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Wholly Holy
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Friends accept
that friends
will feel out loud
when they are ready.
~ She Recovers Every Day: Meditations for WomenLate yesterday afternoon I had a serendipitous treasure visiting with my dear friend, Jane Foster. Jane is navigating radiation therapy. The linear accelerator was being repaired so she had the day off from her daily drive into Chicago.
One of the foods that sits well with Jane right now is my homemade creamy tomato basil soup. A neighbor grows the basil and it is such a gift-of-the-garden, even more so when it is shared. I delivered soup and fresh-baked cookies.
This has been a stressful week and the visit with Jane was such a bright spot!
As Jane referenced her sense of the deep pain in the world I told her about the stated angst of an elder student around his not being able to go and physically offer support to those in Israel who are suffering violence and killing. Here is the short transcript of Aaron’s significant response, posted on the Yellow Brick Road with Barbara Brodsky’s blessing:
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I hear the pain in your heart. The human goes through various stages in its life. At some stages, this action or reply is most harmonious to the true being, and in other stages, a different reply is. As the human ages, often they cannot go off and protest or do whatever else they were moved to do 30 years earlier, and perhaps that is not what is needed.
The world needs an energetic container for compassion.
Feel in yourself the power to help support that energetic container. It is no less a “doing” than any other kind of doing but it is a doing grounded in a certain wisdom and beingness that only someone that has reached some maturity can bring together.
So, this is your special gift at this time of your life.
To pray.
To visualize.
To purify yourself — releasing old animosities, old distinctions of this and that — and truly holding everything in the loving container of your heart.
This is a powerful connection in the world. It can bring forth powerful results. It can draw to you from all over the world, the energy of others like yourself. You don’t have to talk to each other or Zoom with each other. You can; its not a problem but trust the power of your energy and love and release it into this massive container of unconditional love and strong compassion that says “No!” to killing, but without blame of anybody who still is engaged in killing. They are not ready yet not to kill.
You become the ground from which their readiness can arise….
This awareness visits a very humble and willing space in my heart.
“Don’t Just Sit There. Do Something.” is a song by Lewi B and Manga Saint Hilare.
Meditation circles flip that around and say, “Don’t just do something. Sit there.”
But Aaron’s words bring a beautiful balance to these thought polarities by providing us with a true knowing when you and I pray, visualize, and purify ourselves what we are doing is wholly holy….
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Changing Species: It is Our Nature
A retreat coming to an end is always bitter sweet. Some aspect of it is relief to return to a “normal” schedule, but there is also a lingering longing for the better balance that seems to be the likely result of a time of intentional insight and successive sitting.
Catching up on email I felt the collective as I read a Washington Post article by Anne Lamont (a pre-promotion for her next book coming out in April) titled: “It’s good to remember: We are all on borrowed time.”
I found her article helpful and humorous. The opening line really gives you a good sense of her message: “Getting older is almost like changing species, from cute middle-aged, white-tailed deer, to yak. We are both grass eaters, but that’s about the only similarity.”
Nothing quite as humorous as honesty, is there….
Some of you might already be familiar with Dancing with the Elephants, by Jarem Sawatsky. Previous posts have referenced this, especially the Corpse Prayer on page 28:
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Be not afraid.
I give thanks to god who created all things good.
In christ, all things hold together.
I am not entitled to life without death.
I embrace sacred life. I embrace
sacred death. I embrace the
growing and crumbling in between.
Smile at yourself in the silence…
Writing to a friend about the retreat this morning, I acknowledged that while it was not part of the formal retreat theme, because so many people attending expressed currently navigating health issues often the teachings leaned into how to mindfully accept gracefully our old age, illness, and death.
Robert shared that as his friend, a long-time mediator, was actively dying his friend had a prayer he repeated three times. Someone recorded his final recitation of that prayer and his own voice was heard at his celebration of life.
