Noticing Unfreedom...Wondering

 Rachmaninoff Concerto #1, first movement. I was on my way to CrossFit last week, enjoying the random shuffling of my iPhone/iTunes. This piece came on, one of the Top 100 Piano Pieces of All Time, or some such collection Brian had downloaded at one point. I rarely listen to classical music anymore, for some reason. Usually, I hit the ‘advance’ button, as soon as I hear orchestral anything. This time I didn’t. I let the familiar bombasity of the piece wash over me—the stately piano chords, the rising waves of the orchestra and lyrical lines as the piano and orchestra danced together in sound. Something deep within me was touched, curious, remembering… Later that day, purging and reorganizing my downstairs office space, I took out of storage the electric keyboard we have—grand piano-weighted keys, fine sound. A wedding present to me from my new husband, twenty years ago. It rests now in the corner of my refreshed office space. As soon as I find the headphones required, I’ll finish connecting its wires and power and sit down to play, privately. In the privacy of my own ears. Maybe.

The piano bench is one of the most unfree places I know, for me.

 

I know some of the reasons for this, though I’ve not given it much thought for years now. Musical inclinations within me resorted long ago to vocal expressions, first in seminary choirs then in song-leadership in my various leadership callings. I’ve loved leading large gatherings of seminary students into singing-in-parts, particularly when most in the room think they cannot sing. My musicality has found good expression in these ways, though now largely relinquished with online teaching and pandemic isolation. Holding circle for women writers, then conscious feminine leaders, has offered spaces for song-leading. Red Tent and leadership sister circles have welcomed a newfound women-centric song for me, my own singing in circle and in leadership. My voice has soared in these settings of women’s voices joining together—Woman Who Loves Herself, Woman, a River of Birds, and more. I’ve not really needed any musical outlet nor considered the piano bench, for years.

 

Then Rachmaninoff comes on, and I found myself reveling in the sound, the timbre of the piano, dancing with an orchestra. I was reminded of a good friend, so at home at the piano bench, speaking to her own finding home there, then inviting us into a beautiful, demanding, lyrical rendition of Troubled Waters. I spoke of this to a spirit-friend this week, and was surprised at the tears that arose for me. Something here in me wants to be free, I said, but I don’t know if that’s even possible anymore. I don’t know what I would want here…

 

All the discomfort, shame, fear and more that comes when I sit at a piano bench has a long incubation in my early life, of course. I began with musicality lessons when I was in nursery school. These moved to actual piano lessons when I was in first grade. Mrs. Warner’s piano studio was the most respected in my small town. She was known for being disciplined, a bit severe, with an established program of individual lessons, regular studio ‘performances’ of her students for one another, yearly Auditions assessments of progress, and more. Her studio had two baby grand pianos in a living room off to the side of her farm house, at the end of a long lane. I can still remember the kelly green carpet and the scent of her space. The bathroom with the rusting rings in the sink, well-water smells. My sister and I took a lesson with her every week from first grade to senior year in high school.

 

Sometime when I was in junior high, well into 7-8 years of piano lessons with her, I learned that her severity lessened if I cried first. Writing these words out, part of me is a bit horrified for my little girl self, but it was a matter-of-fact discovery that made piano lessons less scary or shaming. Part of me is impressed I found a way to make these weekly lessons more bearable. I was a talented girl at the piano, after all. I learned good technique from her early on, and was fairly disciplined in my practicing habits for a young girl. At least to start. I learned that if I practiced immediately after my lesson, I would find practicing easier that week, more frequent, less fearful. I enjoyed learning the pieces that were set before me—most of them—though they were all classical and never pop-music of any kind. I’m not sure how much the enjoyment arose from the music, or from the affirmations-sought, and received with successes demonstrated in learning tasks and improvements in difficulty-levels. I always excelled in the spring, receiving evaluations of Excellent in each ‘end of year’ Auditions assessment. Ten years of Excellent ‘earned me’ a Paederewski Medal, which made Mrs. Warner simply beam. I remember my final piano lesson with her, in the Piqua Presbyterian Church where she served as organist. It was a formality more than a lesson, really, as I had been coming to her studio since I was in nursery school. I was sad to leave her, to say good-bye, but I don’t think I cried.

 

Sophomore year of high school, something distinct arose in my piano lessons. Mrs. Warner put Schumann’s Piano Concerto in front of me, the first movement with its audacious lines and demands. I was going to learn this piece for a competition to be held up at Bowling Green State University. The prospects of such a daunting mountain to climb appealed to my affirmation-seeking girl-self, even as the esteem in my father’s eyes widened when I brought it home. I practiced and listened to classical performances of it. The months unfolded and the time for the competition drew near. There was a piano on the stage in a huge room, with a couple people I didn’t know sitting about midway back, in the dark. I had eaten my piece of cheese, so to counter the adrenalin rush that would come at the start of the performance. I played, but not well. Or not well enough. Or…I failed…at something. I don’t even have much recollection of it, to be honest. Remembering it now, I feel mostly shame and sadness. Mrs. Warner spoke of “pushing me too soon.” We both failed, this seemed to say.

 

So I don’t sit at piano benches anymore. I evade the question in some fashion, when people ask if I play piano. “I don’t play piano anymore,” I will say if pressed. Or “I used to.” Or “I used to play, but no longer. I can’t even sight read anymore.” I was never very good at that anyway, even at the top of my game.

 

I do not know any easy way back to the bench, you see, though there are curious windows in my life opening here. The grand piano on which I ‘grew up’ rests, rebuilt and retuned, in the sanctuary of my husband’s church. I could go in pretty much at any time, even during the pandemic, to play, if I wanted. I am blessed to have access to our electric piano at home, with weighted keys. Yet to even sit at the bench today is mostly discomfort, sadness, shame, anger, fear…

 

I don’t sit at piano benches anymore.

