Category: belovedness

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

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!

Mending brokenness with gold

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

A few days ago, I heard again a story I have heard before about a Japanese method of repairing a broken object, like a teacup or a vase, with gold, and of the philosophy that goes with that process. The belief is that the visible brokenness and mendedness makes the repaired object even more beautiful than it was when it was an unbroken whole … more beautiful AND more beloved.

So, my curiosity helped me discover that this repair process is called ‘kintsugi,’ which as I understand means literally ‘gold joinery,’ or ‘to join with gold.’ And that this joining with gold process and philosophy is also a part of the Zen ideals of ‘wabi sabi,’ which teaches about seeing the beauty of aged, weathered, or worn things.

About cherishing the beauty of unpretentious imperfection, honoring the beauty of simplicity, of authenticity, of vulnerability. About respecting the deep, rich beauty of things that have been broken and mended.

But also about respecting and honoring the rich beauty of people who have been wounded and aren’t afraid to let their scars, their brokenness and their mendedness, to be visible …

Of people who understood that their brokenness was worth being mended with gold, that they were worth being mended and made a new whole …

What beautiful philosophies! Or maybe I should say ‘practices’ … because these words and ideals aren’t meant to be elegant objects to set on the shelf of your mind or heart, to look at and admire. They’re meant to be a way of living more richly and soulfully … seeing beauty and light in the ordinary, the cracked and broken, the imperfection, and seeing them all with belovedness.

Teaching that broken things can be mended and still have purpose, usefulness, beauty, a beauty that maybe new things don’t and can’t yet possess … In this way, also teaching the hope of restoration and reconciliation.

I realized that this method of kintsugi, this way of repairing and joining with gold, doesn’t just apply to broken objects … but to our own broken hearts. And what about to broken or cracked relationships, friendships? Can those cracks or breaks be filled, joined with the gold of forgiveness, of reconciliation, whatever reconciliation may mean in that circumstance?

Cracks happen, relational fractures happen, relational rifts arise. Words cause wounds, trust cracks, a sense of spiritual or emotional distance opens up, disconnect, misunderstandings, miscommunication, unequal feelings. Conflicts and crises might shake a relationship … maybe sometimes shatter it, or cause the individuals in it to feel a shattering. Or perhaps just a subtle but profound shifting of the relational foundation …

And so what felt like a strong, deep-rooted relationship or friendship seems to become like a beautiful vase that fell and shattered … what do you do with the broken pieces of the vase? Do you sweep the pieces into the trash, and consider the worth of the vase irretrievably ruined? The question is, how precious was the vase … precious enough to gather up the pieces and fit them back together, even if they will not be in the same flawless form? Precious enough to find the most beautiful way to fit them back together, even if it is a painstaking – or painful – process?

Can a cracked, wounded, broken relationship or friendship be made whole, restored or repaired as if the cracked, breached, or broken places had never been? Maybe, maybe not … but whether it can or not, the effort of reconciliation, the desire of restoration or repair, is precious beyond price!

And so, the deeper question that came to me is: What if we sought to repair and restore our relationships, our friendships, in the kintsugi way? To mend, to join with gold, the broken places, the broken trust, the broken communication, the broken connections. To mend brokenness with belovedness.

How is that done … with mindful listening and open-hearted conversation. With open-souled vulnerability and deep humility. Sometimes, with tears, with repentance, with apologies … and sometimes, with stillness, silence, space.

Maybe it seems counterintuitive, that giving space would be the thing that healed brokenness or disconnect, but sometimes, it’s the loving act of giving space, letting go, that becomes the gold that joins relationships together again. It’s what my soul believes, anyway!

I think that perhaps a truly sacred relationship or friendship is one that has seen and been weathered by storms, one that has endured brokenness but has been mended with gold. Because it was precious enough to be mended and mended with the best …

And it is more beautiful, more cherished, more honored because it has been broken and because of all the gold with which it is mended and joined together …

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Questions to consider: politically, socially, globally, what if we sought to repair broken relationships in a kintsugi way, a way of belovedness? And – what if we sought to repair and restore our broken relationship with the earth, with nature, in a kintsugi way? What might that look like?

sorrowfulness, a sacred part of belovedness

/ Lanae / 2 Comments Featured

Yes, this little space has been echoing silence  …

As it’s said, there’s a time to be silent and a time to speak.

