Befriending Too-Muchness

What is it about too much that strikes fear into me, can spin my wheels in ruts of old, run my mind into the ground with worry, anxiety, self-loathing? Too much manifests in many ways, of course: too much emotion; affect more intensive than one expects; logic overridden by intuition; extension of self or desires in appropriate or inappropriate ways, connection to another felt whether desired by either involved or not. Too much drives my mind into cycles of self-analysis that wear me out, not to mention those who love me, choose to share time and space with me. I think this is one of the things that Clarissa Pinkola Estés soothes in me. She’s way more than my simple too much…and she seems to relish it. One of these days, that will be me.

Given the energies involved, "family of origin" must certainly be involved. I am my family and my family is me, but whoa, are we verbal and intellectual. Affective, yes, but always controlled. Contained. Proud of being so contained. I remember my parents arguing when I was growing up, and while it scared me, it was also explained to me. They wanted me to see that adults could disagree and remain in relationship. They were angry with each other. They did what angry humans do—silent treatments, guarded outbursts, and more. But it was still anger-with-a-purpose. A lesson. Controlled. A blessing for which I’m thankful.

I did learn in such trajectory, however, that emotion has its place, direction, purpose. It’s educational, restrained, channeled. It never just is. Which means, perhaps, that any emotion that simply is what it is? Well…that kind is simply too much. It must be pared into its cognitive pieces until each one has its purpose and the too-much-ness can be contained, rationalized, understood. I remember one of my uncles watching a favorite movie of mine with me: Romero. I love the movie for several reasons—a bookworm believed to be harmless becomes a gospel-steeped leader, a poignant & difficult portrayal of polarizing ecclesiologies, more. But mostly I love it because it highlights the strength-in-weakness that liturgy offers.

The American military has taken over a cathedral to be a barracks in one of the Salvadoran cities. Already Archbishop, Romero comes simply to retrieve the consecrated host. The hostilities he endures for even this small rescue of the sacred open way for full liturgical dress, clear ritual action that signals he is about to perform a Mass, and the evicted Salvadoran people joining him as they walk peaceably but surely into the cathedral. They approach the armed soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, and with regret but realization, the soldiers make room for the people to enter the sanctuary. A Christian mass proceeds and participants & viewers receive proclamation of liberation theological hue. 

When my uncle and I watched it, however, we spent over an hour debriefing the movie until he could parse his own emotional reaction to it enough to be able to sleep that night. To this day, I don’t know what the governing emotions were—anger, even outrage, sadness, fear, guilt? I don’t remember ever addressing the emotional realities present for him. But we spent a lot of time in Latin American politics, that’s for sure. I was exhausted and relieved when he had finally sorted out his “too-much-ness” in the ways he knew how.

I’ve done similar things with my own too muchness for as long as I can remember. Find the presenting cause. Assess it. Discern it with compassionate listeners. Resolve it with care and attention, perhaps a little courage and risk. Allow myself to feel it, just feel it, and let it shape my life for a time? Unacceptable.

The analytical behavior serves a good purpose sometimes, of course. There are times when I have shared too much, or emoted too much, or hoped for affirmation too much and from the wrong sources. One learns from these over-extensions and, if willing, befriends them into a narrative of “Oh well. Live and learn.” But then if they shape our learnings, or if they communicate a too-muchness of something beautiful, are they really too much in the end? Can one receive too much grace, for instance? Or listening? Or compassion? What if the too much serves a purpose of ratcheting open something that had become closed? Charting a possibility that it really can be as good as all that, if we but allow the possibility and sustain the learning to receive it?

I have served for years now in one of the most emotionally-emaciated ‘businesses’ or ‘callings’ I know: higher education. I have learned to translate an intensive emotional capacity into channels of acceptable creativity, comprehensible institutional innovations, and effusively poetic prose that drives establishment-press editors batty. I have internalized my own too muchness as an Achilles heel, a weakness for which I must compensate. What if there’s a new way to re-frame this anxiety-whirlwind that is too muchness? What would it take to befriend one’s own too muchness and welcome the confrontation with others’ preferences, norms, boundaries as teaching/learning tool—for me and for others? Would this new friend have something new to tell me, a new story?

I’m on the cusp of believing in a new writing project that would terrify my family, for instance. It's way too 'naked' but it's probably the liveliest thing about my life right now. As such, I’m experimenting with sharing glimpses more broadly, but not so much so as to take my legs out from underneath me. I’m alert for self-sabotage—which I can specialize in—while I’m intentionally listening for how to broaden the circles for discerning directions, listening to this ‘naked-writing-prose.’ For example, I’ve recently shared a couple links of this writing with a woman I do not know, nor know whether I can trust. Good risk? Self-sabotage? Time will tell. Will the too-much-ness overwhelm or will it instruct…me and others? Will it expand my abilities to continue to write or will it confront them (and me) with new (difficult) learnings?

Maybe it comes down to a willing foolishness in the end. Befriended too-much-ness suggests that the only way to grow into new voice, to leave one’s chrysalis of new-becoming, is to fall out of it and see what’s received, what wings we can stretch into the air. A friend of mine assured me recently, “Artists love the intensity, the too-much-ness. They can handle it. So don’t worry about it.” Pursuing further artistry of my own requires I learn how to handle it, me, this gift of too muchness. 

This gift. That's a good way to start...

Frida Kahlo -- Companion for the Path

Sometimes companions find you after they have died.  Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) has erupted into my imagination and prurient interests. Or at least the sensate-intellectual fascinations of a recovering academic. Love, death, new life, birth...they're all here as thematic seductions for my writing-self today.

[Inarticulate intuition grasped from thin air this adjective, prurient, whose definition I was only peripherally/subconsciously aware. A quick online definition-inquiry later? I learn it means “marked by or arousing an immoderate or unwholesome interest or desire” with specific attention to sex. I laughed, unaware I had meant that but too amused to let it go. My sense is that it’s not unwholesome in the least, though perhaps ‘dangerous’ in the Estés sense of it… ‘held within my danger,’ my soul’s commitment and value, strength and passions for life.]

An artist of international acclaim, Frida beckons us into her work, her imagery, her “pain and passion,” to quote an introductory book. Her work became the first of Mexican artists to find ‘voice’ at the Louvre in Paris. She painted her way into a Surreal-esque style, but not through any training by Surrealists. As such, her work never quite leaves the reality at hand, so doesn’t qualify as Surreal in any formal sense. Throughout her oeuvre, she invites us into the complexities of impassioned human life—physical injury and painful (un)recovery, life’s loves fraught with connection and betrayal, awareness outside societal norms or preferences, cultural gifts unwelcomed by the “over-culture” around her…more.

