Author: Lanae

2020 Guide-word: Integrity

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

Year of Abundance Project

Guide-word for year: INTEGRITY

Definition [personal] of word: Ability and act of staying in tune with the inner voice of my intuition and of Spirit, knowing and aligning with core values, discerning deeply what it means from moment to moment, choice to choice, to live attuned and to return to attunement whenever mistunement or misalignment is present and known. To be willing for the process of re-attuning, re-aligning, retuning, returning and returning.
Intuition, and intention, attuned and aligned with Spirit, anchored thus no matter the winds and waves and current of this sea of life.

I am the boat, life is the sea
Integrity makes me sea-worthy
boundaries me, sustains me
nurtures me, holds me

Exposition of fuller meaning of this integrity and its application in my daily living:

This integrity is about being true to the deepest truths of my body, mind, spirit, soul. It is about making a vow to be true and to live from the essence of my soul, a congruity between what matters most to me and what is for highest good for all with choices made and energy (spirit) shared.

This integrity is about attunement – to my physicality, my sexuality, my gender identity, my spirituality. Attunement in relationships with myself/Self, others [clients, friends, peers, colleagues, mentors, leaders, family, children, lover], and the Infinite Presence. Attunement on all levels – holistic attunement – physical (or material), emotional, psychological, intellectual, mental, social, relational, spiritual. Attunement with the created world, Creation, and Creator Presence.

Attunement to the way that my desires, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, views, words, attitudes, actions, choices all intersect and interact with one another, the energy field this creates around me and the way my energy affects others, and where these elements are in alignment with innermost values as well as where they are not. Integrity is acting in the interests of attunement, which means listening to the voice that speaks from the deep stillness at the center of my being, my true Self. This is the voice speaking from Source into the center of my being and is my true voice – not the voice of ego but the voice of soul. If I know myself/Self, if I know this true voice and listen and respond to its direction and re-direction, herein is integrity, and in this integrity, liberty – living attuned and free.

Overarching Vow:  Preserve Presence. Be present with myself, with others, with Presence.

Note of explanation: This is the first installment of my Year of Abundance Project series! With this project, I also included other pieces such as 20 Guide-Phrases for 2020, vision/values and mission statements, etc. But the main part of the project involved choosing a theme to focus on each month, with a guiding intention and encouraging mantra as well as action steps for each theme. So, I will be sharing each month about that month’s focus, progress, and what I’m learning!

Thank you for coming along with me and sharing in abundance!

Turn the stones to peace

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

Sometimes, the various thoughts and messages I think I’d like to share feel rather like a swirling nebula, and the question is, where are the stars?! Where is that cloud of desires, feelings, ideas, and possibilities coalescing into a star, a message that’s like a unified point of light, shining bright and clear? Sometimes, these days, the intention, time, and energy required for star formation (as it were!) are beyond me …. but I do what I can to keep the creation spark alive!

And that’s why it’s a gift to rediscover stars – writings and poems from past years that hold the essence of a message that remains relevant to my heart, that speak light to my soul again, that could speak light out into the world, perhaps. I wanted to share one of those stars here, a poem I wrote in November 2017 – a time when my heart felt like it had somehow become full of stones, but I sure didn’t want to keep carrying them and so I desperately sought a healing, freeing practice.

The stones that the poem speaks of are stones that any of us could be carrying in our hearts for whatever reason – we’re human, and these stones, these feelings, these emotional, psychological, and spiritual experiences, are a part of our humanness. But there is a way to see more deeply into these things, to see them for what they are (and are not), and there is a way to set ourselves free, to “turn the stones to peace”. It might be that we need to “turn the stones to peace” over and over and over again, to set ourselves free over and over and over again. At least, this is true for me – I find I need to return to the practice, partly because I seem to be good at finding stones to carry again!

It can be intense, challenging, sometimes exhausting work, but also such healing and freeing work – what lightness and light it can bring, that we then carry with us, wherever we go and to whomever we meet.

And drawing the lens out further: What if this were not only an internal practice, but a communal practice that we learned (re-learned) to share and do together – and found peace, became free, together? To carry stones no more to our own hurt and others’ hurt, but turn them to peace, be free. Be free to be love to ourselves and one another.

Turn the stones to peace

These stones
I have carried in my heart
Resentment stones
Envy stones
Loneliness stones
Grief stones
Bitter stones
Sorrow stones
These stones
I have carried in my heart

I reach
inside
and I gather these stones
I hold them in my hands
rest them on my palms
lift my hands up
feel the weight of these stones
I see the stones
outside my heart
I see them for what they
are
emptiness
perception not whole
truth
As I see them
for what they
are
they fall into dust
and from the dust
transform into doves
who take wing

Robbed of their form
and their weight
given a whole
truth
stones become peace
my heart is light
I carry stones there
no more
I am free