When it was a time to speak, I spoke boldly and passionately about what was deep in my heart and soul, about mindfulness and justice, about owning the truth and living the truth.  About Belovedness, as not just ‘my truth,’ but a deep Truth, a Truth for all!

But then it was a time for silence … and as I’ve learned, knowing when to hold space for silence is an important – perhaps the most important – part of finding your voice and knowing how to use it well, with love and truth.

It’s a time of sorrowfulness, of grief, both personally and communally, and silence, stillness, seemed the most necessary for the healing and health of my heart and soul …

So I embarked on what has felt like a lonely journey, practicing silence, speaking, writing less. It has felt like being in exile, a chosen exile and a redeeming one, but still …

I thought, why should I write/share these days, anyway? When sorrowfulness is so strong in me … I cannot write of belovedness in the same way, and if I write of sorrowfulness and grief, doesn’t that seem contrary to belovedness, to the message of belovedness? When I write of saying “YES!” to belovedness, but then I write of knowing sorrowfulness and feeling intense grief, being in deep mourning, doesn’t that sound like a “NO!”?

Does it seem joy-making, gratitude-inspiring, hope-spreading? Which truly is what I want to do and be!

But here is a truth I cannot deny about myself:

I am one well acquainted with sorrow, with grief. One who knows suffering. Who knows the suffering of others, feels it in her bones, in the inward marrow, in the heart-center. Yes,  I have an apprenticeship with sorrow … yet I also now have an apprenticeship with belovedness.

Oh yes, wild sorrow and wild belovedness, I know these both.  I know the darkness of sorrow, but also its light; the light of Belovedness, but also its darkness. I know this wildness, and if there is any edge on which I live, it is this edge.

It is not quite a safe wildness, no, but yet – I am secure, because I am anchored, I am grounded in belovedness. My soul is safe, my ego is not, and this is as it should be.

The wildness of being fully alive … fully, deeply, intensely, powerfully alive in, with, and through sorrowfulness and Belovedness both!

And another truth:

The other part of Belovedness, is this sorrowfulness, this grief-fullness – the yin/yang, the both/and.

Sorrowfulness IS another part of belovedness! Grief and mourning ARE a part of belovedness.

They are a part of a full, deep, rich “Yes!” to belovedness.

What is belovedness without sorrowfulness? What is belovedness without honoring and holding sorrowfulness? Sorrowfulness is a part of the wholeness of belovedness, part of its wholeness and richness of meaning.

Belovedness contains joy and sorrow. Goodness and suffering. Grace and grief. Peace and pain. Hope and  despair.  Abundance and loss. Groundedness and uncertainty. Wholeness and brokenness.

Having awareness of them all within us, within each other, is important, vitally important. Knowing how to give space to and to hold space for them is fundamental to knowing our own both/andness, our completeness, our aliveness as human beings.

It’s not about embracing either belovedness or sorrowfulness … it’s about embracing both and being taught by both.

Belovedness teaches compassion, empathy … it can crack your heart wide open, to feel and know the sorrow and the suffering in the world, to make it a real rather than an abstract understanding … and move you to loving action.

Sorrowfulness, grief, loss, exile. Belovedness gives the grace and strength to face them. They must be allowed, respected, honored, given space … if there is to be a full healing of the body and soul, heart and mind.

So much soul-sickness and suffering comes when grief and sorrow are not given space to be, to be known, to be tended. Not only to individuals, but also to communities and nations.

Here is our country, our society, its psyche deeply, gravely wounded, reeling from profound losses and traumas,  facing and fearing change …  fear seems to be a common ground we share, wherever we stand.

Underlying it all, I sense the vastness of an unheeded sorrow, an untended grief, feeding the fear, the anger, the despair; giving root to the seeds of violence and suffering.

I see a society that doesn’t know how to grieve, give space for sorrow.  That doesn’t have a healthy relationship with pain, grief, or sorrow – and thus perhaps not a healthy relationship with grace, goodness, or belovedness either, then.

