Chapter 64. Gold cracks

“When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. 

They believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history

 it becomes more beautiful.”

– Billie Mobayed

I’m wrapping up this story of the last two or so decades of my life, and I continue to be fatigued. I feel like running away; I’d rather not make any more dinners, or prepare taxes, or do laundry, or trip to the grocery store, or show up to my day job, or scrub the toilets, or exercise my body. You get the idea.

I’m kinda sick of it all. I kinda wanna just quit.

I need reminders of the deeper truths of existence.

I’m reading The Gifts of Near-Death Experiences: You Don’t Have to Die to Experience Your True Home, by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Lin. They record the words from one who had a near-death experience (NDE):

Realizing that the Light, the magnificent Universal energy is within us and is us, changes us… I could refer to it as God, or Source, or Brahman, or All That  Is, but… I don’t perceive the Divine as a separate entity from myself or anyone else… It transcends duality so that I’m permanently united from within and am indivisible from it.” – Anita Moorjani

In summary of descriptions from many who have had near-death experiences (NDEs), the authors say, 

“What is common in these efforts to describe the Light is a perception of infinite, unconditional love, and the realization that this infinite, unconditional love, which manifests itself as light, is the essence of all things, including ourselves."

“Every good gift and every perfect (free, large, full) gift is from above;

it comes down from the Father of all [that gives] light,

in [the shining of] Whom there can be no variation…”

- James 1: 17

“What kills is judgment; what heals is love. 

The Light itself is only love, and it never judges; 

instead it gently nudges you toward your essential self. 

It wants you to realize that your core being is this Light – 

it is not something external to you. 

When you become identified with this Light, 

you will have only love and compassion for yourself – 

and for everything – 

and you will be able to let go of all judgement. 

Self-condemnation, 

guilt, 

and other forms of self-laceration likewise are vanquished. 

When judgment – 

that ruthless sower of division – 

falls away, 

there is only acceptance – 

of everything. 

And that is called love.” 

– Kenneth Ring

Chapter 63. Vast plain

In order to tap the uniquely creative in ourselves, 

it is important to honor the four ways of 

deep listening:

intuition, perception, insight, and vision...

-          Angeles Amen, The Soul of Creativity

Some modes of communication penetrate more readily than words: music, poetry, symbols/icons, images. Images that reveal my present perceptions lead me to deeper awareness.

The image/visions below, accompanied by their respective feelings or senses of being, provide a kind of spiritual timeline of my adult years:

 

  Hidden and safe, as in a cleft of the rock – late 1970s

  Exhausted yet still trying hard while sinking/ stroking/ fiercely grasping for a raft, “drowning,” – 1980s

  Toppled and confused, as if the rug is taken out from under me – mid 1990s

  Raw and bleeding, with knife pushed in and twisted through my heart – late 1990s

  Companioned, as on a plateau dancing with Jesus – early 2000s

  Radiant, as if shining like the sun/Son – mid 2000s

  Questioning, as on quaking ground – late 2000s

  Falling, as from a height or down a slippery sandy hill, but still safe – late 2000s

  Moorless, as in a boat unanchored – early 2010s

  Lonely but aware of possibility, standing in the middle of an extensive flat green valley, seeing mountains on the edges in all directions – mid 2010s

A poem Rainer Maria Rilke has a few lines that especially catch my attention in late 2016. These lines speak to this flat green valley in which I’m presently abiding:

”Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.”

Here’s the poem in its entirety --

Onto a Vast Plain
You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

Presently, though feeling rather alone in a great expanse – this uncertainty in everyday, an unknowing – I am also aware of possibility. 

There is beauty and creativity, within and without, to be discovered. There are trails to explore, heights to climb, horizons to gaze upon, connections to the earth and to what is. 

Acceptance of change, as all things living do change; and acceptance of death, as all things living die.

“When you sit quietly and for extended times in nature, you see that everything changes. 

If you stay longer, you see that everything dies or erodes. 

Nothing stays in the same shape or form for long. 

Plants and animals seem to accept this dying. 

Nature fights for life but does not resist dying.” 