Presence/Poetry

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

I haven’t forgotten I have a blog, nor have I forgotten the joy weaving words together brings me, but I have been seeking to discern where and how writing fits into this full to the brim season of my life – the career season, I guess! I still, and always will, consider writing as one of my first loves and one of my deepest callings. Sometimes, though, it’s been a neglected love, one that I needed to pick up from a shelf and dust off, rediscover anew. Or it’s a calling that’s gotten swamped amidst the multitude of other time and commitment choices I’ve made. Or it’s a gift I have too often left unopened or unshared …

I love the therapeutic work that I am engaged in, and it’s part of my life’s work, my calling – to listen, teach, serve, guide, counsel, be present, help people find the healing power within them – but writing has never stopped feeling as though it belongs in my life’s work too. The form and expression it takes just seems to keep evolving … and so the form it seems to be taking right now is journaling and poetry, putting my journaling into poem/prose form (free form, that is, free from any conventional style of rhythm and rhyme!). Somehow, poetry seems simpler to manage right now than a thought-piece or essay, too. And since I wrote multitudes of poems in my teens and twenties, returning to poem-form feels like coming home.

So, this blog offering is a poem drawn from more of my January retreat (at St. Benedict) journaling. A poem that feels like it weaves together the mosaic of intentions that shapes the deepest essence of  who and how I want to be in the work I do, the life I live … deep listening, loving speech, healing words, learning stillness, practicing the pause, holding presence, being present with Presence. Mindful speech, mindful silence.

These intentions are like vows – my ‘Presence in communication’ vows – vows that are sacred to me. And these are also vows offered to myself, my children, my friends, colleagues, clients, everyone I meet. I’m still only beginning to learn how to practice them and be them with mindful consistency across the many situations and interactions that come my way, but I am keeping them close at heart!

(And if you look in the wayback of my blog archives, I’ve carried these intentions, these vows – or they’ve carried me – for a while now, and they’ve only taken deeper root. They’re home, where they belong! I’m home in them …)

I think, too, that this poem just opened my eyes to something – that my calling is itself a mosaic, many parts of whole, as one! The intentions of belovedness and Presence hold this mosaic together.

Presence in Communication

The intention of my every day communication:
To carry silence with my communication,
to allow silence the place in my communication –
pauses before my words, rests while listening
whole listening
my own thoughts stilled
open to the silence behind the other’s words
the unspoken notes clear to my ear

My policy toward the spoken word:
Use only the words that are most necessary
With care, choose them well
Take a breath, take a sacred pause
better to enter into a space –
a space that allows the liberty to feel
into the right intent
from which the right words will
flow –
Right words will come
from the letting go of over-thinking
the search for them
surrendering into the flow
of Presence

Best of all, in all
tend presence, tend Presence
Presence speaks the best, says the most
and needs no words
to convey the meaning of love
to show another they are heard and known
If and when words fail –
for they do and will
accept this truth with grace –
If and when words fail –
remain present
With or without words
your presence is your
communication
of your essence

Deepen presence, deepen into it
become
intimate
with silence, stillness, sacred pauses, rests
deep listening
whole-soul listening not only to the words
but beyond the words
to the whole being of another

Listening with deep presence, quiet mind
from this well of deep Presence
mindful healing words
can be drawn to offer
like living water
But it is your presence still
that makes the water
of your words
Living

Retreat reflections: Mindfulness vows to myself

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

I began 2019 with a silent retreat at a lovely, serene spiritual oasis in northeast Nebraska (St Benedict Center). It was a time of deeply mindful, sacred rest – exactly what my body and soul needed after a busy, intense, revolutionary year full of some pretty powerful learning and growing experiences! 

When I arrived, my soul felt it was home. I knew, my body and soul knew, here was a place of deep peace safe to rest and be – and all I had to do here was rest and be. Lay down burdens, step into another world, set aside the phone and the watch, re-connect to and follow the rhythms of nature and my own body. What a delight and relief!

For me, this retreat was like a spiritual pilgrimage, a journey within, to see what I could find and learn in the silence and to see what gifts and news silence would bring me. I came with some deep desires. What I hungered for was to find and learn what would help me live my purpose to be more present in my life and with others. What I thirsted for was to immerse myself in Presence and know deeper healing and wholeness.

After arriving and settling in, I thought, to find what I’m seeking I need to set intention(s) that will give me clear direction. Oh, yes, I sought space for my soul to wander free … but I also didn’t want my mind to wander lost either!

I sat in the solarium that first afternoon with pen and notebook, surrounded by books and light and spacious quiet, soaking in the peaceful ambience, a still quiet at ease with itself. I reflected on how I could act with deliberate intention in physical and spiritual ways to support and deepen my purpose and practice of presence, to embody mindfulness.

In this quietness, these words came to be my guide and companion on my retreat journey. And they’ve stayed! I decided they weren’t just retreat vows, but life vows. I printed out and framed a copy I keep in my bedroom, and another I put on my desk in my (new!) office space, to keep my purpose ever before my eyes, engraved on my mind, nurtured in my heart, informing my words and my work, flourishing in my whole being.

