Always There

This morning at 6:00am I was out driving through thick fog to take my son to his job at a local golf course. As I drove through the gray mist, a litany of regretful thoughts came to mind--past behaviors and choices I'd rather forget. Quickly realizing I didn't want to fill my head with those kinds of thoughts, I began thinking of God--God's love, God's reality, God's belief in us. Instantly my thoughts changed. I was surprised that instead of just seeing a mental door closing on those thoughts, in my mind's eye I saw them transform as light was added to the picture. That light was God. Suddenly I realized that God was there in all those moments, loving me.

I've heard that God sees only good in us--He is too pure to see evil (see Habakkuk 1:13.) It makes me wonder, does God still see us as walking in the Garden with Him? He made clothes for us when he realized our error (such a sad, tender moment in Genesis 3:21), and we seem to have "moved out" into a separate existence, pouring ourselves into our lives, our choices, our involvements, our interests. But maybe we're still really--in Spirit--in the Garden, walking and talking with Him, enjoying His companionship.

I have a real world analogy. I have two teenage sons and they enjoy playing their favorite video games together. When they are playing, they are totally absorbed in the game. I can come and go from the room and they may or may not notice. While they are playing, they make choices, create worlds, fight evil, or try to master a challenge. I don't really understand the games, even though I can watch them play whenever I want to. I'm just back here, loving them, making sure they have what they need. Whatever they do in the game, it doesn't affect how I love them, know them, and see them.

Do you think God feels that way about us, as we go about our daily lives? We follow our interests, create challenges, manifest beauty, struggle, live. Perhaps God, instead of focusing on the game we play, is simple shining love, life, truth, wholeness, and beauty on and through us in every moment. Right there, behind that easy chair. Right now, beside you on the couch. This instant, inside the whisper of that thought that just flashed through your mind.

Enjoy your day today, knowing that God's Light looks over your shoulder and out through your eyes, loving you, trusting you, believing the best about you. When things get stressful or challenging, remember that you have an immediate and continual pass back into the Garden, if you're willing to put down that game controller for even the slightest instant. :)

Think Beauty

Good News Associates, an independent nonprofit ministry organization that supports people in non-traditional ministry roles, published this thoughtful article on beauty in its current newsletter. It's worth printing and rereading. And maybe a week long beauty meditation? Who's in? :)

Free in Spirit

What do you think those early days in the Garden were like, hanging around in paradise, having everything you needed to live joyfully, abundantly, peacefully? You had a companion to explore with, to cuddle with, to name things with. Together you enjoyed each day to its fullest point of bliss. And of course at some point each day, the most loving presence in the universe would come to personally walk, talk, and laugh with you.

What more could you want?

That's what I think of when I envision true freedom--freedom of the spirit, freedom from judgment, labels, restrictions, shoulds. The spirit still walks and talks and laughs with God. The spirit still enjoys the music of true communion. The spirit knows nothing about any casting out, covering up, or blaming of serpents.

Enjoy your gardening today! :)

Footholds of the Past

This morning in Indiana there is so much moisture in the air that a kind of mystical haze surrounds everything. After almost two weeks of bright, white heat, the soft, muffled morning feels like what I imagine it must be to discover an oasis, somewhere far out in a desert on the other side of the world.

I noticed a couple of days ago that one of the clematis vines that winds its way along the front porch had gone brown. This morning I decided to clip it back to give the green vines more room to grow. But when I took my shears out and started looking for a clean place to cut, I noticed that the other vines were curling their tiny green tendrils around it, using it as a foundation from which to reach a little higher. I tried snipping a few small places, thinking if I cut in a strategic place, the whole vine would just come out with a gentle tug. After a few attempts, I realized that wasn't happening. The old vine had become part of the growing of the living vine. The structure was real. The investment was forever. The old and the new were twined together inseparably.

I looked at that vine and saw in myself my own tendency to want to weed out the "bad stuff"--the mistakes, the errors, the plain old-fashioned bad choices I'd made in my life. I'd just as soon clip them back and put them in the compost bin, where they can become food for better things. But it does ring true that all the experiences we have, however we name them, serve as a foundation for our current life, whether they have sap flowing through their veins or not. They become a foundation we lean on, maybe unknowingly, as we reach higher. We might not want to make those same choices or have more experiences like those again, and it's probably worth considering why the vine went brown (so perhaps we can avoid making the same mistake in the future), but seeing the value of it all wrapped up together like that was comforting to me this morning.