I don’t reach my hands out to touch the keys.

 

And yet I wonder...why am I writing about it?

 

The Hard Easy Freedom Road to Fitness

Humans are complicated animals, I know. Vexing. Frustrating. Even enraging. The better part of me yearns to hold all with compassion, understanding, empathy…and then there is the better part of me that needs to mirror what she sees, hold what she knows close inside so to not lose it, forget it…amidst the pressures of all else.

I have learned in the last year that my life is more peaceful, steadier, more grounded and curious when I do not consume sugar. Added sugars. Sweets. Desserts. Whatever. Same thing with carbs like bread, rice, pasta, couscous, quinoa. When I’m intentional about eating good food, not processed, protein and plants, higher fat, I’m the happiest woman I’ve ever known myself to be.

I don’t spike up and crash down during a day. I don’t get shaky-hungry, requiring an immediate ‘something’ to stop feeling like I might pass out. I don’t feel afraid of hunger anymore. (I used to fear it like the plague…like something was wrong with me). I don’t visualize meals that would offer reprieve from said cravings, spiking up, crashing down, shaky-hungry spells. I’m not very receptive to billboards and digital seductions of desire, food-porn, or quick-fix. I know a food-freedom that I have never known before…a way of being in my body that opens me to a much steadier presence all around me and within me. This is a choice-for, not a choice-against or -without. For-life...

Now, most people I know would hear this collection of choices as a life of deprivation and self-denial. A woman of strong-will who has learned to diet for the rest of her life. I get that, as it has been internalized into me too, for most of my life. But it’s simply not the case for me. Still, there is almost nothing I can say that can convince otherwise. (Including my husband, sad to say). Most cannot hear that eating good food, avoiding processed foods, eating mostly plants and protein, more fat, makes me the happiest woman I have ever known I could be.

So it remains exhaustingly challenging to maintain, to continue to know this freedom inside…

For instance...Brian is delighted to have found a new spice for our pork meals—tenderloins, chops, shoulder in the slow-cooker. He used it for last week’s pork shoulder and we both enjoyed the change of flavors. So tonight was either going to be pork chops or pork tenderloin, “bicentennial rub”, the new spice. While slow-cooking the bacon for breakfast, however, I began to put the new spices into the cupboard. On a hunch, I checked the label of the new bicentennial rub. Argh. Cane sugar. The rush of irritation and feeling of being unsupported, exasperation at this, our difference. Why can he NOT check the labels, knowing as he does that it matters to me? 

Next step then...venturing into the difference and advocating for what I need while he gets irritated and frustrated with my so-called rigidity about sugar and carbs. A couple post-workout exchanges, beginning to check in with one another about the possibility of a walk to the preserve with Nala, our dog. The psychological terrain feels steady enough for the naming of what I need. 

Adopting a nonchalant tone of low-anxiety: "Oh, and we better choose pork chops for tonight. The Bicentennial rub? It’s got cane sugar in it and I’m trying to get back on Plan for several days in a row, remember? You can use that rub on yours, and let’s use the Adobo on mine, okay?” Tensive pause as he looks at me, a bit crestfallen. "Sorry. I didn’t think to look," he says. Biting my tongue, I hear inside my head, “No, you didn’t. Again. How freakin’ hard can it be, for someone you love and live with, who has made these choices for over a year now?!? Any chance of you being supportive of me, given you see the fruits of it written all over my body?" 

But saying aloud, “Great! Let me get my walking shoes on. Ready to go in 5.” 

This is why eating good food, avoiding processed foods, and avoiding 'added sugars’ and carbs like bread/rice/couscous/quinoa etc. is so freaking challenging! I admit I am envious about those families who have made the move to on-plan eating together. While it is just Brian and me—no children, by choice—I get so very weary having to make the choices again and again amidst his refusal to support me in it, his neglect of what I have demonstrated I need, his resistances, his own disregard of his body, his increasingly fraught use of food to numb out or avoid his higher stress levels with work and the world.

And yet it is his own journey, his own body, his own freedom that I want to honor, protect, too. I don’t want him making choices for me, so I don’t make choices for him either. And yet…. And yet… Sometimes…just sometimes…I wish the living into the freedom I know would be just a bit easier, with fewer obstacles from those I love.

Humans are complicated animals, through and through. My own tenacity gets refined by his neglect and refusal. My conviction grows as I watch his own body deteriorate from the inside with high sugar, acid-reflux, and more… I wish he would take better care of himself. I wish he would love his body in a way that is healthy for it. But that will never be my call, in the end.

Freedom is what freedom is, after all…

Change that is also not Changing -- what I am learning...questions and all

What am I supposed to learn in this new free-fall, that has elements of things NOT changing alongside elements of things that feel to me, perhaps to her, VASTLY changing…? When is a collaboration interdependence, healthy for the parts and the whole, and when is it dependence or co-dependence, unhealthy for one or both, and the whole? Do I get to celebrate my capacity for collaboration, even as it may lean into dependence, at times, all without shame or blame but simply difference in need, rhythm, flow? I count on my companion and soul-friend (in this case, Lisa, but surely others in the past and present or present-to-come) needing different things than I will, do; I fear loss and loneliness when change comes, grieve what had felt safe and secure, as change arises with its force and freedoms.

