A Sufi Asks

The Mystery within...

An old Sufi saying asks:

 “Are you able to stay still long enough to allow the mud that swirls around you to settle so that you can see clearly?” 

What a powerful visual metaphor that is for mindfulness and reflection.  In my mind’s eye I picture a glass jar of water with dirt dumped in, stir it or shake it, and the water becomes very cloudy.  But let that jar sit still for a while and the water clears as the dirt eventually settles to the bottom.

I was once very stirred and shaken by my mother’s Alzheimer’s and both of my parents’ care needs.  I doubt I would have survived that time without immersing myself in the natural world, sitting with my pain every night, and reflecting and writing about those joys and sorrows for three years.  Those daily reflections and writings eventually became my story in "God Never Hurries."     

Life is easier, more even now.  But everyday living can still bring occasions of dirt dumping.  I know I could see so much clearer if I returned to daily reflection and writing and got myself outside more in God’s beauty.

What if we all became still long enough to see more clearly?

Lessons Everyday

The Mystery within...

Three things I am quite sure about this week:

1.  Every one of us is unique and we each come with our own set of gifts and faults. 

2.  Our faults are pure gold for they hold the potential for true humility, compassion, and the ability to love everyone else regardless of their faults.

3.  Every day presents opportunities to grow in love for others and our self through the power of reflection. 

What if we all knew our true potential for humility, compassion and love, present in each day’s living?

Unchurched?

The Mystery within...

Unchurched is a word I have been hearing lately used to describe people who are no longer card carrying, dues paying members of a religious sect.  I don’t much like that word used to describe those of us who have left formal religion.  During a discussion between Arthur Zajonc, a physicist and contemplative, and Michael McCullough, a professor of psychology, on Krista Tippet’s On-Being Program, Mind and Morality:  A Dialogue, it was said of people who have left formal religion they have stepped out of the little church of virtues and have stepped into the virtues of the big church.  I really like that analogy. 

I love the big church’s virtues.  Knowing that all of creation, everything and everyone in it, is holy, helps me look for the Divine Mystery everyday.  Knowing that all of creation, everything and everyone in it, is connected, gives me pause to reflect on how my actions affect everything and everyone.  I love the freedom to be curious and to question everything.  I’ve become comfortable with knowing that answers only raise more questions to be explored.  I love the challenge of reflection and looking beyond trouble and hurtfulness.  I love knowing I belong to the big church.               

Other points that touched me in the discussion between Zajonc and McCullough were: we need to allow for differences and to explore them in safety, with respect; morality is our relationship to others and the world; empathy and compassion activates moral progress; there is no good argument for treating people differently; the fact that we can choose to separate ourselves from one another, and live and learn in a monoculture, is absolutely poisonous; education should teach us how we are going to be together as a human community; and we need to use our attention wisely.  

What if the little church of virtues and the virtues of the big church got together?

Life's Messy

The Mystery within..

There was a vacuum cleaner commercial some years back with the slogan, “Life’s messy.  Clean it up.”  I’ve learned from life’s traumas to keep cleaning because like vacuuming it’s not something I do once.  Learning from trouble requires ongoing engagement.  The important thing is to do the work again and again.  If there were no struggles, would we ever know true forgiveness?  And how else would compassion be learned?  

My traumas taught me about hope, trust, patience, reflection and planning along with forgiveness and compassion.  I heard Martin Luther King had said, “Struggle is about hope.”  His words helped me accept my angst in caring for my aging parents.  Also enlightening and comforting, was a copy of a Teilhard de Cardin’s prayer, “Above All Trust in the Slow Work of God.”  That prayer seemed to find me whenever I really needed to let go and trust things would eventually work out.  I also remember being very open to everyone and everything around me during that difficult time.  My heightened awareness to the people, places and things I encountered daily was the source of my learning, along with reflection and writing that helped clarify the next steps I needed to take.

I sometimes long for that heightened alertness that made me so very present to what was going on around me, but not the accompanying trauma. Lately, I tried applying Bessel A. van der Kolk’s recommendation to hover calmly and objectively over my thoughts, feelings and emotions as a way to access mindfulness and not let my emotions hijack me.  It did help me respond to others more calmly and made me want to plan for better outcomes in daily living.  Remembering to hover is the tough part.  

What if we could all know struggle stands for hope and to trust mindfulness will eventually lead us to better life outcomes?  

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?          

Indigenous Self

God is . . . 

In my memoir “God Never Hurries” I wrote:  ...I awoke in the middle of the night.  My room was bright with moonlight.  It called me outside to write.  Downstairs I put on a warm jacket and went out to soak in the heavenly light.  The evergreens were casting deep shadows.  The apple tree and grape vine glowed holy.  I bet I looked pretty good too in that Godly light. 