Something to Give

I've been working with the idea of abundance for a long time. My own financial situation, as a self-employed writer, has fluxuated over the years. Sometimes things felt stable and secure, sometimes not. Whether my barns were full or empty, though, I did learn in a very real way that God was there throughout, trustworthy, faithful, helping.

Here in Indiana everything went from the brown of winter to vibrant green spring almost in a single day. I marveled at the green green grass and the full leaves on the trees--it all happened so suddenly! Surely this is God's abundance at work, I thought. I prayed to understand that sense of constant, instant, always available supply so that I could know once and for all my financial needs were met in God--no two ways about it. I really wanted that certainty.

A little while ago I read this article over on Spirituality.com. The author talks about how he felt when he lost his job and couldn't get any traction. He struggled with fear and was stretching a pot of soup to last a whole week so he wouldn't go hungry. When his thinking began to change, it all started with the thought, "I have something to give." That's a powerful thought when you feel yourself being backed further and further into a corner. Giving has been a part of my life for a long time, but when I'm being really honest with myself I know that my giving had a lot to do with getting. I gave money to the church because God said to and I was afraid not to! I gave extra effort for my clients because I hoped they would want to work with me again. I always went the extra mile, did more than was asked, was as good as possible--but the effort came from fear (lack) in the hopes that it would earn the love, care, and supply God already provides simply because that's God's nature! I didn't realize that last part, and I didn't know I was giving to get.

In the article, the writer talks about discovering what he already had to give--ways in which he could give out of his own abundance. You may not have a lot of money, or time, or special talent. But you already have abundance somewhere in your life. The world needs your gifts. Your family needs your gifts. God needs your gifts. What do you have to give to the world? It may be something simple, like appreciation of beauty or your time and attention. But whatever you have to give, you can be sure that it fits perfectly a need that someone else has.

Because I love these kinds of object lessons, I sat down with my journal and wrote "I have something to give" at the top. Then I began to list all the things that occurred to me as things I can give from my own abundance. And you know what? "Money" didn't appear until #24 on the list! This really made me feel good about what I have to offer the world from the abundance that exists within me right now.

Try it--you'll be amazed! And then drop me a note and share some of your abundance of insight. :)

Saved

I loved this poem...it describes the very real, flesh-and-blood way I think salvation works on this planet. See God in someone today, no matter what their words and actions show you, and you will be participating in the on-going sacred movement of saving grace!

Poem: "Mrs. Kirkorian" by Sharon Olds, from Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002. © Alfred A Knopf, 2004. From Writer's Almanac.

Mrs. Kirkorian

She saved me. When I arrived in 6th grade,
a known criminal, the new teacher
asked me to stay after school the first day, she said
I've heard about you. She was a tall woman,
with a deep crevice between her breasts,
and a large, calm nose. She said,
This is a special library pass.
As soon as you finish your hour's work—
that hour's work that took ten minutes
and then the devil glanced into the room
and found me empty, a house standing open—
you can go to the library. Every hour
I'd zip through the work in a dash and slip out of my
seat as if out of God's side and sail
down to the library, solo through the empty
powerful halls, flash my pass
and stroll over to the dictionary
to look up the most interesting word
I knew, spank, dipping two fingers
into the jar of library paste to
suck that tart mucilage as I
came to the page with the cocker spaniel's
silks curling up like the fine steam of the body.
After spank, and breast, I'd move on
to Abe Lincoln and Helen Keller,
safe in their goodness till the bell, thanks
to Mrs. Kirkorian, amiable giantess
with the kind eyes. When she asked me to write
a play, and direct it, and it was a flop, and I
hid in the coat-closet, she brought me a candy-cane
as you lay a peppermint on the tongue, and the worm
will come up out of the bowel to get it.
And so I was emptied of Lucifer
and filled with school glue and eros and
Amelia Earhart, saved by Mrs. Kirkorian.
And who had saved Mrs. Kirkorian?
When the Turks came across Armenia, who
slid her into the belly of a quilt, who
locked her in a chest, who mailed her to America?
And that one, who saved her, and that one—
who saved her, to save the one
who saved Mrs. Kirkorian, who was
standing there on the sill of 6th grade, a
wide-hipped angel, smokey hair
standing up weightless all around her head?
I end up owing my soul to so many,
to the Armenian nation, one more soul someone
jammed behind a stove, drove
deep into a crack in a wall,
shoved under a bed. I would wake
up, in the morning, under my bed—not
knowing how I had got there—and lie
in the dusk, the dustballs beside my face
round and ashen, shining slightly
with the eerie comfort of what is neither good nor evil.