If I’m honest here, I too knew a static was rising in me, a stasis and even numbness in me in times with Lisa in which we had circle or leadership things to tend but I was also yearning inside, locked into something, somehow. The grief around all things Women Writing Cincy/Mother School (I’m always careful to write now because of MaryPB’s pain body and accusations…) was becoming a rut I could not escape. Cannot escape, as is? In the #StayAtHome orders but early on, Lisa came over for a Tuesday afternoon that fed me so, nourished us both, I’ll venture to say. There was no work to do, nothing 'other’ to tend with either responsibility or a sense of fear/uncertainty. We could be just as we were, figuring out this pandemic rhythm in families, friends, work, play, food and home. I could feel the peaceableness in a gaze with her, which we simply fell into, without aim or intention. My body whooshed with all the memories of the Nook, our space upstairs which is my space but womb space, Our space, Her space too. We sat on the porch and enjoyed many of our spaces. Enjoyed some Chardonnay and sun. I felt a returning I still don’t know how to name, some for fear of boxing it into old ways of thinking or feeling. A returning is sufficient for the flow here...and a breath of fresh air too, as ever, as we welcome what-is, together.

This morning, I get to sit here at our little Parisian table, pretending to be at a coffee-shop, listening to Spotify ‘peaceful guitar’ pieces chosen by a random calculus. I get to bask in the familiar yet tender shared-listening Lis and I did this morning about the circle tomorrow night. Tender because I know how to craft agendas by myself AND I so trust her gentle way with prayerful-circle-way currents too. I value how a free space opens up for both of us when we allow it, even now, in the tender of the New, Unknown. I am coming to appreciate with more intention, if I cannot feel as she does, the burden she carries, has carried, in these seven years. I won’t even try to describe it, except to honor it, honor her fidelity and willingness in it.

Can I come to words about the burden I am increasingly aware of, for me? Not with respect to collaboration with her, though of course there are differences that I consciously choose to hold with a fierceness and care...weighted sometimes. That’s what spirit-companionship IS, in my experience, and it always serves a holy Flow each needs. But what do I know as burden in this bodacious, abundant and Sacred circling Life I’ve gotten to live, to grow in, to mature and heal in?

The administration of the business is burden for me, though it’s also been an area of tender rage, new growth, curiosity of actually focusing on doing it well. I’ve never tried to be a business woman, and am not sure I want to, really. The passion, the birthing work, the gathering work...those are the things that come naturally and are not heavy to carry, for the most part. Some can be, of course, but not the bulk of sisterhood relationships. I thrive in those energies, my extroverted-introverted self, both.

Being loyal in containers that I outgrow is a burden, given my devotion and need to be known as loyal, fierce-for… For me to choose myself over a web of relationships in which I felt safe and held and seen? For me to realize that I am not feeling safe in a place where I used to feel safe and seen? Incredibly difficult for me. Refused grief, then, becomes the burden...until something or someone, like Lis in this case, knocks it center stage and I have no choice but to face it inside.

Being so fierce for the creative life of women (and some men), in writing, in SoulCollage®, in Spirit, I have lost track of how to risk creatively for myself. How to play, for no ostensible purpose whatsoever. The burden here is a refusal of innocence, a refusal of beginning again, a fear of not being enough, not being seen…even failing, whatever that might mean.

A private creative life, in Spirit, in prayer…? Feels foreign to me now. That private life used to be ALL I had, in some ways. No one in my work environment could honor or see such things as valuable in time or money or product, and I was largely publicly identified in work things. So I did my thing privately, started new hobbies, played in artist-dates and kept a solitude I’ve long forgotten in these years. I doubt Lisa can even imagine that prior self very easily, because it is not remotely who I am now, who I can be with her. Brian would give me a hard time, projecting his envy onto me as my ‘waste of our resources,’ or ‘waste of my time.’ I learned to hide most of it from him. Then spirit-friendship opened up in a way I never knew. The Artist’s Way with a friend, (Kate then), diving deeply into our spiritual lives and weaving intimate experiences together in a new energy I knew but did not know. Then the lessons of attachment and the suffocating damage it can do...into a more balanced devotion-and-nonattachment for sake of each, both, all.

In the beautiful intimate life Lisa and I know, I re-entered and knew the deep satisfaction of diving deeply, being seen, being companioned and One in the journey that scared me so, us so. Creativity. Birthing. Re-birthing again and again. But also mothering, providing-for, being mothered, being provided for, in ways I always needed but never could know. It is now natural for me to feel the urge to share anything lively, often sharing it all...often before I’ve had time to even receive fully for myself. Classic Two thing, which is both a seed of deep intimacy, interdependence, joy...and can be a shadow of grasping for what is already inside (when I can no longer feel it myself), for holding onto, for avoiding risk, vulnerability, New.  Lis has learned more fully for herself, how to pause, how to discern what she will share with me...and all that she does not choose to share in her journey now, even as what we share remains...whole, energetic, lively...

Is that something I am to learn for myself? Or is that simply a difference between us? Is there a new Center that is beckoning for me here, a returning inside myself that when stronger, will feel free in sharing certain pieces only with her? Friday, I chose the ‘be strong and trust your own Center’ so it seemed, holding back and trying not to share. From this side of it, I can see/feel now that part of me was screaming inside, beginning to lose the battle with the fearful voices, the 'cut bait and run’ voices in my own head…'cut bait and run before she does' kind of energy. When I feel that energy, then yes, I am to reach out, methinks. Which I did. And we ‘sat on her deck/my deck’ together, in the sun… I needed to come to speech about yes, what a big deal this is for us both, and how I want to have it all together but will not, probably for a long while. Tears arise in me now with that admission. I hate my intensity being a burden for her, for me, for anyone...which ultimately circles around to accepting it simply is what it is, me accepting me. I also love this intensity in me...if it could just NOT be a burden for anyone, me included…? And around and around we go...