There were many rich lessons, wild and precious moments of pure joy and aliveness, profound healing experiences, and other gifts I’d love to share down the road perhaps (some feel like they are only meant to be told in how I live but the ones meant to be told here will tell me, I’m sure!). But for now, just this seems enough and more:

Guiding Mindfulness Vows

(My Vows to myself on my Retreat and for Life)

When I walk, I will walk
When I sit, I will sit
When I eat, I will eat
When I write, I will write
When I read, I will read
When I rest, I will rest
When I listen, I will listen
When I observe, I will observe

When I look, I will look deeply
            into myself
            into what is present

When a feeling arises, I will feel it as it is
            and then set it free
            chaining to it no story

I will be with my body
                       my heart
                       my mind
                       my soul

When I notice myself in distraction  
          I will redirect myself with a gentle grace
When I notice myself in rumination and self-recrimination
            I will give thanks for my awareness and
            return my body and mind to the one act
                        of presence

            of walking
            of sitting
            of eating
            of writing
            of reading
            of resting
            of listening
            of observing

Above all and in all
            of experiencing this moment
           of being and inter-being

With my presence, I will be present
With Presence, I will be present

Voiceless

/ Lanae / 1 Comment Featured

Voiceless
On some things
I feel
my voice is
silence
silenced?
Silence my voice
voice my silence

Sometimes
silence
is the voice of grace
grace the voice
in silence
Is silence sometimes
the greater grace?

I’m not sure what sense this little collection of words makes, and I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say.
What I know is this: I’m feeling voiceless, and from my voiceless feeling comes the question, Is silence sometimes the greater grace? Or, when is silence the greater grace?

Why am I feeling voiceless?
Because in the matter of traumatic sexual experiences, I too have a story/stories. One I can tell, one(s) I cannot.

My first sexual experience with a woman – really, my first true sexual experience – involved deceit, manipulation, and a lack of consent. 21 and I had never been drunk before, but a couple coworkers thought being 21 should be celebrated. One of them took me to her home later. The experience itself was unsettling in its emptiness, but it was the aftermath of harassment that was truly chilling – having the two of them confront me at work “We knew you were gay, you can’t hide it,” the two of them waiting for me outside my apartment when I got off work at 3 am, or the time I came home to find the yard decorated with toilet paper and apparently stolen road signs. It felt evil.

It also left me wondering, what does a consensual, joyful, soulful sexual experience feel like? Will I ever know?
When I went into celibate ministry later, I figured I’d never know and that would be okay.

But there’s another story, too.

It’s not that I lack courage to tell this story. I do have a voice, I know my voice, and I have lifted my voice to share other parts of my story – spirituality, sexuality, identity, the journey toward becoming a whole, beloved person.
There are other parts of my whole story I have left in silence, especially aspects of distressing sexual experiences – at least online silence. Because is it always the highest good, the most right thing, to bare deeply intimate things to the light of the [online] world? Does it always help with healing? No …
Do I entirely feel the liberty to share those intimate bits of my story, which is intermingled with another’s story, and in considering reverberations it could bring into my life or my children’s life? No …
But – do I want to be heard? Yes, absolutely.
And I have been heard. Heard by friends, heard in private conversations. Heard in even the stillness of my meditations  – the Spirit has heard me. And so there has been healing.

The main reason I’m writing is for myself, to process my thoughts and feelings, to wrestle with nuances. Perhaps another reason I’m writing is to put a little light on why some stories may not get told, some voices remain silent, or why this silence is sometimes a valid choice. These things deserve voice and understanding too …

All the stories and experiences matter. All the voices matter; all our voices matter!

I do think it’s important to consider that there are many forms and contexts in which traumatizing sexual experiences can occur, and there are demoralizing, dehumanizing sexual experiences women – anyone – go through that may not necessarily arise to the level of criminality or legal reckoning. That doesn’t mean there isn’t, or shouldn’t be, a spiritual, social, or moral reckoning of some kind.

Perhaps these experiences could or should be called assault or rape; perhaps in the technical legal definition, some would be considered neither rape nor assault. But where there was not consent, or consent was coerced, what should it be called? These experiences fall into a psychologically – as well as physically and physiologically – valid experience of being raped, feeling and being deeply, humiliatingly violated and intimately disrespected. Emotionally and spiritually raped.

All the stories and experiences matter!

All the voices matter, whether they roar or whisper, or are veiled in a fierce silence of grace or a fearful, shamed silence.

And sometimes, perhaps there’s genuinely a lack of intent to have caused someone to feel sexually degraded or demoralized, or a terrible awakening and striking pain when realizing this has been the other person’s experience. Lack of intention, lack of awareness, does not absolve the need for accountability, however, in whatever form.  In my situation, something about understanding this lack of intention has absolved me from carrying the weight of blame and shame, and created space for compassion (and self-compassion) that has ultimately been so healing for me.

