Comfort Zone

God is...

Early Saturday I attended a “Nature of Energy” workshop focused on intentionally creating an energy boundary around myself for good self-care--for protection from harmful energy coming from others.  It made a lot of sense.  For supper that night I had Chinese takeout and my fortune cookie said, “Comfort zones are most often expanded through discomfort.”  Sounds like paradox where truth reigns! 

At the workshop I learned a little bit of how much I don’t know about human energy work.  I’m familiar with both Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram where the goal is balance through self-knowledge.  This human energy work also promotes knowing who we each are through different defining elements of Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Nature.  Our human nature can contain parts of each element, but one element will be dominant.  Within that dominant element are both positive and negative aspects of ourselves challenging us to become more balanced. 

I found the idea of intentionally creating an energy boundary around myself comforting.  The idea that I can deflect another’s negative energy, or I can do ritual self-cleansing after being exposed to another’s negativity, felt empowering.  And probably the most important thing I learned, and no doubt will be the hardest to remember, is that I can never assume anything I say or do will be received as intended.  Plus, offering care or advice to another must always be done with the other’s permission.

I took a walk in the wood next to the river before the sun set on that Saturday.  There I became aware of the energy boundary I had surrounded myself with earlier in the day.  I intentionally removed it.  I just wanted to be one with the ground beneath my feet, the trees, air, sky, sun, wind and flowing water.  The following morning I again surrounded myself with my personal protective boundary.  Maybe it will help remind me to first ask permission to speak and do for another. 

What if the goal of all this inter-personal balancing work is leading us to a Rumi Guest House where together we will eventually balance each other within?

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary

awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably.  He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Heat

God is...

It’s been hot.  Temperatures in the mid nineties, dew points in the seventies, heat indices in the 100s—tropical.  My air conditioner ran for five consecutive days—unusual for me.  In my memoir, God Never Hurries, I wrote:  I do not like an air-conditioned home life.  I prefer being outside, even if it is only through an open window.  I do not want to go soft in the air-cooled house.  I like living more in rhythm with the weather if it’s hot, slow down, adjust my life (clean the basement).  Nevertheless, I had central air installed.  But I don’t turn it on—only when I can’t adjust my life—only when its too hot for the birds to sing—only when there’s no hope of a wind shift from the east—only when I can’t adjust my life.  I had my air conditioner installed when my aging parents came for extended visits.  It made life easier for all of us.

The biggest adjustment I made these past five days was to take my yellow-lab, Ben, to the dog park early in the morning while it was still mostly shady, and take another short walk after sundown around the neighborhood.  Once around the park and Ben was walking slowly toward the gate.  One day three black dogs waited at the gate ready to go home to their air-cooled lives while their owner tried to coax them around the park one more time.  I guess we are all going soft in our air-cooled houses.

My three grandchildren were at a summer camp this past week.  I worried about them in the extreme heat.  (People died in this last heat spell--mostly elderly.)  But I envied my grandchildren too.  They were coping and adjusting to the weather like I use to do.  And I also became very aware that I too am rapidly becoming an aging parent.

Last night when Ben and I went for our walk the dew point had dropped into the sixties, and the bright moon was growing to its soon-to-be fullness in clear, dark sky.  I thought about turning off the air when I got home even though the temperature was still 85 degrees at 9:00 p.m.  But when we returned home I was damp with perspiration and Ben was breathing heavily so I reluctantly left it on.  Waking at 5:00 a.m. and hearing the birds faintly singing, I got out of bed, opened the back door and heard their full chorus in cooled morning air.  I shut the air off and gratefully opened windows to a breeze, much less humidity, and then got in bed and let the birds sing me back to sleep.  When I woke again, I felt a new kind of energy in my body and fresh air in my lungs.  Maybe I should clean the basement the next time it gets hot.  It sure needs it.

Intuition/Curiosity/Courage

God is...

I recently read Gavin De Becker’s book The Gift of Fear and was struck by his brilliant descriptions of intuition.  He wrote:  Intuition connects us to the natural world and to our nature.  And.  Nature’s greatest accomplishment, the human brain, is never more efficient or invested than when its host is at risk.  Then intuition is catapulted to another level entirely, a height at which it can accurately be called graceful, even miraculous.  Intuition is the journey from A to Z without stopping at any other letter along the way…  And …Curiosity is, after all, the way we answer when intuition whispers, ‘There’s something there.’  De Becker also states real fear is not paralyzing but rather energizing and refers to it as coiled up energy.  Perhaps courage is another word for that energy. 

I know it all because it is what I lived to tell the tale about in my memoir, God Never Hurries.  It was as if the voice of God was speaking to me through the natural world.  The sun’s message to “Be not afraid”; a glimpse of heaven through grandmother moon; the bright blue sky and the clarity it brought; the deer that sparked my curiosity and later enlightened me; the fox that signaled caution; the raccoon that showed me evil often masquerades as good; and wilderness waters that relieved me of imposed guilt, were just some of the ways nature informed, comforted and emboldened me.  Periodically I still marvel at how I managed to hold my ground and not give into my father’s demands regarding his care.  All of the above, and more, was a long, difficult, but ultimately rewarding lesson in learning to trust in the slow work of God.  What if we all got in touch with our intuition, curiosity and courage?

Two Leo Tolstoy quotes sum it up:

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man [read men, women and children] and Nature shall not be broken.”

And

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”