So THAT happened...

Brian and I had a cocktail hour that went awry, unexpectedly off the rails into The Great Matter once again. There had been a brief flare-up when She Who Will Not Be Named tried to get Lisa Heckaman to become her spiritual director (again). Lisa checked it out with me, to confirm or deny her own gut-sense that such a re-arrangement would be a bad idea. “I know the whole story, after all,” she reasoned, “so could I help her? Yet it seems unwise too.” I confirmed it would be a bad idea, simply continuing the destructive pattern this woman has shown again and again: getting her emotional needs met in the covenantal intimacies of others. This time, she was hankering for Lisa’s and mine, not Brian’s and mine. 

A distinctive reaction in me was my own utter visceral wallop: feeling a loss of oxygen, slight panic, wave of sensation then tears. I tended myself well, honoring the visceral wisdom, letting it be held in witnessing with a friend, moving my body through it. And the next morning, still aware of it, I did the online instruction research to invite Brian to block his email addresses from her, finally. He’d nodded he was willing when we were away in Minnesota, but such things are rarely of his own agency or energy. He won’t pursue things of potential conflict, even when–or especially when–they are in his best interest. It’s like he doesn’t value himself enough to protect himself. For others he’ll fall on a sword to protect. Himself? Rarely if ever. Maybe he thinks that’s manly. Myself, I see only a soul-wound or deficiency. An inability to believe he matters for who he is, as he is, not for what he does. A refusal of an abandoned little boy unable or unwilling to grow-up into a deeply grounded, loving man, Image-Bearer, knowing his own needs matter to Godde, not just for him.

And my part in the debacle? Let’s see what an autopsy might reveal…

Whatever was triggered within me started slowly, gained force, then ultimately refused to withhold itself, to the point that Brian nearly walked away from the walk we were on with Nala. Part of me regrets that. I never want to see him in pain. Part of me is proud of it, as I rarely speak openly in tender spaces with him. I do my best to be as gentle and as translated as possible, attuned to his insecurities, his griefs, his desires. Then every once in a while, I disregard all that and simply say what I feel I need to say. It’s his and my version of both of our parents’ disagreement styles. True to expectation, he and I live utterly parallel “stories” of wounding, each projecting onto the other, both available to grow us up, if/when we're willing. This whole 9-year narrative is the shark that’s taken bites out of me for years.

When he’s had more than he can withstand, he stops listening and begins counting: his experience of “bites” I’m taking out of him. “You’re like a shark,” he finally said. “Taking bite after bite.” I wish this were not so, of course. How painful. Yet his incapacity to continue to listen, to really hear and understand amidst this Matter continues to surprise me, wound me, anger me. He continues to have the assumption of relationship renewed, regardless of what he and I seem to have agreed. All while she has done more and more to demonstrate any relationship would be unhealthy, inadvisable, dangerous to him. He cannot root out the presumption of relationship, hoped-for connection, which will only continue to wound him and me.

He named “the hypothetical” of the one conversation he would have with her, if/when she finally does reach out to him. “I would answer one direct question from her, which would be why I blocked her from my personal and formal email contacts.” He gave his threefold answer of what he would say. He outlined that any return to relationship would go through me and only through me. This is when my trigger popped, I think, if slowly at first. It was only a hypothetical, after all.

I tried to name my once-again frustration/anger at “having to revise what we had agreed upon” understanding of no-contact. How even imagining this one-question-response was a betrayal of our agreed-upon no-contact, which I then try to reconfigure in my own gut-sense as not a betrayal. The word betrayal is a charged word, particularly for him, so I have learned it’s not very useful for us together even if it is what I experience. I stayed with my own experience, even if I tried to soften it. Projecting his need for relationship with her onto me, onto "my choice" or "through me" was the other "pop" I now see in my trigger. This is the responsibility for his relational life that I am attempting to release. It is not my responsibility, ever. "I will never open that door," I told him. "Ever."

