Thank You Very Sweet

I won an award for best cookie at a holiday party last year. This year, obsessed with winning again, I had to out do myself. I workshopped a new cookie recipe for nearly two weeks.

On the day of the party the host sent a text indicating that we all needed to bring 3-4 dozen cookies.

I made 12.

12 cookies.

I didn’t go.

Instead, me and my 12 delicious cookies stayed home.

Make sense of it.

Christ came to my garden last night. There was peace. The crying stopped. The fire burned. The wild beneath was beautiful. And He came and swept sweet kitten up and carried her to Paradise.

She lived in paradise here. Safe, fed, a wilderness below with her mama and siblings. She played. She was watched over.

And now she has transitioned in peace. Mama and siblings are feasting on a big rat this morning. A repast.

For a moment my neighbor came out and found some peace. He lit his blunt and turned his chair to face my fire. His two big dogs with him, quiet. There was peace.

Christ came to my garden in the inner city of Newark last night and there was peace. I slept well.

The goal of yoga is to quiet the mind so that you can sit still in the presence of God.  I realize this is what I had been doing in all of my searchings: when I sat around the fire with the Mayans in Guatemala, when I sat in the sweat lodge with the Mexicas in Central Mexico, when I sit in the sauna at the Korean spa in Edison, go to acupuncture, practice yoga..  It has all been to quiet this spinning mind so that I can sit in God’s presence,

again.

It happened in the midst of tragedy that I stopped controlling for a moment.  When Kesner died.  I stopped for a moment and I felt a profound sense of being held.  In tragedy this happens, they say.  Tragedy begets deep spiritual experiences. I was held. Silenced. 

And I’ve been looking for that freedom ever since.

It comes more easily now with practice.  Daily, I practice. And daily I find pockets of grace, these moments of true freedom. 

Prayer – Lord release me from the bondage of self.  May I open to a view of you that is beyond my imagination.  May I find rest in your unimaginable greatness and strength.  May I find refuge and comfort in you and be imbued with a power beyond my imagination.  May I trust in the order of things, in your perfect timing; and that in each moment – if I make myself available – that you have the power to work through me and use me.  May I step out and you step in.

Current events have people feeling worried, afraid and powerless.  If you feel this way, Congratulations!  Powerlessness is the beginning of true faith.  Do we truly believe in an almighty God that can move mountains?  Have we seen and witnessed mountains moved in our own lives? I have!  I have been delivered from toxic people, places and ways of being.  Things that I thought I would never overcome have been removed from my path.  

Look to the hills, friends. When David said “I will look to the hills from whence commeth my help…:” (Psalm 121) he wasn’t looking forward, he was looking back.  He was looking at all that God had already protected him from, the places where he had been held, covered and rescued. He was looking back to say I will remember these times in the days ahead.  I will remember my story.  I will remember that I serve an all-powerful God and God has helped me.

Can you look back to find hope in the days ahead? What blocks us from fully surrendering? Is it the need to control? To understand? To be right? As much as we lament, there is a part of us that is actually attached to human misery – to winning, being right, belaboring sorrow, to shame, to guilt, to fear.  What needs to happen in order for us to let go so that we can become clear vessels that are available for God’s use?  

Some of the most inspiring human acts happen during times of world suffering.  Nothing that is happening is new, we are a part of a vast and extensive world history.  Our lives are just a jot on the timeline. This is a moment in time.

How will you be used in this moment?  What will you do?  How will you be a purveyor of Gods love on this earth now?  Will you?  Will you make yourself available?

I first learned of the concept of sacred rage while reading about of the myth of Pacha Karmaq, the Father of the World according to Peruvan Ichma Culture. The Ichma predated the Inca’s and they believe that God created Man and Woman but, in so doing, forgot to create food. When man died from malnourishment, woman got angry and demanded reparation from God. Pacha Karmaq responded by blessing woman with fertility and populating the earth with food. According to this myth, the sacred rage of woman led her to demand healing change.

In my view, this myth speaks to the need for sacred rage over neglect and how it can inspire creative resourcefulness within us.  It begs us to ask questions of ourselves about what is being neglected in our lives, communities, country, and world.  What is being neglected in education and in spiritual development? Can we speak our truth about these areas of neglect and even muddle in the uncomfortable waters of rage over them?

I am enraged by the marginalization of women in stories about God.  I am an ordained Christian minister with a Master of Divinity from an Ivy League institution.  I learned about God as man in my formal and informal training. Courses about God and women were specialized electives, not general track requirements. 

