The Mother's within us

My daughter never knew my Mother.  She had died decades before my daughter was born. On a few occasions during her childhood she showed curiosity or tried to ask me about my mother, what she was like, etc.  That is a very hard kind of question to answer.  While we can give some superficial kinds of descriptors of another person, it is very hard to describe the breadth and depth of another persons personality and energy in the word.

When my daughter turned 11 she started babysitting.  It was an amazing and powerful experience to watch her in action, to see a maternal energy coming out of this one who was so recently a young child herself.  It was a little like when she first started talking and I felt like a curtain was pulled back and I suddenly knew what her mind was like, how she thought.   As I watched her with children there was this odd dejavue experience.   I partly recognized my own parenting style coming through her, but also I would have to say, I also recognized the way my mother was with children coming through her.

Science has now come to understand that from the moment we are born we carry the eggs inside us that will one day be our children.  On some sort of mysterious level those eggs "hear" or experience everything their mothers experience.   There is now in fact evidence of multi-generational trauma that is carried in our DNA.  I would like to believe there is also multi-generational joy and love that is also carried in our DNA.

In the past year or so it occurred to me finally to say to my daughter:  "You remember when you asked me what my mother is like?"  She nodded.  "You already know.  You have already met her in the many ways I carry her in my being and my way of being."  So on this Mother's Day, it does not matter if your Mother is dead or hundreds and hundreds of miles away.   She is with you.

This is my Mother holding my sister with me looking on.

For those of you who know me and my daughter you will 

note that genes do repeat!

Counting our Blessings

I see with bemusement as I look back over my past 3 posts here that my "new idea" for this post echos the themes of the past 3.   Well sometimes we must look at things from many angles to get something.

In the work of Joanna Macy she starts with Gratitude and then goes into grief for the world, then seeing with new perspective and then into taking action. In a couple of previous posts I have written about the book: The Wisdom to Know the Difference, by Eileen Flanagan about using the Serenity prayer to try to discern whether something is a thing we can change or a thing we must accept as is.  And in last month's post I talked about the significant difference in happiness of when people "compare up"  vs when they "compare down".

Today I was reminded by a friend that when we live fighting the reality of the experience we are having, fighting the injustice of it, the way in which it is not what we wanted or dreamed of, that we make ourselves unhappy.  (Similar to comparing up, glass half empty or not having the wisdom to know what we cannot change and must accept.)   My friend reminded me of his own amazing discovery of how to actually be happy while literally in prison for decades.   It starts with gratitude, counting your blessings and being truly happy for what you do in fact have.   In the comparing up mode we discount our blessings seeing them as "normal" and "as it should be" - thus not of importance or value.

All this begs the question of what is in fact changeable.  It is possible to live as if everything we encounter just is, and we have no personal power and must just endeavor to be happy in an injust and immoral society.  I would argue that that way of living is as much a cop out as deciding to me miserable by fighting everything happening in our lives.   It would seem to me that when we can ground in gratitude and learn to be happy there is a slack from which we can see what step might be before us for justice and try to take that step.   If we can take actions for justice from a place of non attachment then we are either devastated or ego stroked by our outcomes.   We are just faithful.

Many years ago a friend wrote me around Thanksgiving time that she was playing the "Thanksgiving game" on a daily basis.   This was a woman who was in grave danger of loosing her eyesite entirely, but she was noticing what to be thankful for each day.   I notice another one of my Facebook Friends, a climate activist is posting something she is grateful for each day.  These are inspiring examples to me of people remembering to count their blessings.

Fish tails and other tales of beauty

Over a dozen years ago someone sent me the quote: "An idealist is someone who is always homesick for a place they have never been".   I relate to this quote immediately because I have been homesick my whole life for the Kin-dom of God: for a place where Justice rolls down like rain, where love is practiced with abandonment, and where kindness and equity run hand in hand, and where community is a way of being. It has been very painful at times to not live there.