Then I realized it was this matter of “presumption of relationship” driving the ship once again. He cannot adjust to the reality that she broke their relationship. Continues to threaten him in ways he refuses to see. On our walk, then, I tried to name the issue as this presumption that was driving the hypothetical.  We weren't arguing over a hypothetical, in other words. It's always the presumption of relationship. The hypothetical only arose because the presumption pushed it. “What do you get out of having this one-question conversation that not having it does not provide?” I tried to invite us to see together that his need to be loved by her, understood by her was his proverbial Achilles Heel. He refused to see it. Or simply couldn’t, in his own grief and sadness. Instead, he did what is the next best thing for him: project it onto me, my desires. He knows how to do things he doesn’t want to do if someone else is responsible for “making him do it.” I forbear this most times, but this time, with less patience. Yes, I am holding a fierce line because in some increasing areas of tensions between us–The Matter, his own body-activity-care, for instance–I recognize I will be hurt when he refuses to care for himself. In this narrative, I am my father, trying to get my mother to believe she matters. Fool’s errand, and I know it. I wish I could just stop it. I honestly don’t know how and tend my own fear. Yet.

He remained out in the living room for the majority of the evening, as I moved into bedtime and reading in bed. “I just needed some space,” he said, as he finally came in. Yeah, me too, if not in the same way.

Francis Weller speaks of what I see in Brian (and in myself) as developmental trauma, or slow trauma, which “occurs from an experience of absence rather than from something dramatic that happened to us. … In those moments when we needed to be soothed or held, the touch often didn’t come, or what was offered was a partial and distracted attention. What we were granted was too thin and didn’t provide us with enough substance to calm the effect of the experience we were having. … It shows itself in the inability to regulate internal states of distress as they arise and in feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness.”[1] Brian and I both share these behaviors, demonstrated responses when the experience we’re having touches this longstanding experience of absence, “the touch that didn’t come,” or what was offered was simply insufficient to hold what we were/are feeling. Brian's grown-man-self, his outer-shell, knows his worth and fears becoming arrogant. His little-boy self sabotages him all the time with self-doubt and fears of worthlessness. And so they dance, pushing away the self-doubt and fears, never facing them, never knowing how to face them.

This morning, I awoke to a bit of convergence or an ‘a-ha’ feeling about it all. This young woman has such drive to have children, to fill the emptiness within herself through another she can control. Though she has never had any deepening intimate relationship with anyone, she will pour that voracious need into some biological form from her own womb. I lament that so fully…I pity the child. While Brian loves his mother, she was also overwhelmed with depression and migraines in his earliest years. He never got the message that his own needs matter. No one’s needs in his family of origin can be claimed to matter: selfish, self-centered, etc. Swedish-Norwegian culture, we say, pushing it outwardly. He honestly has no spiritual-muscular-capacity to know what his own needs are, let alone advocate for them himself. To do so in his own family would further isolate him from his family. So he refuses. In The Great Matter, I now see: this no-longer-young woman attached her neurotic need to mother to this abandoned little boy inside of him, whom he regularly refuses.  (As most men "to be manly" are taught to do too, btw).

He won’t ever get himself free until he learns to feel, discern, and protect his own needs in healthy ways, which as a pastor he faces obstacles against, which as an abandoned little boy inside, he simply doesn’t know how, nor even have any motive to get curious about. She’ll always have this hold over him until he grows up inside, recognizing his own needs matter. I need to remember that he has to be the one to name, claim, and pursue them. Well-bounded. Clear. In conversation with me, yes, but not always met by me. His work, not mine. 

My work is how to hold my own fear as we age, even if it means he self-destructs. I need to practice remaining vulnerable with him in the times to come when this aspect of him means that I will get hurt. I need to practice releasing him to Spirit’s care for all these things, for him to do what he’s chosen to do, ready to do, willing to become. To love him, in other words, without unhealthy attachment or presumption. My challenge here is protecting myself while he refuses to claim his own agency in protecting himself, protecting both of us. All he knows right now is his sensation of "Lisa is controlling what I do." Which I am apparently willing to do for now, to tend my own fear.

So how do I tend my own fear in the midst of a trigger-fest? Well…that’s why it’s called practice. I need to learn to welcome fear as wisdom, alongside a deepening trust that I am learning to name my needs, knowing that they matter. I could imagine that as I get better at that, specifically with him, he'll get more and more pissed off. In the past, that has led to us finding our ways to grow in this invitation together. Will he get curious about strengthening his own ability to name, claim, his needs? I wonder... He doesn't need to, ironically, for me to love him, as clearly I do.

