principles and values, between faith and doubt, between hope and despair, between keeping my tongue tucked tightly behind my teeth or sticking it out and swallowing whole the ignorance and evil that pervades.

Stuck here, at least for now, I have no eloquent ending or tight conclusion to this piece. No passionate benediction that rallies the troops and calls us to arms. Not even some deeper self-awareness that offers me solace or strength. Which feels right somehow, though uncomfortable.

Kind of like faith.

So even if I can’t come up with a catchy ending, I can keep working on sticking out my tongue and letting my eyes be furious daggers of fire and opening my arms and protecting the weak and loving the children and believing in justice and somehow, somehow holding on to hope – that words will come and courage will sustain and love will conquer all.

In the meantime, I gaze at the pictures that now hang in my home.

Afraid yet fearless. Wise yet playful. Brave yet tender. Imperfect yet loved.
~ Kellie Rae Roberts

It is in the midst of misery that so much becomes clear. The one who said nothing good came of this, is not yet listening.
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
~ Audre Lorde

Maybe the message is getting through…

And there’s still plenty of wall space – and time – to find and display a print of Kali Ma; maybe even Jesus.

Why Stories Matter

Dec 16, 2016 | Sacred Stories, Spirituality, Writing

We live in a world of stories. Childhood fairytales shape our dreams and hopes. Family legends, imparted over kitchen table conversation, at reunions, and during road-trips, build our memory and craft our beliefs. Historical narratives inform our understanding of culture, politics, our larger world. Film, music, literature, and poetry mysteriously and continuously
speak to our deepest heart – communicating truths we implicitly know and others we long to grasp. And then there is the media…

Stories serve the way in which we are able to make sense of our world, our relationships, our behaviors, everything. They are how we speak of our circumstances, our deepest emotions, and our biggest questions; how we create and apply meaning. And they connect us to one another, bridging differences in language and perspective, time and place, past and future.

Most of us acknowledge that it’s less about a particular story and more about story, itself. It is the device, the vehicle, the means through which we express, listen, and even participate in our own life and others’. We admit (and even enjoy) that most stories, when told over and over again, not only shift and morph over time, but take on a life of their own.

The fish gets a little bigger, the storm gets a little wilder, the love gets a little stronger, our bravery or disappointment gets a little exaggerated in the telling over time. There is creative tension in story. When we hear it, when we read it, when we speak it, when we write it, we filter words through our own experiences and our need for meaning. We shape the tale to reinforce our understanding of how life is. ~ Christina Baldwin

This is what we love about them. This is why we tell them. This is why we live our lives within them. This is the power of story.

But when it comes to the stories in Scripture, something implicitly and explicitly changes.

Our claws come out and our defenses go up. Or maybe we just shut down. Though told for thousands of years, these particular tales have taken on a life that is not their own. Instead, they have been claimed and co-opted, parsed and paraphrased, interpreted and indoctrinated. Now, seen as either sacrosanct and inviolable or completely irrelevant, it’s no wonder we struggle to hear or tell these powerful narratives in beautiful, meaningful, and truth-filled ways.

Frankly, it is this very tension that keeps me connected to them, working with them, and yes, telling them. Believe me, I feel the pull every single day: the embedded and assumed doctrine that permeates their pages and the deep, rich, yet-to-be-mined wisdom within; the patriarchal God I seek to escape and the shockingly kind, compassionate, and feminine one who pursues me. Further, I am not willing to let our collective seen and felt tension, our theological arguments, our political agendas, our denominational differences, or even our general ambivalence allow us to drift and fall apart when I know that stories (even these stories) are what bring and hold us together. More than all else, I cannot bear to let the stories I love, stories of women, drift and fall away. To even contemplate such a possibility completely breaks my heart.

Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language — this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable. ~ Adrienne Rich

It matters, perhaps more than most else in my life, that these sacred stories not become unspeakable; rather, that they rise up in power and strength, relevance and meaning. And I don’t know how to make that happen without just continuing to tell them – one at a time, even to one person at a time.

Are there days in which I long to abandon the lot of them and talk about something else?