Beyond Fear

This morning I grabbed a little notebook out of my desk drawer so I could make a list, and I found this written on the top page:

Look behind the fear and you'll find a dream.

I must have seen this before--and thought it before--because it's in my handwriting. But this morning it hit me with all the import of a major epiphany.

Look behind the fear and you'll find a dream.

I tried this out with some of the fears I'm struggling with right now. My work has been shifting--a couple of big projects are finishing up and I'm not completely sure what's coming. What's the fear? Financial instability. What's the dream? Financial freedom--the freedom to create from a sense of complete, secure joy.

That's a pretty good dream, I thought.

Another fear that's jangling around in the back of my head and using up energy is that I won't be able to really get Starlight Books off the ground. What's the dream? A thriving, family-based children's publishing company that specializes in top-quality books that that promote tender love and care of the earth and all beings in it. We will bless and be blessed by everyone who works with us and create the kind of books that become family favorites through the generations.

That's a really good dream, I thought.

Take a look at one of your fears today. What is the dream that is behind it? Safety, love and companionship, radiant health, financial freedom? The dream is where you want to put your energy, so once you see that dream, hold on to it and affirm it. And know that I'm out here, doing it too.

And where two or three are gathered, you know... :)

For Every Mother's Heart

For every mother's heart, dear God, bring peace and certainty of Your care,
In every father's hands, O Lord, place a healing vision and the will to see it through,
In every child's spirit, precious Father, preserve the innocent expectation of joy
and the knowing beyond knowing
that You are here
that You meet us tenderly in our broken places
that You are the source of all Good
and that as your children,
that Good is ours to claim.
Amen.

One-Word Prayers

Last week I wrote about finding an article tucked away in my great-grandmother's book that offered a series of readings for whatever might be troubling you. I ordered Henry Drummond's The Greatest Thing in the World and read it last weekend. It's really wonderful. Clear. Loving. Uplifting.

Always true to my student nature , I took notes and made lists and worked with all the ideas. But a sweet little inspiration keeps swirling around my head. And it's that instead of intellectualizing everything (which I am prone to do), to breathe the life of the offering in and exhale it out. So here's a list of simple, beautiful, elegant, life-packed one-word prayers, inspired by Henry's book. Choose the one you need today, and breathe it in whenever you need it--in traffic, in the checkout line, when the neighbor's dog won't stop barking, when you're out of sorts. Breathe it in and really feel it, and then let yourself exhale, feeling your connection with All That Is. :)

Patience.

Kindness.

Generosity.

Humility.

Courtesy.

Unselfishness.

Guilelessness.

Sincerity.


Amen.

Ageless Wisdom

Just a few minutes ago I was looking for something in a box on the top of my office shelf, and I found an unexpected blessing: books of my great-grandmother's, from the early 1900s. Tucked inside a frayed and tattered 1908 copy of Mary Baker-Eddy's Science & Health, I found this article clipping:

"Business Woman" Has a Cure for Every Ill
To The Star: If you have the blues, read the twenty-seventh Psalm.
If your pocketbook is empty, read the thirty-seventh Psalm.
If people seem unkind, read the fifteenth chapter of John.
If you are discouraged about your work, read the one hundred twenty-sixth Psalm.
If you are all out of sorts, read the twelfth chapter of Hebrews.
If you cannot have your own way in everything, keep silent and read the third chapter of James.
If you are losing confidence in men, read the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. Sir Henry Drummond's "The Greatest Thing in the World" was taken from this chapter, and if "Experience" will read this little book in connection with her Bible I am sure it will change her whole life as it did mine. She will find it a heart mender.