But recently I have been thinking that I have been approaching this the wrong way.  Happiness studies show that people who compare "up" are unhappy, and that people who compare "down" are.   This is another way of saying do you see the glass half empty or half full.  But I think of the story of a man in a Nazi concentration camp (I believe Victor Frankl) who was served a bowl of soup that had a bit of fish tail in it, and as the light hit the scales and reflected off in a sort of rainbow way he marveled and rejoiced over the sheer beauty he saw.   When I first heard that story many years ago I was sort of stunned that anyone in such a horrible and oppressive situation could find any comfort or joy while in such a setting.   And it seemed hard for me to understand that such a "small" beauty could do it for him.    But now I am aware of how often people who are in the last weeks of their lives talk about how love and beauty or the only things that really matter.

I had a weird day in which their were various frustrating things, and opportunities to feel discouraged or annoyed.  But if I am honest there was also the opportunity to notice an amazing couple who had adopted numerous special needs kids, or a whole group of people just trying hard even as they perhaps miss the mark, or a moment looking out on the Sound where the water was all shimmery and the sun was hitting it in a way where it just looked like a thousand diamonds.  I realize maybe the Kin- dom of God is not some magnificent place of perfection that I can never quite get to, maybe it is just these small moments over and over again.

Living into Impotence

I suspect this title will not excite people about reading this post and for men may even seem a bit ominous.  But I ask you to read on.

I am middle aged.  I have lived long enough to see that not everything we try for do we get.  I have lived long enough to also learn that you can warn people about dangers and snares that you know about personally, but they have to learn from their own experience.  I have lived long enough to learn that all set backs are not permanent, but neither are all victories.  I have experienced many loses in my life, starting very young, and I have learned that there are loses that cannot be recouped, out run or redone - they simply must be accepted.   Accepted not as a defeat, but as sand inside an oyster, and some as compost for the plants that are coming.

In the book: The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Difference and When to Let Go. by Eileen Flanagan she takes the serenity prayer and talks about how we come to terms with it.   She notes among other things that most of us are naturally pulled in one direction or the other with it.  I certainly recognized for myself that I am pulled to take courage and try to change things..even things like national policy.  But one of Eileen's points was that we do have to discern when we need to go the other direction which in my case means when to find serenity by accepting things as they are.  I don't recall if this is in her book but to believe that we can change anything is in fact a form of idolatry.  It is to believe that we have God like powers.

In a society racked with injustice, and in this country at this moment in history, this would seem an almost impossible task how to be at peace with the world as it is.  As a person who is actively working to stop climate change and who is surrounded by other climate change activists who often feel quite frantic about, as joked yesterday: "Repent the world is coming to an end" type feelings.  I have learned even with climate change to hold it in spirit.   I hold it with a spirit of curiosity, knowing that I do not know how things will turn out.  I have learned with great difficulty to practice non-attachment around the outcome.  Sometimes I cannot tell if it is simply a slick form or bargaining or denial.   But it seems like there is some peace from saying both in the face of hopeful signs and in the sign of terrible signs  "I don't know what will happen."

I was so pleased when Wen Stephenson's book: What we are Fighting for now is Each Other, came out.  I have not read the book yet.  I just love the title.   It summed up for me that I cannot be fighting for the outcome but I can always act for Love - the love of Life, the love of the planet and all those on it.  I can notice the spiritual practice of non-attachment to outcomes that Buddhism preaches.  The Truth is I don't know what will happen; none of us do.  As I write this the Lacy Dalton song is singing: "listen to the wind,  The only thing you can trust is change."  This also summarizes the form of detachment I am talking about.

As a therapist for 23 years now I have had ringside seats at many disasters.   Some that my clients were fighting as hard as they could.  Others that even as I gently tried to question or discourage they went towards like moth to the flame.   But there is nothing like being a therapist to teach you that you are not in charge of other people's lives, you are simply a witness.  Hopefully a loving and constructive or supportive witness, but a witness none the less.  This then becomes its own spiritual practice of learning to keep handing it back to God even as you pray for others.   and yes to keep breathing into your own impotence, to meet the limits of what you can do, or what you should do, to surrender again and still keep your heart open, feel the pain, release the pain, and then do it again.