From her, I learn that ex-voto’s are simple sketches or paintings of utter devotion, significant and popular within her Mexican (Mestizo) cultures. Estés offers examples of these in her own recent work on Holy Mother, Untie the Strong Woman. Is there invitation to explore such a tradition for me? Is it possible to offer a sketch or drawing or painting as an ex-voto, unconcerned about the aesthetics of others, concerned only to be true to the devotion one knows? I also learn that one of Frida’s “favourite subjects” is “the birth of new life through death.” Not only is it a part of her own imagination-psyche-understanding, it is a significant contribution of Mexican culture to all of us. The Day of the Dead in Mexico, for instance, is not a day of mourning but of celebration. Death’s intimate partner is new life, not the void or nothingness. New life.

Frida’s capacity to paint self-portrait after self-portrait after self-portrait enlivens the most of something unknown or unclear, however.  “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best,” she said. I, too, find myself often alone. I, too, write of my internal experiences (here) again and again. My Protestant propensity for guilt in self-assessed selfishness pains this practice sometimes. “What navel-gazing,” I sometimes hear my mind’s editors say—my “council of apes” who distract me from what yearns to pour forth. But perhaps there is offering to the world, to its healing and redemption, in such capacity for self-portraits, again and again. Frida’s inner-gaze has touched me deeply, enlivened something in me that I did not know was there, do not know how to articulate yet.

One image found me a couple months ago and it draws a lot of these themes together. “The Two Fridas,” painted in 1939. It marks a work completed shortly after Frida’s divorce from her life’s love, Diego Rivera, upon the affair he had with her own sister, Cristina. [I was startled to learn of their remarriage a couple years later, though with mutual understanding of redefined roles.] You can find a variety of commentary on the symbolism contained in this image, but I’m fascinated with the whole-hearted, full-blooded, earthy Frida in Tehuana costume, holding hands with the European-contained, lacy and blood-letting Frida. I do not think my receiving has much to do with her intentions or communications, but I value what I see, for what my experience is, is becoming. There is a whole-heartedness to the Frida connected to the earth, to her land, to her people. The European part of her shows much more pain, injury, surgical-trauma. What does it mean for the European side of an artist to lose blood? Even to die? I wonder. Is it better for such an attribution or accretion to die, or would that be a tragedy too? At the very least, this image mirrors something significant for me, for my learning. If death’s intimate partner is new life, is there value in letting previously chosen or imposed identities die? Do we welcome the pain of a life passionately lived, offering its images and intensities back in devotion that seems to come from elsewhere?

Ex-voto offerings. Birth of new life through dying. Repeated self-portraits. These are gifts to consider amidst a season of endings and beginnings. I love the poetry of her images the most. Purely symbolic items, tied to other symbolic items, resting within a reality everyone can recognize as it claims them, willingly or not. I love Frida’s capacity to startle her patrons or viewers the most, I think. She seems unafraid to paint-name the violence of life, or the things we work so hard to keep hidden. Like birth, our own or that of others. 

A blessing to receive such companions, even after they have died.

Balancing on One Hand

Entrance—or at least invitation—arrived for me this weekend into an obscure (to me) Theravada wisdom.  Buddhist lineages, particularly those within Theravada streams of tradition, encourage beginning practitioners to spend inordinate amounts of time meditating on things most of us spend just as much time avoiding: corpses, decomposing things, anything suggestive of mortality that would bring a wave of repulsion in cognition or physical awareness. The underlying rationale, as I understand it, is to bring the practitioner into awareness of impermanence, the utter changeability of life, that we are “like grass,” as Hebrew scripture reminds us.

I’ve never found my way into this Theravada wisdom. For one, it seems unnecessarily morbid, particularly when the daily citizenship-duty of reading the news allows you awareness of life’s brevity and unpredictability. Two, any image or sensation that I would bring up myself, in my own mindstream during meditation practice, would not come close to the real thing in sensate experience. The practice has seemed like make-believe, in other words. I knew there must be something to it--millions of people have practiced it over centuries--but way had never opened for me.

Attending a lama’s teaching this past weekend brought some new considerations to mind, however. Perhaps there’s intention for encounter with impermanence, but I’m beginning to wonder whether the practice is also intended as a crowbar into awarenesses of attachment too. That’s the underside of impermanence, after all. Attachments amidst impermanence birth suffering, from which the 8-fold path of Buddhist wisdom liberates.

A vocation into companionship, spiritual friendship(s), connection across differences means that my path necessarily requires wrestling with attachment in a variety of ways. The calling is connection, receptivity, advocacy for the spiritual yearnings and maturity of those within my life. How easy it is to entangle in things not of the path at all! Attachment to person or transferred yearnings of my own?…voilá, attachment. Attachment and a liberating—if painful—release from it urged this blog, prayerful listening to life’s invitations and mires. Various posts have allowed me to sort through “the end of attachment” in some particular venues of my life—to persons, to destructive habits of mind or body, to ideas. In attentive practice, for these purposes of differentiation and liberation, I have been intentional about avoidance. Avoidance of places of probable encounter with persons, post-attachment; of habits in body or mind that manifest in self-criticism or internal loathing; avoidance of past-practices from which attachment grew.

But here’s the funny thing. Avoidance—or the even stronger sensate phenomenon Buddhists call aversion—is simply attachment in its negative or reactive form. If one remains attuned against being somewhere, against being present to another, against being receptive to past pains, then one’s energies are still hooked to the phenomena of attachment—the person, the practice, the pain. Avoidance or aversion suggests the attachment is still governing the mind and actions. The task, in contrast, appears to be an equanimity amidst all, regardless of previous attachments, ongoing aversions.

Nonattachment describes this task within Buddhist lineage, but many misinterpret that to mean no connection or not caring. Nothing could be further from the truth, I discovered this past weekend. I wound up in conversation with a woman who used to be a covenantal companion, a relationship that blew open my understanding of calling before imprisoning both of us with a sickly-sweet attachment. My prayer has been twofold for a couple months—neither to be swayed back into unhealthy comforts in unexpected encounters nor to be overly brisk or do harm in these habits of regained health. What a marvelous surprise to recognize an immediate familiarity upon unexpected conversation and to watch my mind learning its new balance without attachment or avoidance. My  hope to live into ways that this narrative is simply no longer a thing is actually strengthening into reality. And it does not mean not caring or actively avoiding. It means equanimity amidst life’s unending rhythms of attachment and aversion.