To return to the question, I think sometimes [public] silence can be an act of grace that preserves peace in interactions that must continue – I feel that way for myself, anyway. Yet, while it’s okay for me to be [publically] silent about this piece of my story, and valid for me to feel that this kind of silence is grace in my experience, I feel that the greater grace in general now is the breaking of the silence, the outpouring of stories, the undoing of shame.

Indeed, it is well beyond the time for silence on sexual violence and the structures that enable it to be broken, the time for things that have been hidden, cloaked in unjust shame, to be unveiled – truths should be seen and heard and known. For the sake of women and the sake of all human beings who have experienced sexual violence.

After all, does change ever happen without stories, uplifted voices, narrating it?

But yet – though it’s okay to choose privacy on pieces of my story, and let others speak who can speak freely and whom the Spirit is moving to speak –
Something in me still feels voiceless. But at least I’ve given the voiceless feeling I’ve struggled with a voice here … it helps.
It’s been sharply uncomfortable. I want to have a voice, and I want it to roar and be heard, with fierce grace and belovedness!

But it helps to remember that I’m not truly voiceless … because my voice is joined with my sisters’ voices. And their voices are rising strong, perhaps shaking and perhaps with tears, but rising strong.
My spirit is joined with their spirit, our collective spirit rising strong – Spirit rising strong through us, through many.

Together, we all rise.

 

Living with a heart wider open

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

Yesterday, I was reading a reflection in a lovely yoga book called Meditation on Intention and Being, by Rolf Gates, and there is a passage there that really resonated with me to share. It is from a section discussing self-study, or self-examination, being willing to look into ourselves, to understand our motives and our intents better – so we can change and purify them, change and purify our habits of thinking and doing and relating to others.

Anyway, these are the words I wish to share: “We find … that what stands between us and an act of kindness, or honesty, is not race, or gender, or politics, but just plain old-fashioned self-protection. We may mutter unkind stereotypes under our breath, but it is not because we are fundamentally against any particular type of people. What we discover is that we are against any threat to the immediate gratification of the self (ego).”

For me, this cut to the core of my own personal struggles with learning to live with a heart wider open, with generosity and vulnerability … and what I suspect is at the core of many prejudices and biases and extreme reactions people sometimes have toward those who are different, and why they feel so terribly threatened, hesitant or resistant to reach out or step out of their comfort zones. It is a self-protective measure, an ego-protective measure, a feeling that the sense of themselves as they have understood themselves, of the world as they have understood it, is threatened. And that is a fearful thing, that invites a passionate reaction of some sort … a reaction that perhaps covers up what is really at the core, that desire to protect ourselves.

That self-protectiveness, that self-defensiveness, the kind that causes me to resist or shrink in fear from deeper acts of compassion and generosity, of going beyond my self,  is something I am working on surrendering … and surrender is a challenging practice! But I don’t want the self-protective urges of my ego to cause me to miss out on the joy of surrender, living from the soul, living in abundance, generosity, purer integrity!

My intention: to become more self-aware of that limiting self-protectiveness, and to surrender it.

 

Anniversary and rebirth

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

We human beings  have a pattern of limning our lives, our stories, with anniversary. Rituals of return and remembrance and reflection – meaning molded by and told in the language of time,  beginnings, endings, transitions, journeys, seasons and spirals, cycles and circles,  birth and death and rebirth. And anniversary seems to be an idea that encompasses and embraces all of that meaning-making and feeling.

Anniversaries are powerful and meaningful memorials.

And so it is for me. I learned a lot about anniversaries, about how they mark grief and joy and loss and invite reflection on awakening and change, in the last year.

May 23rd marked the first anniversary of my (our) divorce. Anniversary usually brings to mind wedding days, yes, not divorce days … but anniversary can mark any day of significance. And this day is significant of a new era in my life, clearly demarcated new boundaries and the erasing of other boundaries.

Many things I haven’t shared – my sense has been that it was best to cover them with grace, and so it remains. And too, it wasn’t all only my story – this marriage and this divorce and all the attendant anniversaries and meanings and feelings, were a shared experience. Windows and mirrors into my own heart and wounds and flaws – I can choose that for myself, but (when) have I the liberty to choose it for another? Liberty only within boundaries of grace.

But this memory feels right to share …

May 23rd one year ago was a cloudy day – and a coldly formal, somber courtroom too, the air itself seeming as gray as the day outside. After the long wait between the filing and the crisp, detached pronouncement from the judge, the fifteen minutes of the hearing seemed abrupt and anticlimactic. A few words was all it took …

But isn’t that the way it has often been, a few words – so many of our social structures, our plans, our hopes, our feelings, our relationships, made of stories, and all it takes is a few words to create or uncreate or recreate the story, to weave or unweave or reweave the meanings.