Whoa…. What words might hold my heart in that sublime stability? This morning I am still processing and wrote in my journal: Why do the birds go on singing? Because it is their nature.
All things with a beginning have an ending. It is our nature. All endings are really new beginnings. It is our nature. Changing species…. it is our nature.
So yesterday was the end of the retreat, and today is the beginning of living life with the benefits of practice. It is our nature.
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Perfect
We gained an hour last night here in most of the United States. What an odd concept, that we can lose or gain time….
Gain and loss…. part of the Eight Worldly Winds. It is written that gain obsesses the mind, and loss obsesses the mind. We are attracted to gain and repelled by loss, thus we can be tossed about by our (often subconscious) fears and desires.
This retreat has been placed in the perfect conditions of my life. My nephew David has found himself homeless and without money once again…. I could feel my heart closing after discovering he had not been honest with us.
During the dinner break last evening I overheard John having two difficult phone conversations: the first was about an ambulance and police cars having been at the home of John’s youngest brother. Thankfully, John’s brother was not the one in medical crisis, and the man living on his property was tended to. In the quest for information, however, John discovered something else about his brother that was distressing.
Loss and gain, fears and desires.
The second phone call was about Friday’s evaluation for our great grandson, Jackson. Jackson had seizures one year ago during the fall retreat. While we have lost the illusion that Jackson is neurotypical, we also have watched him gain the ability to walk. He is still not talking. And, yes, it feels like another likely loss that Jackson will be tested this week and it is strongly expected he will be diagnosed as on the spectrum for Autism Disorder.
The last sentence in my retreat journal from yesterday is: “If we had to be perfect to make a positive impact in the world what good could ever get done?”
In the evening dharma talk, Aaron told a story about when he and Jeshua as young boys befriended another boy who would have been called retarded. Aaron would smile so broadly speaking of that boy’s loving heart.
Our son-in-love, Doug, said about Jackson in the aftermath of the seizures: “Jackson is still the same loving little boy.”
We have been learning that compassion is vital in facing the conditions of our world today. We have heard the term “Satyāgraha,” which is a sort of holding firmly to truth, also sometimes called truth force. It is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance.
We have also heard the word ahimsa, which is Sanskrit for noninjury. In the Indian religions of Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, ahimsa the ethical principle of not causing harm to other living things. There are said to be three types of ahimsa or harm:
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1. Physical, by hurting someone’s physical body.
2. Vocal, by speaking against others, hurting their feelings.
3. Mental, by thinking against others.From this morning’s Daily Reflection Quote:
Everything is compassion. It’s only when you’re cut off from that compassion that you can begin to realize that you have free will choice to react with holding things away from you with negativity, with fear, or, still feeling that fear, to make the choice, “I will respond with love, even though my reaction is based in fear. I want to fight back. I want to hate. I want to kill. But I will not allow that of myself.” ~ Aaron
Fortunately, we don’t have to be perfect to make a positive impact in the world.
My intention can be: I will respond with love, even if or when my reaction is based in fear.
Love. Perfect love.
(Barbara Brodsky shared a precious video on Instagram of a dog being loved on by ponies. She said, “This is perfect love. They don’t care if they are different.” Here is a photo snip:)
(And also sharing a photo of Junior Bear, my nephew’s Emotional Support Animal, sitting patiently at the table waiting for his breakfast at The Mason Jar Cafe.)
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SOAR
When the loving heart simply asks, “How do we best find forgiveness in this situation?” and you take it into meditation and you ask for help, the help that comes is not spirit help versus your help; it’s simply love, one voice of love coming through whatever source it can come through. Let go of “Who is it coming from?” It’s just the voice of love. You can tell when you are tuned into that voice of love because there’s not a lot of contraction and grasping. The body energy is open, connected. ~ Aaron
This morning begins the fall retreat with Barbara Brodsky, John Orr, and Aaron. I will be physically at home, serving as Zoom host, but my heart is also with each of you.