– Richard Rohr

I still resist death of ego. When at a friend’s daughter’s wedding in mid-August 2016 – barely three weeks post my unexpected appendectomy and just a week after Mom’s funeral – even though I felt unwell and sad and quite desperate to go home early in the evening, I stayed to the end because -- we said we would. We were to help clean up at the end of the reception and dance. I could not allow myself to be less than trustworthy and responsible.

“Responsible” has been largely what has defined me: at least according to me. I couldn’t give in to the invitation in that moment to be other than my egoic “superwoman” persona. 

But I think I want to actually give it a try in the days ahead: to step into what is more modest, to live into my human limitations, to ripen until I am real.

Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

What does anyone feel when they reach for me?

I think of the days during 1987 in Storm Lake when I took care of my sister Kathy’s baby Katelyn along with my four little ones, and finances and Gregg’s job situation were disappointing at best to nearly desperate at worst. Kathy would come to our blue two-story 2^nd Street house over her lunch hour to nurse her firstborn, and we’d talk. She experienced me at yet-unseen depressive lows (I said to Gregg in November of that year, “I’m drowning!” and intensely felt under water); in that vulnerable time she found me to be more approachable than ever before. 

I could be “felt” upon her reach, during those painful modest days of ripening until real.

What does being “real” look like for me? I sense it involves feeling my feelings. 

Letting them all wash over me: 

   not wallowing in the “negative” ones, 

   allowing myself to experience (and not feel guilty about) the “positive” ones. 

This enneathought comes as I’m wrapping up this story in February 2017 -

The Direction of Growth for Ones is Seven. 

Ones tend to exercise too much control over their feelings and impulses. The essence of the move to Seven is that healthy Ones relax and learn to take delight in life. 

How can you delight in life today? (Personality Types, 404)

Being real involves delighting in life?

Possibly I’m letting life ripen me; I know I’m wishing for considerably more soft and juicy within.

Chapter 62. Changed

The great weakness of much Western spirituality is that there is little understanding of the necessity of darkness and "not knowing" 

(which is the transformative alchemy of faith). 

– Richard Rohr

What I need is here. And yet, I resist. Still don’t much like  discomfort. I don’t much like this NOT knowing in the big ideas of life like “who/what/how is God? And how does that effect my living?”

I have felt invited to change my theology (and it seems like drastic change) in these last two decades. Inviting me to change my way of thinking asks me to hold the hand of anxiety. Change is unfamiliar, unstable. I need reminders that it is good to change, like these quotes:

"First take the log out of your own eye, then you will see clearly enough to take the speck out of another's eye." – Jesus, Matthew 7:5

"An unwise person will try to change others, 

a medium wise person will change the environment, 

a wise person will change himself." 

- Islamic saying

"If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change."

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

-Gandhi 

Can I really BE in my moments in a changed way that will change the world? Be a healing presence? I need assurances that even small changes can make a difference.

Mother Teresa's words comfort me,

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

And so do the sentiments of Therese of Lisieux, who described "the little way" in terms of a commitment to the tasks and to the people we meet in our everyday lives. She accepted that each one came ultimately from the divine artist and thus each one is loved forever by God. Therefore she would love them as best she could, a kind word, a smile, an assist when she was able… she determined that there is deep down a union between love of God and love of neighbor.

What a comfort it is, this way of love! You may stumble on it, you may fail to correspond with grace given, 

but always love knows how to make the best of everything.”

– Therese of Lisieux

To love more completely I have needed to change and will continue to need to change. My Myers Brigg personality typology of ISTJ is said to be the type that is most resistant to change. As a young adult I had a subconscious sense of "why would I need to change?" I was a good girl, a rule follower, exemplary in behavior. As a senior in high school, it was I who received the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) Good Citizenship award.

Diane, center, mom behind me; oh my, that hair!

[Interestingly, mom tracked down her revolutionary ancestor and proudly joined the local DAR chapter, serving as the DAR officer who presented the Good Citizenship award annually to a high school senior for a number of years. To honor Mom, her four ‘girls’ all joined DAR in 2008. 