...is that part of what I need to be learning in this freefall/not-freefall? Are our differences increasingly hard for her to hold inside herself? Is my largeness prohibitive of something deeply necessary and growing Inwardly for her? These are questions with her, my wonderings of her, at the center, I know, so not really anything I can do about or hold. They may not even be her questions at all. But I do carry their energy with a sense of weighty dread. I never want to be prohibitive of what is most Inward for her, what is most Lively for her. This deep belly feeling-awareness is the gift that Kate and her daughter Rebecca remind me of, even today. I cannot be other than as I am, which Lis honors and is fierce for too. I cannot fear growing larger or deeper as the Path beckons, and most days, I do trust that we will be right there, in our kayaks, drawing close and bumping into one another, flowing away, finding the eddies and currents that are Creatively selected for each of us, by the One who calls us into this Spirit energy here and now...except the moments when fear does take hold and I cannot seem to allow it or process it or welcome it or....

A slightly different angle then...How am I to hold the deep conviction in my Heart that I am a stronger, deeper, wiser leader when in spirit-led/leading companionship with her, her insights, her freedom to play and create? How does this not become a burden for her or a need? sole-desire? only? for me? I mean, she’s not the last thing since sliced bread, I know. Others will bring other gifts, their own energies and offerings, which woven into collaboration will be gift for the world. I know this. I can collaborate with others. She’s been pushing me to collaborate with others. And I can do that. Will do that, as I learn more. And yet… There is an utterly Created-Creative distinctive Liveliness that comes into the world when we both surrender into it. Maybe surrendering into BOTH its birthing and unraveling purposes, as this strand is about unraveling as much as about what is not changing between us... We would not be a whole fidelity force unless the whole birth-life-death-rebirth were active in us too. Whatever is dying-changing-letting-go just hurts more, feels hard.

So...a smiling nod to my own burdens, the questions that rise, the ways I can be attentive. Yes, I will share with Lisa, because it is who I am as a writer and as her Anam Cara. And yes, I will enter into this creative stream beckoning me, however it will, learning to pause and discern before sharing with her, with anyone.

I’ll only ever get a sense of this Invitation if I explore it with intention...she's got nothin' for me in that, as I do not for her...

Do You KNOW?

She paused for a moment, as both of us knew our phone conversation was coming to a close so she could run with her daughter and I too could workout for the day. She asked me to pause and listen for ‘the question.’ I honestly didn’t have anything arise right away, for what she might be about to ask me. What flitted through my mind? Things women-circling, things writing, things tender from how the universe is stretching us these days. Though it has been a familiar, even liturgical or ritualized question, for the years I have known her, I was not prepared for it. 

"Do you know?" 

Gut-tensing tears arose immediately, from deep within my gut, clutching at my throat a bit. I let them come, glad I had not clicked onto the Zoom invite link for my CrossFit time. The tears made it up to my eyes, a bit down each cheek. A sadness in my belly, though not sadness as I once knew it. Not the familiar sense of emptiness or void, of being left behind, forgotten, abandoned. This sadness seems to be at the root level of my being...some part of me that is still able to be surprised and disbelieve that I can be loved so deeply, so dearly, so fiercely. How is it possible that disbelief can rise, still? Where can my disbelief come from, given that I DO KNOW I am deeply loved? Could there ever be a life I could live in which that disbelief would no longer to rise?

Before the question, I wrote in some pages this morning about a disbelief or belly surprise that Lisa would want ‘being time’ with me this week. Even as it rose, I also heard in my own voice—Really? You wonder about that still? Really? But then...I will no longer be holding a work container for her sacred evolutions in her own calling(s). In one sense, I never did, but in another very real-world sense, I have. For us both, for years. A viable public entity in which she and I could be held and serve a broader community.  There is no longer any regular financial or work-development container through which she needs me. So I found myself awakening to the wonder and curiosity that she wants ‘being time’ with me. When I read the Enneagram insight for the Two today, I almost laughed aloud. I had already written my pages about this, and there it was: your basic Fear is that you are unloved, unworthy of love (or some such phrasing).

I’m embarrassed by this inner dialogue, of course. After everything, after all these many years, I am embarrassed that some part of me remains ever vulnerable to the self-accusation: you are unworthy … no one will love you unless you.... unless you are serving, sacrificing for… It’s like the very structure of my soul cannot be reshaped or reformed without unworthiness being there at some foundational level. Which feels awful, again and again, even though it is so familiar, a longstanding way I have known myself from without... 

Is that what this sense of unworthiness gives me then? A way of knowing who I am, in who I was accused to be, for so long, in the refused grief of my own ancestral lineages? The theological traditions that disempower, even as they hope to transcend and offer grace too? The earliest self-help gurus I learned from would ask me, "So what does unworthiness give you then? What are you getting out of it, that you hold onto it so tightly?" Their gut-instinct, perhaps wisdom: You wouldn’t hold onto it if it wasn’t giving you something in return.

When paired with those who struggle with this too, I can receive assurance, affirmation, that I matter, that I am seen. For a short while, at least, until the vulnerability gets touched again, and the cycle must then repeat. Ad infinitum. Feeling unworthy can also motivate service and action on behalf of others. Most religious traditions I have learned from have some component of this, in some fashion, though Christianity in the West has a particularly difficult version of this, with sin, depravity, shame, etc. Right now, this feeling of unworthiness is a drive...it is creating words on a page, looking backwards, within, beyond…

Something a directee said last week has stuck with me; it feels relevant here. In the abyss of quarantine (for her), she is learning that Love is right there, within her. Because she lives, Love lives. She need not reach outside herself for it at all; it is always right there, within her. … And then, without awareness of the paradox/irony, she spent several minutes diminishing her own ability to be on the Path she so desires. All while she was living it, speaking it, teaching it to me. I did smile inside, even as it touched the sadness she and I both know at our root, wondering if/whether we matter when we are not serving, helping, providing...