This morning as I readied my space, I noticed some words on a promo piece for Zan Lombardo’s Forge & Scroll exhibit:
It is time to give up deeply….He could do no more. Transformation appears as the death, at its right time.
As I wrote the words into my journal, along with the comment, “I’m not sure from where the words came,” I also hear: “The words came from the ONE.”
I played with the letters in one.
O – N – E
Only now energy.
I had selected some special healing stones to place on my side table. I put the spirit (or love) rock that says FORGIVE YOURSELF on my computer.
Then I wrote in my journal my often-expressed desire of spirit: What would you have me know?
The voice answered:
“No one is going on retreat. The ONE is present. You will have a split second of grief as you let go before you soar.”
S – O – A – R
See once and release.
The retreat ends late Sunday afternoon. The Buddhist practice of dedicating merit is that we practice not only for ourselves, but for the benefit of all the people in our lives and in the world as well.
May all beings come to the end of suffering.
May all see once and release.
May all know peace.
Namaste’
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Looking for the True Self
Wow… I had a very unskillful time of things at the Jam last evening. When John and I arrived there were only two others there and one of the guys asked me to drum on the first and third beat only. He played a bit of a song he was going to do, and he coached me, and then my emotions went on a demented detour. A wounded state got triggered (honestly, that wounded state had come into the jam with me after it was previously triggered by another situation). It was all I could do to stay in that room for two hours. I did not put my hands on my drum for one beat.
He apologized to me after the jam.
I apologized to him by text this morning.
So much unnecessary suffering….
Yesterday’s Daily Arron Quote: Decisions made from a space of contraction will always carry karma. They will always come from the self, from the ego. Decisions made while resting in that spaciousness that is aware of the contraction and is not hooked into a self-identity with it are free of karma and can hold the spaciousness of the loving heart as ground for the decision or words.
I was self-identified as the person who could not drum correctly; the person who was not allowed to drum the way I wanted to drum; the person who was not good enough.
Those are familiar thoughts and feelings, but they are not who I am. As I am writing this post a text message from Empty Circle Zen group arrived:
We ARE IN the habit of identifying ourselves with our bodies. The idea that we are this body is deeply entrenched in us. But we are not just this body; we are much more than that.
The idea that “This body is me and I am this body” is an idea we must get rid of. If we do not, we will suffer a great deal. We are life, and life is far vaster than this body, this concept, this mind. We are connected with everything and everything with us.
My emotions did not originate in the interaction about the drumming. My emotions came from old habit energies of feeling judged or rejected or controlled, resulting in not feeling good enough and believing that someone or everyone was doing something or everything wrong.
The true self has deep compassion for all humans navigating these bodies, these concepts, these minds. The true self has wisdom to recognize the suffering that comes from self-identification with all of that.
While the true self was working on this post, I received an email from a friend saying a digital copy of his book, Looking for the True Self, is now available. (The title of this post comes from the title of his boo k.) The downloadable, virus-free, printable, and shareable file is freely available on his website (www.georgesanfacon.com).
Note: George says you may get a pop-up message box that reads “This file is too large to preview” or “This file is too large to scan for viruses” but fear not — the file is safe and you can click the “download” or “download anyway” button.
Excerpted from “Looking for the True Self:”
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a spark is born and dies in a split second, while the sun seems to last forever
but if your time shifted to a longer perspective,
you could watch the sun flicker in and out of existence, too,
same as a spark from a fireand so your body is flickering, too
the Universe scooped you up into manifest existence,
and will soon pour you back …. …. ….May all beings enjoy looking for the true self!
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I Wish to Give My Share
Today’s “Word for the Day” from Gratefulness.org is by renowned poet and author, David Whyte: Being unappreciative might mean we are simply not paying attention.
I have shared previously that we have been on an accelerated path with my nephew. He has now signed a lease, paid his first month’s rent, and this David and his emotional support animal, Junior Bear, have moved into an unfurnished space in the walk-out basement of a co-worker. David has known Terry for close to forty years. Terry’s mother lives there too. She is 80-something.