Absolutely. Are there other days in which I wish I long to stand atop a mountain and command entire swaths of civilization to listen to me? Most definitely. Are there more days in which I long to sit in even the smallest, most intimate of gatherings, hands clasped around warm mugs of coffee, and tell you tales of amazing women? All the time.

Here’s why: underneath all the doctrine and dogma are women whose stories have changed me women’s stories; stories and women who change me still.

Nearly every day, whether in the most mundane or significant of circumstances, I think of one or another of them. They come into my mind and heart. And I imagine, consider, and wholeheartedly accept every ounce of wisdom they offer, every word they speak, every strain of strength and solace they sing into me. They are that present, that real, that relevant, that powerful.

A Reflection on 12

Dec 7, 2016 | Sacred Stories, Spirituality, Writing

  • 12 represents the completed cycle of experience.
  • 12 is the symbol of cosmic order.
  • There are 12 months in a year.
  • Time is measured in two groups of 12 hours.
  • There are 12 signs in the zodiac.
  • There are 12 days of Christmas.
  • On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me – 12 drummers drumming.
  • Apollo 12 was the first moon walk.
  • A total of 12 people have walked on the moon.
  • There are 12 names for the sun in Sanskrit.
  • In the color wheel there are 12 basic hues.
  • There are 12 steps in recovery programs.
  • There are usually 12 people on a jury.
  • The 12th man in football refers to the role of the fans.
  • There were 12 principle gods in Greek mythology who resided on Mount Olympus.
  • King Arthur’s Roundtable had 12 knights.
  • The Beatles released 12 studio albums.
  • There are 12 half notes in each octave.
  • In numerology, the number 12 is a higher octave of the number 3 and represents careful planning and orderly growth leading to spiritual development.
  • My birth number is 12 before it is reduced to 3.
  • I was born on the day before the 12th month began.
  • I was 12 years old when a self-image formed that has stayed with and haunted me my entire life.
  • Just under 12 years passed between my sister’s birth and when I left home.
  • 12 years passed between leaving home and getting married.
  • 12 years passed between getting married and graduating from seminary.
  • 12 years passed between graduating from seminary and today.
  • 12 years ago, my daughters were just 6 and 8.
  • By this time next year, I will have been blogging for 12 years.
  • Two years from now, I will have been divorced for 12 years.
  • There were 12 tribes in Israel.
  • The first recorded words of Jesus were when he was 12 years old.
  • Jesus had 12 disciples.
  • Mary Magdalene is mentioned 12 times in the Bible.
  • Revelation 12 tells one of my favorite stories – about a woman clothed with the sun, the moon at her feet, and a crown of 12 stars round her head.
  • There is another favorite story of mine that tells of the Hemorrhaging Woman who bled for 12 years.
  • There are 12 letters in the word “hemorrhaging.”

I can tell her story in 12 sentences.

  1. 12 years of bleeding meant 12 years of isolation, pain, and grief.
  2. She had tried every medicine, method, and mantra – all to no avail.
  3. Still and always she held on to hope.
  4. When she heard about the man with the 12 disciples – a healer and miracle-worker – she was determined to put herself in his path.
  5. “Surely, if I can but touch the hem of his garment, I will be healed.”
  6. So she did.
  7. And she was.
  8. He said, “Who touched me?”
  9. His 12 disciples were incredulous as they looked at the pressing crowd and said, “What do you mean who touched you?”
  10. The woman finally stepped forward and said, “I did.”
  11. He responded: “Your faith has healed you.”
  12. Then he continued on his way – soon after to heal a 12-year-old girl.

I can finish this piece in just 12 more sentences. I promise.

  1. “Your faith has healed you,” he said.
  2. It was not the Divine, the miracle-worker, the man that made the difference.
  3. It was her.
  4. She made the healing happen.
  5. That feels hugely important to name and remember.
  6. My word for this year is “healing.”
  7. It is now the 12th month.
  8. Maybe there is still time.
  9. And maybe neither time nor healing is the point.
  10. Maybe it’s about still and always holding on to hope.
  11. Maybe it’s about faith – not in a miracle, a miracle worker, or even a man, but in myself.
  12. May it be so.