So this equanimity, I am reminded, does not mean uninvolvement at all. It breathes an ultimate connection or awareness of interdependence into the world—an ultimate concern—amidst a perfect balance between attachment and aversion. We would like to rid ourselves of either or both, of course. We would prefer living a life without attachment and a life with no aversion. Not only is that naïve, but it would be lifeless. Equanimity is much more powerful when it manifests as a perfect balance between attachment and aversion, free of sway or repulsion, aware of connection. An enlivening ultimate concern invites delight at the precious luminosity of life. If we had only one of them, we’d never know the depth of joy whose underside is life’s precious fragility. We’d only know suffering. With both, sustained in practice-balance, life is generative beyond all our imaginations put together.

How about that. 

I still find the Theravada meditation practice obscure, probably outside my own path. Its wisdom, on the other hand, is breathtakingly beautiful. Thanks be to God. J

Relinquishing a Ring and the Gaze...only to Receive All

Psychic unsettlement. ‘Tis the way of things for me right now, for some reason. Mind-chatter has been full of various angst-ridden narratives or snagging anxieties: a forthcoming tenure decision about a co-worker, an old narrative re-emerging and re-living a bit this past week, a distinct lack of yearning to be anywhere or with anyone this morning of anticipated faith community life. I wonder what is afoot in these hours, days? Perhaps a series of glimpses through the lens of a ring. Not like Peter Jackson’s cinematic re-telling of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy in which the ring has a dark-mind of its own. No. I sense an enlightening, mirror-esque symbol-exploration, plausible for unearthing some narrative undertones of psychic unsettlement. The ring is an anam cara ring, after all, significant for my continued reflections and learning about (and within) many gifted-gifting companionships. It seems to have four major associations for me this morning, the fourth being the one inviting most articulate expression.

For the first, this ring

was a self-procured Christmas present offered to me by my parents during the holiday season of 1998. Self-procured means I found it when browsing at a Celtic store close to the hospital in which I was completing a third-unit of CPE as a Hospice chaplain. Christmas was coming and my folks asked for ideas for gifts for me, so I mentioned the ring. They loved the idea, so I procured it and they wrapped it up as a Christmas gift. At that time, it signified an opening of body and spirit to new relationships and a sloughing off of unhealthy habits and difficult relationships. A crotchedy, soft-hearted man named Ed Sullivan is intertwined with it at this stage.

Ed was a Hospice patient with whom I met four times, whom I still love today. He was an alcoholic who’d been sober for 27 years. A hard-spoken but soft-hearted ex-business man with battle-won, impish wisdom and a steady Roman Catholic faith. During the previous year, I had visited him once on the 2^nd floor of the hospital—the heart-wing—and when I called in the next ‘season’ as a home-Hospice chaplain, he recognized my voice, on the phone. I was stunned. The third visit I had a “gift-and-run” idea, to give him a little piece of sea-glass as a symbol of the hard-won beauty of his sharped-edged now sea-tinted soul, softened in the living water he’d welcomed so faithfully in his life. As I was about to launch into my spiel, the doorbell rang. Visitors. I was peeved. My rhetoric and style had been interrupted. The visitors were the Eucharistic ministers of the church. “Would he care to receive the sacrament?” “Would I care to join them?” We both said yes, received the sacrament, and they departed. “Now where were we?” Ed asked. Such a better context for my little gift. Duly chastened in holy humor, I shared my gift and he beamed. Two weeks later, I wept when he died. I attended the funeral, shaken to my depths with my own grieving. It made no sense to be so shaken, to yearn so deeply for a man I had met four times as a Hospice chaplain. What would I do or say, were we to spend more time together? Nothing. There was no more to say after such a beautiful lively-dying. I remember Ed from that season in my life, our story and his sense imprinted into this little ring.

Not much later, I began to date an Irish-Swedish fellow from my college days a decade before. We would ramble about town, either his or my own, and whenever we passed a Celtic store, we would browse, sometimes supporting them with a little business-shopping. At one of them, I received the icon in front of which I wrote my dissertation. The Laughing Jesus, a drawing/painting of Jesus with his head thrown back in a belly-laugh. A well-suited image for my own relationship to this holy-man-God-teacher Jesus. Those early years, my beloved’s courting before and now into our marriage, the Laughing Jesus are all imprinted upon this little ring.

The ring danced alongside me into, within, and then out of healing times I experienced as dangerous as well. One September morning, I was slated to talk with a new friend about overwhelming sensations and I was terrified. I saw this ring in my jewelry collection and though I had not worn it for a while, I put it on my right index finger as a reminder of who I was. I didn’t want to lose me and I feared I might. Its symbolism did hold me as I entered into covenant with this friend, a blossoming anam cara relationship of healing, then eventual attachment. The ring was a sign of commitment to my beloved husband, but it took on a hue of meaning about this new covenant too. I played with it in times of spiritual practice, needing it to be a symbol of holy union to everyone, to no one, to Someone, in new ways I could not articulate or conceive. 

It was a dangerous time. I felt the threat of lost trust, of lost connection to those I cared for most, all while my body and spirit swelled with a life and wholeness I had only dreamt about. Anam cara lives conceived and received will be beautiful and healing of both and all. Grasped and grasping, they lose their healing balm, captivating both and all. The ring danced me into its anam cara circle, held me there to be healed. Then, when my body-mind-spirit could no longer breathe in the grasped thrall of attachment, it pushed me out again. The circle must remain open, even as it remains unbroken, so my new anam cara circles sing. This little ring holds all that within it somehow.

Most recently, it offered me a new dance, retrieving the power of the gaze amidst practice spiritual-companions. The setting was the last session of “authentic movement” for the season (see Body-Literacy-3), and the circle-leader invited the group into a “partnered witnessing and movement” expression of the practice. My heart stopped as she described it. “You witness the eyes-closed, authentic movement of your partner for 25 minutes or so, then critically-reflect in journal/meditation. You share one-on-one what you saw/heard/experienced. Then, roles reverse, and the practice repeats while you move and she witnesses.” From my history, I know the power of the gaze within spiritual practice, one-on-one.  I hadn't been in that space for awhile, but I know it. Have known it. Know enough to fear its intensity and eventual (holy) wounding. I know the woundedness received when the gaze "leaves" or no longer opens into the Holy. I was back in the anam cara learning/healing space with the old narrative, once again. I sighed, then named my fear in the circle, who did hear it. I'm not sure how many understood what I tried to name, but at least one did.

In a rather organic fashion, the group of eight partnered into pairs, and while I had a preference and inclination, I was also practicing receptivity to whomever would be my partner. Preference and partnering matched up, to my surprise, and I wound up witnessing and being witnessed by someone I'll note as N. I've been an unexpected but deeply-intimate safe-haven for her before, in fashions I was not aware of choosing but which I desired all the same. She has just birthed a new project into the world, as have I, and that day it was 'made public.' The day was also the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. In circle, I spoke a weird 'sharing' I had not planned in which ‘pregnant’ was my adjective of choice. I never use that adjective, but it was apparently what drew her to me for us to partner. It was a significant offering and opportunity for me to hold her in this practice, this space, with a circle-intimacy I've learned to trust but not expect. I think she was surprised when her intensity didn't phase me in the least. What a blessing to recognize another’s intensity as much, even more, than my own.