David needed EVERYTHING.
I sent a message to our Interfaith Fellowship list. Gifts began to arrive. A toaster oven; pillow and comforter; bath towels; odds-and-ends for the kitchen; small flat-screen TV; etc.
I stopped at a garage sale while out riding my bike and bought a floor lamp for $3. The guy ended up gifting David a small table with three chairs and a desk.
In response to my email, news from a friend home recovering from Covid came that her church was having their huge garage sale this week and giving me the name of a woman in charge. Patty is a long-time friend AND a former teacher who knows David from elementary school!!!!
The church gifted David a queen-sized bed, complete with headboard and mattress pad. A friend loaned us his pick-up truck for delivery. (If you do not see the photo here, please click on the title link in this email and read from the website.)
Another friend sent $100 for “whatever is needed” and we were able to purchase a twin-recliner sofa, end table, and chest of drawers from the church’s sale. The friend loaned me his truck again and he and his wife and Larry Gunter helped me deliver the sofa. (If you do not see the photo here, please click on the title link in this email and read from the website.)
And David still has $15 dollars left!The past several days have brought some challenges. Heavy rain meant no driving the cement delivery truck and work at the shop resulted in a very painful shoulder that sent David home before daybreak. Later that day he discovered his pay had not gone onto his debit card, and his mom and Larry had to help him get that straightened out. The next day he knew he was sick with that nasty respiratory stuff going around…. The rent goes on even with three days of work missed this week.
I sent him this big message posted on Facebook by a dear friend, Sandy, who is losing her vision from complications as a result of treatment for cancer:
I think it’s inevitable that all of us will experience some difficult setbacks in life…we’ll be dealing pretty effectively with challenges (of all kinds) when an unexpected issue crops up and we find ourselves temporarily overwhelmed. Please don’t hesitate to share your feelings with the empathic listeners in your life. Don’t fall into the trap of pretending that your troubling feelings don’t exist OR that those feelings are the place you need to stay. Recognizing all the blessings that remain can be so helpful in finding our best head space. Today I am blessed with a great care team, a generous blood donor, creative physicians, a loving partner and adult sons who are tracking my comings and goings. There is SO much to be grateful for; I’m hoping that all of you who are facing life challenges can find your way to a hopeful and peacefilled resolution. 💖
This morning I was reading story number 29 in Forty-Seven Stories of Jesus You Have Probably Never Heard, by Aaron, channeled by Barbara Brodsky. Jesus and his companions were attacked by bandits and left without shelter from the sun, food, and only one small container of water for all of them. When they came across a sole sheep and her newborn lamb, knowing without water there could be no milk for the lamb, Jesus said, “I wish to give my share of the water.”
I plan to share the rest of the story at St. John UCC on October 29, so I won’t say more about that now.
David has expressed desire for a Britta water pitcher because the water at the rental house has a lot of iron. I don’t have iron in our water here but we do have city water so we have chlorine. I actually use two Britta pitchers — filtering once for cooking and coffee or tea, then filtering a second time for drinking.
Today I wish to give David my extra Britta pitcher….
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Make the Chili
I shared this story at St. John UCC a few days ago:
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Make The Chili
A good friend of mine unexpectedly lost his wife. A couple months later we were golfing together, chatting about nothing. He asked what my dinner plans were and I told him wifey wanted my homemade chili and cornbread, but I didn’t feel like stopping at the store. We golfed a few more minutes when he quietly said, “Make the chili.”
It took me a few minutes to realize we were no longer talking about dinner. It was about going out of your way to do something for someone you love because at any moment, they could unexpectedly be taken from you. So today I’m sharing with you that wisdom handed to me by my dear friend, that I’ve thought of many times since that day. Next time someone you love wants you to go for a walk or watch a football game or play a board game or just put your phone down and give them your undivided attention, just do it. “Make the chili.”
