Tag: belovedness

resolved:

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

I feel moved to share here a poem that poured itself out of deep aspirations and intentions that have impressed themselves on me during recent weeks. Sometimes I find that a very good way for me to help myself remember my aspirations and intentions is to write them down, allow them to assemble themselves into poem form. Perhaps it is also good to allow aspirations and intentions to be witnessed, to deepen their truth and help them (help the one who holds them!) to come into full bloom, or even to allow them to become light and warmth, bread and breath for some who witness them!

resolved:

I am resolved:
	to honor my belovedness and that of others
	to delight in others’ joy as if it were mine because it is indeed
part of mine
	to remember the light 
	to envision clearly the life I aspire to be in 
	to live with the mindful, peaceful energy
I wish to invite, whether it manifests in others or the world around me or not. If conditions in them, in the world, are such for it to manifest, then it will, and if they are not such for it to manifest, then it will not. And it is nothing I have done or is in my ability to control, no matter my desire or hope. But I can inhabit the energy of peace myself and it is a protection.

I am further resolved:
	to keep my spirit unfettered and unbittered
	to awaken
	to arise
	to emerge, from my fabulous fractal being
	to act, boldly, in conscientious confidence
	to water wholesome seeds and with great intention
and loving discipline return unwholesome seeds to the deep storehouse of consciousness
	to let patterns of thought and belief that serve only ill to go
	to release hindrances of spirit
	to hold lightly and lovingly to anticipation
	to see the flame of possibilities in ashes

I am yet further resolved:
	to believe in my kids’ wholeness and encourage their wellness, wisely
	to believe in my friends’ care for me, that they consider me
beloved, and that I am a good friend in my autistically authentic way
	to let go of friendships and connections not meant for me
	to understand that many will not/do not understand me, and that is
okay; they don’t have to. There is no universe-ordained contractual obligation that says they, or anyone, must, especially in order for me to be content or at peace. I release my bondage to any such expectation.
	to expect, however, to have my personhood respected and for people to understand that they don’t have to understand me in order to respect my personhood, my humanity, my dignity, to afford me the liberty to live in the peace in which they also wish to live, or to respect the potential of goodness in my character.
         to believe in the goodness of my character and to give it space and grace to bloom bountifully
         to be forgiving, for the health of my spirit; forgiving of pain I’ve caused myself, mistakes I’ve made; forgiving myself from carrying any burdens that anyone has attempted to place upon me.
        to remember defiance in the service of justice is not only okay, but blessed; may my defiance be mindful, fierce, and joyful
	to be repentant, to turn, return, retune to the harmony of the Earth
	to show kindness and shine kindness forth
	to live with intention and integrity
	to manifest abundance, for all, in all
	to live in the courage of my goodness
		     the goodness of my courage
		     the wholeness of my goodness and of my courage
		     the wholeness of truth and the truth of my wholeness
	to live in the holy truth of Wholeness,  in a whole 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!

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!

 

 

On becoming forty: Surrendered vows, divergent paths, transformed topography

/ Lanae / 2 Comments Featured

Sometime ago, in my wayback files, I found a forgotten collection of poems from my late twenties.

Seventy-seven glimpses into who I was at 29, windows and mirrors in time. Early days of motherhood, word snapshots of my first son as a baby, the changing seasons, world events, prayers, dreams, life lessons, my heart and soul.

And then, this poem. Reading it from the vantage point of 40 now felt so strikingly poignant and invited reflection… since the journey between 29 and 40 unfolded in ways unforeseen and unfathomed by 29-year-old me!

Becoming twenty-nine

And now –
I am twenty-nine
forty seems closer
more real
than it did at twenty
at fifteen
At fifteen –
I imagined twenty-four
but I think I could not
stretch my imagination more
and think of myself
who I would be beyond
Twenty-four came, twenty-four went
every year since
as though journeying into
a realm unimagined
And it seems to me
my true youth has fled
not that I feel old
but here – at this juncture of time
the limitless, or the illusion,
of limitless possibilities
has narrowed to a single road –
not even one I ever dreamed
I would walk down –
(the aisle as bride)
The future lies ahead now
with the simple choice
of living with the choices
that have closed doors
and opened but one –
ah, but let’s see how far the road
beyond it will go
and what waits along the way

Oh, what waited along the way!

That single straight road became a spiraling one with several forks in it, surprising crossroads where divergent paths met … and many new doors opened onto new paths, views, opportunities, possibilities.

