Another winter storm swept through the midwest yesterday. Photos show huddled pedestrians struggling against the wind and blowing snow as street lights swing in the intersections. A 40-car pile up on Iowa's Interstate 94, with news about injuries still unavailable, stirred deep concerns for my sister who lives in Ames.
Yet, winter is just another "outside reality," a term I use to define the world around me, but not the world within me. This doesn't mean that I'm not fully aware of its potential to cause havoc with a winter storm, loss of power, bitter cold, concerns for the elderly and sick who would be endangered by such a storm. It means that, always, regardless of any situation, my power comes from within, that Kingdom of God within, and the climate there is not determined by the storms that sweep around me.
The inner world, the world of the heart, the world in which I choose to live, and many days, that choice is hard won, is a virtual summer. It is a place of God-shine, playfulness, communing with life in every sense of the word. It is sunshine reflecting on the lake, like miniature fairies - as my youngest daughter liked to describe the sparkling water on Lake Erie in the summertime as the bright sun danced gleefully on its gentle rippling near the shore.
My inner world marvels and delights in fireflies, illusive to my young son's eager pursuit, as we sat outside in the evening, together, gathered even long after a radiant Western New York sunset.
And yet, summer is a rich metaphor for a life lived with the Holy Spirit at the helm of your life. Perhaps, C.S. Lewis really had the imagery right with the Chronicles of Narnia. Summer arrives after the great thawing of our hearts, bringing with it a kind of freedom rejoicing within us. We become children again. Our worries seem to slip onto a back burner or off the stove completely, as we focus on the life bursting forth all around us - the laughter of the children splashing in the puddle-size pool in the yard, attempting to rescue the little bunny that my overfed cat is toying with, feeling that excitement when the tomatoes are actually coming out on the vine. And the flowers! Can words even begin to describe the sheer joy when suddenly it's mid-May and the apple blossoms have swarmed every tree in sight. The world is blooming so loudly. Mother Nature is singing her most beautiful song. Couples stroll along the beach in the evening, hand in hand - young couples, old couples, even human and dog couples.
In the dead of winter, then, my mother would comfort her six cabin-fevered children who had exhausted every snow plow mountain on the street by reminding them of summer.
"Remember how hot it was last summer, you wished it was winter?" she'd say. "Think about the beach, swimming and playing in the sand. Think about those beautiful hot days."
And, we would, and eventually winter snarled his last snort and went to bed as summer danced, freckle-faced out into the brightness of day, calling all her children out to play.
As I write this, this morning, I am so powerfully reminded of a scripture that calls us to remember that which is most beautiful, both to sustain us through these bleak winter days, but to further launch our spirits higher vibrationally, from where the real power of living stems.
St. Paul reminds the fledgling church in Philippians to lift up their hearts by first lifting up their thoughts, when he writes:
"Rejoice! and again, I say, Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything ... whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things..." (Phillipians 4:4-8)
As you brace yourself against the winter winds, the long dark days, and the equally endless onslaught of oppressive news - from Haiti, the mideast, the country's epic center in Washington - remember the precious firefly of summer, light your lamps and hold that thought.
December 2009 They make an unlikely trio, but Baloo the bear, Leo the lion and Shere Khan the tiger have forged an unusually strong bond.
Considering that they would be mortal enemies if they ever were to meet in the wild, it is stunning to see their unique and genuine friendship in these intimate pictures.
Rescued eight years ago during a police drug raid in Atlanta, GA, the three friends were only cubs at the time, barely two months old. They had been kept as status symbol pets by the drug barons.
After they were delivered to the Noah's Ark Animal Rescue Centre in Locust Grove, GA , the decision was made to keep the youngsters together, due to their budding rapport.
"We could have separated them, but since they came as a kind of family, the zoo decided to keep them together," said Diane Smith, assistant director of Noah's Ark. "To our knowledge, this is the only place where you'll find this combination of animals together."