For my part, my turn of movement, I was returned into sensate space I recognized from previous years, reminded of that holy yearning, a sense of loss or lament at the distance from that space/sensation, supposition that it was singular space left long ago. Some tears came, with awareness that while alone, I was being seen, held in the practice. Another hand touched mine, without intention, but held me gently, while being seen. It felt just like receiving intimate space or knowing holy intimate connection with another while married to my beloved. And again, it was okay. It was better than okay. It was Intended, gentle, precious. I found myself laughing, playful in the Gaze, unable to really move about but energized and enlivened once again, then again. I became aware of the anam-cara ring on my index finger. I took it off, put it in my pocket, but eventually relinquished it to the circle. I gave it back, in other words. And I discovered once again that this space of the Gaze is not singular in the least. It’s always present, ever available, to any and all.

Freed from attachment, I began to play with awareness of the Gaze...facing it with my eyes closed, turning away from it, lying down as if in my own home, my own bed. I remembered wanting a "new intimate friend" of years back to know me in that space somehow. In speech, we had crossed that line, which I now regret. So I laid there relinquishing that regret, that sad memory, protected by this practice and aware of renewed healing.

Moving time ended and there was opportunity to journal a bit. In the partner-sharing time, it became clear that my movement but also the meaning had been seen. "It was like you were at home, in your bed,” N said, “and it was so sweet to observe. I know I will never see that, but how beautiful it was." I was held, seen, touched, but this time in a healthy, bounded way...awareness shared in a fashion able to hold the awareness, across a circle of practitioners. I felt like I was invited into and had progressed through a mini-version of my entire narrative, through to the healing balm of bounded bliss. As the practice ended, I retrieved my anam-cara ring, had N put her hand on top of mine as I placed it back on my finger. We can only receive what we have completely relinquished. What I procured in 1998, amidst all of its nuances and companionable dances, is renewed, redeemed, once again.

The circle of companionship remains open but ever unbroken, so the ring continues to teach. I know little how long this circle of practice will nourish and be nourished by what I and we will continue to bring to it. I can sense new invitations into service amidst my many loves. But this circle continues to give me an unending gift. I am listening anew, attentive to my own sense of commitment to circle practice, with whomever enters the circle, however circles come into being, and only for their time. Such a circle seems to be the only viable container in which to hold and honor what's possible in holy spaces.

One of the most beautiful dimensions of the story for me, today? N. Her intensity and passions to offer the world. A gratitude overflows everything I am and reminds me of the devotion I know in my flesh-and-bones of holy space, sacred giftings shared. She is larger of spirit and more gifted than she is comfortably aware…and…attachment between us is slight to nonexistent. I know a devotion to her but no attachment or conditions of relationship. We know ourselves to serve the One whose birthing into the world comes in feasts, around tables, within the rhythm of the drum. As for myself, I'm learning, slowly, to steward these gifts of connection, reception, and release I'm continually startled to find as my own. There is nothing better to offer a world so hungry and I know of nothing else that grows my heart to its fullest so very often these days.

Significantly, as I close, the ring has been many sizes in its life with me. It was too large for my ring finger when I first wore it. I remember it sliding off my finger in a restaurant one January, when my hands were inordinately cold. Years later, when it danced with me amidst its times of healing and danger, we had it resized to fit my ring finger, even a bit tighter than I was comfortable with. When I was pushed out of healing and danger, into the open space of new companionships, my beloved and I had it resized again to fit on the finger on which it began, the right index finger. Relinquished, received, so it rests...for now.

Blessed be…Holy Mother, Divine Child, the One I know in Three this season of anticipation and fruition. A light renewed beckons for a bit of play...a new day of devotion to my beloved dawns, to be lived out in all the ways it may...prose, photography, poetry, all with a bit 'o passion to share.

(As one of my teachers often says:)

So may it be for you,

So may it be for me,

So may it be for all of us.

Amen, amen, amen

…and a little woman

It's About Companionship, Silly

I’ve been writing a book-manuscript on the topic of interreligious companionship only to realize that’s not what I’m writing about at all. How bizarre is that? Such relief to receive the awareness, such grief to realize my need for establishment-affirmation never wanes. The staid curricular notions of a seminary and the backward, risk-averse publishing market distracted once again. Argh.

The tentative title was Just Beginning: Interreligious Companionship Amidst Difference. Obviously something the world needs, in the view of many. A scholarly-accessible book outlining the approach into which I’ve bumbled amidst several life-giving companionships that could be described just like that. Clearly in line with vocation, interest, passion and more. Except none of these companionships formed because they were interreligious. Each one has its own draw, its own synergy, its own manner of expression. Not one was to learn a religious tradition or to be interreligious.

This nub of an idea, this enlivening reality that shapes contributions in the world, companionship, forms not because two (or more) someones are of different traditions or ‘different’ in other ways, per se. This something or Something or Someone made available within companionship…this Life…breathes into both or all when doing whatever it is they do: sitting at table, sharing a sacred space, exploring some concern, playing at some activity, serving in some capacity, etc. Companionship is about Life Across Borders, not the names of the countries or even the borders. Companionship is about being part of Something or Someone larger than yourself, invitational of spiritual enlivening and growth, interesting challenges, larger Humanity. In theist senses, I finally realized all this was about God, not interreligious companionship. That doesn’t help the portion of Humanity decidedly non-theist, so it’s not only about God. It’s also about not-God.

Of course, that idea needs to be narrowed down if we are to get any worthwhile prose at all. J

The other nudge from which the awareness arose was honest student feedback: in numerous contexts all across the United States, there’s no felt-need for any critical reflection on interreligious dialogue or encounter. Many folks in our country today live in strictly homogenous contexts, at least with respect to religious traditions. Despite the Pluralism Project’s research and the felt-needs in urban settings, many human beings of legitimate dignity see no need for any of this work. “My context?” a student observed openly, “There’s no need for methods of interreligious encounter. We don’t even have a Catholic Church in town, let alone a synagogue, mosque, or temple. Most of my congregation never leave the county, let alone the state or country.” Here’s where the publishing market has a point. If there’s no felt-need, then there’s no connection, no teaching/learning opportunity, no sales of books.

So how does one create the hunger for what the world (as a whole) needs in contexts in which no need is felt, let alone imagined? Especially in contexts where defensiveness has built up in polarizing, fear-driven media against what the world needs (as a whole)?

