Joy Comes Without Worry Tags

Yesterday, I had been graciously given a new book about the "real" teachings of Jesus, which are a breath of fresh air on the theme of spiritual liberation which many of us had already come to believe was what Jesus was really teaching. It opens the whole world and language of Christianity to include all human beings. It is explosive in its potential to heal our lives - all of life - from wars, disease, interpersonal relationships, mental illness, everything. It reaches right across all our human limitations, our human fears, and our cultural and religious and even historical boundaries. In short, it gets to the point of everything. In it, we are shown a vivid glimpse of who we really are and how we can reach the pinnacle of our authentic being. The material is bursting with light, love, energy, hope - and most of all joy. It literally blows your mind right out of the water into a new perspective that in a sense transcends everything you ever thought was possible.

We are shown that at the source of all that is, in terms of our earthly lives, dreams, dilemnas, everything - is the creative power that is always within reach, always there. It is in every cell and every galaxy. It's in our actions and choices, powered by our thoughts. In short, it is our "power," and you know I'm going to tell you that our power is not our power but our creator's power within us as it is in everything. It is our conscious intentionality that chooses to subscribe to its presence. Does that make any sense? It is by - to use old Christian language - surrendering to God that God will enter into any situation to remedy it. Now, deperonsalize that concept, remove the shoulds, guilt, unworthiness and judgment from it, and think, by inviting the power of all of life, creative power of all of life, to enter your mind, your choices, your life and allow yourself to be fueled by this great "other" and you will find your life transformed from black and white to brilliant Pixar technicolor rainbows.

So, who does that right? Well, think about Gandhi's walk to the sea. He chose non-violence to stand before the British and only held in his hand the weapon of love, the weapon of the power of love. In his decision NOT to use any form of violence, defense or weaponry, he made that choice to surrender. When we consider that this power is available to all of us, bar none, absolutely unconditionally, no strings attached, and that with this power (which is the creative power of love, or maybe we could call it the power of creative surrender to "that which is the power source of all of life - always has been, always will be) we can re-create our lives from hum drum or even just down right miserable into magnificent lives of power and joy, animated by this beautiful life source and inspiring and animating all those around us as it flows through us out into our lives and life all around us. Now, just imagine if everydone did that? Bingo! Paradise. Maybe that's the vision for what will come after 2012. Let's hold on to that one.

But, just one more thought on this. When you realize that you don't have to control everything - every single detail in your life - you feel this awesome release from worry about outcome. Then, you can just go back to doing what you love (once you know what that is) and let life take care of itself while you hum while you work. That, in my mind, is the beginning of joy.

My only hope and prayer is that we can stay awake to this new idea, which this book calls the "good news, " or what I would call the news from God - in a way, it's kind of late-breaking, but nonetheless very ancient. It was what created the heavens and the earth and made life on this beautiful planet. Yet, behind all great power is ultimate being, so I can only imagine, if I could really imagine this, Who is this ultimate power Who can create such magnificence? Creation, plus power, equals being-hood. Well, that's just awesome!

Check out this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA8PaIw5gcE

Courageous Goodness

In memory of the humanitarian workers
who died in Haiti's earthquake

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doors
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
-- Rumi

These are confusing times to say the least. We run the gambit from hearing about Haiti, the Republican upset in Massachusetts which may cause a political tidal wave, deepening concerns about the decline of the U.S. economy while at the same time watching in great admiration the valiant efforts of those many search/rescue, medical and other aid workers in Haiti. They are absolutely heroic. It is a time of great extremes. It almost feels as if heaven and hell are engaged in a kind of cosmic battle right before our eyes. And, there has never been a more important time to stay awake and have the courage being awake requires.

This morning I am deeply touched, saddened and inspired by those many other unsung and yet most heroic aid workers who died in the earthquake in Haiti. Many were young, fresh out of college, young men and women who were trying to help Haitian children and others survive the unsurvivable life in Haiti. They were giving their time and talent, enduring the hardness of life there themselves. They gave unselfishly and died silently, moaning alone as the heavy cement hit their heads before burying their bodies. Many are still missing, many will never be found and most worked silently, invisibly outside the publicity of the media's lens, and to the best to which any human being could aspire. My heart and gratitude is with those invisible ones.

Martin Luther wrote that the battle between heaven and hell was fought in the human mind, where love was threatened by fear, where cold disdain and apathy challenged compassion and human kindness. Rumi seems to remind us to remain vigilant and awake to that challenge, "don't go back to sleep." I wonder if his warning to remain vigilant to the spirit's voice within is to remain watchful of any tendency to harden, freeze out our spiritual sensitivity and frighten away our courage. I wonder if he is saying that it is through that open heart where the doors open to other "worlds."