What is happening in our society (in our world?) is a breaking wide open … there is so much pain pouring out. It overwhelms me with sorrow and grief, a sense of deep spiritual loss, death, darkness.

And yet, in this breaking open, belovedness teaches me to see hope – that with all the pain and sorrow rising so visibly to the surface, perhaps we will learn, together, how to give space to sorrow and pain. Perhaps we can learn together the gift and the grace of grief …

I know that Belovedness is teaching me how to have a healthy relationship with sorrow, to bind grief with grace, to give space to mourning   … the gift of great losses and heart-rending choices and experiences is that I am being given the opportunity and the space to learn how to grieve, how to see and know the grace in grief.

A gift that perhaps I can learn how to share, even to fashion into part of my life’s work  … the blessedness in sorrowfulness and the sacred work of grief, and their beautiful oneness with Belovedness.

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What if we allowed ourselves to be better acquainted with grief, with sorrow, to not fear or shame them, but to welcome them? To work with and through them, to find meaning and hope in them? Would restoration and renewal come? Would we become whole, in ourselves, as a nation, as a world?

 

 

Saying ‘Yes!’ to belovedness

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

Over the last few years, I’ve tried to keep a spiritual journal of sorts. Not a diary for recounting daily events, but for working out spiritual musings and philosophical ponderings, or making feeble attempts at poetry sometimes, too!

Now and then, it’s an adventure to go back and read ‘old’ words … to re-learn or reclaim forgotten insights, lessons, or experiences. Or to feel like I am indeed on a spiral staircase, circling around the same themes in my life and mind and soul …

So it happened again … As I opened up my journal to write, thinking “Oh, I need to return to belovedness, find a clear ‘Yes’ to it again, not water seeds of bitterness,” the page fell open to an entry from November 20 (2015) that was like a return to a familiar landing on the spiral staircase! Like, haven’t I been on this step before, looked out this tower window??

The external scenery of my journey is different, yet there was a sense of returning to a familiar inner landscape! The realization, “I’ve been here before; but what more is there I need to learn this time?”

And so chimed another mindfulness bell … or the same mindfulness bell, again …

In words I’m sharing below just as they flowed out then …

The last few days have been intense – just rather a deep swelling psychic sense of a ‘NO’ arising in this land, crying:

No! No, we will not take in refugees; No, we do not want Muslims here; No, we do not want Syrians (etc., etc., etc.) here;

No, we do not think the world will ever be anything other than broken and no, we do not think love or goodness is the true nature of humanity … evil and violence is and will always be;

No, we do not think love will win; no, belovedness is not greater than fear!

It has made my ‘YES’ feel so lost in the resounding cacophony of that ‘NO’ … and has broken my heart.

But I find now, again, that the strength and quiet, peaceful power of a conviction of Ultimate truth of belovedness has returned to my ‘YES’. I will keep saying ‘YES,’ I will keep saying all are beloved, I will keep saying ‘Belovedness is …

To clarify, the reference points for those words are the Paris attacks, the rising anguish and awareness around ISIS/the Syrian refugee situation, and the powerful, visceral emotional reactions in the U.S. and globally to these and other  crises. (And please hold in mind that this isn’t meant as political commentary – it’s a soul-cry – it’s spiritual (social/spiritual) commentary, if anything! I’m not a political activist, I’m more a social justice advocate with a spiritual approach, a spiritual advocate or perhaps a mindfulness messenger.)

Though those events are past, they still seem to be present, somehow – unresolved, unreconciled, unhealed. And the words above remain relevant because our shared societal spiral staircase always seems to be taking us to these points of political, social, and spiritual crises … where both the NO! and the YES! voices are resounding, on scores of personal, social, political, racial issues.

Awareness and change are happening rapidly, things are shifting, evolving. In the midst of it, there is fear, there is hope, sometimes a fearful hopelessness, sometimes a fearful hopefulness …

And the words are relevant to my own personal journey, my own inner ‘climbing of the spiral staircase’ … for me personally, change is happening rapidly also, things are shifting, evolving on many levels in my life, from deep internal places to external circumstances. And just as before, my ‘Yes’ to belovedness has started feeling lost, blurred, frayed … and my ‘No’ to anger, impatience, bitterness, and negativity has been waning.