This woman’s story, the Woman of Revelation 12, even Mary Magdalene (mentioned 12 times), are but three of those I work with to create SacredReadings.

On the Phone vs. In a Pew

Nov 6, 2016 | Spirituality

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend. She’s married. I’m not anymore. She lives in the South. I definitely do not. She has a fulltime job outside her home. Mine keeps me here, in yoga pants most days and perched at my desk in my dining room. She attends church. I do not.

Despite our differences, it’s this last point that is our greatest place of connection. I, for all intents and purposes, left the church when I left my marriage to the pastor. She still attends, but wishes either that she didn’t have to or that she could find some resonance and affinity within. And for reasons that I completely understand, she still attends, she stays, she tolerates, and often – silently and in isolation – she rages. I listen. I nod. I get it.

I wonder if her situation is unique. But before the question even completely forms in my mind, I already know the answer. She is not. She is just like me. I was her – in a pew every Sunday; longing to hear something, anything different and knowing that I wouldn’t; caught between my desire for community, a safe and nurturing space for my daughters, the lack-of tension my absence would create in my marriage and my ambivalence, oft’ disdain, and endless frustration over what I witnessed, what I heard, what I felt – or didn’t.

There’s no one solution to this bind for her or for me, no all-inclusive answer that mitigates loss on the one hand and offers respite on the other.

There was a day when people attended church and (mostly) agreed with what they heard. They nodded in affirmation. They spoke or interned an “amen” when the message or the music resonated. They embraced friends – aware that they were among their own. And they left the confines of that sacred space feeling stronger, uplifted, encouraged – shoulders squared to the week ahead and grateful for a place and time in which they felt at home.

I suppose I am somewhat jaded, but I no longer believe that church is where I will experience this. Not because the people within are incapable of such, but because the system of beliefs to which I must accede in order to fit in is too incongruous for my soul to survive.

…church has become a spiritual, even a theological struggle for me. I have found it increasingly difficult to sing hymns that celebrate a hierarchical heavenly realm, to recite creeds that feel disconnected from life, to pray liturgies that emphasize salvation through blood, to listen to sermons that preach an exclusive way to God, to participate in sacraments that exclude others, and to find myself confined to a hard pew in a building with no windows to the world outside. ~ Diana Butler Bass, Grounded

And yet, miraculously and gratefully, my soul does survive – and thrive – completely outside of this system (something I disbelieved while still within). I am supported and strengthened by relationship with people who are nothing like me, who do not know the stories of which I speak, who wonder who I am talking about (and why) when I mention the Syrophoenician or the Shunnamite, and who love me still.

Then every once in a while, like this morning, I have a conversation with a woman who gets my every story (including the Syrophoenician and the Shunnamite); we are separated by miles and even similarity, but no less desirous of friendship, kinship, and talk of sacred stuff.

I hang up and my soul breathes in a whispered “amen;” I utter an unspoken prayer of gratitude and give a wink-and-a-nod to something that feels akin to grace…maybe even God.

It is heartbreaking to be alone in one’s beliefs or lack thereof, even more so to be surrounded by people who believe (or don’t) far differently than oneself and feel unseen, unheard, unnoticed, unappreciated, un-understood. I am so profoundly aware-and-thankful that this is not my story today. And I hold such a place of tenderness and affinity for those who remain – for a myriad of legitimate reasons – in a story that is even remotely less-than the one they long for. Religious. Relational. In any form.

May we be ones who honestly name heartbreak – first and foremost our own; then on behalf of others. May we be holders and creators of safety and the sacred (even if “only” on the phone). May we be ones who bravely leave spaces that are not safe, do not heal, do not encourage and uplift. If we cannot, at least not yet or not now, may we be ones who boldly bear and bridge the gap, the ravine, the in-between. And may all of us – no matter our location, our circumstances, our beliefs, or the state of our souls, be ones who both receive and offer what is hungered for most, needed most, all that really matters: love and love and love.