[In case you wonder, our Revolution ancestor is “Dr.” John Hubbard, who served one year as a Surgeon’s Mate to Dr. Finley in Capt. Adam Martin’s Co., Colonel Timothy Bigelow’s Mass. Regiment, total service 3 years; wounded at the battle of Monmouth.]

Though I haven’t stepped eagerly into change, I think those close to me might acknowledge that my beliefs are changing. Life’s unexpected bumps and roadblocks certainly have contributed to my ideological changes. Probably an even bigger contributor has been the people around me, namely my kids. Their differing viewpoints and life experiences have expanded my worldview, and given credence to other ways of thinking and being.

Dec 2005 family trip to visit Rebe in Mexico, and learn about social justice!

I am still uncomfortable with what feels like drastic ideological changes within, AND I am forever grateful. 

My loved ones have changed me. And I am changing me.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” 
― Jalaluddin Rumi

Chapter 61. Now, here, this

“We tend to underestimate two things:

1) how intense it is to be human, and

2) the capacity of the heart.”

For lent in 2016 I journey via the book Behold Your Life. I read this on Good Friday and tear at the beauty of the coupling of woundedness with gift: 

“Standing before the cross, I proclaim…

Here is my life. This is who I am. Here is my gospel – my bittersweet good news. I am wounded, broken, and scarred. Yet with all these burdens I am still able to be your song...

Here at the foot of the cross my blessings seem to stand in the background. I invite them to come closer, and they do. It feels like a great homecoming. Everyone is present.

Deep gratitude is here. She stands close by, reminding me of all the ways she’s blessed me.

Immense love and healing grace are present.

Fierce yearning is here.

Constant conversion and childlike trust have arrived.

 Always forgiving is here.

Abundant joy is present.

Lasting beauty stands by my side.

Ever faithful smiles through the crowd.

Even quiet peace has arrived on the scene.

The two sides stand and look at each other as if to say, “We’re not really divided. We’ve always been one.” The blessings embrace the bruises. The bite is gone in that embrace. I look upon the cross and I am healed.”

I substitute "cross" with Love: I look upon LOVE and I am healed.

Just the day before reading this, after Maundy Thursday service, I comment to Gregg that the cross for me now is more about God, through Jesus, demonstrating God's supreme love; not about Jesus needing to die for my sins. It wasn't until my early 50s that I finally came to a realization that "the joy set before him" (Hebrews 12:2) was not about Jesus getting to sit at the right hand of the Father, but rather about Jesus getting to demonstrate love to us and give LIFE to us.  

Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity.

Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God.

– R. Rohr

Love softens me and brings me to a place of openness rather than bitterness.

Only vulnerable people change. Only vulnerable people change others.

Jesus presented us with an icon of absolute vulnerability, and said, "Gaze on this until you get the point. Gaze on this until you know what God is like!"

That demanded too much of us, so we made the cross instead into a juridical transaction between Jesus and God ("substitutionary atonement theory"),

which in great part robbed the cross of its deep transformative power.

– Richard Rohr

When love is present, bruises and blessings can comingle in a meaningful and thus beautiful unity. Death and pain are transformed. As Teresa of Avila said in the midst of a culture of war and want

“All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Or as Horatio Spafford proclaimed after the wrenching loss of his wife and daughter at sea-

It is Well With My Soul

When peace like a river attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Even during the moments when I don’t believe all is well, I still want to. I’ve sung these words as a young person, I sing them now to myself and my grandchildren, I will sing them in my dying.

That want to – a belief that all is well – is with me in the midst of deep sadness. In summer 2016, my mom suffers through her final struggle with cancer and is ready and wanting to die as she sits in the nursing home, Methodist Manor room 22. Gregg’s folks have given up their house and car and reside in an assisted living facility. Their way of living up until now is gone: so many losses of what was.

Harder than my own suffering, it seems, is watching the suffering of loved ones. Yet still, when my body and mind don’t as easily embrace this truth of “well” there is a deeper part of me that yearns for an acceptance and even an embracing of what is, with an awareness and hope of what will be.

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, 

you would never see the beauty of their carvings.”

Storms happen, and have their effects. Neither life nor death is merely black or white - darkness is as light.