---

[1] Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, 38.

Noticing & Cherishing

Today is a day of noticing, one which I intend for cherishing too. When something in our life ends, we get grand opportunity to notice many of the pieces it had touched. Even if it hadn’t been active or lively for a good long while. I’ve written about this a couple times now, on my CrossFit-focused blog (www.crossfitatmidlife.com), but my home-gym, CrossFit Dedication, closed its doors for good yesterday. It was sweet to do one more AMRAP–which I dubbed “That’s a Wrap” in my writer-way–with Open Gym friends (Melissa, Matt, Beth, and Amber).

It was poignant to receive the snap-video and then final picture of the box completely cleaned of equipment, mats, etc. Truly “end of an era” as this CF affiliate that had held space there for eleven years became its emptied-out space of ending.

And new beginnings…for them, for me, for us.

Me being me, I notice the “us” things first. While I didn’t consciously choose this transition for me, it was the change in the “us” that really pushed me out into the larger CF world. The relational web of the class I had enjoyed for years shifted, with some members leaving to other classes, new members coming in that were difficult for me. I did my best to innoculate myself from the relational tensions, but to no avail. What had been an anchor became just a weight. I shifted my attentions to some Work that was calling–a book manuscript–and realized my best writing time was during the previously-CF-focused hour. So I shifted my CFD times to more open, more collaborative-communal offerings on the weekend. And I explored other CF boxes closer to home. In a weird way, I’m now thankful for that dissonance that invited me to grow up, move out. Sometimes unwanted things are good things for our own maturation.

Because my own CF practice had needed it, I now see. Not aware of it at the time, I was hungry for new perspectives, a variety of coaching styles, more-specific technique-coaching each class. It wasn’t that the CFD coaches weren’t providing. I simply knew them well. So I landed at Bombers’ CrossFit, much closer to my home, with course offerings that fit my writing-work schedule (10:30 a.m. esp, but afternoon WODs too). And I have grown intentional again about my own training, technique, in a way I hadn’t been, too-focused on the people-bits.

There’s a lot to notice just in my sense of the day today, this first day “after.” Folks who hold space for others’ learning-journeys–whether it’s in a writing circle, or in a CrossFit gym, or in a nutrition-education program, etc.--carry an energetic weight that is underneath and above the explicit curriculum or practice-tasks.

I noticed an absence as I food-prepped yesterday and now as I make choices about how to fuel my body, for instance. The Dedication Health program utterly changed my life in my relationship with food, a healthy sense of how to fuel my body for all the activity I now love. Though it’s not been active for well over two years for me, the presence of CFD had held an echo-web of community, holding this healthier way of being in the world. I wasn’t alone in it, which helped me balance the really unhealthy eating dynamics in my own home. Its historic-structures strengthened me in living a healthy-choice, body-fueling life. So this morning, I notice the energetics of that is now solely within me, my own body this morning. The “Melissa is Always Right” energetics we always joked about can now return solely to her, with no more responsibility to hold, even unconsciously. I find myself curious whether she will notice any of that abundance returning to her in her own awareness. How to relinquish responsibilities when you’ve carried them for years…takes practice! And I will observe my own habits and explorations…I know online-resourcing to pursue, if I need that communal web of healthy-living-eating support. (Bombers doesn’t really carry the focus on nutrition in the same way.)

For these years/months that I’ve time-shared between CrossFit boxes, I’ve been able to play the boxes’ strengths off of one another, choosing to receive what I needed, when. It was a little complicated, of course, requiring me to manage and scale if/when two arms’ days or two legs’ days collided in a week. But I notice an ease with some simplification now. I’m less relationally-focused at Bombers, so more energy can be spent simply on my own training. What are my own training goals? What do I want to lean into next, discomfort-zone-wise? A 10K race? Some mobility-learning around shoulder or thoracic-tight movements? I wonder… I found myself missing my “push-ups per day” practice, so maybe I begin that today. I’ll miss the Murph event this year, being on an Alaskan cruise, but I can still do a version of it on my own…

It’s weird having the apps on my iPhone change. The scheduling app was no longer necessary, so got rid of that. The SugarWod is my 5-year history-app, but color changed. Not sure what that says about the relationship I have with my phone, that I notice such things. 🙂

So…this morning, Brian and I begin our day slowly, unplanned but gently organized now into a high protein breakfast, a walk in the woods somewhere with Nala, then I suspect I will find myself at a coffee-shop for some downtime, a bit of work, then a Fran-focused WOD afternoon class. Or a longish run, perhaps. I’m needing to slow my own pace down, allow my own energies to be replenished amidst things I love to do, to receive.