But you know, it isn’t words that are most memorable from that day. It isn’t words. It’s the man who wiped tears from his eyes when I answered ‘yes’ to the question of whether I believed the marriage was irretrievably broken, and when the judge pronounced the marriage dissolved … From I pronounce you man and wife to  I pronounce you no longer man and wife …

The judge’s words weren’t the hard thing though there was something surreal present. In my heart was peace but with the peace the pang of pain for the open pain of the man at the other courtroom table – the one who was now my ex-husband.

Later, someone texted me – congratulations … I think? And no, the last thing I felt was celebratory. I felt solemn, a deep sigh cleaving the marrow of my soul. It was a funeral moment, not a party moment. A time of death, death of marriage – or the official time of death, anyway. Death – and yes, a beginning.

I walked down the courthouse steps, feeling freshly, vulnerably born into a wholly different life, same feet but a different path, taking steps into the mist of a brave new world, unknown waters to navigate. Like inhabiting new skin, a new way of being in my skin, uncharted self to learn …

One year on, I’ve navigated those waters, inhabited that new skin, learned more about that uncharted self. It’s been a powerful, beautiful, confounding, challenging year … both glorious and inglorious, messy and marvelous.

I’m grateful for the grace between my ex-husband and I, the spirit that makes it possible for us to co-parent in peace. That we can make decisions together for the kids, that we can share meals and holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, together. That we can do acts of kindness and service for another. That we can share friendly conversation, communicate and compromise. That the kids have this witness and this security. It’s like a transformed relationship, love in a different form – and perhaps a healthier, more right form for us!

And for me, a love informed by respectful compassion, informed by the indelible image and understanding left imprinted on my soul from that courtroom.

And my relationship with myself is continuously new, perhaps more informed than ever by that same compassion and respect – although I have certainly struggled with grace and patience with myself and my singlehood/sole financial responsibility/work-life-school-parenting-community involvement balance/efficient time management (yes, that’s a mouthful, and yes, I am busier and wear more hats than I ever fathomed I would) learning curve! But you know what? I am a perseverer and a persister … and I’ve persevered and persisted, and learned my power.

Oh, I’ve learned my power … and I’ve become more comfortable with my power. Comfortable wearing it, comfortable with it as my new skin, part of my new natural self and way of being in this world, in my life as it is now. I’ve gained a pride – (hopefully) not ego-pride, but the pride of confident authenticity, bold assertiveness, mindful acceptance of gifts graced to me by Spirit, and a deeper willingness to be evermore generous in my service and presence.

And as for the uncharted self? That new way of being in my skin, exploring new ways of being, throwing off old ways of being like graveclothes, shifting, evolving, moving beyond fixed forms of identity or sexuality or gender conceptualization. (These stories are for another time perhaps – but a simple clarification is, I no longer use the word gay to describe my sexuality, but queer – because its wide meaning encompasses much more of the nuances and texture of my sexuality and the undefinable fluidity I am increasingly comfortable with).

First redefining, then undefining, flowing toward being comfortable with no longer needing so many definitions, but being awake with my own is-ness as it is in whatever moment.  Being less attached, whether that is to ideas, self-definitions, life plans, or relationships.

It’s such a human thing to need and want definition and naming in order to apply meaning and understanding – and uncharted, uncomfortable territory to move beyond that, where Love itself is the meaning and the truth and the way.

But for now, on this anniversary of my divorce,  I celebrate rebirth and awakening and remember with respect the death that first had to be.

**************************

As has been my habit, this post was long … But change is coming! My plan move toward shorter reflections or seed-thought pieces, more in line with what I actually have time to produce/post in this season of life – and maybe I could post more often than every 3 months or so 😉

My hope is simplification and revival!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Awake

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

Every year, my church holds an Easter vigil, beginning on Good Friday evening and extending through Easter Sunday morning. I’ve discovered I quite love the midnight to 4 a.m. hours – how quiet the church is at those hours! The little chapel area becomes a place set apart in space and time, with darkness and stillness of the night draped around …. a cocoon of calm.

I feel a fondness for that chapel – it has often been a retreat place for me, even in the midst of busy days, to come and find a bit of respite, to re-center. Not only to pray or meditate, but to think, to write, even to engage in an activity as mundane (and non-sacred seeming!) as work documentation – or to play the piano (which is one way I re-center). For me, it is a ‘thin place’ – places infused with the sense of the sacred, places that offer an invitation into reverence and renewal, places where the veil that often lies between everyday existence and Ultimate reality lifts or even dissolves …

The saying ‘thin place’ comes from Celtic wisdom tradition, where it is said that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance narrows. The boundaries between heaven and earth collapse, dissolve … or, perhaps more accurately, our sense of those boundaries collapses, dissolves. Our perceptions change, deepen – or we see beyond our usual perceptions, see beyond our illusions …

It seems to me that not only are there ‘thin places’, there are ‘thin people’ (no, I don’t mean physically thin!), ‘thin friendships’ – people and relationships that are like spiritual conduits, that help us come closer to the sacred, that invite us to go deeper in our spiritual journeys, that support and enrich, challenge and teach us.