I could feel the double-bind of it for her, for myself, for what seemed like ages in our short hour together. I wrestled whether to mirror any of what I was seeing, sensing. Would my mirroring play into her need for assurance and affirmation, thereby disempowering her from knowing what she already knows? I held onto most of my own observations, refusing to mirror or play into the affirmation yearning I know all too well. At the very end, however, I did name my own experience of wrestling, also discernment, to say at least this: The energy in your words, your eyes, your life right now is stunning, beautiful, so very powerful. That’s all I said. 

Love is right here, within me. Love lives, because I live. These words do bring tears into my awareness, if not all the way up to my throat this time. I know this. I mean, I really know this now. I have for well over a year, with seeds and blossomings of it for nearly seven years. At the same core level that the vulnerability and abandonment rest in my ancestral lineages. Yet gut-tensing tears arose to nudge me into something...something I don’t know too, or don’t know anymore. 

The formation of the Women Writing circle communities, community up here in Central Ohio, has been an incredible labor of love, for both Lisa and me, for nearly seven years. It has shaped me into a woman I would not have been without her, without it. These years have also shaped me into a woman I no longer know, really. I don’t know how to be present to myself, alone, for me only, on the page. I don’t know easily how to play anymore, in color or in puzzles or in fiction that has no purpose but to amuse me. I don’t know who I am in this season of my life, more whole and healed than I have ever been, peeking out now from the inside out. 

So...do you know? I know I am deeply loved, even when that love needs to be expressed in ways that terrify me, force me to look at some things I am afraid to see. But I don’t know who I am as a woman in this season of my life. I know I have birthed and participated in the birthing of women’s voices, surrounding me now with their own journeys and desires, their own strengths and frailties. I know we’ve been birthed in a motherline and way-of-being that nourishes me less and less as I experience the More beckoning more and more. I know the work I do in seminary streams is gently simmering in categories that feel livelier in me than I want to let on, for fear of being insufficient to the tasks ahead. A form of unworthiness, it would seem. And I know I don’t know how to proceed without being bound up in others’ energies, needs, desires… I know I don’t know how to proceed as a woman, herself, in this season of life. 

I do not want to be accused of abandoning others, of course. I feel a deep affection and confidence in most of those who have woven their journeys deeply with mine, with Lisa’s and mine, in this circle-way. My heart opened and expanded as Lisa spoke her passion that "the circle needs to grow up now." Yes...it does. They do. And so...

Do you know? She asked. Yes. With her, my Anam cara and spirit-friend of Old, I know. I am unfamiliar with ‘being time’ anymore, so shy and a little fearful of being found out, vulnerable, unsure in her presence. 

Do you know? She asked. No, as me...I don’t know. I don’t know how to proceed to re-acquaint myself with who I am as the woman I am today, in this season, in this moment in time. 

The ways I know to fake it til you make it feel forced, less genuine for where I am right now, though I welcome their familiarity too (Julia Cameron, tarot, work...). So I am moving slowly, sitting with the questions as they come to me, contenting myself with the deepened awareness that I am the only one who can answer for me in this season, who do I want to be...?

My best friends refuse to answer my question of me, after all, simply smiling at me, in Love.

* * * * * * * * * *

Addendum, wanting to be kept and known, yet also only as an addendum…

Independent of any of this, I realized this weekend that I wanted to put together a Start-up Facilitator’s packet for all 17 of our leadership sisters, inviting everything from brainstorming themed circles to more self-directed core-circles, marketing tips and timings, all the Create the Container and usual resources to encourage getting this circle-way more into the world, wherever a certified circle-holder lives. I want to empower everyone to bring this into the world. I became aware of a desire to make myself unnecessary in significant ways. I need to be unnecessary, for me to sit with who I am in as a woman in this season of my life.

Singing into an Empty Sanctuary

I couldn’t stop crying this past Palm Sunday, sitting in an empty sanctuary, preparing to sing a solo for a congregation’s online worship service. Deep belly sobs came. So strange, it felt, so odd. I was sitting in a place I never feel at home in anyway...so what gives…what is the intensity about?

Part of me feels a bit ‘caught’ in this, as I rarely enter a sanctuary anymore without a deep sense of conflict in my body…
I am very thankful that sanctuaries like this exist for those who yearn for them, are nourished within them and the shared practices therein. My impulses? 1) Stay to be heard and teach and transform from within traditions and systems unconsciously refusing the experiences and healing ways of women (or the feminine, if you prefer).
2) Get the hell out of Dodge and let all those who are nourished in these old ways go with God, in peace, leaving me to the freedom my own spirit needs from...??? But…

Two weeks ago, I got asked by a friend’s husband, who is also a pastor, to sing a couple moldy-oldies for his congregation’s online worship service. Sure, I said, without much attraction or aversion. How Great Thou Art. Great is Thy Faithfulness. Blessed Assurance. I do NOT feel conflict in offering gifts to older Christian populations who do not feel the jarring language and hierarchical baggage in these hymns. My voice is apparently a gift for many of them, and it’s easy for me to offer it. Perhaps this is because I have few expectations that older populations can flex 'forward' or 'outward', so it simply is what it is.