I needed (continually need) a mindfulness bell to remind me I am beloved, to remind me of my ‘Yes’ to belovedness, to knit any unraveling edges back into the fabric of belovedness. To remind me to accept change and to embrace and heal my pain and difficult emotions with the ‘Yes’ of belovedness. To find strength and grace in focusing on that ‘Yes.’

I think so do we all, so does our beloved country, so does the world often need a mindfulness bell, in whatever form it takes … to remind us we are all beloved, we all belong in belovedness. To teach us to declare and to live a communal ‘Yes’ to love, compassion, hope,  justice … to say ‘Yes’ to loving ourselves and one another and ‘No’ to causing ourselves and one another suffering.

For where there’s a ‘Yes,’ there’s a ‘No’ …  saying ‘Yes’ to belovedness, to compassion, to peace, to justice, to forgiveness, to hope, to grace, to freedom, to open-mindedness and equanimity, is also saying ‘No’ to fear or being ruled by it, violence, prejudice, injustice, inaction, indifference, poverty, oppression … a ‘No’ that must be clear!

Yet what seems most needful is not so much to declare the ‘No’ against suffering as to proclaim the ‘Yes’ for liberation from suffering … to be the ‘YES’!

And even when a fearful or cynical ‘No’ seems so loud and dominant, listen for the powerful, peaceful ‘Yes’ that’s still present, in you, in others, in the world … and amplify it!

Live the ‘Yes’ … make your life a resounding ‘Yes’ to love, grace, hope, justice, mindfulness!

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*** I also wrote a poem with this journal entry, but I’m not including it all here. I’m working on creating a separate section/category specifically for poetry. Right now, it’s here: Always yes, always beloved, always belovedness ***

       

Stepping out of the boat (again): owning my truth

/ Lanae / 4 Comments

You might act as if you’re at peace with whatever happens now. However, the truth is that your attractions are pulling you strongly in two opposing directions and you don’t want to let go of either choice. Unfortunately, it’s time to stop living under the illusion that you can follow divergent paths for much longer. You are at a fork in the road and you must make a final decision before moving forward.

I can’t remember where I originally found these words, but when I rediscovered them in my files today, my heart pinged again, and I thought, OH! I have no idea why I first saved those words, but they resonated with me again  ….

Inspired me to reflect further about letting go, about not living under the illusion that it’s possible to follow divergent paths … about moving forward in truthfulness, moving forward in and with Belovedness.

The last few years, my life journey has brought me to several forks in the road, forks where divergent paths met. Both could not be followed, and I had to learn to choose. I confess that at times past I have attempted to hold onto all possible choices, to hold on to an illusion that it was possible to reconcile contradictory paths … but I’ve learned to let go of some illusions!

Many things – interests, possibilities, or relationships – can be integrated into a clear path to follow, but truly conflicting paths cannot be converged into one harmonious way of living, no matter how hard or how sincerely you try.

I love the idea of a middle way – that whatever the divergent-seeming choices might be, there is another way, a way of both truthfulness and peace. I find myself now always looking for a middle way …

Sometimes this middle way is a way of understanding that what seems to be an either/or choice can be a both/and choice, where perspectives or truths that seem to be in opposition can actually be held together and balance one another. This is a beautiful path to see and to follow, a way of choosing peace, finding harmony. This is equanimity, in vision and in action.

Sometimes, the middle way is a way of moderation, sometimes a way of concession and compromise. Sometimes compromise is the path of truthfulness and authenticity; sometimes not. And when it’s not a path of truthfulness, it’s not really a true middle way, a way of peace or of belovedness.

Sometimes, what compromise means is a fear of committing to a clear purpose and path, a fear of committing to authenticity and vulnerability. Fear of claiming an identity, of taking a clear stand, making an open acknowledgement …

What is in stark contrast here is the desire to move forward in a direction of authenticity and vulnerability, but also to remain in a place or path of seeming certainty and safety! To be honest, or to be hidden or to hide behind silence … but is remaining in silence a path of truthfulness and authenticity, or a damaging, deceiving compromise?