A good new-beginnings day, then…

What I'm Learning...in "Operation Differentiation"

 Rarely do I sit down to chronicle the overwhelm of my life anymore in this private blog-space…but today seems to be the day (to wear my favorite underwear! ~ Olivia the Pig). I am amidst the uncertainties and invitations to deeper trust in what I will impishly call Operation Differentiation, or Operation Grow the F**k Up, Rachel.

I have been living in the overwhelming emotional-spiritual flows of Brian’s ministry life for the last several weeks, months even…the staged-crafted departure of one young woman staff person (Loralei), the ordination of a previous staff person become Word&Sacrament minister (Rachel). Brian came home “in the weeds” a week ago about something Kelley had shared with him: Rachel’s intentions for the Associate at Fairmont’s job, upon Kelley’s retirement. Rightly, he knew this could break us, him and me. So, we set the intention to “have a conversation,” agreeing it made most sense to do so well-held by a therapist or a church consultant or both. 

Which never works with Brian’s anxiety, nor my own, for that matter. Once “the conversation” is named as intention, it begins. We live it, almost non-stop, until he and I can live into a better emotional space of understanding or connection or both. Sometimes it’s not both. It’s only intertwined connection, with neither of us understanding. But sometimes it IS both. For him, that’s when “the conversation” can rest. I tend to do better with ambiguity or “letting it breathe” even if I am not pleased with where we are. He wakes up with nightmares that then need airing, assurance. Which I’m glad to hold, offer. My nightmares tend to come when I am moving, walking, active; when my body can speak to me in its own voice, not my mind’s chatter. 

This morning, I’m appreciative of how deeply we are connected, regardless of whether I can feel him, whether it feels good. Wow do we live our emotional life bouncing back and forth from one another, most often in church-dynamics these days. (I’ve, of course, instigated this dynamic in my own awakening, in some of my own journey points. But recently, it’s been all church, all the time for us).

[Context notes, for future recall. Sunday was the Celebration of Ordination of Rachel Christina Boden to the Word and Sacrament Ministry by our Presbytery of the Miami Valley, Dayton Ohio. A culmination of nearly ten years of collegiality, then mentoring, tending, heartbreak and challenges still remaining. A week ago, I realized it may be necessary for my 8-10 years of “quiet collaborations” in “tending the gifts/challenges of Rachel Boden” to become potentially available to the whole community, for the sake of informed discernment when Rachel decides to press for a “working relationship with Brian” again. 

Brian and I have stewarded together a most demanding question, with various phases of response: "How to nourish a daughter of the church who has fallen in love with a married man who happens to be the supervising pastor with whom she works daily?" This question began in 2016 and has unfolded in quite difficult ways ever since. I invited her into my writing circles, in hopes of her facing her irresponsible choices and increasing threat to Brian’s public ministry. Her decision to leave for Princeton Seminary seemed a reprieve, but it only intensified her dangerous emotional pattern of pursuing her own emotional needs through the covenantal commitments of others. She intruded into another marriage, this time enmeshing with an older woman, in disregard of that woman’s husband as well. We now have a datapoint set of two, and gender doesn’t matter. 

I therefore spent a couple days writing and refining my own documentation of “the quiet understory,” in (only) my own perspective. An eleven-page document to be sent to all relevant ecclesial bodies should informed discernment be necessary for any future Associate-hiring alongside Brian at Fairmont. For the first time in nearly ten years, I realized I could no longer “hold protective space” or “provide context” for what is an unhealthy attachment pattern in her, and an unhealthy attachment with her in my own life-soul-partner, Brian. I lived into the framework of “we disagree about this, but it is his emotional life to discern” up until now. Now, I am unwilling to see this disagreement as something I can hold. I release him to his own devices, and stand with the resources that are at my disposal, which are public-attestation and potential greater-ecclesial/presbytery involvement.]