My own husband did not want to be outdone, of course, so asked if I would sing for the Palm Sunday morning in his congregation’s…maybe at some point our congregation’s…online service. Sure, I said, without much aversion or attraction. True to form, the choir director wanted me to sing something from Fauré—the Palms—a classical choral-soloist-show piece. I was girding my loins to do so, but the accompanist had to change at the last minute. Blessedly, because I got to choose a simple hymn to sing, which would press me much less.

I was eager for the morning to be over, but not overly anxious about any of it. Then…

...something broke open in me. I could not stop crying. The empty pews. The energies of yearning for togetherness in a huge room of no physical connection at all. Before the service, I had brought my own energies to remembering and welcoming the faces of those who so yearned to be there...who were with us through the online portal. But there I sat--a woman who doesn't really ever feel at home being there anymore. What was I to receive or learn, being there when so many who really wanted to be there could not? Grief overwhelmed me, presumably for those who so yearned to be there yet could not, for my own for being there, feeling so very alone... 

Quarantine, then?
Life has changed.
We can no longer gather in congregational ways, or in any fashion, for the foreseeable future.

Thankfully, I got it together before I had to sing my little ditty about Hosannas and little children. Well, not a ditty…a hymn of processional entry. But…I am aware I am weary… I’m not letting the grief go very easily. 

Perhaps I cannot let it go until it tells me its name.

* * * * * * * * * *

My Grief name is Loneliness, it says.

Feeling not at home in congregational sanctuaries is a long and seemingly irresolvable storyline in my life now. If you are not aware of it, you should know I had felt completely at home in congregational sanctuaries for nearly 40 years, give or take a year, here and there (like adolescence). For the last 5-10 years, in a very gentle and not-so-gentle transformational journey into deeper and deeper spiritual friendships across traditions and none, my capacity and experience have changed. I now avoid congregational sanctuary spaces as often as I can, even while sustaining a continued call to seminary teaching and teaching-elder orders in a Protestant denomination. I attend formal worship settings when my calling requires it, acknowledging in myself, every time, the lack of women's voices, pronouns, ways. I sign in for Presbytery meetings, at least once a year, so to remain 'on the books' for as long as Spirit seems to require it. It was a community that shaped me in its ways, and one I served in leadership capacities for years...until it became that no longer. I enter into some congregational opportunities in my husband's calling, though not as many as many of them would like. The easier ones for me are those outside of 'the normal Sunday', like a pilgrimage to Israel or Theology on Tap. 

On the one hand, very few particular people have created or caused this discomfort in me. A few have, of course, but those injuries are well known and digested into stories by now, with the hurt met in genuine forgiveness and understanding. I am actually thankful now for those persons' journeys, those events that grew and awakened me, us all. On the other hand, the discomfort is unending in congregational sanctuaries because so seemingly few are able to see? willing to see? supposed to see? what I've been given to see and feel and know: a calling into Restorative Wisdom in the archetype of the Circle, welcomed by human beings who are willing and able and...?

I guess that's part of this... I feel so overwhelmingly lonely in congregational sanctuaries, while surrounded by well-meaning and good-hearted Christian people who are not interested or able to see/hear what I cherish so passionately now. For whatever reason, the majority of faithful Christian persons in my life are not called into or interested in or willing to enter into new ways of gathering, new ways of being human together...in the archetype of the circle. Including my pastor-husband, I might add. Folks in these settings are embedded in habits and practices that are no longer nourishing for me, but still deeply nourishing for them. There are times when I am envious, to be honest, though Envy is not the name of what I've been holding this week. So I remain mostly outside of the church sanctuary, in the twilight of the 'church yard,' to use a Barbara Brown Taylor image. And for the most part, I love it here, can thrive here. I can find just enough oxygen here to see what is happening within the "church walls" but yet breathe in the New I've been given to know.

And yet...and yet...I want and need to be surrounded by those drawn into more of the New, less of the Ancient...(though arguably even more Ancient than the denominational congregation). Those trusting a space co-created by whomever shows up, not by those 'in authority,' which by and large puts me into non-religious/non-ordained communities of inquiry, practice. I want to be with those risking into vulnerability and awakenings that are anything but comfortable. Those holding divine Scripture loosely or even not at all, because more of us are finally admitting: there are not enough initiated adults who are able to hold paradoxes and contradictions with compassion across anger. Any deep dive into the Scriptures (broadly understood to include Torah/Talmud and others' Scriptures) requires this both/and of holding paradoxes and sustaining compassion in anger. I know very few Christians who are able to sustain this both/and...at least when they are holding onto the either/or's our Scriptures offer with an idolatrous preference for certainty, historical-critical scholarship, and security. I don't know how to be immersed in Scripture AND hold the both/ands my own experience has invited and grounded me in. No judgment or shame or blame here...just a sadness and grief at the loneliness I feel IN Christian settings.

Not surprisingly, I love being on the periphery of conversations with pluralist Jews right now. The classic joke: an issue arises between two rabbis, and three perspectives will be there. At the very least. Probably more.

So...singing into the empty sanctuary was probably the most honest and obvious mirror of how I feel in Christian sanctuaries all the time. For me, the feeling was the same, whether the people were there or not. I wish it were not so, yet feel freed to name what I do know. 

I don't know quite what to do with that learning, that awareness. I don't want or need congregational members to see me/hear me...because I have been gifted with circle upon circle of women who see me and hear me regularly. But it does hurt to realize that I can be surrounded by congregational members...or not...and still feel the loneliness in a sanctuary space. I grieve the days when entering a sanctuary felt in my flesh and bones Invited, Welcoming, Desired.

My name is Loneliness. Seeing while not being seen. Listening while not being heard. Singing with no one else singing along...in places that used to be Home.