Today this story visits me with greatly expanded awareness.
A precious dharma friend has been experiencing anxiety and full-blown-panic attacks, possibly a long-covid condition. In our discussion about all of this I mentioned three therapies that might be helpful. Self Havening, EFT, and EMDR. This is what I sent to her after we logged off Zoom.
Self Havening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQXbZmuSbFs
A 10-minute, Self-Havening practice to reduce anxiety, enhance wellbeing, and develop compassion and loving-kindness. See neuroscienceofhealing.com for more resources.
Tapping Points and Instructional Video
Tapping (EFT) is so powerful because it addresses the emotions that have been stored in our bodies as we developed.
Here is the short instructional video introduction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAclBdj20ZU
The points are on the side of the hand, where the eyebrow begins, where the eyebrow ends on the side of your eye, under eye right on the bone, under your nose, on the crease of your chin, on your collar bone, under arm on the bra strap, and on the top of your head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAclBdj20ZU&authuser=0
EMDR Therapy
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, commonly known as EMDR, is a mental health therapy method. EMDR treats mental health conditions that happen because of memories from traumatic events in your past. It’s best known for its role in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but its use is expanding to include treatment of many other conditions.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/22641-emdr-therapyOur meditation teacher, Barbara Brodsky, reminds us in The Path of Clear Light: Stepping Out of the Shadow, “There is no need to fix them, though you will wish to tend to them.”
When we sit in formal meditation, if a fly buzzes our face we resist the urge to swat or shoo it away, thus developing concentration and mindfulness. We are cultivating the gentle truth of tending to conditions. We know everything arises from conditions. We know conditions are impermanent.
If a baby cries because it is hungry, does the mother refuse milk to teach the baby that hunger arises from conditions and will pass when the conditions cease? Of course not. The mother will tend to the baby.
John and I have been spending time with my nephew as he makes a huge lifestyle change from over-the-road truck driving and living in the truck, to local work and being “home” every night. Complicated hugely by not having had a home or an income. The goal is to generate stability rather than becoming homeless every time he changes jobs. Today he came for home-made vegetable beef soup and cornbread and a shower.
Just as judging “judging” is still judging, fixing “fixing” is still fixing.
Conditions are calling us to tend to them.
Make the chili.
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An Experience of Grace
Wowser, it has been a wonder-filled day. Six women were present for deep sharing following the 6:30 a.m. meditation. Three of those women I have known previously, two are new friends.
Right afterwards I scored a Royal Flush and earned a whopping 5,000 points on the poker machine in our guest bath. In the decades we have had that game, neither John nor I have even come close to that score! I think the highest previous score was 500 points. The Royal Flush can be formed 4 ways (one for each suit), giving it odds of 649,739 to 1. This morning I had the ace, king, queen, jack, and ten of clubs!
A bit later, my friend, Mary Anne, and I sat on the porch drinking tea. We had hoped to go for a bike ride, but now the predicted rain began to fall in earnest. She shared how sad she was feeling after the recent passing of her 34 year-old niece following five years of cancer treatment.
We talked about how important it is to be open to communication, and just as she was sharing having talked to her niece’s fiance about that a rainbow appeared!
We watched the rainbow hide and emerge, and hide and emerge, along with a faint double above. We both knew clearly that nature was showing us the nature of life and life after life in just the ways our hearts and words were speaking it to one another. It was an exquisite sharing.
My nephew has had quite a journey — I have spoken of him before. After being incarcerated for many years and then working his way to release from parole, he has had a roller coaster as an over-the-road truck driver. Today he started a local job hauling concrete, but tonight he learned that he will not have access to transportation, extremely inconvenient given that the camper he has just moved onto the work lot has no electricity or water. Feeling grateful for the work but not at all sure how he can navigate life like this, he returned to the camper to find a co-worker / long-time-friend had left him a generator, a microwave, and a bag of food!