Living with the zoo's founders for the past eight years, Shere Khan, Baloo and Leo have now moved into a purpose-built habitat where the public can now witness first hand their touching relationships.
"We didn't have the money to move them at first," Smith said. "Now their habitat is sorted and they have been moved away from the children's zoo areas where the public couldn't really get a good look.
"It is possible to see Baloo, who is a 1000 lb. bear, Shere Khan, a 350 lb. tiger and Leo, also 350 lb, messing around like brothers.
"They are totally oblivious to the fact that in any other circumstance they would not be friends."
The trio are handled by Charles and Jama Hedgecoth, the zoo's owners and founders, and seem unaware of their animal differences.
"Baloo and Shere Khan are very close," Smith observed.
"That is because they rise early, and as Leo is a lion, he likes to spend most of the day sleeping. "It is wonderful and magical to see a giant American Black Bear put his arm around a Bengal and then to see the tiger nuzzle up to the bear like a domestic cat.
"When Leo wakes up, the three of them mess around for most of the day before they settle down to some food.'"
Surprisingly, for three apex predators with the power to kill with a single bite or swipe of their paw, they are very relaxed around each other.
'They eat, sleep and play together,' said Jama.
"As they treat each other as siblings they will lie on top of each other for heat and simply for affection.
"At the moment they are getting used to their new habitat.
"Shere Khan is being quite reticent about the move, but Baloo, the bear, is very good at leading him on and making him feel comfortable and safe."
Explaining that the three 'brothers' have always seemed to share a unique bond, Charles said: "Noah's Ark is their home and they could not possibly be separated from each other.
'You just have to remember who you're dealing with when you are with them, though.
"It's when you forget that these fellows are wild animals that you get yourself in trouble."
The trio's new habitat had to be constructed carefully, in order to accommodate its occupants.
'The clubhouse had to be very sturdy for the guys, because they all sleep in it together," Jama said, ading, "We had to include a creek, because the tiger and the bear both like to be in water."
(This article was shared with me recently by a friend. It seemed a beautiful example of the proverbial "lion lays down with the lamb" story which has been a childhood favorite for many and yet speaks to the potential for peace among humans with long-standing tribal differences)
"Faith is being sure of what we hope for
and certain of what we do not see."
Heb. 11:1-2
Faith is a well worn word, one that circulates in our language frequently and commonly and yet sometimes I wonder if we really lived into the depths of its meaning, how might our lives be different. In that single word seems to contain Heaven's most valuable spiritual guidance.
So, what does it mean to have faith - the faith of "the ancients" - as the author of Hebrews writes. The faith even to believe in the power of faith. I especially love the scripture in which St. Paul invites us to pray for an increase in faith. Who ever thought of doing that? It seems that "miracles" are clearly the product of such faith. The awesome faith an elderly woman held onto after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince buried her under rubble for one week stunned the world as CNN ran and re-ran the moment of her deliverance by rescue workers. More than 70 years old, she was pulled out alive and still singing whatever song she had sung to herself as she laid buried underneath her home near the city's cathedral, which also lay in ruins beside her.
Singing is one way of staying present in the moment, where we connect with the power of God. Eckhart Tolle calls that moment of connection as the eternal "Now." By singing hymns Christians throughout the centuries have entered into the moment of praise and rejoicing, lifting their hearts, entering into another dimension where the day's concerns are forgotten, a kind of metaphysical plain where they simply don't exist anymore, and where they reflect on - even connect with or commune with and are consequently empowered by - that what IS real, lasting and eternal. There's another story like this one from several years ago, in which a young minister was hiking in the English hills when sudden a rare snowstorm hit, buying him for also an unbelievably long time. Later, after he was finally rescued, the news asked him how he managed to survive. He replied that he had just sung all the hymns he knew.
Faith may be believing, but we must beware that "believing" is often just a head trip into the deepest recesses of our intellect, rather than our heart. If we believe, live with or through, our hearts, lifting them up and out of whatever would dissuade us from our effort to believe in something more radiant, more alive, more beautiful, of a higher calling, then we will have to apply some real inner spiritual muscle to the intention. It is far too easy to become overwhelmed, which tosses our hearts down, rather than lifts them up.
