Connections

The Mystery within...

From “God Never Hurries:”

…my heart, mind, body and soul were consumed in what the day might hold.  But I was most aware of my soul.  It seemed to be telling me, “Love is courage talking, not long-suffering silence.” 

***

I helped my mother bathe.  I felt my touch asking for her forgiveness.  I saw it in her eyes.  My heart wanted to stay.  My head said, “Go”; my back said “Hurry”; my soul said; “Leave.” 

During those years of intense learning, as I struggled with my aging parents needs and my own self-care, I began experiencing my mind, heart, body and soul as distinct parts working together on my behalf.  I ached for naturalness and just wanted to blend into the natural world where everything is connected and works to support the whole.  There a deer first led me to know curiosity was the way to go; and finally another deer showed me others do lay down their life in order for me to grow.  Thunder storms, snow falls, sunrises, sunsets, frogs, fox, herons, hummingbirds, black birds, sea gulls, raccoon, and more all came with messages from which I learned. 

So I wasn’t surprised when I heard at Jean Watson’s Caritas Caring Science workshop that there is current science at Heart Math Research studying how the physical heart is more than just a pump but communicates with the brain.  In my experience I would add the body and soul are also in cahoots along with the natural world. 

What if we all became aware of the connections within ourselves, between each other, and the natural world?         

Project Belonging

The Mystery within...

I had a dream last night about a project to get everyone, everywhere to learn and speak a language of belonging.  It was one of those dreams when upon awakening it quickly fades from memory.  But I seem to recall the whole world was involved in creating a belonging language and just before awakening I was in a classroom of young children who were excited to be working on this project.  No doubt this dream was the result of listening to john a. powell’s conversation with Krista Tippet last week on how we might open up our anguished race conversation into the spiritual work of self and belonging.

Powell was right when he said we do not yet have the words to speak what needs to be said about race relations in America.  I looked up belong in my Thesaurus and most of the synonyms left me cold with references to card carrying members.  There were some words like respect, regard, concern, involve and touch that fit with powell’s focus on the spiritual work needed to promote belonging.  I believe the language of belonging will come forth when we all know, on a gut level, how deeply we are connected to one another and the natural world.

My knowing of this deep connection came when fear and intuition led me into nature where I encountered an Energy that told me to “Be not afraid” and led me to trust I would be shown the way to work through my struggles with my aging parents’.  I was shown my complicity in my troubles and gradually found ways to change myself--the only person I really can change.  It seems fear permeates both sides of race relations in America today.  Perhaps asking to know our complicity in this trouble will eventually lead us to a caring language of belonging where we all fit together. 

What if everyone everywhere worked on project belonging?

Spirit Animals

The Mystery within...

My August 5, 2013 blog titled “My Spider” told of how I came to know, and be grateful for my totem spider that appeared to me while on a “Women Gathering” retreat.  I wasn’t at all sure I wanted this spider spirit until I began to understand what it was asking me to suspend:  judgment of others and myself; anxiety for things undone; and the need to be perfect or right.  And after I learned that my spider is the keeper of the primordial alphabet, and teaches one how to write with power and creativity, I was in love with it.

Two more spirit animals have now recently showed up very unexpectedly in my life in the forms of a golden Palomino and a black horse.  They appeared on the first thawing day of this winter’s frigid grip while I walked in a wood not far from my house with my yellow Lab, Oliver.  Oliver stopped and stood transfixed with something among the bare trees deep in the snow-covered woods.  I followed his gaze and there stood a yellow horse!  My disbelief doubled when a black horse soon joined it.  We all just stood watching one another until finally the horses snorted, and then Oliver gave one bark, at which the pair turned and ran north into a grove of pines. 

This little 17-acre wood, bounded by private residences, a bike trail, and the Milwaukee River is home to squirrels, birds, chipmunks and deer.  Not horses.  I figured they probably escaped from their paddock somewhere and were enjoying a little spring fling.  I thought somebody should know where they were so when I got to the bike trail I asked a couple walking there if they had a cell phone so I could alert authorities of the horses whereabouts.  Later that night I called the Ozaukee County Sheriff’s dispatch to see if anyone reported a missing black and Palomino horse.  The dispatcher said no and they sent two deputies there and found nothing. 

I looked on-line for the spiritual attributes of horses and found Horse Journeys.  I learned horses are symbols of freedom and will awaken and discover my own freedom and power.  They teach fear kills creativity and can lead me to trust my own inner wealth of knowledge making me aware all things are possible.  Horses can reconnect me with the natural world, encourage me to be in the moment, and inspire a heightened sense of awareness.  Some of the goodness horses possess leads to a balanced social order because of their heightened sensory awareness, self-responsibility, and support of the greater good for the whole community.  These spirit guides can help me claim my authentic heart so what I say, do, think and feel comes from love.  I also found a golden horse signifies the coming of a spiritual manifestation and action; and a black horse is symbolic of death and rebirth.  I am thrilled to accept these new spirit animals in my life and welcome their mentoring.

What if we all became aware of our spirit animals with messages for our life?  