--BUSINESS WOMAN

Thanks, Grandma Roos. You listened to your heart and clipped this out 90+ years ago, and it blessed me (and us) today. :) k

Manifesting Abundance

I awoke this morning thinking about the way in which God creates. He didn't sweat and struggle, push and labor. He simply spoke, "Let there be..." (A wonderful woman writer whose name escapes me now once said, "Whenever we say, 'Let there be...." something happens.")

I thought about how much I sweat and struggle, push and labor, in order to bring something about. I think the only reason it is hard for me is that I believe it will be, has to be, hard. It was there in my definition of How Life Works.

But as I drove Cameron to school this morning, I was very aware of all the colors around me. I had a thought: These colors are always present. The light reflecting off the objects that appear to have color really contains all the hues available in the universe. Wow.

Then the classical station I listen to began playing Aaron Copeland's "Hoedown" (you might recognize this as the amazing, high-energy melody from the 'What's for Dinner?' commercial a few years back). I thought, What an amazing piece of music! The notes are already present, and the composer lifted them up, selecting and arranging them and bringing them to our consciousness. That was another Wow moment.

What kind of day do we want to create today? Do we want joy, harmony, happiness, productivity, abundance? All those qualities are already here, within our grasp, in the air and ideas we swim in every day. We simply need to choose what we want, say "Let there be..." and give thanks like crazy as things begin to take shape.

It's all already here! Thanks, God. You thought of Everything.

Beautifully Said

I ran across this quote from Karen Casey this morning and wanted to share it with you:

Two persons love in one another the future good, which they aid one another to unfold.--Margaret Fuller

We can see the potential for growth in friends we love, a reality that often lies hidden to them. Through our encouragement and our commitment to them, we can help them tackle the barriers to success. Likewise, we'll be helped. It's within the plan, ours and theirs, that we're traveling this road together.

Dealing with Difficult People

I discovered a helpful prayer this week when I found myself dreading interacting with someone who "pushed my buttons." I noticed that my thoughts were going along the lines of, "Oh, I wish I didn't have to deal with him/her...I would like to bypass this part of things altogether...I wish he/she wouldn't be so pushy!"

When I realized that I was investing my thought energy in creating more of an obstacle with this person, I turned to God. My simple prayer was, "God, please teach me how you want me to relate to this person." And then I let it go.

Wonder of wonders, the whole situation resolved so well we were happy and in tune with each other by week's end. No kidding! It was a simple, powerful, prayer--and it worked miraculously. :)

We're All Alchemists

Yesterday morning I heard an amazing story on NPR by Judy Woodruff, "Experiencing Other Faiths to Find One's Own." The story was about a 21-year-old college student who traveled around the globe to experience other peoples' faith traditions. The story is insightful and timely--and gives me so much hope for this generation! Here's a clip:

"Siple calls herself a Christian pluralist, open to the possibility of the validity of other religious traditions.

After her tour of Asia, she spent a week at the Taize monastery in France, a place that attracts young people from around the world. In a Taize service, there is chanting and reading from scripture. But there are also long moments where more than 1,000 young adults sit quietly together in silence — not being told what to do.

"You do what you feel is right for your religious practice," Siple says. "I think that is what our generation is screaming for right now. People want not to be told what they should do, but to figure it out for themselves."

It occurred to me as I listened to her sweet voice on the radio that we are each alchemists of our own souls; we each experience God in our own unique way. We take those experiences, mix them with understanding, questions, wonder, hope, doubt, and trust, and ultimately create something completely unique and wonderful that we give back to life, in our own words and our own way. What a miracle!

Rediscovering Taoism

Years and years (and years) ago I read The Tao of Pooh and loved it. I realized that deep at heart, I do believe in a basic harmony at work in and through all creation. From that belief in harmony, many other beliefs spring--the belief in the inherent goodness of creation; the belief that our natural tendency is toward healing and growth (like flowers to the sun); the belief that calmness, quietness, and trust bring you to resolution much faster than struggle, resistance, and conflict.