I once knew a wonderfully inspiring woman back in New York State. She was my next door neighbor in Hamburg, NY. She was stunningly beautiful, 65 years old, married to a State Supreme Court Judge who was a former town supervisor. Over the years, she had graciously entertained many civic leaders. She had raised six children, all of whom had grown up and moved on to doing wonderful things wth their lives. One summer afternoon, as we were talking, she shared her thoughts about how someone begins an overwhelming task, something that just looms before and over you like a mountain, foreboding, blocking you. You all must know situations like that - how do you lose 150 lbs. - or in my case - even just 10 would be nice. How do you overhaul an old house or begin a whole new career, how do you heal from cancer? She said, after her big sporty sons had filled her basement with skis, boots, books, and all the clutter and things of their childhoods now out of sight, abandoned in her basement, she was overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the task of cleaning it.
"I just took a shoebox and cleaned it one shoe box at a time," she said.
By filling that one shoebox and focusing on just that one small space at a time, she managed to stay present and consequently that sense of being overwhelmed left and in no time her basement was cleaned.
Is that faith, cleaning a basement? I don't know. But, how she cleaned it, the kind of "mind" that was tapped to clean it, is the same mind that we can tap into to do great things. There was a scene on the news of a group of Haitian fathers whose small children had died at their school when the earthquake hit. The young childrens' bodies laid buried under the rubble of their school. These heart-broken fathers were working together, painstakingly one-by-one pulling pieces of cement off the mountain of debris which had entombed their little ones. It was a huge monumental task, and yet they were doing it, remaining almost religiously vigilant, prayerfully present, as they did the somber task. Perhaps mountains are moved, one rock at a time, as one stays focused on the rock, rather than the mountain, or the largeness of the task before them. Also, when in that kind of present minded, mindfulness (to tap some Zen lingo), time seems to stand still - moments fly into hours - and when you you've finished, you feel you've been gone for only a few minutes, but it had been a couple hours.
The entire network of railroads that were built across the continental United States in the 1880s were built by men, who "sang as they worked."As the Haitian woman and the English hiker, and my neighbor, they disconnected from present circumstances and entered into another mindset, one of praise and present-mindedness. Perhaps, that moved them through a kind of spiritual time-space dimension while empowering them to survive as they waited.
All I know is that singing is one way we can enter into a state of mind in which our faith can be activated, catalyzing into our lives things so much more than survival or accomplishing insignificant household chores. Through singing, dancing and loving (making love is certainly one way of staying in the present!) and praising - thinking good thoughts, imagining what you really want, visualizing your dream - while remaining intentionally in that present-minded state of joy, energy is released into us which opens portals upon portals within our hearts, ascending up and away from whatever was holding us back and somehow, mysteriously, even miraculously, bringing into our lives that which we had hoped for.
Just a last thought, as you stay aware of what you're thinking about, remember you can (as in, you have the power to) take control of that thought, choose to shift it by singing, dancing, praising , painting - anything that you know will take you out of the grip of that thought - and then visualize what it is you want - if its to survive an earthquake or buy a new home, or sell your current one or heal your body, whatever it is.
You can do this. Just imagine, if we all did this one-by-one, we would regain control of our minds, our lives and our world. Even if you just did it, starting today, your day would at least change and if you could remember to do it tomorrow, your week could change, and if you could make it a habit, your life would change. And, then, imagine how many lives impact yours. Don't we all touch each other all around the world? Visualize peace and peace will come.
We all have to hang together. I can see you in the next branch. We have to dream the big dream, hold on to the heart and NEVER GIVE UP and NEVER GIVE IN to anything, any in-coming thought that's not love, anything that stretches your conscience beyond your instincts to be vitally alive and present to yourself and life all around you. Love your neighbor and love yourself.