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?

Nature is...

God is...

I attended a Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, Spiritual World of Nature program this past week where we were invited to briefly share what nature means to us.  I said, “Nature is where God talks and I listen.”  After speaking those words I began to appreciate again the gifts accompanying the suffering that led me into the natural world where I found a unique solace and answers to many of life’s toughest questions. I am grateful for having recorded the comfort and insights I experienced in my memoir “God Never Hurries.”  Now I can remember and relive them, and share with others.

Nature is—where the morning sun beamed through the trees and whispered, “Be not afraid;” where I came to know a caring Presence to whom I belong; it is celebrating freedom at dusk that was like a trip to the moon on gossamer wings; it is a magnificent, warm, soul soaking rain; it is a huge oak tree where I sometimes took my troubles and always parted with a sense of communion and strength; it is a blue moonlit snow drift where I played with my late son Joe and dog Lydia; it is a bright, fall, moonlit night that called me outside to write one night; it is the smell of wood smoke in my sweatshirt and the rustle of dry leaves in dark trees above that gave me respite from my troubles; it is a curious deer that encouraged my curiosity and later another deer that showed me all is Eucharist; it is tall gray herons wading in a thick gray blanket of fog that let me sense the seamlessness of the world’s soul; it is a sunlit fog that showed the church of my birth in a rusting old car buried upside down on the beach; it is water running under a milky cascade of ice on the bluff that sounded like a happy, vibrant church where everyone has a voice; and peddling my bike past a swamp, where I heard frogs talking, I was reminded to talk more and share myself with others.  I could go on and on but I think you can understand why I listen when God talks.    

A common theme from others who shared what nature meant for them at last week’s program was a sense of balance and centering.  And then our competent instructor led us to see how the interdependency of diverse natural communities is the source of their strength and order. 

We too are a part of the natural world.  Could valuing the interdependency of our diverse human communities lead us to strength and order?  What if we all prayed toward that end?         

Deeply Connected

God is...

Have you ever felt deeply connected to someone or something and experienced a kinship and empowerment through that connection?  I think those are the times we can become aware of the God energy flowing through us.  And even though that energy is always within, it seems awareness of it comes easiest in either times of great sorrow or great joy. 

When I struggled mightily with my aging parents’ care needs I felt that kinship and empowerment in the natural world, and sometimes from others.  It is that God energy, and the learning that came from it, that I share in God Never Hurries.  I wrote … It was a time of heightened consciousness and vivid dreams.  I awoke one morning with words floating in my head.  I did not remember a specific dream, but there were these words that wanted to be put together.  I reached for my bedside pencil and paper, and here’s how they became arranged: 

God is in the sunshine,

God is in the rain.

God is in the wheat field

And in the sky again.

God is in the birds

Who sing to you and me.

God’s also in the puppy that

Plays so gleefully.

God is in the mountains,

God is in the sea.

But best of all, don’t you know

God’s in you and me.

What if we really looked everyday for this mysterious God living in all people and all things?

Lost?

God is...

Philip Chard, psychotherapist, award winning newspaper columnist, and fine human being, writes the weekly column “Out of My Mind” which runs every Tuesday in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  He also graciously wrote the endorsement for my memoir.  In his May 14, 2013 column titled “Finding one’s way is no easy journey” he suggests, “…existential disorientation calls for visiting one’s existential home, which is the natural world.”  Chard’s words transported me back to times when my internal GPS (God Positioning System) helped re-orient me mentally, spiritually and psychologically.  Conveying those special times became my primary goal in writing God Never Hurries.

There was the candlelight walk at a nearby state park on Lake Michigan’s shore …There was special mystery in the dark fall air.  It was as if God was right there.  The leaves were wet soft, and silent under our feet.  As we walked in the black velvet night each step required a little faith….  Then there was the windy winter walk to the valley …As I entered that more gently sloping entrance into the calm valley, I slipped on slick ice under this fresh deep snow.  But it was like falling on a soft white cushion.  A floor of very slippery, but deeply cushioned ice was in much of the valley.  I fell or crawled or sometimes just sat down—moving like a child learning to walk.  I was like a child learning to walk with deeper spiritual and psychological discovery….  And …I rolled back up a large drift at the mouth of the valley that I had rolled over to get to the beach, but before rolling down the other side I stopped at the top to appreciate the brilliant blue sky.  There I decided I needed to have more faith and a lot less fuss and debate with myself…. And I responded to the sweet young outfitter guide’s question as to what I wanted from my wilderness experience—I told Jeremy I just wanted blend into my surroundings.  My body was aching from all the accumulated tension in my back neck and shoulders.  Instinctively I was aching for naturalness….  Every season gave me new and deeper insights that helped me navigate through dark times and brought deep learning. 

Chard concludes his May 14 article suggesting we slow down, practice mindfulness in nature and learn about its ways, and he said it “helps us plant our feet in the real world.”  He ended his column with a quote from the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor who wrote:  “God does some of God’s best work with people who are seriously lost.”  I can attest to that.  What if my internal GPS had not been working when I really needed it?