And over the last couple of years, I’ve confronted that question in various ways, at deeper levels … and I’ve made some agonizingly difficult decisions to follow a path that diverged from the familiar and comfortable status quo. But this became a path of peace because it was a path of truthfulness and authenticity, of integrity and wholeness.

There’s something I’ve chosen to share in my everyday living, with friends and family, in my faith community, and now here …  I choose this path of truthfulness because for me it’s a path of peace and of belovedness, because it brings a liberty that far outweighs any costs.

I won’t, I can’t, hide behind silence anymore. I choose to be authentic and vulnerable, though this is a risk both exhilarating and terrifying.

As I mentioned in my very first blog post, I am stepping out of the boat:

I am no longer afraid or ashamed to identify myself as gay, nor to stand in love and solidarity with all those in the LGBTQ+ community.

It’s also true that I would rather not pigeonhole myself into any one label. I am simply who I am. I am a person. A person with an interesting sexuality, yes, but my sexuality is only a part of me that doesn’t define all of who I am.

Yet, it’s an important aspect of who I am, and I had to learn to make peace with it and love it as a part of who I am innately, so that I could be whole, live in authenticity and integrity.

I have previously told my story of finding the gift of belovedness  … the gift of wholeness and reconciliation. Accepting and embracing the truth about my sexuality is also an integral part of my story, of finding that gift of belovedness. I suffered deeply from years of denying or despising my sexuality, not able to accept or love that part of myself or to be a whole person …

But knowing all of myself as beloved, as deeply accepted and embraced by Love, helped me become whole! Helped me learn how to echo belovedness …

And so I send this echo of belovedness, this echo of truthfulness, into the world and hopefully into your hearts!

And a little child led me: parenting in belovedness

/ Lanae / Leave a comment

Today I want to share a deeply personal story about finding and living the echoes of belovedness in parenting!

This is a story about what became a holy interaction between my youngest daughter, D, and I, though it surely didn’t start out with that promise in it at all! In fact, it felt pretty messy. Nowhere near a beautiful mess … just a mess.

It was Easter morning and the girls and I were getting ready to go to brunch at church before service.

Now, D is a delightful child (after all, that’s what the D stands for 😉 ), sparkly, spunky, spirited, strong-willed, sweet and spicy both. I love her spiritedness; it’s one of my very favorite things about her. I love her fierce strength, and even her stubbornness … oh, so much like mine!

And this was a stubborn moment … not just hers, but mine, too!

There are times she decides, and at the most inconvenient moment (that is, the last five minutes before it’s time to leave, for school or whatever; and do these things ever happen at a ‘convenient’ moment, anyway?!), that she isn’t wearing these shoes after all, only those shoes will do, but those are the shoes her sister is wearing (or the coat her sister is wearing) and no, I won’t wear any other shoes. Or, no, you get these shoes for me and you put them on for me … and then, NO, don’t put my shoes on for me, I want to … Which is wonderful, except then, she doesn’t want to anymore in the next moment! Oh my!

So, Easter morning we had a variation on this theme.  I attempted to handle it in the method that has, after much trial and even more error, revealed itself to be generally effective at calmly de-escalating or defusing these situations. This method usually involves a combination of offering a choice and counting to a certain number, making the options clear and giving her time and space to make a choice before the choice becomes mine. It works well – when I remain calm, mindful, and patient!

But it was spectacularly bombing this morning … or rather, I was, really. I felt oddly disoriented and drained after being up in the middle of night (2:00-4:00) for the Easter vigil and I just was failing at the ‘patience and not sounding like a drill sergeant thing!’ Besides, I hadn’t eaten any breakfast yet and I just wanted to get to the brunch and have time to eat!  I was most definitely not in calm, mindful mom mode … D was in meltdown mode, and I felt about ready to join her.

But then I felt my own stubborn anxiousness suddenly give way and I said, oh, honey, I just want to get there because I’m so hungry and so tired, and besides, I think I’m just about to cry!

And she quietly said, with a sigh and a sob, me too!

I picked her up, set her on the counter, hugged her tight, and said around the swelling in my throat, Oh, D, I love you … I’m so sorry I haven’t been patient. I’m so sorry this has been so hard for you and me too …

We cried a bit together … and then amazingly, how much better it all became, like a brand new morning! The shoes went on and we left, still in decent time, but even better, with peace in our hearts.