And … ‘thin times’. Those midnight hours seem like ‘thin times’ to me … hours where I can let go of time, hours that become timeless, because the rush of the world is stilled. Hours where the sacred feels wide open to me and I feel wide open to it, hours where the boundaries and barriers fall away, and this world/Ultimate reality blend together. (Not that they don’t anyway, but there are times and places it’s more discernable or we’re more open and prepared to discern it).

So the midnight vigil hours in the chapel are the profoundly holy convergence of a ‘thin time’ with a ‘thin place’!

For my vigil time, I brought along with me my old ‘spiritual journal’ (which has received little attention from my pen for a long time) in case the Spirit brought me words. And as I played the piano, words indeed came … “May we not be afraid to be awake … May I not be afraid to be awake”

I have always loved the times when I sat down to write and the words wrote themselves … coming to my hand not from my mind but from somewhere deeper, from the soul, and coming into my soul from a yet deeper Source.

I share these words here just as they came to me then at 4 a.m., without revision, these words that are truly not mine. And whatever they might mean to you is yours!

May we not be afraid to be awake

                awake to ourselves, our pain, our need

                awake to one another

                awake to our own suffering

                             to others’ suffering

May we not be afraid to be awake

                to see the crosses that are present

                                                                in the world

                            the crosses of suffering

                            the crosses of injustice

May we not be afraid to see

                to see the crosses we bear

                the crosses others bear

                the crosses we have given others to bear

May we not be afraid to take

                to take up our crosses and walk

                to take away our crosses and walk

                to take away the crosses of injustice

                                           the crosses we have given others

                take away these crosses so that others

                                           may walk

                              We may walk together

May we not be afraid to see the suffering

                to be with the suffering

                to be awake to the suffering

                                            to be there

                                            present

                                            awake

                                            seeing

May we not be afraid to feel

                to feel the pain

                                our own pain

                to feel the pain

                                our neighbors often feel

                the pain of their crosses

May we not be afraid to be

                to be there

                to be with ourselves in our own Gethsemane

                to be with others in their Gethsemane

 

May we not be afraid to bear a cross of love

 

May we not be afraid

                to be there

                where there are crosses

May we not be afraid to be love

                where there are crosses

So that only love, only Love

                may be where there have been crosses

It’s so powerfully real to me that we must be willing to be with the pain, our own and others, in order to move through it and heal the suffering.

This thought, I think, has broad applicability, across many personal situations and relationships, across many societal issues.

Do we want healing? Justice? If so, are we invested in what the process means?

Because it does mean being willing to be awake, wide awake, to the pain of others – to say, the grief from relationship loss, the distress of poverty, the pain from accumulated wounds of racial injustices – before we can begin to understand better the suffering others have endured. To not be afraid to be feel the pain and discomfort that the awakening of deeper understanding and compassion can bring. To not be afraid to feel, to see, to be – to be humble, to be love.

To be wide awake to the pain, suffering, brokenness in the world is also to be wide awake to Love, to belovedness. Love is also in the world … but Love needs us to be awake to it so that we can embody it in the world.

May we not be afraid to be awake, to be wide awake in love to Love!

Redefining everything

/ Lanae / 2 Comments Featured

I’ve been feeling like my words have all been coming for me recently, echoing back at me … both reproachfully and hopefully!

All the various deep intentions I challenged myself to practice and to be …

Being mindful, practicing deep listening

Being an includer, practicing radical inclusion

To nurture belongingness for those who have felt a sense of not belonging

Being peace

Being stillness, being a healing presence

Choosing abundance

Living these words has felt painfully hard recently, feeling like I was failing to live my spiritual practices. And yet these words, these intentions have still anchored me …

In mid-October, I gave a reflection at my church home about choosing abundance and gratitude. How I learned to choose abundance, abandon the myth of scarcity, the one that said that there wasn’t enough and I would never be enough or have enough. How I’d spent years in poverty-thinking and I was done with that …

But even though I passionately declared myself done with it, I guess it wasn’t done with me!  I found myself mired, struggling to remember abundance or to have the strength to choose it, day upon day. And I felt like such a fraud … teaching what I was struggling to do/be!

And what I wrote recently about coming to see my life-mission as being peace, being stillness, being a healing presence? Certainly, there’s truth there, regarding that as a calling, but how it was presently showing up in my spirit?? Mmm, not so much maybe! Even when I published the post, I was thinking, my dear girl, this won’t ring right  … because right now, your energy, your spirit doesn’t match these words!

I certainly wasn’t feeling like I was a healing presence, because I definitely didn’t feel still or serene within. I was aching, hurting, grieving, feeling lonely, unsupported, burdened, overwhelmed.