Betrayal -- Musings on a Holy Saturday

Betrayal. This word was thrown at me this week by a beloved partner, in his own fear and anger that my actions could bring the virus into our home. The details are less important—he said, she said etc.—than the power of that word for both of us. The word has lived amongst us in our marriage for nearly two decades, after all, though neither of us likes seeing how each has betrayed the trust of the other. The rupture this week seems to have passed over us in these holy days, yet I’m left with wonderings that beckon…

At root, without judgment or accusation, ‘betrayal’ points to a rupture in expectations and need, dependence and impermanence. From within the story, one person’s actions do not meet the expectations or needs of another. A sense of rupture arises because the one who is surprised thought the other shared his/her assumptions, need, expectations. In the throes of fear or anger, it feels like trust has broken, an agreement has been ruptured. An assurance or dependability feels torn open, like a wound.

Place this into the context of a healthy and determined marriage between two very different people who yet embody a love for one another in the best ways they know. What does betrayal mean in a container of determined and lived trust, for decades? As I wrestled with my own feelings from this encounter, I found myself smiling with a quiet, wry thought: Who has been married for nearly twenty years and not betrayed his/her partner? We betray each other all the time.

Some of the betrayals have been large, requiring ongoing decisions of steadiness to stay the course of union. On the one hand, making a big promise at engagement that is then refused fulfillment in the early months of marriage or on the other, emotional investments in spiritually intimate companionships that nourish one but threaten the other in the marriage bond. Both can be considered big betrayals of the primacy of the marriage.

Then there are the small betrayals, like… You said you were going to go on a walk and keep six feet apart….and you didn’t. or You left the basement window open again…or You said tonight was our night and now you say you have to work? or All I wanted was one hour of your undivided attention and time, and you forgot to show up. These ‘betrayals’ are the natural complement to living in close proximity with another person, in a deeper intimacy than the kind that feels good all the time. These small ones can take the form of ‘felt large ones’ if the stress level is high enough. Say, in a global pandemic.

Both ‘large’ and ‘small’ betrayals can be considered necessary choices, if they are indeed conscious and intentional choices. Many of our betrayals are not conscious choices, but actions made from wounded places needing healing. Many betrayals are unconscious actions, made by living in worlds and assumptions not shared by the other, not needing to be shared by the other. In this sense, the conscious discernments can be made to preserve the marriage, amidst family dynamics and spiritual growth. A committed, devoted marriage can actually grow and expand to envelop the divergences in the needs of each. I would even argue that a healthy marriage needs to expand in this fashion, in order to stay alive, to thrive.

So how does one sustain the steadiness of devotion when s/he feels betrayed by the other?

For myself, the first thing I’ve learned to do is breathe. Count to ten, or twenty, to welcome the feeling of being accused…or desiring to accuse. Anger and rage may be the best energy to welcome, to release in healthy ways, outside of the immediate relational spaces.

Speaking as a woman in a historic tradition of Christian faith, I have spent probably 5-6 years enraged at the betrayals of my own faith communities and our institutions—betrayals of neglect and silencing, shaming of bodies and dissociations of spirit, utter refusals to awaken to the hidden and overt pains of women’s experience, wisdom. The God I was traditioned into ultimately broke herSelf open to awaken me to a deeper and more profound Way of Restorative Wisdom; yet I am now deeply suspicious of any ‘new’ God language at all. Such is the depth of my being betrayed by what/who I was told was Sacred.

My task in these years has been to find the fidelity in betrayal, to use Peter Rollins phrasing…to search for the deeper Story, the implicit Way, the healing Path of wholeness and restoration. I chose for years to stay in a kind of relationship (marriage) and a (male-normed) worldview that has betrayed me as a woman for centuries. Unconsciously and in my situations, without malice, but no less genuinely and deeply betrayed. Alongside this raw enraged journey, a Way of Wisdom did find me, in such abundance and overwhelming fruit of Spirit that I/we could not but surrender and receive. I surrendered to its Invitations, diverging from all I had known before. I breathed through the incongruities and the potential threats that could implode a life. All the while, I knew that my surrender into this restorative Wisdom way could and even would be experienced as betrayal by many in my life. And it was. It was experienced as rupture, incomprehensibility, and worse, complete with refusal, requests for no contact by those who said they loved me, and attempted interventions to coerce me back into previous norms. It still appears in my marriage sometimes as felt-betrayal…

…because my beloved partner and I no longer share his worldview, his commitment to the church, his need for security and dependability in his own eyes. I respect his worldview, as it is so present and collaboratively created by so many in our world today. But I no longer share it. The world has grown so much more mysterious and interactive, energetic and inviting for me, for those with whom I do share a worldview. My work is being in my own world, now, here, at home, alongside his world, all without triggering rage and hurt. I honor his commitment to the church, as it is his calling and joy. I even offer my gifts within his setting, when invited. But the church as it is conceived and embodied today is no longer where I spend my time or energy, but for my commitment to him. I am no longer committed to the institutional church the way he is, though I (for now, and for as long as Spirit seems to desire it) remain credentialed within it. I even observe and honor his need for security and dependability, watching him be who he is acquiring supplies and groceries that benefit us both in this pandemic. I breathe into this need of his, except when it confines my need for wide open spaces or attempts to interrupt the connection within which I thrive.