Joanna Macy likes to ask the question: What have you allowed to break your heart?  To break your heart open?  This spiritual practice of living into impotence is not for the feint of heart, but it is a powerful spiritual practice.   It is is not the same, at all, as giving up or becoming hopeless or helpless. Because inside of this practice is really the turning towards the strength of God, and the wisdom of eternity.  Recently I have heard both Native people and a famous civil rights leader say: "We have been here before and we will be here again, we know who we are and we are not giving up".   There own familiarity with suffering gives them strength, endurance and resilience.  Impotence is about being without power but it is also about how you live into that.  Do you live into it as a loss, a humiliation, a defeat, or do you live into it with humility, serenity and hope?  Do you live into it alone, isolated on your own terms or do you live into it with Grace and Presence?

The Ocean of Non-attachment

I am at the ocean. Yes, in January.   I recommend it.  Divorced from laying in the sun or running in the waves there is an even clearer sense of the eternal majesty of the waves and their reminders of the eternal majesty of the Divine.

For me there are spiritual practices associated with the ocean.   One is the practice of non-attachment.   Buddhist monks have a practice of spending days painstakingly making beautiful Mandala designs out of different colored sands.   Then after their careful work is completed they ceremonially destroy the work.  This is a ritual expression of non-attachment and the impermanence of all things.

Long ago when my daughter was small we would come to this same place and we would enjoy making a sandcastle and then we would watch the tide come in and destroy it.   Later with her stepfather and her step brother we would build an even bigger one with an extensive moat system and we would race to complete it before the incoming tide would come for it.   We would play at defending it, and then finally stand back and watch its ultimate destruction.   A reminder that nothing man made is actually permanent or stands against the sands of time.  After my divorce, I came and built a sand castle just to watch it wash away, just to acknowledge the years of work I had put into the marriage and then to release it.  There is a funny kind of peace I cannot properly explain about knowing that in the end it all, everything we do, returns to the ocean.

There is another beach ritual that goes hand in hand with this.  It is the throwing of the rocks in the ocean.   Some year when I was full of angst and troubles I stood watching the crashing waves and the majesty of God.  I began to pick up rocks and name them for the troubles of my year, and then to “give them to God” by throwing them into the ocean.  I would do this till I could think of nothing more to throw in.  I would leave feeling lighter - emptied.  I value the practice so much I often recommend it to clients  to release  grief or anger.

I remember one year I picked a particularly big rock to throw in to represent a whole ordeal I had gone through for more than a year.  I happened to throw it right as a gigantic wave came and even though I backed up to not get water in my shoes the wave brought that rock back and deposited at my feet!  I said:  “I understand God, I am not as done with that one as I wish.  I have not fully let it go.”   And sure enough during the next year, at moments I could feel that thing washing up at my feet again.    I’m happy that this year I am having a year where there is nothing I feel I need to throw in the ocean.  I think I have been learning to throw them into the eternal ocean all year long.

Where is God in Darkness?

I have written in other spaces about my concern that the incoming Trump administration represents the rise of fascism in the US.   This raises interesting spiritual questions about how we respond to destructive things happening around us, where is God in dark times and what does this mean about evil?

Has God abandoned us, or is punishing us by allowing this to happen?
If one holds to the view that God created us with free will then that means that those who are not listening to God are always free to stray from what God might intend for us and to do great destruction or evil.  That evil affects other people.  The price of freedom is a God who is omni-present, but not all powerful.

Where is God in this situation?
God is always present as a source of guidance, comfort, and strength.   It is even more important in crisis to turn to God.  God cannot however stop the suffering caused by others' application of their free will.  Buddhism does have much to say about how we manage suffering.

What does God require of us?
The Bible answers this question of what God requires of us saying:
"To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."  Micah 6:8
I think those spiritual theologies that say we are co-creators of the world we live in and the lives we walk in, also suggest that we are to embrace the highest truth we know and live it.   I think in a time where hatred rises up and causes the scapegoating and targeting of some people that means saying no to that.  I think in a time where violence rises up it means acting with non-violence.  I think in a time where the earth is pillaged, polluted and destroyed it means aligning our life style with an honoring and protecting of the earth (as currently modeled by Native people at Standing Rock).  In a time where there is an increasing assault on free speech, on free press, and on civil liberties it means standing up for those and protecting supporting those others who also speak out.   In a time where vote suppression and gerrymandering threaten our very democracy it means standing up to fight for democracy.   And all of these things mean turning to God for the courage to act for justice.  In short, in a universe where people can do destructive or evil things, we are called upon to speak truth, take action and to hold up the Light of Love.   To remain silent or passive is to passively allow the evil.