It’s not been an easy year by any stretch … yes, there has been much blessing, but a profound collection of losses, and an accumulation of layers of grief and sorrow.
The specters of depression sprang up … anger, fear, shame, despair, loneliness. Self-pity, resentment. Seeds I didn’t want, didn’t want to water. They made it difficult for me to remember abundance, to choose it … and they’ve caused me to begin redefining what choosing abundance looks like, in different circumstances. How does one draw abundance from dark emotions? It’s a (lonely) labor of love!
And I’ve tried, oh, I’ve tried to remember abundance in this hard, valley season … if it was hard to choose it, at least to remember it! To remember the gift of belovedness.
I’ve tried to nurture my spiritual practices, and let them nurture me. I’ve tried to rest in this posture, difficult as it is (more of my words that came back to me).

In all of that, I think the theme of this year has become redefining! Redefining – and refining.

Redefining myself, redefining my spirituality/spiritual practice, redefining my intentions and expectations. Redefining abundance and what choosing abundance looks like.

Redefining even the act of defining things, learning to let go of my need to define things!

Redefining everything …

There was the divorce … and learning to live life as a single, working mom (while continuing grad school!). And I’ll not sugarcoat it – it’s been hard and deeply overwhelming. Yes, sometimes such a triumphant feeling to realize what I can do and what I can handle, but also – overwhelming!
And yet, so many big decisions to make on my own and so many responsibilities and obligations (like, managing finances alone!), and so much uncertainty, and so much on my plate …  and so little time!
The busyness and fullness of my life – on one hand, satisfying, and yet on the other, feeling like it robbed me of friendship and connection time.
A cold and searing loneliness confronted me.
And the voice of poverty told me that I didn’t have enough support, care, love, affirmation …. but oh, how it told untruths! I do know that, because the voice of abundance brought again to my heart the many beautiful things that dear friends have done for me, big and small:

  •                 the friend who got a family photography session gifted to me
  •                 the friend who organized a clothing drive for my children at the beginning of the school year (and the generous response to that)
  •                 the long phone conversations with one friend
  •                 the friend who sat with me as I cried in shock after losing my job earlier in the year
  •                 the friends who have picked up my son from middle school several times when I was working
  •                 the kind, loving words here and there that have added up to a sweet bouquet

Too, there was also the felt weight of withdrawal in some long-time friendships (from my past church), heavier in my heart as silences made the sense of emotional distancing more tangible. This weight has lightened, though.

Redefining friendships, connection, sisterhood, community … learning what my village looks like. It might not look like what someone else’s looks like, or the ideas that society and social media have given me, but it doesn’t need to! If I open my heart, if I see with different eyes, if I look right next to me, it’s there … you’re there! Friendships, community, sisterhood – they are for me just as they need to be for me for this season. And are enough, if I let them be!

And then there was my first girlfriend experience, and then a break-up. To be clear, it was a special experience, rich in many ways! I’m thankful for what I learned from her and the relationship, but the break-up really rocked me.

Redefining love-relationship needs and desires … learning to be content unpartnered, for now.

Then, I lost one job – but found another, one that has been good for me in so many ways. Loss = gain.

Redefining my professional value and competence. 

Hopes humbled and dreams deferred …  A niche that I had had the idea that I might fill, but became clear didn’t belong to me. Some dreams and passions that I had to say goodbye to, at least in the form I had envisioned them.

It turned out to be a long, hard goodbye, and it’s been hard to find the hellos that follow the goodbyes. Even though I know about letting go gracefully of that which is not meant for me, and that letting go of old possibilities opens up new opportunities, I still felt the deep sting of loss, all the way into my core.

And it shook me, badly, unexpectedly. It stirred up resentments and fears that surprised me with their presence and power. I think it showed the depth of my attachment to those expectations and ideas, too.

(So much for learning to practice non-attachment! This quote comes to mind: The mark of a moderate woman is freedom from her own ideas. Alas, I am not (yet) a moderate woman, then! But it’s a life goal!)

I’d made the mistake of attaching my identity to my idea of what my role, my calling was. I’d tied my sense of belongingness to it. So, I felt unmoored  … another loss, another grief. One I didn’t really receive with grace or gratitude, I tell you!

Redefining calling, role, identity. And – letting go of the need to be defined by them.

So yes, the last while, loneliness and grief have been familiar companions.  So familiar I simply decided to befriend them and make peace with them. (I think that’s how you draw what abundance and healing there is to draw from them, anyway!)

I know that this is the holiday time, the season of joy to the world and peace on earth, and it’s not festive to speak of loneliness and grief and sorrow – but these are also a part of the holiday experience for many, because they’re a part of the human experience.

Redefining the value and reality of grief and loneliness.

Don’t get me wrong, I do know joy still, I know there’s a place of joy deep in the center of my being; I know there’s light within! There’s still stillness …

Redefining ideas and expectations about being stillness, being peace, being a healing presence.

I have learned and am learning still that I need not judge myself for not always knowing equanimity and stillness. There’s no need to define myself by the presence or absence of any emotion or experience. I’m human – part of being human is feeling deep pain, experiencing grief, sorrow, loneliness, dark emotions. As I’ve written before (more words that keep coming back for me!) sorrow is a sacred part of belovedness. So is grief. So is loneliness.