At root here, it seems to me, each of us is fiercely loyal and faithful to the other in our years of marriage that have placed the Sacred as our primary loyalty. Each of us also regularly betrays the other, though not with the sense of immorality or malice. Each of us is way too cognitive and articulate, too highly functional-intentional for the offhand unconscious acting-out kind of betrayal. But with a Sacred that has betrayed me as a woman, and the Sacred that has found me as woman, you can see the train-wrecks that will indubitably happen—in these past years and in the years to come. I can get seduced into wanting him to approve and legitimate who I now know the Sacred to be, and he can yearn for the time when Sacred meant the same things to both of us. But neither of those things need happen for the Sacred to be precisely how the Sacred is.

As a Loyalist, a particular Enneagram type, my beloved will chafe at this statement of assured betrayal in our us. Another difference, we see. J Our consistency does illustrate, however, the diversity of worlds and choices both of us have had to make to continue to mature, spiritually, relationally, with love. We are blessed to be in union as One, always changing, always remaining One with all, conscious or not.

Going Tharn...at least until Noon

Stunning disorientation. Going tharn...

So this is what everyone has been naming in oblique ways on Facebook, in the text streams, in the news. I thought I was sharing in that experience. In this first round of #stayathome, I was, as it was to be for me at the start.

I was confined to my home with my beloved husband when I was accustomed to a larger-than-life life in at least two cities and several webs of relationship. I was navigating his fears, my own fears, and responding to the needs of my communities to stay connected. I had had to learn several of these skills over the last year, last several years for online-learning things, so the Quarantine opened avenues for me to be helpful, in multiple vectors of the relationships I cherish most. This is an outdated-addiction for someone like me—someone who learned in her early life she was most safe when helping others, being a help, being the way that others could thrive. (Enneagram Two, for those who enjoy interpreting life in ‘collective pattern’ ways). I have outgrown that soul-center these last several years, except when I haven’t. Like writing to process, knowing I will also want to share it, to be read by those who might see their own experience in it too. 😏  For this crisis time, it was all good work to be about. It connected me with my communities ‘out there’, be they circles, CrossFit peeps, directees, even church folks from more my husband’s side of our life together.   

All the while, I kept yearning for the challenges of quarantine that some folks were talking about—boredom, need for structure, need for solitude, etc. [I admit I felt relief at Brian’s and my choice to not have children. The overwhelm of our friends having to homeschool amidst previously overbusy lives…? I feel we missed a bullet on that one, even though I know the sense of connection and family is being strengthened so for them, aware of it or not.] I kept wanting the challenges of others in this time, being focused on them, out there…

And so I used the energy of yearning to do the final pushes for remaining, if less immediately deadlined, tasks. Yesterday seemed to mark a watershed of some kind. I completed a couple tasks from a leadership-training a friend and I had held this past year. I steeped in the words of students returning from Immersion experiences I oversee, to Israel/Palestine and Cuba. Those had been on my list since the end of January. I tended final details for this week’s writing circles, with our semester coming to a close. My list of tasks requiring immediate attention thinned, and empty spaces met my eyes on the page. Dinnertime arrived, and I basically went tharn. [Watership Down reference, btw]. I’d had a cocktail the night before, so I didn’t want to make myself a drink. We tried for take-out from Christopher’s but could not get through on the phone. We baked chicken breasts and steamed broccoli. We tried a NetFlix show that has been all the rage—Tiger King—and I got angry watching it. Especially as my husband gaffawed and howled in some places. I was entering into a world where I could not seem to find any humor at all.

I’ve learned enough to know that when I’m at a deadend night like that, I just go to bed. Make the day end. Poured my hot bath. Read a little bit of something I cannot remember now. Turned off the light. So this morning is a new day…?

I laughed when I got my Screen Notification Summary on Sunday. “Your screentime has increased 61%”. That doesn’t even count the Zoom or computer hours. Ooph. I know I’m going ‘there’ in hopes of feeling connected, grounded, in relationship with those I love. It does give me a place to encourage, to cheer on my CF peeps, to participate in what our ‘communal life’ has to be in this time. Yet the screen is not where I can feel alive… I need to begin to trust that those relationships will all be there when I come out of this, on the other side...regardless if I do anything helpful at all...

The experience of these recent hours has not been unlike running full speed into a wall. I am stopped. I feel halted, somehow. Stuck in amber, even. My mind continues to race with all the things I know should lighten my spirit, my heart—a Paris puzzle I have out, two knitting projects, my SoulCollage table, a couple fiction series I’ve wanted to start, working out (today at noon, so I could have something to look forward to).

I have a couple ‘intentional containers’ I’ve started, to hold some of this time—Julia Cameron’s Walking in this World and Tarot of the Spirit, the book to interpret the deck I got for Christmas—in addition to those I’m already blessed with in my life. I am through Week One of Cameron’s book. And I’m to the Ten of Fire, for learning the deck/familiarizing myself with its insights/invitations. CrossFit continues to be the steady anchor in my life, both with daily workouts and text/FB nudges from coaches and friends. I continue to touch in daily with my spirit-friend, Lisa, who holds such beautiful space for me and my best-self. It’s hard to not see her, be with her, as much as we have been accustomed to in our circle-work together. But she feels close, no matter what. Brian and I have opened into some new rhythms—some contemplative practice, daily walks in the Preserve—and we are increasingly patient with one another. Yet I simply couldn’t DO last evening somehow. And the months of evenings to come?

I have known how to pull myself out of depression or the doldrums for decades, and yet this time, I’m just not feelin’ it. I know I can will myself into these activities. I know I can use these activities to distract and busy myself away from this simmering rising water inside…

…but what if the gift of this quarantine bunker-time for me, for those I love, is to let the water simmer? To let it rise?  How do I stay still to receive or to tend what is coming my way? Others’ callings at this time will be different—those with children, those working the front-lines of things—so what is my Invitation from the Universe that I’m still too afraid or shell-shocked to open…?