Being with Mystery

The Mystery within...

My daughter’s cat; my daughter’s Facebook words:

“Rest in peace Sophie.  Sweetest cat I've ever known.  Very sad day.  She will be dearly missed.”

We never expected to lose Sophie this past week.  Her death brought us closer to Mystery and reminded us control is an illusion and change is inevitable.  She was thirteen years old and was treated a couple of months ago for a lame front leg that got better overnight.  The lameness suddenly returned, much worse, now in her opposite leg.  Treatment was ineffective and the next day she was still in major distress.  The vet suggested it might be best to put her down.  So we took her in and mercifully she was put out of her misery while we stood by her.

I had suggested to my daughter that we could bring her back home with us for burial but she was reluctant until the vet mentioned home burial was one of our options.  I thought Sophie would also have wanted to come back with us. 

Clearing a spot for her burial, digging a deep enough hole, sawing away large underground roots from nearby bushes was hard work.  But when I watched my daughter gently wrap Sophie in the cream colored sheet, carry her to the grave, and nestle her in, I knew it was the right thing to do.  She put colorful flowers upon the sheet, and sprinkled some of Sophie’s late buddy Ben’s ashes around her and then lit some sage.  That little ceremony reclaimed our connection to Sophie and Ben and all things beyond.  Life and death are so inextricably linked.

What if we could always reclaim the life and death link to everyone and everything? 

My Shadow's Voice

God is...

The awareness of my shadow last week took me back to a 1998 gathering I attended sponsored by the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC).  I wrote of that experience which was published in that fall’s CAC issue of Radical Grace.  I found a yellowing copy of my learning that read:

I concluded the Women’s Rites of Passage program with Carolyn Baker, author of

Reclaiming the Dark Feminine, with a deeper appreciation for the creative energy of my shadow.  And I had an immediate opportunity to give my shadow voice.

The bus that was taking us from Ghost Ranch back to Albuquerque hadn’t even reached the highway when I met my first reentry challenge.  A wooden drum rolled off the luggage rack above and hit me on the head.  It momentarily stunned me as it bounced off my skull onto the floor.  My body was already objecting to being in the great aluminum container, with windows that didn’t open, and an air conditioner that could not be turned on until we left the curving, dusty road in the hot desert sun.  The heat and lack of air added to the insult of the drum.

The momentary blur in my eyes refocused in anger at the absence of the protective cord to hold luggage above.  Only one short piece of broken cord dangled from a compartment near the front of the bus.  A line of holes the length of the bus indicated where the protective cord should have been.  The next turn in the road brought a soft pouch across my field of vision.  Fear grew for my sore head.  My anger grew in fear of my surroundings.  My mood turned ugly.

Many of the women on the bus joked and laughed with the driver.  I was furious with him.  I worried I might be too much like the frantic Chicken Little, or the perpetually groaning Eeyore from Pooh Corner.  I felt ugly, but I didn’t want to be ugly.  And then I recalled my pastoral training where we encourage others, and ourselves, to stay with our feelings.  We are given them for good reason.  So I accepted my ugliness and waited for what it came to teach me. 

It confirmed for me that it is not right to jeopardize other’s safety.  I must tell the bus driver of the danger and my injury.  And although I appeared to be the only sourpuss on the bus, it was with good reason.  I had a sore head.

After we reached our destination and the bus was unloaded and some of the women gave the driver hugs, I faced him and gently said, “I’m sorry, but I must complain.  The cords on the luggage racks are missing and I was hit by a falling drum.  It hurt my head.”  His smile immediately left and he said in anger, “It’s not my fault!  People should not put stuff up there!”  I quietly and factually said, “No, the cord on the luggage racks needs to be fixed.”  He abruptly turned away from me, and grumbled loudly, “Okay, I’ll fix them!”  And I didn’t feel ugly anymore.

I am now grateful for that bump on the head.  It reinforced the need to accept ugly—stay with the feeling—until it works for change.  I learned I can be calm and factual when asking for change, (though sometimes it is even okay not to be).  And I hoped that when I meet people who are acting like “soreheads” I can remember my drum experience.  Maybe they are just in the process of working on some needed change. 

I believe the ugly hag resides side by side with justice in my shadow.  It is why justice is so elusive.  There is reluctance to seek her in the darkness where tremendous power exists to transform or destroy.  But my encounter with the drum, and my heart, has given me a little more confidence to trust my hag and to give her voice. 

Now, in 2014, I think it’s time to reread “Reclaiming the Dark Feminine.”

What if we could all see and remember the potential creative and healing energy of our shadow? 

Winter Solstice

God is...

A turning point—the sun at its lowest in the south as it shines upon our earth.  A time when darkness and light are equal in that day—balanced.  Many cultures see Solstice as a time of rebirth.  So when I attended this December’s Full Moon Circle, a gathering of women who look to each other for their place and purpose in the world, we were each asked to share what we wanted to manifest for ourselves in the coming year.  It wasn’t immediately apparent to me.  Needed change often isn’t.  So I asked myself, “What would make me more balance?”  The need to play more became apparent.  It wasn’t hard to figure out where to start.