Years before, I thought my life had narrowed to a single road and my path was set only to find myself drawn down an unexpected path.

Since I had felt moved to be in ministry work at 15, I had envisioned my life spent in that calling, a lifetime vow. But Spirit taught me to surrender that vision and vow … and at the time, it was painful to surrender what seemed my truest calling.

I had never dreamed I would walk down the aisle as a bride – no, I hadn’t.  Marriage hadn’t seemed a calling meant for me. But, much to my surprise, Spirit led me there, so I believed that’s where I would stay, always.

I never dreamed I would reverse that walk down the aisle; love bid me stay. But Spirit led me there, too; love bid me go.

And the profession vows I made in the fellowship I grew up in, I only thought then but what those would be for life. I dared not think otherwise … “My vows I have made, I cannot now go back.” I never fathomed leaving; love bid me stay. But Spirit led me there, too; love bid me go.

And never did I think I would be free to accept and embrace my sexuality, my identity, fully and openly … there I had made a vow of silence and self-denial, what seemed a necessary sacrifice (though I was sacrificing my wholeness and well-being, a costly sacrifice indeed, because it affected all those in relationship with me, too). Self-denial that requires denying the essence of who you are isn’t healthy self-denial, but soul-warping self-denial.

But Spirit showed me I was beloved and free, and that loving the essence of who I am and living the truth set me free.

My 29-year-old self believed there would always be a familiar and safe topography along the road ahead: same vows, same faith, same church, same community, same friends, same marriage.

And the same inner landscape with its long angst-y dark night of the soul that I believed would always be a constant in my spiritual and emotional topography, no matter what unfolded on the path.

But then the spiraling road brought me the gift of belovedness.

And living in this belovedness and liberty transformed my inner landscape, then the entire topography of my life, opening up paths, perspectives, possibilities divergent from the familiarity of the known and expected road.

I embarked on a coming-out path and surrendered that vow of deep silence regarding my sexuality. For the good of my soul I vowed to walk and live in wholeness and truthfulness; Spirit opened that vision and vow to me.

For a while, I thought the outward familiarity of the well-travelled road might mostly continue as it was … that I could walk that old path and keep other vows in a new way, as a whole person.

Yes, I expected significant changes. Yet somehow I didn’t see some of them unfolding how or as soon as they’ve unfolded … I didn’t wish for the whole path and all its familiar safe topography to change so much so soon.

But as I continued to make choices aligned with the truth of my sexuality and my spirituality, those divergent paths, those crossroads, kept meeting me at every turn. And at every turn, Spirit, yes, Spirit, kept directing me down the less familiar path, into places and paths of surrender.

My spiritual topography kept evolving; my path kept diverging.

I laid aside belief in any ‘one true way’ teachings and yet found the Way that transcends all religious traditions, creeds, and doctrines, and is the essence of true religion: Love, the universal thread of truth and life.

I parted with dear friends, friends I loved. Left a church community I loved. Spirit bid me leave, but love remains.

Ended a marriage that even in its trying times was precious to me …. worth all of the 13+ years. No regrets, no bitterness. All is gift. Spirit bid me leave, but love remains.

Some might question how it’s of love to surrender a marriage vow; a good question.

But what if the vows come to cause the hurt of your own soul … and surrendering them for the good of your soul?  What if keeping the vows causes the hurt of others, of their souls … and surrendering them for the highest good, for all?

Then surrendering them is love. Surrendering such vows, if it must be done, is best done in Love, because of love.

I surrendered none of these vows without intense contemplation to know its rightness or without profound grief for the accompanying losses.  Because of love.

Not only for my own losses, but also for the losses some near to me felt keenly. For just as my earlier lack of wholeness affected my relationships, following a path of wholeness affected my relationships. To some, I seemed no longer to be someone they recognized or knew; the changes I experienced as good for my soul, they didn’t.

And so I know there was loss and grief for others because of the divergent paths I followed, and I knew (I know) the pang of it in my own heart. Because of love.

So now, my path and my life landscape, inside and out, looks so different than my 29-year-old self could have fathomed, indeed!

For all I’ve lost, I’ve found much, much has found me. I’ve found my wholeness, my mind and soul, spiritual abundance, liberty, Belovedness! New spiritual communities, connections, capabilities. Rich relationships, deeper perspectives, purpose. And realized: I never left ministry, it only returned to me in a new form!