Maybe I sit with a new title to listen for an answer: Life Across Borders. Has a ring of “Without Borders,” like the humanitarian organization “Doctors Without Borders.” This one requires borders, though, in light of the overt shaping of habits of mind, expectations of community, fears of innovation that occurs inside them.

Meanwhile, the invitation remains to relinquish, again and again, the desire for affirmation by institutions desperately hungry for the new life offered here, even as they…we…are yet unwilling to open doors or windows to that which we seek most. Perhaps all we need in the end are the companions who make the journey so worthwhile. L'chaim. Salud. Cheers. Blessed be, this (and every) holy season.

Finding Form

The dance found its way into form in my body last night. A space “in the round,” it was. Opportunity to move and not think, listen and not talk. I heard how weary I am, what rest I seek. And then right foot behind left, left step over, right foot in front, left foot follows, right knee up, left knee up, repeat. Arms stretched out to touch the shoulders of other saints, previous and present, repeat.  Unassuming. Understated. Invitational. An ancient congregational rumba line. My spirit soared. “I remember it!” I heard myself say inside. “This is how they do it. This is how we do it.”

The words of one of my teachers from way back arise in awareness here, this morning: architecture always wins. John Bell noted this with respect to community-singing and sanctuary architecture and accoutrement—carpets, pews with pew pads, arrangement of furniture, etc. A paraphrase of his teaching: “If you want people to sing, the space needs to be welcoming of their song, period. No carpet or pew pads to soak up the sound, isolate voices. People sitting close to one another so they know they are not vulnerably voicing their song alone.” Traditional spaces for communal song today prohibit most of this, of course. Rows of pews fashioned for comfort welcome the seated, but they also encourage isolation, spacing apart, vulnerable spaces for unaccustomed voices. Architecture always wins. Isolation grows, and song diminishes.

How much more true this is for body-work, movement, embodied or sensate awareness in most communal settings today. Movements are channeled only at right angles from one another—into the pews, or up and back the aisle. Sometimes you have a daring space that has diagonal aisles, but rare those are. People who gather—any ecclesia—will move and think as the surrounding architecture determines. How do we move and think? In right angles from one another, increasing space toward isolation, with polarized, either/or habits of mind.

How might circles and spirals find their way into form in our future, into our midst, I wonder? If the multitudes are accustomed to squares, rectangles, and straight edges, how does one encourage a different flow of line?

Disruption and disorientation, for starters. Starting anew somewhere else, then inviting us all in? Perhaps it is less about joining the dance, more about allowing the dance to find its form in you. Them. Us.

Sacred Dance...for Evangelicals?

I wonder if there’s any way for religious Midwesterners to join a dance?

Multiple questions arise with this notion, not least of which is “Huh?” What kind of dance? Do you need a partner? And do we really expect Evangelicals or Baptists to participate? Is the question even a Spirit-leading for discipleship in this context, where most faithful I know scurry elsewhere at the mention of “liturgical dance”? Seriously, when I was growing up, my mother and father would shepherd us to Sunday School, then we would gather together for worship all mornings except when liturgical dance was listed in the Order of Worship. “We’re going Methodist today,” my Presbyterian father would say as he scuttled us out of the sanctuary. Dance of any kind is the ultimate religious deal-breaker.

Granted, the kind of dance about which I’m thinking is not like any dance I’ve known. It’s closest to a congregational rumba line. There’s nothing liturgical about it in the above sense, though it does occur within a Eucharistic liturgy. I’ve experienced it only once, though multiple iconic images have seared the image of it in my awareness. Where would we start to even consider the questions? Of course, St. Gregory of Nyssa Church. All “free” reflections this week seem to eventually wind up back there. It’s like the psychological black hole of the week…though imbued with irrepressible light.

A community of dancing saints…around the Table, above one’s head and below at one’s (moving) feet. Incense is lit. Bells are rung. The Word is read, then proclaimed by a recognized leader and by the gathered community, the ecclesia. Prayers are sung and songs of praise are offered. Then, all stand and hear, “Face the Table, place your right hand on the left shoulder of the person in front of you, three steps forward, one step back.” A hymn tune is intoned, and the dance begins. A stately rumba line approaching the table, circling upon circling, gathering all those gathered into the Communion, whether one aims to partake or not. The saints above are not all Christian, by profession, nor are those below-around the Table certain of their beliefs. But all are welcomed as Friends and the dance continues until it is time for the feast. The meal is shared, a song of celebration continues and another stately dance begins and ends. Blessings are shared and the people disperse to bring the love of Friends into the world.

So what’s the big deal? As I reflect on it now, I'm aware of images of Hasidic dancing--pietistic Jews embodying their devotion of Rebbe and G-d (almost) alike. I remember circles of Middle-Eastern men dancing too, whether at a Muslim wedding or in a social setting without overt religious connotations (as I would name them).

First off, something finally happened in Christian worship that touched me so deeply I can’t seem to shake its import. I can truly say I’ve never felt anything like that before. Maybe when I was little, when I was free to move and express in sensate fashion what I was coming to know as True? But even then, I can’t imagine or remember such a time. When was the last time in communal worship that you were truly surprised, truly brought out of yourself and your sense of body? So wholly embraced by strangers and unseen but visible saints “written” into spaces above? I’ve been surprised by the unexpected in worship settings, of course—something falls, somebody says something s/he didn’t mean to, something “goes wrong,” which I always enjoy as “something right,” because then people pay attention in new ways. But I’ve not been surprised like this in a loooooonnnnggg time. I’m doubly blessed to be surprised in my own tradition. I felt so Christian. I haven’t felt companioned in my own tradition in a very long time.

So what to do? Transplanting one community’s practice without context, without communal discernment, into a completely other context is clearly not it. Like having this amazing encounter with Taizé chant in France, then coming back to your own community and asking them to sit on the floor, light candles, and sing songs they’ve never heard. I can save us all the trouble: it won’t go well. Transplanting the dance makes no sense.

Reflect on the dance more, with multiple others, for new listening, new lessons? Clearly, yes. That’s what this is becoming here. But reflecting on it does no justice to the phenomenon reflected. Bodied-faith-practice is like the singularity of Protestantism—you either delve into it and become a body-evangelist who offends all those who do not practice in such embodied fashion, or you use every resource in scripture and tradition to defend against engaging embodied practice at all. “It’s just not my way,” we say. “We are to be born of Spirit, not of the flesh,” we hear. Reflecting on some congregational rumba line will never circumvent this singularity.

So…what?! Spirit breathes new life, touches her children deeply in the play of Wisdom, then spirits off into the horizon with ne’er a look back to see if we understood the touch in the first place.