The air was super still in the cool quiet night.  In the neighbor’s yard a lone cricket found enough warmth to manage a slow chirp.  The barn a couple of blocks away released the smell of cows and hay.  And it seemed I faintly heard traffic on the freeway though it is well over two miles away.

I looked up at my bedroom window and saw Mr. Edison’s incandescent light.  It didn’t look like progress against this holy night.  Early ancestors, and even not so long ago, Native Americans must have had better nourished souls living closer to this Godliness.  I prayed, “Dear God, I know we can’t go back.  So please show us how to nourish our souls in this ever changing world.

Answers to my request on that glorious September night in the late 1990s started coming gradually after I sensed caring for myself was imperative as I struggled with my aging parents care needs.  l began to feel a part of something bigger than myself when on ritual walks in nature where I would find solace in reflection and found answers to some of my troubles.  Those walks helped me sort out what being human means, and to better understand how inextricably life is linked to the many small and big deaths we encounter on our journey.  Our ancestors had hands on experience with so much in nature which must have brought them closer to the living and dying experiences from which our modern, compartmentalized lives, seems to separate us from. 

I made the prayer feathers pictured above at a Women Gathering retreat given through Way of the Willow last August.  (See August 5, 2013 blog post titled “My Spider” and what my totem animal came to teach me.)  On the mornings I remember to hold my feathers and face each of the four directions and pray my day goes so much better.  Facing east, the place of Illumination, I thank the Great Spirit for what has been shown me, and ask for more.  Facing south, the place of Trust, I give gratitude for what trust has taught me and pray for more.  Facing west, the place of Introspection, I am thankful for what reflecting has brought me, and ask to go deeper.  Facing north, the place of Wisdom, I am thankful for what wisdom has come to me over the years, pray for more, and ask that it always be balanced with heart.  I close my prayer at each direction with a request, “Help me know what to let go of today, help me know what to embrace.”  Way of the Willow also just held a day of reflection on the Meaning of Mortality (see link to the program’s opening video, The Meaning of Death).  There I was able to share the annual Pre-funeral Luncheon I wrote about in my January 6, 2014 blog about old friends getting together to share what is important to them and to wink at death.  And then I had a rare opportunity this past weekend when my children, grandchildren and I were all in the van together to tell them about the green burial workshop I attend recently and learned about options for in-home care of the dying and the dead, and a new, even more environmentally sensitive option to cremation, the resomation process.  And I am thinking now, maybe I am becoming a budding indigenous grandma.

What if we all found ways to touch our indigenous selves?                   

God Energy

God is...

After being invited to give a talk at a Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, Spiritual World of Nature program, I remarked, “I will look forward to preparing for it since I always learn so much in the process.”  As the date is now just around the corner I was hoping for some of that past enthusiasm to get me started formatting my upcoming presentation titled, “Does Nature Speak to You?”  The offering description states I will share how I overcame difficulty “… by watching, waiting, and trusting in the healing messages God sends through others and the natural world.”  Reading that description left me feeling flat and uninspired until I understood the critical missing spark.  Every day for three years, during a very difficult time, I sat down and reflected on the joys, sorrows and troubles of that day and briefly wrote them down.  Those words had power.  They put perspective on my troubles, which gave me just a little distance from them so I could be open to God’s healing messages.  Those words formed a holy trinity with others and the natural world where God speaks.   

In my presentation preparation I recalled a quote from my past work life as a Public Affairs Specialist for the USDA Forest Service, by its founder Gifford Pinchot.  I am just a little unsure if this is the exact wording.  I believe he said, “There are only two things important in this world, people and natural resources.”  I goggled quotes by Gifford Pinchot and could not find it among them.  I think it should be.  And I am recalling at the end of my blog post last week titled "Ask, Seek, Find" I related Carolyn Baker’s telling in her book, “Reclaiming the Dark Feminine,” the importance of ritual and how returning to our indigenous selves reclaims our connection to all things and one another.  What could that look like today?  There is no shortage of material for reflection.     

My Audubon presentation description ends with “If nature speaks to you spiritually you will have a chance to share your insights and experiences.”  I look forward to facilitating that sharing for we are all better off when we all share.   

What if we were all open to learning from one another? 

Looking with Evolutionary Eyes

God is...