I see more clearly now: there have always been divergent paths. There has always been surrender on the journey. Love in each choice. Surrender and love always interwoven.

Such a divergent path it has been and become and will be, always! And Belovedness now the constant in the entire topography of my life and my journey, always.

So, here’s a new ending, on becoming forty, and beyond:

The future lies ahead now – no,
is Now
with the simple choice
of living with the choices
that have closed doors
but also opened many –
A single path, yes,
but with boundless possibility
limit itself the illusion
and abundance the truth
Ah, now let’s see how far and where the road
beyond it will go
and what is present in the way
Now

Beginnings and continuings

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

So, dear friends, it’s been a while since my last post … and now it’s a year since this blog was born, and the anniversary of my very first post!

And as the milestone approached, I’ve done some reflecting, on the past, present, and future of the blog.

When I started this blog, it was with the simple intent to speak truth in love, to echo belovedness, to encourage mindfulness.

I believe, I hope, that I have fulfilled those purposes, yes, and so if I measure the success of the blog by just that simple gauge, then it’s been successful enough.

I don’t think I had any specific visions of having a popular blog, but I did want to reach people and touch lives, hearts, minds, souls … I wanted to reach a significant number of people and have a deep impact! I desired to sow many seeds, seeds of loving-kindness, seeds of compassion, seeds of mindfulness. I wanted to inspire broadened perspectives, to encourage equanimity and grace …

To open up deeper connections and engage in thoughtful conversations …

To look at matters of the heart and soul, of truth and justice, of relationships with ourselves and others, in the light of Belovedness …

Sometimes, I wondered … is any of this happening; if it is happening, is it happening very much? I couldn’t see if much was happening … and I wanted to see and know! It rather seems to be my nature, that I want to see and know, and accepting that sometimes I am simply not going to be able to see and know is hard.

And I had to ask myself the questions: was I writing for the views, or writing to share my views for whatever good they might mean, whether that was to 10, 50, or 100? Was I writing to feed my ego or pride, or writing to feed the souls of whomever read the words, whether that was 10, 50, or 100?

Was I writing from the soul and from the heart? Was my heart and soul fed by simply writing and sharing and loving and being?

I think, as this new year begins, and a new year of blogging begins, that I have learned to let it be. Something has shifted and relaxed, become more fluid and free, in my blogging perspective, in my life perspective.

The success of this blog still matters to me … I just define that success differently, if indeed I even bother to define it! I’m being more intentional about not creating some clear-cut definition, but letting the definition be fluid and flow as it will. And letting truth and Belovedness flow as they will, letting whatever words come flow as they will. And doing more trusting and less controlling …

So perhaps this blog will have a fresher, freer feel and flow to it!

Related to that new feel and flow …

I am teaching a mindfulness/meditation class each week at a local yoga studio, which has been a beautiful new challenge and learning experience for me.

(The class is called ‘Awakening Stillness’ … which harmonizes beautifully with ‘Echoing Belovedness,’ don’t you think?!)

One thing I’ve learned in planning for this class is to distill my thoughts and words. I like to have a theme, such as surrender or being present or creating space, form the structure of the movements and the meditation in each class.

And a meditation class is not a lecture class! Only a few clear, concise words are needed to speak of following the breath, letting attention be anchored in the breath, being aware of breath in the body. Only a few clear, concise phrases are needed to invite people to consider the theme, the seed-thought.

Simplicity and clarity in my words, my instruction allows space for the seed-thought to be whatever it needs to be, or not be, for each person in the class.

Simplicity makes the teaching clearer and the message stronger. It takes much stillness to find such simplicity and clarity. A stillness I am still, and always, seeking!

But perhaps I can learn to distill my thoughts and words, desires and expectations, for this blog in the same manner as I have learned to do for my class …to be still and let the distilling happen!

Awaken stillness to more clearly echo belovedness!

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 …

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

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?

Election reflections: thoughts on change, stillness, and the pressure of light

/ Lanae / 7 Comments Featured

Initially, I felt purposed not to publish my deeper reactions to the election outcome.

I wanted simply, only, to point people to the light, to grace … to implore people to remember kindness and compassion toward others, toward both those elated over election results and those disheartened by them, those rejoicing and those grieving.

But something shifted me toward sharing more, come of it what may.