Sigh.

At least the railing has lessened. :)

Aches and Pain of Grace

I never seem to learn. No. That’s not fair, not even accurate. I’m learning all the time, so much so that I wear myself (and others) out with all the learning. I dislike learning absence--of intense connection, of clear sense of purpose, of direction. Absence.

This happens to me every time, so much so that I should expect it, anticipate it, wait for it. I hate “the other side” of transcendence or coming down from “the mountain-top” when it’s time to come into the world and face its demands. My body aches after receiving such gifts of grace, anointing, welcome, and new practice…when it realizes that the spaciousness, giftedness, transcendence of that time is in the past. Part of me grasps and grasps and grasps, no matter what I profess about nonattachment. What had been intimately close and overwhelmingly holy feels far away. I feel alone again. Isolated. Away from the Center. Literally, aches and pain.

So I find myself railing at the universe this morning, though with particular questions: Why the hell lead me to a contemplative, paperless-musicked, deeply-steeped liturgical community in which I have no opportunity to be involved in the flesh? Why show me a place painted with every symbolic-spirit image of the last four-five years—bride of Christ, tiger, wolf, Friends, dance, and more—then enforce an emptiness, a quiet, for the unforeseeable future? The awareness of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church that has fed an entire week of awe has now become painful to hold, heavy to bear, a pain in the ass. It’s like the Spirit of God took an emaciated, hungering soul, showed it a banquet of incredible bounty, then led it away again. I’m the proverbial kid outside the window of the candy shop. The bounty is too far away. There’s no other place like it I’ve ever seen or experienced. And I’m being told—or at least it seems I’m hearing—“You can’t have any more.”

I’m more than a bit pissy, I guess, not to mention dramatic. I know my soul's not emaciated, for one, but just not getting what it thought it wanted. I know I'm never led away from the Banquet either. In some odd way, it's always before me, before us. Merton was right. But I'm still a bit pissy, knowing the graciousness that’s possible and feeling so far away from it, both at the same time.  Would I really rather not know about it? Of course not. Is it better to know and feel the unbearable yearning as it drives you batty? Of course it is. Is there no grace right here, right now? Of course there is. So…what?! I find myself asking. “What is being asked of me?!? What was all that for?!? Why show me the French Riviera of liturgy, contemplative practice, communal service and then lead me back here to Ohio where I do belong?”

And why introduce me to Sara Miles for a ten-minute, tearful, embarrassing-overwhelm conversation? Why push her to the sacristy for the oil with which she invited my anointing? Why did I allow her to do so? If not for the sense of hands-in-hands, the scent of the oil, it'd be easier to say it was all in my head. I have been aware of her all week but I neither know her nor have any non-freaky way to get to know her. I suspect I’ll find her irritating to boot—a Greenwich Village New Yorker, journalist, post-secularist Jesus-freak, boomer, friend of God whose path leads her to St. Gregory’s every day? No thanks. [Great. Envy raises its ugly head. I actually envy her proximity to the circle. That’s charming.] So the interconnection of Life means we’re already connected, but what does that mean for now? Even were we to correspond, in our overbusy lives, for what purpose? To what end?

So I find myself wanting to know all the irritating foibles and flaws of St. Gregory’s right now. For all it brings into the world, it has to be a real pain in the ass too. It already is from afar. San Francisco’s artsy crowd, gourmet foodies doing good, Episcopalian with all that brings? It has just as much brokenness as any other place. I just cannot see it, know that in sensate detail. Perhaps knowing such things would make me yearn for its liturgical giftedness less?

Nah. Doesn't work like that, thank heavens. Perhaps prayer for the community and its good will nudge me out of bad-temper. :) Regardless...

What I do know in sensate detail is grace beyond measure. I saw and felt in my bones a future in which all my “places in the round” resonated together—the rotunda of the yurt, the rotunda of St. Gregory’s; a circle of Friends (Quakers), a circle of dancing friends; a circle of dance led by Wisdom, a circle of dancing saints, led by Wisdom. I know confirmation in a bread-centered theological way, and have hope of being companioned by those known and unknown along the way. I received invitation into a new liturgical practice of chanting the Psalms, available to me "alongside" St. Gregory’s faithful each weekday morning at 8 a.m./11 a.m. Here I’m learning a radically new-old way of steeping in Scripture, and I’m aware of new significance in practicing “alone” though with a sense of virtual companionship. As ever, my task seems to be learning to hold the heaviness I feel, the weightiness of grace past-received but always present, nonetheless.

As I wrote in the thank-you letter to Sara, to accompany the gift of books, so I write once again: I have learned to say dayenu—or at least am practicing saying dayenu—as grace beyond measure is given. It is always more than enough, even when it’s achingly heavy to sustain, in awareness, for long. Dayenu.

Stolen Treasure

“We’ve been robbed!” I heard myself say amidst practice this morning, followed closely by the telling sign of tears. I find myself at the start of a new-old practice path, with familiar and unfamiliar invitation. Here we go…

Every day at 11 a.m.—or at least as many days during the Monday-Friday week as I can muster—I find myself shaping and being shaped by a new liturgical practice of morning prayer, this time replete with sung prayers, chanted Psalms, chanted Gospel text (given by the Daily Lectionary (www.dailylectionary.org), and of course, contemplative silence(s). I call it “old” because my path has woven into and out of liturgical practice like this before—Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, Celtic origins and derivations of the same, more. But this one is “new” too. It’s new to me, but older than the BCP. Byzantine, actually, though with contemporary breath. I also find that I am strangely companioned in this practice, though I’ve only seen the faces of a potential few of those who share in it. How can this be, you ask?

Well, I meandered my way to a respite-ritual-fix this past Sunday morning in San Francisco, overwhelmed by the academic onslaught on my contemplative path that is the American Academy of Religion meeting. I both thrive and shrivel in this yearly professional outing. I reconnect with old and new friends, sharing my excitement (and receiving theirs) about new accomplishments, old work in new books, new work in possible books to come. But this profession also distracts from what my work is about, who I am becoming amidst multiple covenantal companionships. For example, I steeped with a fellow contemplative over lunch the second day, easing into shared mind habits and being nourished in more than body. The jarring re-entry into conference space reminded me how shriveled it can be, I can be, when I’m not mindful of these distractions, their ultimate illusion. So I planned to attend an early morning Eucharist on the third day, to remind myself of my Center and retrieve a sense of perspective amidst the fire-hydrant-rush of information and conversation.