An image that comes to mind is a powerful scene in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series in which Gandalf (the Grey) is engaged in a terrific fight to the death with this hideous dark power which threatens the lives and progress of those engaged in the battle between good and evil. It seems a good image of the kind of interior confrontation we might face to simply stay awake, aware and engaged in courageous goodness.

In the story, Gandalf fights to the death, eventually killing the "evil thing" only to return, triumphant and whole in the second book, as Gandalf the White. His courage, his passionate engagement had cost him his physical life when. he went down with the dark force which he confronted. The result was a kind of matruation, evolution which transformed him into a more powerful spiritual aliveness that does cross the threshold between worlds. This is also a call to stay awake in these confusing times, stay conscious and mindful, listen to our hearts, allow our love to flow courageously, fearlessly standing up for justice and peace in our world, everywhere it is hunted and threatened.

Staying awake courageously means risking whatever it is we fear the most - in relationships, protecting the environment, opposing unjust political systems, war anywhere and everywhere, large or small, being aware of the heinous crimes against farm animals and having the courage to "go into hell for a heavenly cause." Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandhi along with many others along with those many compassionate aid workers who died in the earthquake, all were willing to dedicate their very lives with a commitment to goodness and the courage to stand up, stay awake and take action whenever and wherever necessary. The confrontation is rarely pretty and often very hard won, but on it hangs the future.

Jesus called those whose hearts had grown cold, who were apathetic and dispassionate, who cared only about themselves, those who used the system for their own gain, He called them "corpses" or "white washed tombs." Those who had the courage and vision to stay awake and confront whatever threatens life are saints. Vivid and powerful language, which only says to us how very important this must be to God.

Do What You Love

I believe in love, real love and living my life with a courageous passionate purpose to that end exclusively, authentically and loudly.

I also realized that so many of us don't, are too afraid to live our lives outside the status quo box. While we don't admit it consciously, we are afraid to live our lives out loud, in bright technicolor, are afraid to make a mistake, be judged wrong for something we needed or felt was what we should do, afraid to be thought "not smart enough," "not educated enough," "inadequately social," "unloveable," etc., the list is virtually endless. But, to live authentically, is to shout back at those limiting voices, "STOP!" and pick up your own beating heart, and give it another option.

I felt sad that so many people I know and love didn't know me and didn't know themselves because, like most of us, they'd put a lid on their hearts, buried their right to be vitally, vibrantly alive. We are actually taught to do this, rewarded by school and parents to do this, and there are books and news articles abounding that actually teach us how to do this - to live inauthentically so to be successful - successful at what? fitting in? fitting in to what? making money? Really? so that at the end of your life, after the stock market has fizzled out everything, you will look back and realize that you spent an awful lot of your life doing absolutely nothing. I'd rather fail at that miserably and succeed at finding my passionate purpose and living it loudly, in love with ALL of you, God, our beautiful Earth.

I invite you to really have the courage to live your truth, do what you want and say what you think, because, as Dr. Seuss once profoundly wrote, "those who care don't mind and those who mind, don't care." And, as one far wiser man once said in the Gospel of Thomas, "Don't do what you hate." When I first read that, I stopped and wondered,"did that say what I thought it said?" "Don't do what you hate?" When have I done what I hated? Don't we all conspire silently to do what we hate? Because, what if we didn't? What would happen? Would the world stop spinning? Maybe wars would stop, maybe the power brokers in our world would stop being enabled by we collective many?

Then I wondered, when have I done what I loved? When have I told someone I loved what I wanted to do that may have been different than his or her plans? When did I have that courage? When was the last time you did what you loved? That's even more challenging. It's easy to serve others' dreams because then we don't have to challenge ourselves to discover our hearts and our own dreams. We can live like we're living, but we're really doing what we were told we should do and we're just following the world's marching orders, step in line, step in time. It is far more difficult to do what you love because it means transcending all those layers of life that we've put over our hearts. I once wrote that finding our heart, where the radiant Holy Spirit lives within, is like doing an archaeological dig. But, keep on digging anyway.

Each of us could live another 30 years. So why are we wasting our time trying to fit into this tight lifestyle that suppresses our own authentic creative madness?

Life could be long, very long, I hope we all can have the courage to live what we feel in our hearts, live lives of love by first honoring our own hearts, our dreams, reach for them with a devil-may-care passion and be willing to meet disaster at the front door the minute we do. There will be many in our lives who will try to keep us right where they like us, at their command. Be daring, dream big, and go for it.

Remember Who You Are

My Friends -

Remember who you are! Beloved beings of light shimmering in the dark night sky, perhaps not yet visible to your own earthen eyes, but you are stars in heaven's sight, for sure.

Remember that anything - said or done, to you or by you - that isn't love, loving or healing is not from God and is, in fact, only noise, static on the line. Listen hard to the love and the static will dissipate.

Remember to hear only love in your own heart first and then in the words and actions of others and let that love heal your weary hearts and bring you increased clarity and joy.