Not surprisingly, especially for an Enneagram Six personality style, it is this threat to his institutional security that has actually begun to bring about resolution and awakening, which will hopefully be better for us both, us all.

This learning both makes me sad, and brings a weary smile too. I have deeply embedded habits of “family accommodation,” “indirect use of power/anger,” “refusal to name my own needs for fear of being abandoned or emotionally shunned.” These played out for years. On this side of naming my experience, naming what I need to do for me, breaking the habit of accommodation and indirect power while moving into my own agency, my own gentle use of power, the dynamics are changing. 

Be the change you want in the world, right? Be willing to name what you need, without attachment to outcome? Whew...so very hard for me in the intimacies of my life.

Now, on this side of all this, I wonder now how I could have accommodated for as long as I did!! Hence, sadness. Owning I allowed so much that I could not articulate nor name I needed.

But the weary smile? I’ve learned more deeply how my partner thinks/feels, in a fashion so foreign to me but so clearly communicative beyond anything I’ve tried before. I’ve learned what the levers are that I may need to be savvy to in the years to come. I hate to say it honestly, but when I need him to hear me, to respond to me about matter of his church? The use of public perception and ecclesial politics appears to be the only thing he can hear and respond to. I wish it were not so. I wish he thought-felt “primarily relationally” as I do (as an Enneagram Two). But he does not. And he never will. He thinks/feels as Godde made him, which is within a love-devotion-duty to the Church. Part of me really does love this about him, as it has also kept me stretched open in significant ways. Part of me wishes this was not so.

This learning is not for abusive use or potential manipulation in the times to come. There will always be things in his life, which is his work, that I simply disagree with but can hold, stomach, imagine Spirit’s work within. The threat that Rachel Boden has always been to us, which he and I navigated together in my/our unhealthy but faithful attempts, is simply no longer a disagreement or divergence. It is an unpalatable dynamic that could break us, if we’re not both attentive to it, if he’s unwilling to differentiate and let her go.

The weird thing is that I haven’t felt as light or as hopeful in a very long while. I realize that I have choice in every situation and that my boundaries deserve care by me if not by him. If he is unable or unwilling to deal with this in a responsible way, then it could be the thing that forces him, us, to leave Fairmont entirely. He does not want that, so again…Spirit seems to be putting new strictures in place that are requiring him to deal with all of this in new, healthier ways. Ways he and I seem to be better at determining together, attentive to what I need not just because I challenge the church and can be disregarded in his love for institutions. Sometimes my own emotional wisdom (need?) actually protects the church.

I will always hold him in love for that journey. I hope to hold it alongside him for the rest of our lives. I anticipate that we will work through this as we have done for 23 years. I feel closer to him than I have in a very long time. 

Still I recognize that I am sad and smiling, both. He and I have learned things about one another this week that have so deeply challenged us both. We live in the world so very differently. Yet it does seem to be Spirit’s intentions for us to be right here.

Trusting in the divine order of things, that Spirit has him in his conversation with Rachel tomorrow. That way will be made clear, in Spirit's timing, for him to face his anxiety and for me to grow stronger in knowing that my needs--even in his church work--can be for the good of the Church.

WHAT gets touched, every time?

 “Maybe a little on the late side? I’m going to have coffee or beer with Rachel today, about 4 p.m.”

That’s all he said, and a rage flashed through me. I know this is my work, so I swallowed it as best I could.

What IS it that makes this exchange so utterly predictable? Why does this keep coming up for me, and what gifts does it bring for me, ultimately for my freedom? (His part in this is his own...)

I think one part of it is that Brian dreads telling me so he holds off until the last possible moment, which then feels like a “gotcha” to me. I also want her to be gone. Gone. Nothing injurious to her, of course. Not that kind of gone. But out of our lives. He will never allow that to happen, so this will continue to arise. I hate being surprised like this, and it clearly touches a tenderness in me when it comes before something he and I are negotiating a time for.

For the last several years, she has brought little to me but heart-ache, betrayal, and disregard of my impotence oft-spoken of in “church things.” She was privy to a lot of that storying in me amidst women’s circling we’ve done, and she doesn’t give a fuck about it for me. Only what she needs. Only her own unwillingness to grow the fuck up. The anger here is the easy part.

