To Life!

Life is a funny thing. We are born, hopefully, loved and we grow until we can't grow anymore. Then we set about creating lives, acquiring stuff, getting ahead and making lots of money (or not), having our own children and being busy. So busy, in fact, that we never realize that life is passing us by and will soon be over.

I am now of an age where all of my rushing, achieving, acquisition and working is behind me. My daughter is grown with children of her own, I'm retired and I have the luxury of being able to reflect upon more noble things.

When we lived on kibbutz in Israel we learned about "noble" worries. On kibbutz all of one's survival issues are covered; you have a roof over head, three squares a day and work to keep your hands busy. Even your laundry is done for you, child care is provided and there is built in community. All that is left for one to worry about are Noble Worries. i.e., am I happy, are my children okay, what causes the sky to be blue and flowers the flowers to grow? Noble Worries.

It sounds idyllic, but there are inherent problems with only having Noble Worries. For me it bred discontent and I think having only Noble Worries was the main reason we left and jumped back into the flames of life.

We had a lot of drama and struggles upon our return to the States. Our daughter wanted to stay in Israel and she acted out for years. We moved to Key West which was not the best environment for her. Her education suffered because the school system sucked! And she was a wild child.

We struggled because we were kibbutzniks with strange skill sets. I milked cows, cooked for the kibbutz population and I am an artist. My only avenue for work was to cook, especially since there are no cows in the Keys. I went to work in the hotels. Jon was a machinist in Israel, he milked cows too, and worked in the knitting industry prior to Israel and that was dead in the USA. He went to work in a shrimp farm during the night shift. His primary function was making sure that the shrimp didn't jump out of their pools and listening to NPR on the radio. He worked as a night watchman, a baker and a counterman at the local car dealer.

It took a good five years to find our way, but our money issues continued for far longer than that. But, we found our way. By the time I retired I was an ordained minister and working for hospice as a Chaplain. Jon was the operations manager at a very large apartment complex. 

I have learned that Life is good. All the issues, problems, annoyances, struggles fade into the background as you age. Joints hurt, you don't see as well and you're a little forgetful, stomach and digestive issues abound and you start to feel a little stupid as technology moves beyond you, but, as long as you have the survival issues covered, the Noble Thoughts give great meaning and joy to life. 

If you are still on that merry-go-round of life try to pause. Pause if only for a few minutes a day to ponder the Noble Thoughts. Devote a little time to thinking outside of your everyday issues. Look up. Develop a sense of awe. You will be very grateful that you did when you wake up one morning looking at your mother's hands on the end of your arms.

Seriously?

Seriously? I haven't written anything since 2011? Unbelievable!

Well, it has been an eventful two and half years. I left my job; got a new one, worked really hard, got laid off, am collecting unemployment, got turn down for a couple of other jobs. I worked really hard at my seminary as a volunteer, burned out, left pretty disheartened and grieved its lost, felt a large hole in my heart where my community should have been. My father died. I miss him, the ornery old coot. I am trying to close his estate out. My grandson was born, filled the hole in my heart and makes me laugh constantly. Now I am waiting for the next adventure, calling, career, thing to come into my way.

How that will look, I have no idea, but I am in pause mode. 

Being still has its advantages. Self-reflection is good. It can also be terribly boring, lonely; which I am quite often. I have rediscovered cooking and am getting fat (not good). But, I am enjoying cooking again. 

So all and all I am enjoying life. 

You are all caught up. That's all she wrote.

Birthday Wishes

Today is my birthday. I always have mixed feelings about my birthday and this year is no different. I am getting older and it's a little disturbing. I will never be young again in this lifetime. My body hurts quite often these days; my back, right hip and knee are at times very painful and not much relieves the pain and it's annoying. Driving at night is becoming a challenge. So, each passing year I need to surrender a little bit more.

I saw a little video this morning, it was a video of a litter of kittens and chronicled their growth until they were nine weeks old. My thoughts went to prayers for long, happy and healthy lives for each of them, but I was struck that they too will one day be old and things will ache and they will die. We all die. This is what I have learned from my work at hospice, we all die. Our lives are like packages, with all of the stories, heartaches, joys, accomplishments and losses tucked neatly inside. Each experience finds a place within the package and when we die our package is closed and wrapped with a ribbon and put away on a shelf. It is the life inside the package that truly matters and not package itself.