I’ve never felt this sort of visceral reaction to any previous election, so I find it telling:

Election night, a nameless, depthless dismay welled up inside. I glimpsed a sense of powerful forces and movements of spirit afoot, which were (are) far too big and deep for me to even put words to …

The following day, a fire burned in my chest, throat, forehead. No matter how my mind said to me, look, the sun still came up; the world is still beautiful; don’t make catastrophic assumptions … the fire burned.

And all day long, I practiced deep, cooling breaths, trying to quell the heat and flame. In the midst of this, though, I tried to listen to what my body seemed to understand about the gravity of the situation.

A wise friend, whose profound perspectives I respect deeply, shared a lovely thought with me that has helped me process things.

She spoke of the pressure of light, of how she believes there’s actually more light in the world now, but paradoxically, it’s that very light to which people are reacting in such intense ways. Some people are being provoked to love, others to anger, to fear. The light is provoking transparency, causing hidden things, some of which are painful, to rise to consciousness …

I think she’s right, that there IS more light. Oh, I think there’s always been light, but it’s breaking forth more brilliantly, fiercely! Yes, I know it’s so hard to believe, with all of the fear, anger, and anguish present, with the apparent resurgence of dark, nasty roots of bigotry and basest prejudices of all kinds, with the shadows of hatefulness and evil that seem to loom.

Yet, I suspect perhaps these things are happening because of the work of the light, because the light is driving them into the open, where they should be!

The pressure of the light is breaking through into places of darkness and making the seeds and roots that hid there visible … biases, wounds, ancient, unhealed traumas of oppression, violence, and injustice that we all bear stains or scars of, harmful beliefs that collectively or individually burden us. Deeply embedded patterns of perception, communication, and relationship that desperately need transformation …

And the pressure of the light is painful, isn’t it … to see, to feel what it reveals hurts.

But what we can see and know, we can heal! And therein is the hope … but also the urgency. The urgent need of holding on to the light, being the good, watering seeds of peace, seeking stillness in the chaotic swirls of societal and personal emotion …

Yes, stillness is needed, now. You and I, we need stillness, to be able to sit with all the powerful emotions swirling up, to hold space for them. To sit with anger and fear and learn to bring the fruit of loving change and genuine justice from it.

You and I, we need stillness, so that we can then rise up and be the good, be the love, be the light, that is needed now.

Out of the stillness is born the deepest living and the purest action.

Out of the stillness, the brightest light shines.

And in the stillness, we can bear the pressure of the light, and respond with love and grace, to even the hardest and most painful, devastating things.

I’m not naïve to the presence and power of evil, but I believe whole-heartedly, whole-soulfully, that goodness is strong, is strengthening, is the strongest force in the world. Everywhere, I see a surging of fierce grace, fierce pleadings for grace and light. People expressing powerful intentions to bring the pressure of light to bear against hate and injustice … and powerful intentions to be willing for the pressure of light within, to let it reveal, heal, and transform.

I am willing for the pressure of the light. Willing to let it provoke unbounding, unconditional love in me. What about you? What will the pressure of light provoke in you?

May it provoke belovedness.

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

One other reflection: We are in the midst of a massive societal transformation, a change in consciousness, and it won’t be stopped. Regardless of who won the election, it was/is happening, anyway. Some experience this as beautiful and good, but others as painful and terrible.

Rather like an intense grief reaction, because there’s loss involved, the loss of the familiar/status quo … but for some, a way of life is dying. It’s hard to see the goodness in that dying, and they’re grieving. And anger is a part of grief. Fear, resistance, a part of it. It’s important to try to understand that, to allow compassion toward it, whether we see it in others or in ourselves.

I’ve read so many reactions and reflections the last few days, people pouring their hearts out, lifting their voices. Pain from all sides, pleas to be heard. It awakens a question: as we’re seeking to be heard, are we also listening? Are we in a space to listen; can we find it?

Listening with belovedness, to the hurts and the hearts of those who voted differently than we, as well as to those who share similar views? Listening inclusively?

Listening leads to understanding; understanding to compassion. Then, to loving, to healing.

If we’re wondering how we got to this point in our world, perhaps one reason is because we have been raising our own voices to speak our truths, yet not listening to others’ truths, not listening for or hearing the hurts and the hearts of those with whose choices or voices or truths we disagree …

Make no mistake, hatefulness and injustice MUST be spoken against, lived against, and love must be lived into, even if it costs us the dearest friendships or asks us to let go of privileges we’re attached to. Yet let’s not be so quick to assume hate is the truth of a heart and soul without first listening deeply to hurts there!