He called a little bit ago because he had not yet been able to get the generator started. John and I went and picked up his food because he has no way to keep it cold, and does not want it to go to waste.As we were driving there, it came to mind how YEARS ago several of us helped the son of one of the women in our community get to work and back after he lost his license due to a DUI. He was a single dad with a young son of his own. I took him to work each Wednesday morning on my way to Kalamazoo and picked him up each Wednesday evening on my way home. Others drove one way or another. Each doing a part.
Today I am wearing my Bee Kind t-shirt, and this evening I am reading words from Gary Zukav: “The Universe gave you an experience of grace. It provided exactly what you needed to transform an experience of a frightened part of your personality (fear and doubt) into an experience of a loving part of your personality (love and trust).”
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The Same Blue Supermoon Shines in Every Back Yard
The moon again provides a backdrop for the Yellow Brick Road (see my previous post, Waning Gibbous Moon).
A friend lives in Colorado where the skies are almost always clear. Each month he takes a photo of the full moon and sends it to me. (If you are not able to see the photo below, please click on the title of this post to read it on the website.)
That ritual of friendship is housed in a story about a family who left the United Methodist church (which had an aging congregation with no Sunday school program for their young children) and joined the Congregational church where all the young families attended. A bit concerned about any theological differences that might be spiritually dangerous to their souls, they asked their Methodist minister what he thought. His reply was, “The same moon shines in every back yard.”
Whether full, waning gibbous, blue, super, or dark — we sleep under the same moon.
A lot is happening to cause this particular blue supermoon to occur. The red wavelengths do not reach the earth, so the blue ones make the moon appear blue. It is the second full moon in the month of August, a supermoon, and this year’s closest to the earth (100 miles closer than the August the August 1, 2023 supermoon).
And this particular moon is visible everywhere on the planet….
One post I read mentioned that it also falls on the Hindu festival of Raksha Bandhan, which celebrates the bonds between brothers and sisters.
Another mentioned this as a time of heightened emotion and intuition. It’s rarity suggests an opportunity to connect with our innermost dreams and visions.
Katherine May writes, “It’s as if the universe is inviting us to lean in, embrace our aspirations, and make heartfelt decisions about our relationships. Our sense of enchantment is not triggered only by grand things; the sublime is not hiding in distant landscapes. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention.”
And under this moon magical things are in the making in my family. I have shared the success my nephew has had getting his life together following years of incarceration. I published an “Insights” clergy article about how difficult it is when someone gets out of prison with no car, no job, no home, no money. He did not even have a drivers’ license, and his profession is driving truck!
It has not all been song and dance. But he was able to satisfy the conditions of and get off parole. Nothing short of a miracle, but he has made it. He says he could not have done it without some of his family.
Just last week he was really down. He was without a job again, and therefore without a vehicle, money, or home. I reminded him how much better off he is now than then, and how Abraham Hicks says if your life is not working for you there is only one non-cooperative part: YOU.
One website broke the influence of the blue supermoon down by Zodiac signs. The specific meaning for those whose birthday falls between November 22 and December 21, Sagittarians: brace for a home and family shift. Delve into emotional ties within your kinship. It’s ideal for a home refresh – renovate, cleanse, and invigorate your space. My nephew’s birthday is December 3….
And this week, under this August 2023 blue supermoon, healing is happening. His sister and her husband are helping him renovate a camper trailer so he and his dog will have a stable base rather than ending up homeless every time he would change jobs. They are feeding him and providing him with a vehicle. He will be starting a new job, with a company he worked for previously (when he was not as stable as he is now). They see value in him and are giving his a job again.
Soooooo much to be grateful for.
In the Christian New Testament, Matthew 12:48-50, Jesus replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
May all brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and neighbors and friends even enemies do the will of the Father (and Mother) in heaven and love one another. It is happening in this blue supermoon.