What I know of the tenderness in me, under the anger/rage? What I grieve?

I grieve that I will never be able to bring Brian the unadulterated commitment to his church that she lived for years, under his tutelage, continues to live in as much leeway as he'll grant her. I am committed to Godde’s Church, and my expression of that rarely feeds him, supports his institutional-self, strokes his ego.

I grieve the loss of the young woman I used to be, who could live into that space with him and who did all that for him but no longer can without a sense of self-silencing, self-abandonment. I feel alone in my own work when he chooses to spend time with her, especially if it’s right before time with me. He supports me in my work, but he doesn’t feel it nor share in it, in the end. His sacred devotion to an institution that has persistently betrayed women is both blessing for me, and curse. Rachel represents so much of what I have had to give up to be faithful to my own calling(s) which he will never share for himself.

I grieve that Brian will never know the joys of fatherhood, though I do not grieve that choice for us. I wish it had been different some days, true, mostly in how it “plays him.” It saddens me that this unresolved grief in him often gets projected onto me, gets “played” in him by her, “the daughter he never had.” She has access to a part of him that he cannot share with me, old-terrain between us that goes nowhere, a grief that he has little skill in how to grieve for himself. She remains a wedge for us here, as long as he finds no other way to grieve that in himself.

I grieve the difficulties Brian and I had to experience to know the contentedness we know now. The unhealthy connections for Brian with Rachel were seeded then, so they are always at the root. Will never be eradicated, in other words, only managed. Her neediness touches the neediness, fear, and betrayal I felt then, which he never could admit or nourish, understand, touch. She mirrors his limitations to me, for me, for us.

She is a relationship of obligation for me, one in which I have little to no say in saying yes or saying no. This touches my own tenderness around control and simple surrender. If I set a boundary healthy for me, he won’t or can’t keep it. It’s not his boundary or need. So I regularly say “okay” to things I don’t really want to do. To appease him? My version of trying to honor the differentiation here between us? I know the specter of him having coffee/beer with her while we do not engage her as a couple feels like a really bad idea. He becomes vulnerable in his congregational work (evidence example #1, Ashley's departure accusation) and then I have to pick up those pieces later anyway. Better to stave all that off in prevention?

His woundedness around “having no friends” means he holds onto her with a desperation of having a friend. So he can provide her what she needs in his competence, which isn’t friendship of course, but it is a pattern he is beginning to struggle with…

I love him. I want him to find the places and persons that can nourish his own growth, his sense of fun, his own spirit. It is always better when his focus is not solely with me, for me. For him, that will always be with church people, where he has the perceived upper hand he hopes will protect his gentle heart.

She’ll be our perpetual “secret” I guess. His need for her. My tolerance of it. Social times with her together that I make possible. Because I do love him and trust him to sort it all out for himself.

Clearly, Rachel and I share that, however conscious or unconscious it all is for them, us.

Peace be with all of us, each in our own need.

Today, I let him go into his own work, what he needs that Spirit directs. It is a blessing to be finite, to not be in charge, to simply let go…

A Sunday Morning Breath - Being Here

A beautiful morning dawns, warm for a November morning, but just enough chill to hint at winter. Brian is off for his sacred callings, and I ponder what invites for me this day. Church? Walk? Run? Food prep? Online work, so I don’t need to tend it tomorrow? The sun shines brilliantly into our living room. Nala rests her head on the fleece she loves, closing her eyes. The house sparrows chirp outside, wondering when I will refill their feeders. It feels a blessed morning, just being here.

Or journaling in a way that seems to beckon these days. Journaling by hand into my notebooks brings my body anxiety for some reason. A shake or a pause in my handwriting, which is hard to read anyway? Dad has that…so I wonder.

It was good for my heart to muse on sex and life with Brian yesterday. It opened some things in me, to remember how thankful I am for him, and to relinquish my uber-sense of over-responsibility for things that are not all mine. We veered into some yearnings-conversation during cocktail hour yesterday, which never seems to happen without cocktail hour. He cannot name what he wants, which he hides behind “I have all I need.” And we do have a blessed, abundant life together. The familiar comparative separation arose–he experiences me as simply SO MUCH while he feels so small. I felt prepared for it, reminding him it was a beautiful way I was made by Godde to be. I didn’t receive his judgment, in other words, but reveled in my beautiful size, being just right. And I mirrored how beautiful his quiet size is as well… 

One of the learned things that helped was we caught ourselves in the parallel projections that we often experience together but focused on ‘the other.’ He experiences me as talking so very much while he has no clue of how much he talks at me. When he tendered his experience, I tendered my own back to him, reminding him that we always find ourselves in this parallel projection. We are having the same experience, though one projects the irritation or frustration onto the other. He recognized that pattern and received it. That’s the best we come to actually hearing one another amidst our own sense of feeling unheard.