I have been looking at events of this past week with an eye toward evolution.  There was my ten-year-old granddaughter’s holiday program where I saw her class on an evolutionary timeline and wondered what positive outcomes and challenges lay ahead of them.  I noted a sprinkling of ethnic diversity in her class and also children differently able both physically and emotionally.  I recalled the NPR program I heard earlier that day that featured Paul Salopek who has embarked on a seven year project to walk around the world on a route that would have been traveled by our pre-agrarian hunter-gatherer ancestors.  Salopek said his slow paced foot travels is giving him a heightened presence to people, their significant problems, and to the landscapes he is encountering.  I wondered if the ease my grandchildren have with electronics, and which allows us all to accomplish so much more in much less time, also contributes to what I see as hurry sickness that leads us to be less present to what matters.  And I let myself get rattled as I was beginning to back out of my parking space at the Post Office, and another driver darted into the parking area, laid on his horn, and then shot past me to make a sharp right into an adjoining parking space.  I thought of David Sloan Wilson’s depiction of the less than social water striders and felt like I had just bumped into one.  And I attended the funeral of a Caucasian family friend, a kind and gentle man whose children intermarried and gave him beautiful grand children mixed with Black heritage, another with Hispanic heritage.  And then there was Nelson Mandela’s death this past week and his beautiful legacy of forgiveness—true liberation, and his deep concern for continuing widespread poverty throughout the world.  Looking with evolutionary eyes has seemed to facilitate reflection and that is a good thing.

We are so very young as a species.  Our hunter-gatherer ancestors began leaving Africa 60,000 years ago.  (The age of our earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old.)  Agriculture began 10,000 years ago and the first cities appeared only 6,000 years ago.  Wilson tells us in his book, “The Neighborhood Project--Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time,” that human nature does go beyond self-interest, and that reason needs to be the basis of our actions.  To that end an interdisciplinary effort to look at how nature regulates, and apply that regulation to economics, became the focus of a conference titled the “Nature of Regulation. “  The conference brought together highly respected individuals from animal behavior, anthropology, business, cognitive psychology, economics, ecology, evolutionary psychology, finance, history, law, neurobiology, peace studies, political science, prevention science, social-insect biology, sociology, and theoretical biology to consider the following:

-       Rethink the theory of human regulatory systems from the ground up.

-       Learn from other biological systems about the nature of regulation.

-       Reach a consensus on what constitutes human nature.

-       Appreciate the importance of environmental mismatch.

-       Take cultural evolution seriously.

What if we all looked with evolutionary eyes that go beyond self-interest; eyes that respect and highlight diversity, and search for ways to end global poverty.  

So Who Are We?

God is...

David Sloan Wilson shares some of Teilhard de Chardin’s (1881 – 1955) ideas on how we have come to be who we currently are.  Even though the Catholic Church forbid this priest, paleontologist and mystic from publishing his work, friends did so after his death.  David Sloan Wilson writes, “For Teilhard, the vital spark that transformed us from a mere species to a new evolutionary process is the capacity for reflection…the power acquired by a consciousness to turn in upon itself, to take possession of itself as an object endowed with its own particular consistency and value…to know oneself…to know that one knows. …  For Teilhard, there had to be an atmosphere of trust for reflection to get started in the first place.” 

Wilson attributes modern dysfunctional social life to a lack of trust in one another—think bitter political disputes for which the only goal is to beat one’s opponent.  He states, “Left unattended, cultural evolution will take us where we don’t want to go.”  Small groups, with trustworthy social partners are seen as essential to counteract dysfunction.  He uses the metaphor of the human immune system for it is profoundly cooperative requiring a team of agents performing different functions that are in constant communication with one another.  Alternatively, a dysfunctional immune system eventually destroys its host.  He says what’s needed is a meaning system that respects factual knowledge as scientists and scholars do, and then use that knowledge to implement values.  To sustain a functional social life we must listen, reflect and give meaning to our goals.

One of the factual studies Wilson cites is of a transformational first grade teacher who taught school for thirty-four years in a poor neighborhood.  As her former students became adults they were measured for grade of education completed, occupational attainment, and condition of their home.  Sixty-four percent of her students scored in the highest category, compared with only 29 percent for students of the other teachers.  When the other teachers were asked how this first grade teacher taught they said with a lot of love by expressing confidence in her children, vowing that no child would leave her class without being able to read, staying after school to help struggling children, and sharing her lunch with students who forgot theirs.   Sloan says gardeners would understand these stunning results since they “…know that a small difference in how the seedlings are tended can make a huge difference in their yield at the end of the season.”

Looking back over my 70 years I can see how small groups of people helped me evolve and overcome the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  But I believe my greatest assist came when I reflected and wrote each evening for three years as I struggled with my aging parents care needs.  And Teilhard was definitely with me during that difficult time for when life got especially tough I would stumble across his prayer, “Above All Trust in the Slow Work of God.”

What if we all belonged to a trusted small helping group and reflected each day on our struggles?