Thresholds' Review

The Mystery within...

On our July “Women Gathering 2018” weekend retreat we were led to reflect on the many different thresholds we have crossed in our life. Our one-day winter follow-up, on where each of us are with our life’s thresholds, was held January 19, 2019. This review made it clear to me all of life is about change and how I accept and grow with those changes.

The challenging threshold I was standing on in July was to find my voice and express myself to a public political ideologue. I feared getting “dirty” in a fight. My initial fear of getting “dirty” led me to find the courage to write my truth respectfully, through a series of letters to the editor of my local paper. 

Main ideas in those letters were: we are all in this together—vote responsibly. Service to others is the hallmark of a healthy community. The health and education of our children is our country’s future. I shared recent tips I had learned in how to search the internet to be better informed on the issues and candidates on the ballot for my district. I acknowledged my gratitude for the Dane County League of Women Voters who listed statewide Wisconsin candidates and how each proposed to served the people if elected. I summarized the first ever Ozaukee County Democratic Party fundraiser where speakers called for respect and dignity of all; more equitable tax distribution, critical infrastructure maintenance, returning science to environmental management, investing in our children’s education, mental health, and adequate, affordable health care for all. And I quoted excerpts from Parker Palmer’s book, “Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit”. I acknowledged we need grace in governance, and voting is more than a civic duty, it is a spiritual exercise. And finally, I shared how learning to breathe from my heart allows me to feel sheer compassion for those who govern with self-serving agendas.  

I was in a better place for our “Women Gathering” January Thresholds’ review. I realized how much effort I put into reflecting/writing/speaking my truth. Not just in political matters, but also from my own life in the completion of my second memoire titled, “Both and Things – The Power in Reflection”. In my first memoire, “God Never Hurries”, I danced with anger and fear for my mother’s and my safety. In “Both and Things” I am learning to dance with love, forgiveness and connection. The nest photo in this post was an art therapy piece from July’s “Women Gathering” weekend  retreat. When “Both and Things – The Power in Reflection” is printed, the nest photo will become the book's cover and will include an explanation of its symbolism for me.

To facilitate our January review of our individual Thresholds we were given these words to ponder: Acceptance; Letting Go; Mindfulness; Compassion; and Identifying Helpers. My helpers were easy to ID. They are retreat facilitators Cathy Gawlik and Dawn Zak, and our beautiful circle of women, who are gently guided in discovery and sharing. Poems also accompanied each of the five words for reflection. This stanza from a David Whyte poem titled, “Start in Close”, stood out for me:

Start with

the ground

you know,

the pale ground

beneath your feet, 

your own

way of starting

the conversation.

Also poignant for me were these words from a John O’Donohue poem titled “A Blessing, A Poem”:

May you arise each day with a voice of blessing 

whispering in you heart that something good 

is going to happen to you.

What if we all felt empowered through reflection?  

A "None" Connection!

The Mystery within...

I was thrilled to come across a pertinent post on Krista Tippett’s On-Being website titled “They Call Us the “Nones,” But We’re So Much More” by Coutney E. Matin.  I began my weekly blog posts on April 1, 2013 with the first post titled “Nun, None or None of the Above.”  It was the beginning of a promise to reflect and write for three years on what I found significant for me in each week.  Though Coutney’s and my path differ significantly in age and life experiences (I left the church of my birth eleven years ago at age 60) we do, however, share a common goal, which in her words is, “looking at the burden and joy of trying to understand how to be a good human.”

Prior to starting my blog there was a period in my life when I reflected and wrote daily for three years as I struggled with a lifetime of dysfunction and my aging parents’ care needs.  I ached for truth and was desperate for answers to heart wrenching problems.  What I needed to know came from the everyday stuff of life.  I learned I could question everything and became aware of the havoc that inappropriate silence wreaks.  I came to know my complicity in my troubles, and that I was worthy of good self care.  I also became keenly aware of the subtle, systemic oppression of women, through religion. My reflecting taught me how to recycle pain and let darkness illumine the light.  Eventually those years of daily reflection and writing turned into my memoir, “God Never Hurries.”  Now this blog, “What if… God Never Hurries,” continues to grow me through reflection and connection adding depth to my life.

What if we all reflected on the everyday stuff of life to grow?          

Apologies

The Mystery within

I owed an apology for a curt phone message I left in exasperation because a message I left the previous evening wasn’t returned by the following morning.  I then continued to stew about that while taking my puppy Oliver for a quick walk and found myself exceedingly impatient with his antics.  And then I suddenly felt and saw the ugly in me.  I did not want to be ugly, but there it was.  It was an uncomfortable but ultimately rewarding revelation.

And when Oliver and I came in the door my phone message light was flashing and the caller left a lengthy list of reasons she why she did not return my call sooner.   I called her back, left a third message; now contrite, with a brief explanation that I am having twelve people for dinner tonight and that it has me anxious and pressed for time.  And then she called me back, I apologized again and she said, “Don’t worry about it, we’ve all been there.”  He words transformed my ugly into connection and communion.

A Richard Rohr daily meditation excerpt titled “Becoming Who You Are, A Riverbed of Mercy” helped me appreciate my caller’s and my interaction.  

…”There is a part of you that is patient with both goodness and evil, exactly as God is.  There is a part of you that does not rush to judgment or demand closure now.  Rather, it stands vigilant and patient in the tragic gap that almost every moment offers. …It is awareness itself (as opposed to judgment itself), and awareness is not, as such, “thinking.”

What if, when we really need it, we could all hear, “Don’t worry about it, we’ve all been there.” 

In the Flow

God is...

Joy Cardin’s Wisconsin Public Radio, March 12, 2014 morning show, Unlocking "Ultimate" Human Performance, featured Steven Kotler who spoke of the amazing advances athletes are making by being in the flow, a mental state that maximizes human performance as they struggle to attain higher and higher levels of accomplishment.  He also used the word now, interchangeably with flow, and said it can apply to all of us as we go through life.  He cited heightened states of creativity in artists and writers as examples.     

I really appreciated Kotler's tie to non-athletes and how being in the Now relates to our advancement through struggle.  I posted a comment on the show, “Sound's like God energy to me.”  He wrote back, “Thanks Marcia.  Not sure what you mean by God energy, but we do know that there's considerable overlap between the neurobiology of flow states and the neurobiology of so-called mystical experiences.  What that means—hard to say for sure….”  I can relate.

In “God Never Hurries” I wrote: 

Tension was an almost unbearable constant for a year.  How does “the responsible one” care for her aging parents?  I devoured books on spirituality and self-help.  I paid attention to my dreams.  I prayed.  The right questions began to surface from my pain.  My relief was in my pain; my safety was in my questions.

Then at the end of May 1995 I made a promise to God that I would write something about each day for one year.  The drive to write was a lifesaver.  Knowing that I would put something of each day’s struggles, joys and ordinariness on paper focused me more in the present alongside my ache for truth.  And nowhere was I more present than in the natural world.  There the connection and comfort I felt from my surroundings seemed to be an inverse of my tension and pain. 

What if we could all accept our struggles in the Now and know eventually they will lead to growth, transformation, and forgiveness?