Oh, I certainly felt emptied, poured out, undone as I drove there … but also filled up with reverent gratefulness, for the healing of love, for me and for her.

Gratefulness for the resurrecting and transforming power of love!

Gratefulness that a simple bit of honesty and vulnerability had the power to heal, cleanse, and redeem that painful interaction … to infuse it instead with belovedness.

Oh, I long so much for my parenting to echo with belovedness! For my children to hear belovedness in the way I speak to them, to feel belovedness in the way I interact with them, the way I am present with them, the way I discipline them. That even my disciplining would echo with belovedness …

And that costs me vulnerability, honesty, humility. To be willing to let my children see that in me, to give them that gift of belovedness … and to believe that even when I’ve messed up, the gift of belovedness is still there, for them and for me.

To let them see I am a flawed human being. To let them see me own that, with self-compassion.

To let them hear me acknowledge my mistakes and apologize.

To not be afraid to apologize to them when I was unjust or unfair, when my impatience or irritation toward them had more to do with me, my pride and my unmindfulness than with them.

To respect them enough to be honest with them.

To be real with them. Real enough to let them see my tears and to cry with them.

To be unafraid and unashamed to be an imperfect mother who is still learning … an imperfect mother who also loves fiercely, deeply, vulnerably, whose deepest intention is to become ever more mindful of this love moving in all my interactions with my children, in all my parenting efforts …

To remember more to let go …

of stubbornness, pride, expectations, attachments to what I think my parenting and my children ought to be like …

and to let Love lead,

just as a little child led me Easter morning!

Offer a counterpoint of love

/ Lanae / Leave a comment

I had some different post ideas in mind, but the Brussels events reminded me of something I wrote (and shared on Facebook) back in November after the Paris attacks. It feels right to resurrect that post along with its accompanying poem, and share it again below in its entirety, as it seems sadly and unfortunately relevant all over again … it seems that all I might really need to do differently is to substitute “Brussels” for “Paris.”

My heart hurts. My soul sighs.

Let the people of Brussels say, we are not afraid. Let the people of Europe say, we are not afraid. Let the people of the world say, we are not afraid. No, let us not be afraid.

Let us lift our hearts in love; let us not be bowed by fear.

Where there is hatred, let us sow love … not sow in fear, but in love. Offer to acts of violence not violence in return, whether in actions, in words, in thoughts, or in judgments, but offer to acts of violence instead acts of love, compassion, prayer, meditation. Offer a counterpoint of love!

There is nothing soft, simplistic, or passive in such a response. Rather, it seems one of the most radical, profound, and powerful – even bold and daring! – ways to oppose the extremism, violence, prejudice, intolerance, hate – and apathy – present in our world. One of the most radical, profound, and powerful ways to face and to answer fear, to face and to answer anger – whether it is our own, that of others around us, or even of a broader societal nature.

To offer a counterpoint of love is to offer something radically transformative to yourself, to others, to the world. To be a counterpoint of love is to be a radically transformative presence in your family, your community, the world.

To offer, and to be, a counterpoint of love is something significant, even sacred …

I ask you – what does that mean to you? How could you offer, or be, that counterpoint of love? For yourself, your family, your community, your world; for those who suffer … and for those who act in violence and cause the suffering also?

*******

I wrote this poem several weeks ago, to help myself deal with a deep fear I was experiencing at the time, related to a challenging personal experience. It somehow feels right to share it now, because it also expresses thoughts of my heart regarding the fear, suffering, violence, hate, and anger that seems as though it is filling up our world right now.

The people of Paris say, We are not afraid. No, let us not be afraid. Let us be neither afraid of fear, nor ruled by it! Let us remember that belovedness is greater than fear, and even in the midst of fear, of sorrow, suffering, let us respond to those things with love, with the grace of equanimity. Respond to a suffering, broken world in love, respond to those things in others with love, and respond to those things in ourselves with love.

Reacting with fear opens the door to further suffering and violence. Responding with love opens the door to grace and healing and hope, as well as a truer, more effective justice.