Two public buses later, and a short walk toward uncertain destination, I found the entrance to St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal church on De Haro Street. I knew it was a distinctive congregation, mostly because my guild society had visited it the first day (when I could not attend) and raved about the experience. Even so, I was not remotely prepared for the wave of symbolic overwhelm that accompanied the simple desire to be at the Lord’s table that morning. The rotunda where the Eucharist table ultimately rests marks the center of a roundabout icon-dance of saints going on in circles on the ceiling. Familiar faces of Catholic saints are complemented with less familiar faces from all over the world, then familiar faces but those without Christian association or confession. Malcom X, for instance. I looked to the right where the chairs for worship were placed and saw an immediately recognizable wall-to-ceiling size icon of the soul’s marriage to Christ, the “bride of Christ” meeting her bridegroom, overseen or officiated by Wisdom’s embrace, shown behind and all around them. As I wandered back to the rotunda, I was startled to see a tiger on one side, then a wolf on the other. Multiple signposts of my own path, all of them, all around me. I struggled to take it in, choosing instead to take a picture with my cell phone and then spend time editing it to be “just so.”

Several of the community greeted me, introducing themselves and preparing the spaces for the morning’s liturgy. One expressed his anxiety that “the rain might mean we’re the only ones today.” Another flurried about, preparing and gathering all that needed to be prepared and gathered. 8:30 arrived and the liturgy began. The rhythm of sung prayer, silent spaces, liturgy as familiar—as “the people’s work”—unfolded, with lectio divina and shared Words abounding. The movement to the table was then introduced: a stately congregational rumba-line to a familiar hymn, hand on shoulder, step by step. We circled the table in preparation, in prayer, in praise. We wound up as a circle, several of us from various walks of life, including an infant, a toddler, and a (quiet) friendly dog. The bread was slightly sweet, of good crumb. The wine was an Anglican-esque white-sherry. The tears ran freely for me, finding myself strangely at home, a stranger and one soon to depart again, back...home?

“Do you have responsibilities afterward?” I asked one of the women I had met before the liturgy. “Yes,” she said, “But a couple minutes…” We sat in a couple chairs off to the side, and I attempted to communicate both my sense of incredible Invitation and a boundedness that meant I knew not how to accept it. I belong in Ohio, it’s been made clear to me. At least for the foreseeable future. But I recognized my Home in that space, with paperless music, with bread at the center. She heard and listened, listened and heard. “Of course you must pray with us our Morning Prayer,” she said, retrieving one of the prayer books from behind the preacher’s seat. She offered me a book, its accompaniment of musical-liturgical offerings, and walked me through the basics, “starting with Week 3,” she said, “in a rather Aztecian cycle of 15-weeks of Psalm-singing we do.” Every morning at 8 a.m., Monday through Friday, they gather for morning prayer. So, that’s 11 a.m., Eastern Standard Time. I’ve begun a new-old practice of morning prayer, 11 a.m., Monday-Friday, or at least as many days asI can muster.

Now I know the history of my practice-life well enough to know this will be for its time, perhaps into unforeseen purposes, but for now, I’m enlivened and delighted in a way I’ve not been for a long, long time. The difference? Chanting. And sensing a strange-companionship along the way. I’m also surprised to have found such resonance within my own tradition. It’s been so long since I felt I was at the Well within my own circles, my own tradition, that I dare not trust it, believe it…or so it feels for now.

So, chanting? My mind says “What’s the big deal? You’ve known about oral-aural music for over a decade now. You’ve written a book about it, for heaven’s sake.” But I’ve increasingly wrestled with how to read my own Scriptures, mostly because they seem so abused, so often, that I hesitate to join my efforts into the abuse. I can only take about 1-2 sentences at a time when most of my communities require whole chunks, pericopes we call them, in which historical legitimacy or validity may be argued. I’ve been choking for years on that much Word, eaten that quickly. And the Psalms in particular. They are simply too vivid to read quickly, within liturgy or for my own sustenance.

Except when they are sung, I’m learning. I’ve sung three days’ worth of Psalms, learning the chant-style of this practice community, and the Psalms are going in. I feel them. I sense them. I don’t understand them but I am nourished by them. Three days. Only three days and I found myself weeping this morning, encountering my own scripture for the first time in a long time. It’s like it was an old friend, finally finding the window my soul had been scraping at for years.

Which brings us to where I began, with “We’ve been robbed!” How could I not have received this, known this, until now? I felt a wave of rage at Protestant resistance to “those old Catholic ways,” which of course are not Catholic but catholic, Orthodox, ancient of days. The rage toned down to anger, a sense of being halved but now expanding toward wholeness. Finally space was made for words to become conscious: we’ve been robbed. An ancient practice with wisdom unto its own offers itself to an egghead Presbyterian, choking amidst historical-critical methods, yearning for deepened, oxygenated air to sustain the rather solitary journey sustained nonetheless in intensely intimate companionship across communities, histories.

Because there’s a strange sense of companionship here too. It comes with my phone-alarm at 11 a.m., which I suspect will remain even when my schedule prevents me from attending to practice every time I hear the alarm. Knowing that a community gathers in that space, moving toward that rotunda with a baptismal font near by, knowing that I’ve been invited in across space but within time to be a part of the dancing friends. How very strange and wonderful that is. How very strange and wonderful this is. How marvelously fortunate and blessed we are to be "we," "us."

The loss of this practice means its finding beckons all the more strongly…so we return once again to where we began. Home, loss of home, Home again. Always a beginner but shaped in a recognizable way as it unfolds. 

Stolen treasure no longer. Just treasure. Just.

Steeping Deeply

I’m being haunted by a circle-chant that has changed my life. 

I first heard it, sang it, in a circle of women I’ve taken to calling my “contemplative-circle-community.” They would not call themselves that, but they would claim “mystics in the night,” creating a practice community rooted in earth and shared spirit & womanhood. Well, they wouldn’t even say that, tortured language as it is, but they are who they are. We are who we are. We are a lively bunch committed to one another and invested in healing and deep listening, resistant to labels and previously-determined images for living Life into the world on behalf of all. The circle-chant we often sing together is a simple song, really, except for what it asks.

“Do you love? Do you love deeply?” You sing this in a group that is really asking? I mean asking themselves again and again, on behalf of the earth and all within it, no matter who they are? You’ll see what I mean. Actually, you’ll sense what I mean. A better verb. You’ll sense what I mean. Granted, I’ve been blessed to live in practice communities who have asked this question in various ways over the years, but I’ve not steeped in the question before. I’ve not been held in the question in this way of sung gratitude, shared gaze, open-hearted listening, and open-sense holding of one another. The question has never been intimate like this, in other words.

So now I’m being haunted. The key to my locked awareness may perhaps be…deeply.