Love always

V

Haitian Tragedy calls for Cosmic Compassion

About Haiti, 1/15/ 2010

For the last several days, I've sensed an almost cataclysmic warning in the terrible and tragic earthquake in Haiti. Certainly it must be among the largest most horrifying natural disasters ever to happen to humanity. So, I wondered what does it really mean to us - as a global civilization at this perilous point in our history on this planet? What ancient struggle is being played out here in Haiti?

Early this morning I felt nudged to write what I was feeling. I felt a deep longing to explore what Earth herself might be saying to us, and what God may be saying to us through this global tragedy? Is there some unfinished business humanity needs to clean up, perhaps an ancient wound stemming from that first heartbreak of Cain’s murder of Abel in the opening chapters of Genesis? I am not implying that God would be punishing us, but rather there might be inherent in the natural order of life, a wake-up call in this tragedy, which I use in the full meaning of the word. Could this be the end result of an out-of-control uncorrected error, a kind of tear in the fabric of life that left unmended would unravel the entire garment?

Is that deeper meaning of this earth-shattering tragedy, buried in the debris and broken bodies and broken lives, the awareness that we are indeed our brother's keeper afterall? Could our original betrayal, slaying of our brother Abel, that original archetypal utter separation, tearing apart of flesh and spirit, that first renting of our human garment, could that be the spiritual thorn in our collective human soul? - a thorn from which war and disease and poverty has seeped like a spiritual abscess for dozens of centuries? Is it the cracked cornerstone on which the entire foundation of our civilization is built, a civilization now split, cracked open, before us in the earthquake's retching upheaval? It seems almost as if Earth herself could not tolerate our abandonment of our brother any longer. And, if it is, which I am feeling it is, how do we remedy it? Is there a kind of antedote to this spiritual virus? Because, I almost feel that if we don't do something, reverse our centuries-old lack of love for our neighbor/brother, what else may happen and where and at what collective cost?

Empires came and went, flourished at the expense of that small island parcel, once paradise, today hell. Abandoned finally by its colonial parents who had abused it since its birth, Haiti's people and government were left too weak, too spent, too exhausted, too long oppressed, completely without any resources to protect himself or have ready any kind of means with which to respond to the earthquake. The poverty and wretched living conditions there may be the worst in the world. With only barely a glimmer of a vision of who it could be among its brother island nations, or even in the world, this spot of earth, like a small metastasizing boil, turned into a villainous rapacious seething time bomb, awaiting a match. Perhaps the Earth herself could not bear to see this parcel of humanity so maligned, forgotten, neglected, so bitterly unloved by his brothers that death itself would be kinder than the torturous existence those three million souls in Port-au-Prince could no longer endure.

Perhaps Haiti is Cain's long overdue debt to Abel, and unless we can hold and love him, indeed restore him, we as a civilization have damned ourselves to roam the earth, cut off, forsaken, broken, limping through time with a guilt so deep within our collective soul, that God's tears might only be able to free us, save us, restore us. Psalm 118 says, "The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone." While that scripture was quoted by Jesus who said that God himself is our cornerstone, our relationship with God, and ourselves, was cracked, when we chose to abandon our brother and slay him, metaphorically in the story of Cain's slaying of Abel.

Today, our brother is in Haiti. He has been born and bred in hatred, oppression, deprivation and despair. If we cannot restore this brother, certainly there is no hope for our civilization which is already perilously close to the edge of extinction, due to our own lack of compassion for each other. I believe the stone will be restored, the human inner sanctum will be healed, our relationship with ourselves and God will be realigned when we can finally love our brother, on as large a scale as we once slayed him, and it seems that we have been slaying him since that very first violation, two steps out of Eden.

But Haiti is one of many nations who also are our brother. From around the world, communities, homes, families, lonely individuals littering our cities, hungry children all seem to come into focus, until suddenly their faces all flash quickly by one-by-one until one face seems to form before us and in the eyes of that face, we see God. 

If we turn away from that brother, we turn away from God. I know that we know this on some deep interior level, but we must remember again and again. The urgent need to love each other that is called for from us today is the greatest humanity has ever required. To save ourselves, we have to save each other. 

We are One, all One, all together here on this beautiful planet and we need each other as we've never needed each other ever before in our history. I sense a real need to remember this and in sharing these words this morning with you, I am reminded that we are all called to love with a cosmic intentionality and to do this in every thought, word and deed we experience and share in everywhere and with everyone.

Potsey's Homecoming

Postsie’s Homecoming 1/7/10


My beloved little orange tabby, who has an adventurous bohemian spirit, decided to go for a walkabout only a couple weeks after we moved into our new treehouse apartment in Portland. We are upstairs with lots of trees hovering protectively over a large wood balcony which also offers easy roof access to other porches. So, as is his custom, Potsey went and returned a few times, like Noah’s dove. And with each return, my heart leaped a bit, breathing a sign of relief. . 
 