Life is. Life is long or short. Life is lived in health, sickness, poverty or wealth. The circumstances don't matter, it is Life that does. It is how we live our lives and the meaning that we find that is the most important thing of all.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. I woke up and it was foggy outside. You know that gentle cloud that descends and rests on us all, the world seems cloaked in stillness. The trees were at the absolute peak of color and the colors stood out brilliantly because of the fog. It was a soft day. A quiet day for reflection. As I was driving to do a bereavement visit I was totally struck by the feeling of Life. It is all Life. I am not separate from the tree, the squirrel, or that man over there or you. I am Life. You are Life. It is just Life. We need this feeling of separateness in order to experience life. If there was no illusion of separation then Life would be a sea of amoebas floating endlessly without ever bumping into each other. It's the bumping that makes Life worth living, it makes it interesting. But, it was as if the illusion was stripped away and I only saw Life and it was beautiful! As it happens during most autumns, by the end of the day most of the leaves had fallen.

Today I awoke to brilliant sunshine streaming in my window. My room has a golden hue. It is cold outside and the trees are showing their bones. I can never decide which season I like the best. Each has it beauty. In winter the purple lace of tiny branches agains the grey sky. Freshly fallen snow glistening in the sun. Soup, I love soup! Darkness comes early and wraps us in peacefulness. In spring the shades of green burgeoning forth from the branches make my heart sing. The warmth of the returning sun, the songs of the birds. Tiny sprouts coming from the ground to call of the sun. Forsythias, I love forsythias. In summer the deep greens against the bluest blue of the sky make me feel giddy. And the sun, I love the heat of the sun. Of course, there are flowers and picnics, an abundance of fruits and vegetables which all make life in summer joyful. But, I think I love autumn most of all; the chill in the air, pumpkins, descending darkness, foggy days. And of course, color. I love the color most of all.

As I watched the leaves falling and dancing as the wind blew them up the street, I was struck by the idea of life as a package. The leaves came to the tree as a gentle green not so very long ago, they grew into the lush green of summer and turned a brilliant red or gold with the change of light and the chill in the air, and now they are on the ground, soon to decay and return to the earth, the winter will complete the cycle and the leaves will nurture the tree in the spring. And the cycle will begin again.

Is that how our life is? I am in the autumn of my life. Will I die and the totality of this life be the food for the next? Will I emerge again in springtime and draw from the earth what I experienced in the life just ended?

It seems to me that Life teaches through example and if we look at nature we will learn the truth of all that is. Life continues... always. Today is the day I was born. It is 11/11/11 and that seems like such a auspicious date. I am glad to be alive. Thank you, dear Creator, for my life, thank you God for Life. I truly am a divine idea in the mind of God; we all are.

Much love,
Susan

Prayerful Image

I found this quote on prayer the other day. I love the language and the imagery of it and I want to share it here.

Reverend Carolyn Colbert’s words on prayer:

“I have this notion that we live in a sea of prayer. All over the world, in almost all traditions, prayer is being practiced. Practiced in a multitude of forms. Prayers are chanted, prayers are danced, prayers are spoken aloud and sounded in silence within. Prayers are written on paper and scattered like petals on the waters of the world. Some prayers are floated out on the breath; others are pounded out on the drumbeat of our hearts. Prayers are said and sung and danced morning noon and night. They are flung to the wind by flapping flags and spun into the air by turning wheels. Prayers are sounded from the tops of majestic mountains and whispered by children at bedtime in the close and holy darkness.”

"We live in a sea of prayers..." I see myself floating on the prayers, being held up by them. When I swam in the Dead Sea there is so much salt that I couldn't possibly sink, the water literally held me up. I see prayer like this; it holds me up. Prayers "...are flung to the wind by flapping flags and spun into the air by turning wheels." Prayers are surrounding the Earth, just as clouds circle the globe. What a gorgeous image! Held by prayer. Held up by prayer. The only thing required of us is to believe in the power of prayer and know they work.

The Castle Walls

I have started to write a couple times over the last six weeks and not much would come. I wrote a long and ponderous post about dying, but I didn't post it because I sounded like a pompous ass. Since moving out of my father's house I have been involved in arranging furniture and hanging pictures; activities that I love to do. I stand back and look at my little house and my hearts feels glad. It really is cute!

Being away from my father and brother has created turmoil. Not turmoil in that I am running over there and caring for my father, but turmoil because I'm not running over there and caring for him. I am very conflicted about the whole thing. I have not seen either of them at all since I left. Good thing/bad thing. I feel very guilty for walking away. I feel terrible that my father is alone. Yes, my brother is there, but my father might as well be alone. My brother does nothing. The woman that we hired to be a companion/driver says that she tells my father all the time to ask Karl for help, but he says Karl refuses. Which adds to my sense of guilt. I am torn and I don't really know how to approach the whole situation.