My yellow lab Ben and I headed out the next day on a relatively mild winter afternoon.  My goal was Lake Michigan’s shore.  Since Ben and I both have mobility issues now, I debated with myself--should I drive to the town to the north where the walk to the lake was easy; or take the more challenging route across an open field, over a wetland dam, and then down into a steep, narrow valley that opens to the lake?  I knew deep joy would be in the valley.  I rationalized that after the more difficult access, I could give Ben a pain pill when we got home.  Just my decision to go the valley route gave me a shot of euphoria.

As we walked across the snow covered field I figured the return back to the car would be easier when the northeast wind would be at our backs.  Ben was euphoric and ran ahead.  In my mind’s eye I saw the four-month old puppy that would bounce down this field and remembered the three-hour summer walk we took here while I seriously wondered if I could keep him because his energy and mischief were so extreme.  (That was a very short ten years ago.)  The six-inch snow cover now obscured the path descending into the valley.  When I eventually found it I broke out in a broad smile.  Carefully, I picked my way down the steep snow covered slope; grateful for the help from my walking stick and the one who made it for me with the carved inscription, “Life is good.”  The calm quiet warmth in the valley seemed womblike and almost brought tears to my eyes.  Returning to this once so familiar landscape was like being greeted by old friends—the winding path and creek, high banks, cedars, and deep silence.  Eventually we reached the beach where a hard cold wind met us, along with three young boys who Ben joyously greeted.  Ben then had a coughing fit hacking up some phlegm.  When the boys looked concerned I said, “He’s just and old guy.” 

Back home I did give Ben a pain pill.  Amazingly, my knee felt even better than when we started the balancing fun walk to the beach.

What if we each asked ourselves periodically, “What do I need to keep me more balanced?”                 

 

Faithful Gardener

God is...

From "The Faithful Gardener" by

Clarissa Pinkola Estes: 

Refuse to fall down,

If you cannot refuse to fall down,

Refuse to stay down.

If you cannot refuse to stay down,

lift your heart toward heaven,

and like a hungry beggar,

ask that it be filled,

and it will be filled, 

You may be pushed down.

You may be kept from rising.

But no one can keep you 

from lifting your heart

toward heaven--

only you.

It is in the middle of misery

that so much becomes clear.

The one who says nothing good

came of this,

is not yet listening.

I dedicated God Never Hurries, “For my crone friend, Rosemary.”  She too was a faithful gardener and would retreat to the soil and her plants for solace when life got difficult.  Crone friend is what she called me and said we were entering our crone years and needed to share a woman’s wisdom.  Through a mistake of her own she learned to say, “This is what I know and believe today, but ask me tomorrow and I may know it a different way."  Humility graced her.  Besides teaching me I have the freedom to be wrong, she also gave me the freedom to be wherever I am at present (the only place I really can be) after I confessed to her there was a time in my life when I actually felt invincible.  She said to me, “Maybe it was a time in your life when you needed to feel invincible.”  And whenever I shared my troubles with her, she saw the promise of change through my discomfort.

Rosemary died a young, but very wise crone.

What if we shared what becomes clear to us through our misery and mistakes?        

Remembering Community

God is...

Having spent much of this past week with just my dog and daughter’s cat for company my thoughts have turned to community and the three days I spent earlier this month on retreat with other women seekers where we experienced compassion for one another and became a healing community.  In the preface to Matthew Fox’s book, “A Spirituality Named Compassion,” he writes: Compassion is not an abstraction, but an entry into our own and others’ pain.  And joy as well. … Compassion is not merely a human energy; it is integral to the universe.  ...Compassion is a mystery. …our very essence, the very best of ourselves is to practice compassion.  … Compassion is important to wounded and oppressed peoples, and to the survival of our planet.    

When I struggled with my aging parent’s care needs, the compassion of others who cared sustained me.  My pain touched others as well.  In my memoir, “God Never Hurries,” I recount words I spoke at a church reform convention’s small breakout group titled “Patriarchy to Partnership.”  I wrote:  I felt empathy for a man in that session who was struggling to understand complicity.  In response to his frustrated disbelief that we all hold some responsibility for abusive patriarchy, I said, ‘My father is a tyrant.  I suffered most of my life under his tyranny until God showed me my complicity and I started standing up to him.  I am now the only one in the family who stands up to him.  My father is still a tyrant, but I am no longer his subject.’  After I spoke those words I felt a new level of acceptance and deeper change taking hold in me.  Applause from the group surely helped along with some hugs at session’s end, but most affirming were words from one woman who said, “You really helped me.”

During that most difficult time in my life I never met some of the people in my helping community but only spoke with them on long distance phone calls.  The following is from my memoir:  Outside of alerting social services agencies that my parents now had no care, and my mother could be in serious jeopardy, there was precious little I could do except trust God had a plan and accept whatever happens, happens.  Pouring my heart out to these professionals over the past two years had not been in vain.  Now the greatest help they gave me were their respectful long distance voices.

What if the next time we are “Wherever two or more are gathered together…” we look for the mystery within us that is named Compassion, and respond to one another with respectful voices.