No matter how relentless and ruthless the evil and the violence may be, or how achingly burdensome the sorrow and the suffering, remember that these things are impermanent. But, as my heart and soul have learned, one thing is permanent: love, belovedness.

As hard as it may seem to hold in heart and mind next to all the knowledge of suffering and evil that exists, much goodness is also present in the world, because much love is present in the world, if we but lift our eyes up to see it!

Let Belovedness triumph over fear!

******
belovedness

I said to fear, my fear
Come in, come here
sit beside me, sit with me
in silence let us sit
together
I said to fear,
You are my friend
I accept you
I accept your presence
here
I hear you, honor you
I love you
I said to fear
But remember this,
you must remember this
if you wish to walk
with me:
I am beloved
and so are you
We will sit
we will walk
we will live
in belovedness
Because belovedness
is greater than fear
is greater
than you and I
together
Because we belong
to belovedness
Because all belongs
to belovedness,
to belovedness
we belong
We belong to one another
in belovedness
Let us step out of the boat
and walk upon the living water
of the spirit
of belovedness
Let us walk and live and be
In belovedness
be living, believing, be loving, beloved

 

The gift of imperfection: an authentic offering

/ Lanae / Leave a comment

Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.

These lines are from Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem”, and when I came across them recently, they felt like a gift to me. A gift that I’ve been working on unwrapping and opening … and want to share with you, just as it is, unpolished, straight from my heart to you!

I have heard the last line quoted often before – There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in – without ever hearing the whole song. But when I was listening to it, it was these words Forget your perfect offering that resonated most deeply with me.

What is it saying? It may say something different to each one of us, something different to you than to me, but what it said to me was, Be authentic, be your imperfectly real self. Not who you think you’re supposed to be, but who you are. Who you are right now, including what you believe to be your brokenness, what is your brokenness. What you think, or know, are the cracks in you.

It’s saying, Forget striving for your perfect offering and remember your imperfect offering. Remember that your imperfect offering is beautiful, it is enough; it is enough because it is what you have right now, here and now, in this moment. See where the light gets in your offering and makes it beautiful, perfectly, beautifully authentic. Imperfectly perfect, perfectly imperfect.

It’s saying … forget perfection. Forget striving for it. Yes, give of the best that you have, the best that you are … but don’t then judge it as ‘less than,’ ‘not good enough,’ or ‘flawed’. As if ‘flawed’ is an ugly, irredeemable, unholy thing. Except that it isn’t … oh, it isn’t. Not in the light of belovedness, it isn’t!

And like a popular Christian song goes ‘Beautiful, the mess we are/The honest cries of breaking hearts, are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.’ It’s the honesty and the authenticity that’s so beautiful, the real rawness, the raw realness. No pretending. No pretending that there isn’t brokenness, breaking places in our hearts and lives. But acknowledging them, offering them up in vulnerable, beautiful openness. Then, oh, the grace that bountifully blesses such an offering … and what remains imperfect about it, then?

Authenticity and honesty make the imperfection into something perfect …. the imperfect offering becomes a whole offering, even a holy offering.

Our brokenness, our imperfections can be things of holiness, places where the light gets into us … places where the light flows out of us and shines all the more perfectly!

The gift of our imperfections is that they can be a gift to others; a gift of light and grace. They can be the places where we have the most to offer, the most light to give. The places wherein we seem the most beautiful to others, where we are the most beautiful to others!

Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.

Ring that bell! The cracked bell that can still ring, and ring resoundingly!

Ring that bell! The cracked bell that can still ring … ring resoundingly with belovedness. A cracked bell can still echo belovedness, and perhaps all the more richly and perfectly because of its imperfection.

Ring that cracked bell … embrace your imperfections. Know the gift of them, share the gift in them. It’s where your life echoes with belovedness; it’s where the light gets in and where it is most luminous.

Your authentic offering is truly your ‘perfect’ offering! It is where you are most you, where you are most beautiful, where you are enough.

 

Finding the gift of belovedness: sharing my story

/ Lanae / 4 Comments

As I sifted through possibilities, contemplating what next to write, one seed-thought kept returning … compelling me. The ‘right words’ making themselves known in their ‘right time’.