Feeling drawn into the chant, I contacted its artist-authoress (Kellianna) to ask permission for slight wording-changes attentive to contexts of the sacred. She agreed, saying, “We’re all one. Please, go ahead.” Instead of a woman-centric naming, then, other two-syllable names could be sung. The original response to the question is “Gaia loves; Gaia loves deeply.” But now the chant could be opened up to other two-syllable names of the sacred, of G-d: Father, Mother, Jesus, Spirit, Allah, Buddha. I was startled to discover just how many two-syllable names there are. Others could be offered, but some are considered too sacred to say aloud, even in a true statement of love.

Not surprisingly, then, I found myself singing this chant in three striking settings, vastly different from one another and apart from the original circle. The first was in the car on a long drive up to an Islamic conference. I was to be the only woman-presenter of an academic paper, both of us—my paper and me—surrounded by Turkish, Arabic, and Russian Muslim men, with a few elderly European or American men in the mix as well. The shared circle on CD sang in my ears as I chanted up to Cleveland and back again, listening for how Allah loves. The second setting was to introduce a colleague of mine whose voice and work find fewer opportunities to be heard and seen than they deserve. We were at a progressive-ecumenical but Catholic conference on radical gospel living and new monasticism(s). We were a remnant of the circle itself, singing its question for multiple, new ears gathered from all over Ohio. The third setting for the chant was a fear-ridden evening introducing a dear spiritual friend, a rabbi, to a quite conservative-Evangelical congregation gathered to listen why he does not believe that Jesus is his Lord and Savior. He was aggressively evangelized by a faith-healed Christian 5 minutes before the event was to start, which unnerved me more than it did him. I had not planned on singing the chant, but the introduction that arose within me, flowing out of my mouth, began there. I sang it three times, in honor of the Trinitarian commitment within which I/they stand.

Still, none of these settings as described gets at the sense of deeply or the haunting that’s happening. I’ve often sung a simple prayer chant to offer praise and thanksgiving in the car, to gather the attention of a group of people at the start of some teaching or listening event.  Deeply begins within an evening of contemplative circle practice, intentioned and welcomed toward our deepest Root, our roots of receiving & service. It was a mundane evening, with no desire or expectation of anything out of the ordinary. I have no recall of being weary or particularly energized. I arrived because that’s where I had been spending my Thursday evenings. The sacred rhythm began, a bit of vocalizing filled the spaces between us, and then a horrifying-mesmerizing image arose in my mind, my body, my breath. I knew I could pull back if I needed to but that the invitation was to receive it, to sense it, to allow it. I chose and refused and chose again. Poetic jottings required here:

A shot.

Gut-wrenching pain, powerlessness.

Power, too late. Then tears,

Suffocating shock, anger,

Rage.

Guilt

Shared across centuries, now mine.

Christian fundamentalism takes another life.

This time, heart of our heart, 

Companion of shared Life,

Taken by “one of my own,”

Living the years’ hatreds anew

In front of my eyes, alone,

Piercing our heart

In two, once again,

Robbed of richness

Ours, theirs,

All for all.

The sound repeated itself

Again and again.

Noise of action unfeeling,

Unknowing, unstoppable.

“It’s only a matter of time,”

I heard before I waked myself.

Moving to the mirrored world-tree

Lit by a tiny tea-light

The center of the world

Then again it began,

Again and again and again.

Shock, anger, rage

Tears, powerlessness, guilt

Somehow old and new,

A matter of time.

Premonition?

Too easy.

It didn’t really happen.

We told a room full of Evangelicals

One could disbelieve

Jesus as Lord and Savior

and still live

Faithful.

A Jew, a child of G-d,

One chosen of many.

Absolute truth

Alongside absolute truth,

Alongside absolute truth…

All breathing the same air,

Incoherent in love,

Lived deeply.

So it went. The root-awareness of this image-nightmare-event accompanied me for three days, unable to be spoken in any way comprehensible to the rest of my life. I’m a theology professor, for crying out loud. We don’t truck in such things as nightmare-visions, nor do we have any framework within which to interpret them within or beyond ourselves. All of the ‘cognitive’ learnings fail, though they sound good:

·         I’m working out the costs of loving deeply across polarized religious difference(s)

·         I continue to be angry at the fundamentalist life-choices of my own sister, with whom I cannot even speak regularly, openly

·         Violence happens apart from our ability to control it, prevent it

·         The losses are felt intensely no matter what ‘circle’ you find yourself identified in/with, though there’s a particularly toxic cocktail when your primary relationships of learning-spirit-faith are outside “your own” community

None of these offers the pathway of listening, the pathway to truly receive whatever may be for the giving of life in this deeply-rooted awareness received, unwelcome but compelling, seemingly necessary. The circle-chant continues to be sung, and it is finding its way into communities who need to steep deeply and ask its questions as we face particular challenges in self, community, and media. 

Perhaps I'm writing because I’d like the chant to haunt us all?

I will conclude, at least temporarily, with bits of a spoken-teaching/poem by a recent teacher, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, relevant here. She offers it in her Creative Fire, describing muerte or death as the patron saint of the chupa tintas, the pen-pushers, or writers. She speaks a description of the bus of life on which she always has death as a seat-mate. “The old one always sags next to me,” Estés says, “And she’s always just eaten a tub of garlic, and rubbed her armpits and genitals with vinegar and goat-cheese.” (That image makes me laugh every time.) The poem continues, nears conclusion in a way I had not heard before, though I’ve listened to it again and again. She says, “If I can stand it, if I can learn to love what others flee, to love the pain that I feel, then maybe I can write tonight, even for a month.” In the end, she confesses, “We always want muerte to be right next to us,” bringing the life it always brings.

Bringing the life it always brings. 

Whatever else it means, I think I've received a patron saint and invitation to listen and write, write and listen again. The root-awareness refuses to leave, so it must live somehow toward delight, which is what I believe in. I don’t know all what loving deeply offers, in both richness and in pain, but I now sense this new root-depth I’d not known. I don’t know what this nightmare-vision offers to any who can receive it, truly receive it, for whatever will be life-giving in the times to come. I hesitate to offer it in any way to those most closely represented within it, sharing more openly only after the nightmare did not happen in the real. But this receiving—these images, continued listening, listening for the sake of fidelity and never again—refuses to return to its subconscious or unconscious life. 

All this is not for the literally-minded. For now, until way opens to new awareness, this will be my patron saint of muerte, goading on the work that needs to be done, the knowledge that pain is required though suffering is not. At the very least, perhaps, I will be able to write tonight. Even for a month. Learning to love what others flee, learning to love the goat-cheese and vinegar. May a life of steeping deeply be offered for the lightness of life, the laughter of companionship across difference, the silliness alongside the serious. Amen, amen, amen...and a little woman. (Thanks, Mother Clarissa, as always)