Although the formal study of Taoism (or Daoism) is an ancient practice with roots both in Confucianism and Buddhism (Confucianism was first), I don't believe it has to be inconsistent with a 21st century practice that involves the basis of Christianity as well. If Taoism is the basic harmony and intelligence in which all being and nonbeing exists, Christ consciousness--whether you welcome that in the person of the Christ or as a spirit of transcendent communion--is the essence that delivers man from himself, freeing him from the restrictive world he creates before he recognizes his oneness with all being. (See Jung and A Course in Miracles for more about that.) That Oneness, to me, is being in God--our wholeness, where all are in and noone and nothing is out. God also has a persona to me--a real being--but on some level that "knowing" I experience when I am in God's presence is more like someone speaking in your language so you understand they are there and they care about you. The reality of their being goes far, far beyond those few words they speak in your language and in your presence. But the effort is made and the message is received, and the presence of the Christ consciousness within stays with us always, helping us recognizing the harmony (Tao) when we can get quiet enough to let it arise.

Energy in Action

As a student of faith everywhere I find it, I have recently signed up for a daily post from Yehuda Berg, at the Kabbalah Centre. I became familiar with Kabbalah years ago when I read the book Seeing God by Rabbi David Aaron and I found that many of the principles of Kabbalah connect with taoist, Quaker, and mystical ideas.

This morning's note was particularly pertinent here at the end of 2006:

The Kabbalists say that a person whose strength is in his words and not in his actions will always be caught in the world of extremes. That's why it is so important to walk the walk, and not just talk the talk. And we all do it, to an extent.
Focus on action today. What have you been procrastinating on? What are you "trying" to do? Don't try. Just do. You'll be much happier this way.

What loose ends can you wrap up before the end of 2006? I'm going to make my list now...no, scratch that, I'm not going to write the list, I'm just going to get them done. :) Happy New Year!

Gifts & Giving

Before the boys woke up on Christmas morning, I sat in the big chair in the living room and enjoyed the glow of the lights on the tree, in the windows, and on the banisters. All was peace. My mind gradually settled on the presents. On Christmas Eve, my oldest son had wondered aloud where the tradition of "wrapping gifts in silly paper" came from. This morning, as I looked over the gifts, I remembered the story of the three wise men and the gifts they brought to the Christ child.

I thought there may be a connection between the gifts the magi brought to the baby in the manger and the gifts we give to those we love. Whether we recognize it or not, when we give a present to someone, we are giving our best, wrapped in our love and hope for their happiness, to the best in another. We've been thinking of them, their interests, their hopes, their dreams, their desires. What we give them lifts them up, affirms their talents, or brings them joy (or perhaps gives them comfort, warmth, or freedom from care).

In the Quaker tradition, we talk about the divine spirit within each living person and creature. The gifts we give each other could be, like the gifts of the magi, a living demonstration of the love we bring to others who--thank God--are walking the earth with us at this time.

I hope wherever you find yourself this holiday season, and whatever your own tradition of celebration for the birth of hope and reconciliation may be, you experience the peace, connectedness, and divine joy that exist in this very moment. :)

An Eve Moment

This weekend I was given both a kind of "dark night of the soul" experience and the light that came as a result. On Saturday night I went to hear my oldest son perform with his college jazz band. The venue was a small, dark, intimate jazz supper club. I was a bit nervous about it because, as a single person, I thought I would be highly aware of my "aloneness"--especially with Christopher's dad, his wife, and their friends eating together at a table not far away.

The music was wonderful, filling, lifting, energizing. I loved every minute of it. And yet I was acutely aware of the empty seats at my table, heightened by the fact that everyone else (as far as I had the courage to look) seemed to have others sitting with them--family members, friends, lovers, spouses.

I sat alone. At the break, Christopher and his girlfriend came and sat at the table and we talked a bit. Then they returned to the stage.

On the way home, I talked to my daughter on the phone. I told her how great the music had been. She asked, "Was it okay, going by yourself?" "It wasn't bad," I said.

But I came home to what felt like an empty house (although in reality I had my dogs, cats, and turtle to welcome me). And I looked at my beautiful Christmas tree and the lights spiraling up the stairs. And my heart ached as loneliness washed over me. I sat down and cried.

Yesterday my daughter and I scurried out in the early morning to try to get one of the late-release Wiis we'd heard a rumor about (we didn't get one, but we got close enough to see the people who got one!). Then in the afternoon I braved the mall and had a wonderful time finishing up my Christmas shopping. I cared for my grandbaby in the evening while her mama and papa went to a company Christmas party. And both boys were home--Christopher came home for Christmas break from college--and they were upstairs hooting and hollering as they played Xbox 360 games.