However, being away from my father and my brother has filled me with peace. I am my own person. My brother's passive aggressive behavior doesn't touch me anymore. I am away from his drinking, his smoking, his sick sexual fantasies which disgusted me. All of it and it fills me with comfort. I come home to my cute little house and it's clean. It's peaceful. And it's quiet.

All of this leads me to my castle walls. My defenses that I've constructed. I see perfectly how I am bound by my psychology. How my defenses hold me back and keep me from participating fully in life. How I am not my reactions; I am not ego and yet, my defenses define who I am in this body. How does one move pass these castle walls?

When I teach meditation I talk about our castle walls and how meditation slowly over the course of years will break down the castle walls and allows the light of God/Universe/Divine in. And it does do that, but I see very clearly how I am still confined by my walls. They are much more transparent, but they are still there. I guess this is the derivation of the saying, "hitting a wall," it is my own wall I keep running into. Crash! I am always confronted by myself and they same issues over and over. Do we ever leave them totally behind?

I echo Ronald Reagan (Oh, my God, I echo Ronald Reagan!) "Tear down that wall!"

Dear God, I am here. I am willing. Help me to move passed what holds me. Help me to move passed what binds. Be with me, Dear One. Help me to know who I am really am, so that I may know you more fully. Help me to stand naked, clothed only in my being, like a tree in winter, devoid of that behind which I hide. Amen.

The Heart of The Matter

The following is a sermon that I will give at the first worship service of the year. I think its message is one that everyone can relate to. 

Heartbroken, Open hearted, Heartfelt, heartbeat, heart and soul, heart space, heartsick, Bighearted, Coldhearted, Disheartening, downhearted, fainthearted, halfhearted, heartache, heartily, heartless, heart-filled, heartthrob, heavyhearted, lighthearted, softhearted, stouthearted, wholehearted. All of these words are part of our language because our hearts are not just a physical organ. Our hearts are the connection between our physical being-ness and our soul.

The heart of the matter is that all of humanity growing spiritually. But, honestly what does that mean in every day language? It seems as if our hearts must break as they open, which may be exactly the heart of the matter. We are “Broken Open” as Elizabeth Lesser’s book tells us.

And honestly it doesn’t feel all that great to be broken, broken open

We live lives behind self-constructed castle walls. We build these walls as a form of protection against the hurts, wounds and unexpected arrows flung at us by fate and fortune. The deeper the wounds- the thicker we build our walls. Some walls are almost impenetrable… almost impenetrable. No one is able to completely isolate themselves from the light of Love. No one is beyond redemption. No one can completely ignore their heart in their heart of hearts.

Spiritual practice breaks down our walls and this happens in tiny steps of which we may not even be aware. We turn around and realize that we did not react from the same old pattern. We woke up, even if it is only for a moment. Of course we will go back to sleep. We always go back to sleep.

When I was thinking about giving this talk today I meditated and in my meditation I was pondering all of the words and phrases that we just named. Heart broken, open hearted, compassionate heart… but, I also clearly heard in my head, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.” I read this book in high school. It was the time of the Civil Rights movement. It was a time of turmoil and heartbreak and struggles: riots, beatings, assignations that rocked our country in our very hearts, to our very souls. So, hearing the name of this book in meditation, of course, I needed to revisit it and see what was there that would help with this talk. “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” is a story of John Singer, a deaf man and the people he encounters in a small town during the 1930s. It’s interesting that the people John Singer meets feel drawn to him and confide in him and he can’t hear what they are saying. He is safe. Therefore, in essence they are talking to themselves, baring their hearts to man that can’t hear them. John Singer has his own heartbreak that he carries alone, unable to communicate his pain. Each character has a story of their own heartbreak, broken dreams and sorrow- very much like all of us in this room.

At the end of the story, Biff Brannon, the owner of the diner in this little town, suddenly awakens… “Then suddenly he felt a quickening in him. His heart turned and he leaned his back against the counter for support. For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who—one word—love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror... he was suspended between radiance and darkness. Between bitter irony and faith."

Moving beyond our castle walls is unbelievably terrifying and most of us can only do it with tiny forays into the light and like hermit crabs we quickly close back up after only a moment or two in the light. It is my prayer that each of you will open your shell for just a moment and feel safe enough to feel the light during this our offering here today.

Even if it’s only for a moment I hope that you feel safe enough to rest in your heart, like our friend the hermit crab open your heart enough to feel the light. Rest in the arms of God. You are safe here. And like Biff feel that moment of radiance. If you feel it once, your’ heart will long for it again and again.

  

An old Cherokee told his grandson, "My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies, & ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, & truth." The boy thought about it, and asked, "Grandfather, which wolf wins?" The old man quietly replied, "The one you feed."