Tag: gifts

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.

 

 

 

Stepping out of the boat

/ Lanae / 1 Comment

This is a brand-new venture to me, one that in many ways does indeed feel like a ‘stepping out of the boat’ experience! Over the years, a few friends have broached to me the possibility of creating a blog, and while I loved to write and felt I had been granted a gift for it, I felt hesitant to put myself and my words, my thoughts, into public space. Much safer, perhaps, to leave them in a private journal! (And besides that, it’s much easier to start up a journal – just get a nice notebook, maybe with a cool design on the front, a good pen, and start writing. I feel a bit overwhelmed with all the blog design logistics and possibilities, but I’m learning, and I’ll keep learning, and maybe tweaking, as I go!)

It wasn’t only a matter of vulnerability, however, but that the time didn’t seem quite right; I didn’t feel prepared with a clear purpose, vision, or calling. But somehow, these things have settled into place, and so, when a good friend again encouraged me to start a blog, the answer within me was clear: “yes, now is the time!” Yes, time to use, to share, to open my gift in fresh ways, not be silent and not hide, even if it does feel like ‘stepping out of the boat,’ out of a comfort-zone into a challenge-zone.

The phrase ‘stepping out of the boat’ arose from a poem I was introduced to a few months, a poem that acted as an inspiration and affirmation of courage to take a bold risk at that time. I think it is just as applicable, just as affirming for me now, and perhaps it can be so for anyone reading it here too!

To sinful patterns of behavior that never get confronted and changed,
Abilities and gifts that never get cultivated and deployed –
Until weeks become months
And months turn into years,
And one day you’re looking back on a life of
Deep intimate gut-wrenchingly honest conversations you never had;
Great bold prayers you never prayed,
Exhilarating risks you never took,
Sacrificial gifts you never offered,
Lives you never touched,
And you’re sitting in a recliner with a shriveled soul,
And forgotten dreams,
And you realize there was a world of desperate need,
And a great God calling you to be part of something bigger than yourself –
You see the person you could have become but did not;
You never followed your calling.
You never got out of the boat

Gregg Levoy

Having begun, I hardly know where to start, except just to start! It might help a little to clarify why I chose the name I have chosen for this blog, what its story is. The word ‘belovedness’ has come to be very precious to me, as the way I experience my relationship with the Divine, but also as the way in which I want to be in relationship with others, with everyone. In my spiritual journey, I have come to know that I am beloved, that I live in Belovedness, and so this love, this belovedness, is what I want to pour forth in my being, my living, my writing.

I want to speak and write in belovedness, to send echoes of belovedness into the world, and to encourage, inspire, promote, and cultivate love, compassion, and justice. I may touch upon challenging topics at times, but always with earnest intent of speaking for and in belovedness. I’ll post happy things, grateful things, thoughtful things, playful things, joyful things, too … all are part of the echoes of belovedness!

There is, of course, a backstory, the narrative of my life’s journey, this path that I have followed in becoming who I am and who I am still becoming to be, this path to belovedness. Rather than begin with the sum of it, I’ll share as we go along together. And I do hope you all will come along, and help make this a space of honest, vulnerable conversation and connection, a place to learn and grow together!