I feel that sense of ‘rightness’ now, though this may be a more difficult or sober thing to read about, and you may wonder at first, where is the echo of belovedness in this?! But there will be echoes of belovedness, I assure you! For belovedness is my life-theme, a thread I now see woven widely throughout the fabric of creation …

This is a story from when I didn’t believe I was beloved, nor knew that I could live in Belovedness. This is also the story of how and why I came to view myself, my life, everyone, everything, through the lens of belovedness … how belovedness has redeemed the story that came before.

The semi-colon has become a very powerful image of a life continued, continuing. My semi-colon is belovedness, the story following the semi-colon is belovedness … but now I can look back at the story before the semi-colon with the eyes and the heart of belovedness, also.

What preceded my semi-colon?

Years of chronic depression, a baseline feeling of vague disquiet often like a dark cloud on the horizon of an otherwise blue sky. Intermittently there arose intense, acute storms, sometimes situational, sometimes appearing to arrive with seemingly no external provocation …

A spirit-crushing inner certainty of myself as a completely disordered person, mentally and spiritually defective ….

A coexisting certainty my cross was to bear that disorderedness, that defectiveness, with all the grace and strength possible, all the days of my life …

A broken sense of self. A broken sense of belovedness too, leading all too often into an existential despair … many dark nights of the soul.

A deep-rooted, soul-sapping sense of non-belovedness. I believed some did love me, but I did not feel lovable, divinely lovable or beloved. I did not know my belovedness, nor that Belovedness already knew me in an infinitely intimate way …

Five years ago – it seems like another lifetime ago – I descended into a severely debilitating period of deep depression, months-long, eternity-long, with multiple suicide attempts. Many factors were at play, too many to count here. Intensifying my downward spiral was a severe reaction to powerful psychiatric medication prescribed for what was later determined a misdiagnosis. The physical and mental side effects left me more incapacitated than depression on its own ever had. A shambling shell of a person, whose body and brain had gone haywire … my inability to care for my children, my keen awareness of my diminished intellectual ability, my profound sense of non-belovedness, damaged relationships, all excruciating.

I was convinced I was too dangerously impaired to live … yet it wasn’t that I wanted so much to die. I wanted to be free. Free from the chilling dread constantly washing over me, free from the defective mind and character I believed I had … free, safe, whole.

So, in the summer of 2011, I tried to escape this life multiple times, multiple ways. Specifics need no detailing here, but this I want to share …

The time I was sitting in my dark closet, feeling both afraid of the pain of death and the pain of life. The time I felt, strangely, some certainty that if I crossed over, there would be no judgment, only the wrapping of cosmic arms around me, my hell, my suffering vanished. An echo of belovedness; the presence of Belovedness … it was with me already, yet I knew it not, and thought it only waited beyond this life.

I believe now that Belovedness saved me. Even though I left that closet and the ever-present dread rolled in like a tsunami and washed it into oblivion – until an indescribable spiritual experience three years ago this month in which I finally knew the indwelling presence of Belovedness in the deepest fibers of my body, mind, soul. My broken self, my broken sense of belovedness and of my belovedness – knit together, made whole.

Oh, I’m still emotionally intense, passionate, I feel the suffering in the world more deeply, I mourn, I weep for it. Yet, I’m grounded now in a grateful, mindful joy. Miracles happen!

And when I look back on those endless days and months, all the brokenness, the brutal moments, the pain and the shame of the wounds I received and the wounds I gave … I see all redeemed in the light and presence of belovedness. The ‘me’ who experienced them is healed and whole, in the light of belovedness … this is the gift that I gave, give, to my past and present self. Reconciliation.

I am grateful for the brokenness and the suffering, not because they themselves are good, but because I found good through them – blessing from them. I am grateful for my experiences of depression, even of being suicidal, not because they themselves were good, but because I drew good from them. They themselves were not the gifts, but many gifts I discovered within them … ultimately, the gift of belovedness. Liberation.

And now, I am with Belovedness, beloved always, in all ways. And this is my gift to you: You are beloved, always, in all ways. Whoever and wherever you are, you are beloved.

Belovedness is here; live in it! Find the gifts that may be for you in whatever is your brokenness and suffering; find the gift of belovedness there and embrace it.