I appreciate these simple reminders:

“Now. Here. This.”

– Father Greg Boyle

Contemplation is learning how to offer 

“a long, loving look at the Real.”

-William McNamara as quoted by Walter J. Burghardt, Church, No. 5 (Winter 1989), 14-17

The genius of the biblical revelation is that we come to God through “the actual,” 

the here and now, or quite simply what is. - Rohr

What I want is to acquiesce to oneness, serenity, acceptance, love. And operate under the assumption that ultimately: All is well and shall be well.

What I need is here.

 “You wander from room to room

Hunting for the diamond necklace

That is already around your neck!” 

― Jalaluddin Rumi

“And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye,

clear. What we need is here.”

– Wendell Berry, New Collected Poems, 180

Chapter 60. Original blessing

Your core, your deepest DNA, is divine; 

it is the Spirit of Love implanted within you by your Creator at the first moment of your creation. 

You begin with “original blessing.”

–Richard Rohr

I am asking myself these questions, again.

Where do I find meaning? By contributing to my world in positive ways. By appreciating and participating in beauty, truth, love, goodness. I want to point to the good when I can. Goodness is important to an enneagram One – author Don Ruso talks of Ones having an inherent God-given sense of each person’s dignity/goodness.

What is my purpose? To find the good. In the mid-2000s, when first exposed to the LifeKeys material, the top passion I identified was to “influence my world for good and for God” and my mission simply put was to “nurture people (self and others) to live well and love God.” Living well today translates to finding good. 

If God is good, then good is God? 

If God is love, love is God? 

I think so. 

I guess “find the good” will do for my purpose, for today.

It’s not easy for me. I sometimes feel disillusioned about my day job. What is good about work that doesn’t fit my passions?

To aid in answering that, I bring back a gratitude practice started years ago when I was hating going to the grocery store. I forced myself then to call to mind any little thing for which I might be thankful (and why not make a rhyme of it?):

   car to transport me to the store,

      legs to walk me through the door,

         money to do this sustenance chore,

              choice of nutritious foods galore,

                  family to love and buy food for.

Turns out those are not little things.

About my day job, I will choose to be grateful for – I can find good in –

-          the opportunity to assist faculty and employer so as enhance their success: of getting grants to support their research of doing their jobs well;

-          the colleagues I work with: remarkable and kind bosses and office mate, competent and decent college peers;

-          getting to lean into my tendency of following the rules (being compliant!) and making “it” good (improving proposals by editing and ensuring they’re abiding by the guidelines);

-          consistent occasions to learn and keep my brain active

-          the privilege of working part-time that gives me flexible moments and time to sit still/think/write.

Part of “finding the good” includes being grateful, seeing beauty and truth and love and invitation, and living with compassion and acceptance. 

Again I need to start with me – be self-compassionate and self-accepting to me. Even when I grouse. Certainly when I’m about to dismiss myself.

On that note, this dream comes to mind from 2010. My know-it-all egoic (dare I say false) self sees and has compassion for, even delights in, the tender child within.

Dream Sun, August 15, 2010, A Child’s Face.

I am seated with a group in a circle, and chatting. I listen to one of the participants: an academic (maybe kind of a big-shot?), then offer a thought or two. At my input I feel dissed - put down, contempted, disrespected - by the professor lady. 

I feel hurt and resentful, and want to dislike that know-it-all. I continue to listen and watch her (or was it a him?) and suddenly that light-haired adult face changes into the face of a child: a dark-haired 8- or 9-year old. I feel tenderness growing quickly within me. It seems to me that the child -- or child-like soul in that heady, off-putting other -– is to be given grace, and cared for as all children are to be cared for. 

I am excited about this realization. After awhile I share with her/him and the group what just happened –- that I actually saw the face of a child as she spoke. And that I realize it’s a kindness from God to remind me of God’s care and tenderness toward her, toward me, toward all, big or small.

Today, I will choose compassion, acceptance, the good, delight.

“May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride, and expectation

with which God sees you in every moment.”

– John O’Donohue, For Solitude, To Bless the Space Between Us