I’ve been reading–slowly, a chapter every couple of days–this book that Lisa recommended: The Way of Grace: the Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation by Miranda Macpherson. Today’s chapter centered on melting the grip of control, offering a practice Macpherson calls the mountain of presence. I smiled to recognize the meditation-practice, though I’d never read of it before. It arises naturally in the invitations into body-presence I often extend to directees. A way of connecting to the ground beneath us, the energetic presence of the Earth nourishing and grounding all of us, aware of it or not. The previous chapter centered on fear, there is nothing to fear, with invitation to harness fear as a gateway into Grace. I will explore that with some intention later, methinks, as I breezed past it this past week. I’m not aware of my fear as much as I used to be, which makes me wonder whether I’ve relinquished more of it, or simply contained more of it in new flows of practice(s). I wonder…

I have found myself drawn to a 30-Day-Challenge pdf I printed off earlier this week, curious what I might want to deepen with such intention. Shoulder mobility is the most obvious thing for me, as I do want to strengthen my capacity for a strict pull-up. So…mobility-stretching exercises for 30 days. Practice of ego-relaxation seems to be a good candidate as well, easily held within the frame of centering prayer Brian and I talked about doing together a couple times a week. 

Mostly, I’m aware of this increasing awareness to balance, invitation, creative-renewal once again. The months before sabbatical are a bit like Pooh’s wisdom about putting his paw into honey. The honey is tasty, for sure, but it’s the anticipation right before putting your paw in the pot that is so delicious.

Heart-Dog Homage -- Nala

I was talking with a longtime elder-mentor-friend yesterday, reconnecting about holy things so important to each/both of us. A portion, therefore, was about our dogs. I was delighted to hear that in her advancing post-retirement age, this friend still walked her dogs 7-10 miles per day. “They don’t like to walk together,” she explained, "so 7-10 miles/day it is!" I shared some of my story with our Nala, including the anticipatory dream I had about her two weeks before she arrived. Such mysteries make sense in the Holy, after all.

But I find myself today wanting to share with her what I love about Nala, with pictures to boot. Well over 500 words...

Nala came into my life when we needed her much more than I knew. Our heart-dog Marley had died September 6th, 2017. Nala (who was named Lana, at the Animal Control shelter) came to us on November 1st. Neither Brian nor I had been actively looking for a dog, but events conspired on the evening of October 31st. Brian looked online, saw a picture of Nala/Lana as ‘available,’ and he said when I got home from circle, “I just can’t let it go…” So we went to the shelter and home with us she came! 

I DO remember seeing her with another family, when I got there after a day’s worth of meetings. I sat down on the floor to get close, and she ran up to me, leaning into me immediately, landing between my legs and falling into my lap. She looked up and kissed me on the face. It was both surprising and immediately familiar somehow. I said to the family, “My husband was here earlier; we are adopting her today.” Technically an aggressive, pushy move, but they thankfully acquiesced, and home came Nala. We had to stop by PetSmart to get her kennel, food, another leash. Marley’s stuff was feasible for the short-run, but Nala was a bit smaller, especially at the start. Brian had a meeting that night, so he left the two of us on the couch. She climbed into my lap, laying lengthwise on my lap and chest, and promptly went to sleep. She was exhausted. 

And adorably cute. I just looked at her most the evening, until Brian returned. I was so stunned to have a dog again, I wasn’t quite processing it all.

The next months, Nala led us on a merry chase of normalcy. Hysterical stories of her, communicating her need to be with people at all times. Her refusal to be contained. (It was a foolish human willfulness to get a second kennel, when she had clearly already obliterated the first one, for example.) She had been abandoned by her first human family–so we suppose–and lived on the streets of Fairborn Ohio for a period of weeks (animal control guessed). She could not be left alone without utter distress. What to do, with two busy working adults, trying to keep her into a lifestyle she could enjoy?