What a beautiful thing if this pressure of light would also provoke us all to listen more to one another … if it would provoke the awakening of stillness so that we could listen in belovedness.

A healing journey

/ Lanae / Leave a comment

I would like to try to reflect upon my recently completed yoga teacher training experience … but I have no adequate words to express the journey. Sometimes there aren’t words and all words are adequate for is to say that they are inadequate to describe the immensity and intensity of an experience …

I suppose I really want beautiful words, the most beautiful words, to paint the most heart-stirring and gilded, evocative and fluid and flowing, picture possible … I feel that the experience is worthy of the most beautiful words that I could find! But what I carry forward is gratitude, for the journey and for those beautiful people, beautiful souls all, with whom I shared it!

I would not have imagined the big-ness of the spiritual journey upon which I was embarking … the layers of my soul that would be exposed to me, the depths that I would plumb, the magnitude of relational shifts, to myself, to others around me, to closer friends and family, to the earth herself …

Oh, like the unfolding of a lotus, a thousand petals opening infinitely outward! There it is, one image to illustrate it …

But perhaps I have to return to the spiral … like that in the trinity labyrinth tattoo that I have on my inner left ankle. Three spirals seamlessly flowing into a center and back out and around in an unbroken line, this labyrinth represents a spiritual journey, re-creation, awakening, transformation …  spiraling in, spiraling out.

As much as the lotus ever unfolding outward even while the tight bud seems to remain at center represents my feelings about this yoga journey, so does the labyrinth, spiraling in, spiraling out.

Sometimes you must fold in on yourself to open outward and bloom, sometimes you must go deep inward in order to find your way back out.

Sometimes you must walk through the darkness and the fire to find light and peace and stillness … be burned to nothing to find cleansing and purifying and wholeness.

I feel that this is not only what happened in the actual teacher training weekends once a month, but also over the entire seven months in the midst of the training …

Did the experience of beginning the teacher training begin opening my heart to an even deeper searching for truth and deeper willingness to live it, regardless of the cost to my ego and my comfort, or did the searching of my heart for truth and my soul for a voice lead me to the teacher training? Perhaps both. Perhaps it matters not.

All the threads were unfolding as they were meant to unfold … as I walked the path, the path opened itself to me, and as I embraced it, it embraced me.

I began the journey with the conscious thought that I needed to learn a deeper physical practice, to know the asana aspect of yoga better … perhaps to bring a balance to mind, body, and soul that I have always sought and craved. I began knowing that I was not in balance … I knew meditation, contemplation, reflection. Well, so I thought!

Those spiritual elements were my focus, perhaps I should say, my idol … ego was in my spirituality. Ego was in my meditation …

Even though I loved to exercise, to run, and found it a spiritual thing, I still did not have what I would call body/soul integration. There was a disconnect, an imbalance in the way I lived with my body, used my body, thought of my body, shamed my body for being a body, for being an imperfect body. For being less important than my soul.

I didn’t live in a soul-ish way in my body. I lived with much ego in my body … a prideful discipline, not a compassionate discipline.

And going through the yoga teacher training, I learned that deeper and more compassionate body discipline, I found that body/soul connection. I found the soul in the asana practice … and it brought me back around to the meditative elements, but deeper into them, deeper into the soul.

Because I learned to find the soul in the body and the body in the soul, and to know that the soul and body need to have a loving relationship … and I need to have a loving relationship with both …

And as I came through to the end of my training, I found myself back where I had begun … where I had never left, having but gone deeper, through the body into the soul … using the body to let go of ego, and in the letting go, finding the soul. In the letting go, the self-surrender, the surrender to the sacred, finding the stillness …

I learned the art of stillness.

I learned that I want to teach the art of stillness.

I learned that I CAN teach the art of stillness. But only if I stay in the space where I am willing to keep surrendering ego and surrendering to the sacred, to the light, to belovedness …

And I want to show that stillness is a safe place … that it is a safe space to be, to see the soul and know it.

May I teach, may I live, may I be with others in such a way that people can see stillness is a safe and beautiful and healing space to be … a safe space to wake up to the soul and find wholeness and healing in the stillness,  and then live awake and whole!

I am grateful that I have found wholeness and safeness in stillness. That I have come to know stillness as the safest space to be and to become anew, to always be becoming anew …

And coming, becoming, from that place of stillness, to be in my body and my soul in a new way, to be in my relationships and in this world, in a new way, a deeper way.

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.

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

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?