Then, on a Monday morning, he went out, as was becoming his new ritual. I had a lot to do that morning, so I also went out. When I got back in the afternoon, I remembered that he’d gone out and I’d forgotten to be sure he was back in before I left. I went on the balcony and called and called, but a sinking feeling took hold. I prayed, fighting back all that dark, ugly fear.

By night time, fear was winning over faith.
 
The next morning, there was still no sign of him at the glass door. That night, I was certain. He was lost. I had gone looking for him, calling him like an old Irish fishwife with the loud, long cat call. “Here kitty kitty kitty ….. heeeeeeeeeere kiiiiiiiiitttttteeeeee, kiiiiiiiiittttteeeeee ……” feeling foolish and knowing and feeling it was all in vain.
 
The next day, I spent the enter day calling and searching animal shelters, talking to police, searching through endless long websites of missing animals in the area. I was becoming exhausted and hope was fading fast. That night, when again he didn’t come home, I just collapsed, sobbing, berating myself for having let him out, and fearing now the worst with no consolation at all. He was definitely gone. I featured him dead on the road somewhere, hit by a car, or injured at the hands of a cruel human.
 
Then next morning, I just surrendered. I’d prayed, cried, prayed, sobbed, held my other cat, and together we rocked, cried and prayed. I chanted his, “beautiful Potsey, beautiful; beautiful Potsey, beautiful” song that I sang to him often as I petted him. What a love affair! It just couldn’t end. I couldn’t imagine him gone.
 
Finally, I reached a temporary place of peace. I was all cried out, worn out, sad, resigned and numb. I breathed to myself, “well, what will be, will be,” knowing full well the huge power in that simple phrase.
 
Then, I decided to take the recycling out. As I walked to the dumpster way at the other end of the apartments, I realized it was an exceptionally beautiful day for January. It had rained non-stop since Potsey left three days earlier, and it had been bitterly cold and very windy. If he was outside, I don’t know if he could have survived. But, that day, the sun peeked out just a bit, it felt warmer out, drier, and in that sweeter climate, my hope began to seep back in my heart. I decided, as I walked the long stretch to the dumpster, to make another impassioned search for him, loudly chanting, “Potsey!!!! Here kitty, kitty.”
 
I started to feel bold, a bit crazed, like I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. I wanted to find my cat. I’d risk looking like an insane cat woman for the sake of my cat. So, I gave in to looking foolish, and in real earnest, started walking up and down all the driveways, calling loudly, alerting everyone around me that I was certifiable.

I called him. I engaged children if they’d seen him. I even hung around the few other cats, inquiring if they’d seen him. They just asked for more petting.
 
Finally, I was nearly back to our apartment, and I was losing hope, but I thought I’d give it one last try, “Potsey!” I yelled out, demanding a response.
 
“Here kittt…..” I started, and then in the distance, heard a distant, muffled, weak and gravey, “meow ….” raspy, as if he’d been crying for a long time.
 
“Potsey!!” I yelled back.
 
“Meow,” came the reply.
 
I got so excited, I started crying. I ran toward the sound, calling his name, almost frantically, and he replied louder and louder, also with that unique kind of cat joy. I finally found him, cold and wet, on the second floor balcony of an empty apartment. He’d come home, but to the wrong building. Finally, after talking a neighbor in to letting me into his apartment, so I could see Potsey, my poor cat was too weak to jump up on the rail and come to me. I ran downstairs desperate to get maintenance to let me in. Then, I turned around and the nice guy who had let me in his apartment,had came downstairs carrying Potsey, and passed him to me. He’d managed to coax him into his balcony.

I held him tightly, and cried in relief and sheer joy as I ran back to the warm apartment, put him on a warm heating pad, gave him some foot and water. He ate and ate, and then slept for about four days. I was ecstatic that he’d been spared and found. I knew that somehow God had something to do with this. I collapsed on the floor, and just prayed the following great chant of praise and gratefulness to God.

 

All praise and love to You, 

in whom we live and move and have our being.
You, who hold us, contain us and love us,
You who are our garden of delights

in whom we experience all,
You who are the Great Allowing,
Oh, Great One, I love you.
You have loved me and allowed me my longing

and given me life and freedom and fulfillment.

I praise you, on my knees, at the top of my lungs.
I praise you with all my being.
I praise You.
Thank You.

Amen

The desperation, the need for God, the love that was so longing for itself in my precious Potsey, all combined to teach me a most awesome lesson and in that lesson give me the gift of knowing what it feels like to really need God and also what it feels like when He responds to that need. This prayer is always on my lips, in my heart, and always close to me, in all things, simple, ordinary or challenging and stretching and abounding. In all things, I Praise and Thank God for all of Life, in everything. 

It is all so good. So, very, very good.