We eventually looked into The Doggie Retreat for doggie-daycare. That actually worked well for a over a year. She had a friend, Scipio, who was always with her in the pictures the staff would take, posting up on Facebook. But then I got the pet-owner’s call of shame. Nala had taken a bite out of a boxer, and wouldn’t let go. I was informed she was no longer welcome at the daycare center, so I needed to come to pick her up. And I did feel ashamed, out of habit! By the time I got her home, though, I was all up in my legal-defense-fierceness. Where was the inquiry?! What truly happened?! How did that dog attack her first?! She was framed!! We laugh about it now, of course, but I truly was angry. She is a social dog who only nips to defend her own boundaries. I’ve seen her do it with our nieces and nephew, for instance, and been envious that she is so clear. I’m certainly not clear when I need space from small kids or family! Just kidding…or not…you can decide.

Now into year five, Nala has settled into her forever home, and blessed assurance that her forever home really IS forever, as long as we have any say in the matter. (I could imagine her chasing a squirrel, for instance, or rabbit, and getting lost…she’s a bit obsessively focused in such ways…). We have our routines, the three of us, and she is a willful member of our household. Honorary human. She gets a celebratory beef-consumme cocktail in a coup glass on November 1st, toasting her arrival anniversary. She curls under my right arm at bedtime, snuggling in for the night. Lately, she’s taken to stretching out lengthwise, leaning against my leg, but it’s clear she’s in pack mode with us. Which suits both Brian and me just fine.

For myself, I recognize her arrival into my life was sacredly timed, and auspicious for both her and me. She has now become an extra little energy field that I’m accustomed to having around me, nearly all the time. When I felt broken or empty somehow, her energy helped that. Her consistent presence has taught me much about staying present, about being-with…her…but also others in my life. She feels so energetically a part of me, or me a part of her, that I do really miss her when we travel. She has been a consistent presence amidst a fair amount of change–from pandemic isolation to transitions out of WWfaC and now into new things, with new sisters of collaboration. 

When I had the dream two weeks before she arrived, the coloring of the dog was just like Marley’s coloring. I had understood it in the receiving as a grief dream. I had not been remotely prepared for what losing Marley would be like. I was a hot mess, overwhelmed with grief I didn’t know how to name aloud. I kept feeling it shouldn’t be as bad as it was…”Just a dog,” said my Reason, so clearly WRONG. Marley had never been “just a dog…” So the dream was my heart aching for Marley, gone.

Except when Nala arrived, I knew instantly that the energy in the dream was not remotely Marley’s quietude, but Lana/Nala’s abandonment energies. I was in an inner tube, trying to paddle out into a harbor, out into a large lake or sea. I had lost my paddle, and someone was bringing one to me from up ahead. Then there was this little red dog, dog-paddling like mad to catch up with me. Everything about the little red dog was saying, “Don’t leave me behind. Don’t leave me behind!!!” So in the dream, I scooped her up in my right arm/torso, and pulled her close to me. I assured her, welcoming her onto my lap as she leaned into me, my chest. Just like I now do every night when it’s time for bed. She leans into my right armpit, chest-torso, and snuggles in for the night.

Sacred gift, at just the moment Brian and I truly did need her. He and I are so cognitive-heady that we struggle to express our softer heart sides, feelings. These come out all over Nala, and as a result, all over each other. At one time in my life, I might have considered this to be a problem needing to be fixed, redressed in therapy. But today? I just go with it. It works. We all benefit. So be it.

And I love it when she jumps onto my or Brian's lap on the front porch, leaning in, looking out. She can see the birdfeeder better, after all, and she wants to be close. I can literally feel my heart expand and the energy deepen, enveloping her, or she enveloping me. 

I never knew I’d get to know another heart-dog, after Marley. Nala’s coloring is Marley-esque, and if you believe in these kinds of things, one could argue Marley sent us Nala, knowing we would need her.

For as long as we get to celebrate and enjoy her, then, we will. We are daily blessed with her affection, play, side-eye glances, stretches, bed-hog self. She communicates well, and knows she’s loved, safe. Good karma, all around.