Redefining my whole emotional experience.

Redefining my journey, my story.

Redefining everything …  refining everything. Being refined.

Further and deeper, learning to let some things be undefined … learning to let the journey and the experience be as it is, in this moment, this season!

 

 

Lessons in belonging (or, what my grad school group class taught me)

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

Today is the final day of my latest session of classes, and am I ever looking forward to a week off before the next round of classes starts – one whole week homework-free! Every time I make it to the end of a session of classes, it’s such a sweet feeling of triumph and relief, a mingled sense of accomplishment and emancipation … and maybe this time, more so, because of the particular challenges and obstacles that tagged along for the journey this time.

For one, I have a job in which I travel a lot, and while I truly enjoy my work, care deeply for the people with whom I work, and don’t mind driving, extra time on the road means time not available for schoolwork – and means creativity in finding time for schoolwork!

For another, I’ve gotten quite the lesson in the complex dance it is to balance full-time graduate school, work, parenting, teaching yoga/meditation … it’s been, frankly, often exhausting and sometimes overwhelming (but rewarding too!). Somewhere in there, my sleep/rest quotient decreased, which meant that balance sometimes felt wobbly, and the whole school/work/parenting/life dance got a bit out of rhythm (okay, maybe my emotional equilibrium occasionally did too)!

For one other, one of my classes presented a special challenge for me, which is really what this post is about. It was a group class, about group methods and facilitating groups, and as part of it, the class met through Adobe Connect. Actually, it was thoroughly delightful to see my classmates’ faces, hear their voices, and experience who they are, because in online classes, usually your classmates are names without faces, people you only meet through discussion posts!

But anyway, those who know me well know I feel much more comfortable in one on one interactions over group interactions, so I felt sort of apprehensive about this class, because I wasn’t sure what it would like, what would be expected. Plus, I was thinking, 2 1/2 hours every Thursday, whoa, that’s a long time to be in group!

And … I was concerned about how the technology might behave for me. With good reason, as it turned out! I missed the first class due to another obligation, and then technical difficulties disrupted four of the next five classes. I did everything I could to resolve the issues, and still there was a signal bottleneck that meant sound transmissions didn’t come through.  So – I spent most of those four classes as a silent observer, watching my classmates on the screen, unable to hear most of what they said, unable to be heard. Ugh!

I thought I might have to withdraw from the class … but a dear friend came to the rescue and graciously let me borrow her home office for the remaining 6 weeks of class. An act of abundance that not only rescued me but redeemed my whole group class experience!

Sitting in silence was painfully frustrating, because I wanted desperately be a part of what was going on – until I simply surrendered to the situation as it was, and determined to look for whatever good there was to draw out of it.  For one, it was a chance to practice maintaining presence and equanimity – what else was there to do, sitting there in silence! An extended meditation opportunity, really!

The piquant irony of it all though (I’m convinced the universe has a weird sense of humor and brought it to me purposefully!) is that my outsider experience in this case so neatly aligned with the outsider perception I have often experienced or felt – a sense of both belonging and not belonging in some way in many groups (as I discussed in my previous post ).

I’ve often felt outsidered – or, maybe more precisely – have often outsidered myself. Although sometimes I’ve most definitely been outsidered, because I failed in some way to conform to expectations about what I should think, believe, or be … and because I was/am different in some ways. For instance, I’ve experienced being outsidered for being gay in one way or another over the years … and now as a single (divorced) person, I sometimes feel a little outsidered amongst my married friends.

However, I see now that mostly, it became my pattern to outsider myself, to believe that being the outsider, or being the quiet observer, was my role in a group – my role in life, pretty much! The odd one, the odd one out … beloved, but still the odd one out.

And so the gift of this disconcerting group experience was that it forced me to confront that core idea. After all, it was technology, a neutral party, that outsidered me, not the group or myself … so that gave the chance to look deeply into it from a whole new perspective, a liberating perspective!

I learned to let go of my attachment to an outsider role, or more precisely, my attachment to the expectation or perception that I often end up playing an outsider role … well, honestly, I’d have to say I’m still working on that! I still kind of like some parts of choosing the outsider role … but I also like belonging (so maybe there’s a way they fit together, eh?!).

Even though it was hard to feel like I belonged to the class group after my silent time, I learned that they still felt I belonged, if for no other reason than that I had persevered and remained present. I wasn’t an outsider, I wasn’t outsidered! What a wonder that was to me!

What I discovered within this experience is that I can be who I am and while my authenticity might mean that I don’t quite conform, yet I can still belong, and belong more so because of my authenticity.

The experience of outsidering has helped me know the value of the experience of belongingness!

Belongingness means more to me because I understand feeling or being outsidered … and I want, I intend, to share the gift of belongingness with those who feel, or are, outsidered!

(So, yes, this was quite the 12 weeks! I’m just glad I made it safely, sanely, through – and found the good in it all 😀 )