I put on the soundtrack to the movie Elf and made Christmas cookies. I was happy. I was singing in the kitchen as I figured out the new cookie press. Life was good again.

It occurred to me late last night that when I was feeling such a riping pain about being alone, I wasn't focused on what's real in my life. I was looking in the shadows for what I didn't have rather than opening my eyes in the light to see the very real blessings all around me. For that dark night in that dark jazz club, I allowed myself to believe in Lack. And you know what? It hurts!

It strikes me that I was reliving the moment in the Garden of Eden, when Eve believed the serpent when he told her she was missing something. Eat this, he said, and you'll have the knowledge God has. Eve thought there was something being withheld from her. She believed it was possible that there was something she lacked. And so she reached out, took a bite, and sought to fix the problem herself.

Not only did that solidify her belief in the possibility that she lacked something; she passed that belief along to Adam. And their own focus on lack caused them to hold back from God when he came for his daily happy stroll in the garden. They hid; they withdrew; they created the illusion of lack in their relationship with God.

If Eve had been completely happy with things as they were in the garden--if she's truly appreciated everything God had given her (and trusted God to reveal anything else needed at just the right time)--that story might have had a different ending.

For my part, this morning I'm very aware of the abundance around me. Life is good. I have companionship, and comfort, and peace, and joy. All along, all I needed were the eyes to see it, the ears to hear it, and the heart willing to fully, abundantly, receive.

Merry Christmas to you and yours--and may the grace and joy of God enfold everyone in the world in an embrace of peace.

Dayienu: “It is enough”

This beautiful poem arrived in my Writers' Almanac newsletter this morning:

Poem: "Just One God" by Deborah Cummins, from Counting the Waves. © Word Press. Reprinted with permission.



Just One God


                              after Wesley McNair

And so many of us.

How can we expect Him

to keep track of which voice

goes with what request.

Words work their way skyward.

Oh Lord, followed by petition —

for a cure, the safe landing.

For what is lost, missing —

a spouse, a job, the final game.

Complaint cloaked as need —

the faster car, porcelain teeth.

That so many entreaties

go unanswered

may say less about our lamentable

inability to be heard

than our inherent flawed condition.



Why else, at birth, the first sound

we make, that full-throttled cry?

Of want, want, want.

Of never enough. Desire

as embedded in us as the ancestral tug

in my unconscienced dog who takes

to the woods, nose to the ground, pulled far

from domesticated hearth, bowl of kibble.

Left behind, I go about my superior business,

my daily ritual I could call prayer.



But look, this morning, in my kitchen,

I'm not asking for more of anything.

My husband slices bread,

hums a tune from our past.

Eggs spatter in a skillet.

Wands of lilac I stuck in a glass

by the open window wobble

in a radiant and — dare I say it? —

merciful light.

Great Givers

I've read God Calling as part of my morning routine for years and years. This morning the message really seemed to jump off the page at me. The reminder was to give of ourselves--our prayers, our time, our thoughts, our presence, our love--before we ever get out our checkbooks to buy a gift. It is so easy to rush out and find a nice sweater, candle, CD, or gadget, wrap it in pretty paper, and wait excitedly for a loved one to open it on Christmas morning. But when we begin to stress about how "little" we have to give, we can think of all the real gifts behind the material, hold-in-your-hands one. We can pray for the happiness, protection, security, and growth of the person--that's a gift. We can call them on the phone and share a little of our time with them. That's a gift. We can spend a little time thinking about them and remembering all loving things they've done and being grateful for their presence in our lives. That's a gift. And we can open our hearts and meditate on the preciousness of that person to us, which I believe adds more light to the world that everybody feels. That's a profound gift.

And when we receive in this same spirit, a new understanding emerges. Unwrapping something on Christmas morning is a joy, but maybe what we're really hoping for is some token that it matters to that person that we're on the earth; that we're loved; that we are connected and wanted and valued; that some other human being understands (or wants to understand) us. That might be a lot to expect from a scarf or a tie. But when we open our hearts and minds to receive everything that goes along with that gift--prayer, time, thought, presence, and love--we can truly know how blessed we are. And then we can continue to give from that richness.

This year may our holidays--Christmas, Chanukkah, Kwanzaa, or a celebration of our own creation--be blessed with an abundant understanding of what giving really means.