Is there no Light in this Darkness?
Neale Donald Walsh has written quite a bit about how it is only the dark that allows us to know the Light.   That the Light longs to be known by us.   Perhaps another way of saying this is that we sometime must struggle in order to learn; contrast is one of the ways by which we learn.  If one believe in reincarnation then we have come to earth in incarnations intended to maximize our learning, and the encounter with darkness or evil is not a detour or a mistake, it is an opportunity for learning, and opportunity to bring forth light.  We are not called to do this alone, it is what community, especially spiritual community is for.

Why is this happening when I don't want it to?
While we may co-create our own personal reality, it is also the case that as a collective humanity, or a society we also create certain shared realities through our shared consciousness. There are lessons we are trying to learn as a collective.  It is worth asking: How could it serve the learning of the American people to grapple with the person of Donald Trump and the type of leadership he is bringing?  It is easy to point fingers of blame at figures in history like Hitler or Trump who are the apparent center of so much darkness, but that really gets all the rest of us off the hook.   We must look at the fear that is always the fertile ground for fascism.   We must examine where we have stood in relationship to fear? We must do the spiritual work of looking at the anger, the pull for easy answers, for power, the arrogance, etc that live within us and are mirrored by Trump, rather than simply demonize him.

How do we respond to this spirituality?
Responding to an already negative situation with more anger, violence or fear only magnifies the negative energy.  Going numb or in denial also does not serve the Light.  Joanna Macy tells the story of the Tibetan Shambala prophecy.   The Tibetan's believe that there comes a time of great darkness and chaos when the world as we know it is completely threatened.   At that time many souls come to earth for one purpose: to fight for our world as Shambala warriors.   They are not intended to fight with normal weapons of violence, but rather with spiritual weapons of wisdom and compassion.   Wisdom brings great clarity and vision, but clarity alone does not bring the passion for action.   Compassion brings great love which can move people to action, but action alone is not productive without clarity or focus.   So they must use wisdom and compassion together to fight for our world.  I believe that this is a time when we all must become Shambala warriors.

Is their an opportunity is this experience?
When lived spiritually all experience contain an opportunity.  Chaos, danger, conflict, destruction.... all of these things carry in them the seeds of change and the possibilities for transformation.   If Hillary Clinton had been elected, most good liberals would have continued to focus little on the situation, even as our planet is threatened by the crisis of climate change, even as racism was literally killing Black people in the streets daily.  When evil becomes as blatant and undeniable as it now is, there is a moral imperative put before us all.  The addition of the Trump administration to the Climate crisis demands we quite literally transform the current power structure or we will die.  So it is time for each of us to reach down to the foundations of our spiritual traditions and see what God calls us to do.

Love Speech

This is the eve of our US election.  It has been a painful election season with constant attacks by both candidates upon the other.  The vitriol has been so bad most people are tuning out and have stopped watching (eg. sharp drop off in ratings by the third debate.) Voters report being weary of this election.  I have noticed recently how we have without every signing up for it been bathed in "hate speech".  This is disturbing in that studies of the rise of fascism say people are more willing to accept absolute power and charisma if they are first afraid.  When afraid we are more willing to blame others, to scapegoat and to yes: hate.

Recently, I heard someone say that just as we need Love, that Love needs us - that it is the only way through us that Love can manifest in the world.   This idea got me to start thinking of the idea of "Love Speech".   “What does Love Speech sound like?”   There were two kinds I thought of.   One is the kind of thing Quakers talk about when they talk about "speaking to that of God in another person" which means to call out the Highest in them.   But the other way I think of that is sort of what Martin Luther King, Jr use to do which was to talk about Love, to remind us of it in the midst of our struggles.  Another age old religious concept is that of prophetic speech.

I invite you each to think about how you might be a vessel of Love Speech?  Especially in the next few days when anger, disappointment, fear and alienation might be in high gear in this country.