The year 2020 created time and space for me to explore the ways that world cultures throughout history have understood who God is.  I learned many stories about powerful women; Goddesses, Wisdom Keepers, Sages, Leaders, Healers. I learned stories of women so tall and majestic that ‘they have to bow their heads when the moon hangs low’ (Hafiz – “Dropping Keys).  I learned myths about women with super powers and the audacity to express rage toward God, I learned that the wombs of women were worshiped!

No more! My sacred rage over this neglect is inspiring creative change in my life and in my understanding of who I am. Perhaps the burn of sacred rage is what we all need to melt away that which does not serve our individual and collective highest good.

10 years after finding Kesner dead, I’m finally beginning to feel like myself again. I’m re-membering. The pieces are coming back together and I am grateful.

You can’t rush healing. Healing happens often in stillness. We do nothing.

Breathe into the uncomfortable places.

Now that I have your attention, I’ll share that I have been very intentional about calling this holiday Easter this year.  I always remember it being called Easter until I became an adult and my Christian friends started telling me that I had to call it Resurrection Sunday only.

“Easter” was a holiday before Christianity existed.  It was a time to celebrate the Spring Equinox, the end of a long winter and the beginning of Spring.  In some places this holiday was also associated with fertility.  This is how we would later get to the eggs (bunnies and eggs came later, admittedly I don’t really vibe with bunnies who lay eggs).

But a new beginning after a long winter? A new birth?  These themes don’t seem so far off from Resurrection to me.  It’s a celebration of life after death! I can understand why early Christians would associate the Resurrection of Christ with a holiday that celebrated new beginnings. Can’t you?

My heart wonders if the people who told us that we couldn’t call it Easter anymore were men.

I am reminded today that women were so very present with Jesus during these Holy three days- the last to be with him in death, the first to rise early to anoint his body with oil and spice , and the first to discover the empty tomb.

Lady this is not the time to hide your light or conform just because someone said so.

We are emerging from darkness to light.

This is a fertile time.

He is Risen.

Happy Easter!!

Yesterday I had a vision of having truffle mushrooms. It was a brief thought, an intention set, and then I went on with my day. By the end of the day I had attracted truffle butter, truffle honey, truffle cooking sauce, truffle goat cheese and actual truffle flakes. To be clear, I did not go out and buy these items, I attracted them. They were shared with me by a friend who recently returned from Italy and who had no prior knowledge of my truffle vision from earlier in the day.

I say this to say – set an intention and then let it go. So many of us suffocate our dreams. We have a vision but we don’t trust God to carry it out. Instead we hover, attempt to control and cling tightly to every detail of how our vision will be fulfilled.

And of course when things don’t go our way, we suffer.

Don’t try to micro-manage God. ‘God is able and God will bless you exceedingly abundantly above all you could ask or think.’ (Ephesians 3:20)

Trust that and let go.

I’m officiating a wedding tomorrow. I listened to Marianne Williamson a bit to prepare. She teaches about Love and she claims that every relationship is an assignment.

We are to love everyone, intimacy is already established because we’re all connected in Spirit. But our ego tries to protect us and keep us separated. We’ve all experienced traumas along the way that reinforce a felt need to self-protect.

So our relationships are assigned to us for our healing and re-membering. We learn in our interpersonal relationships where we have blockages to love.

And our Holy relationships- those are our life partners. When you experience chemistry with a person, that feeling of butterflies in the beginning, that is a moment of Divine enlightenment. Your soul recognizes that there is an opportunity for growth to be had in a relationship with that person. It’s not random.

Our Holy relationships are our partnerships; the containers for mutual healing. As our stuff comes up, our partnership holds the space. We grow together and remember – step by step- that we are Love.

I’ve been asking this question for years – Better to be right or be free?  Last week I asked:  ‘better to be right or be love?’ And my friend Kathleen asked:  ‘better to be right or be happy?’  It’s all the same to me – and yet even as I type, I’m convicted by my own actions.

Yesterday I was angry with my studio manager. For three weeks there has been nobody present at the front desk to check in my Saturday morning yoga class. My student who works for the studio has stepped in but that wasn’t fair to her; she’d come to take class, not to work.  When I saw my studio manager, my own manager persona kicked.  I am a director in another part of my life and I manage a team.

“Do you have a strategy for making sure that this doesn’t happen again?”  I asked her.

I sat firmly in my rightness.

But I didn’t think about the way that my energy made others feel –  those who were sitting in the lobby with no context and who are used to interacting with me differently.

In hindsight, I wished I’d communicated differently.

Where does being right ever really get us? Everything that ever will happen will happen whether we try to control it or not.  And other people always show us where we are stuck. In this way, they are our teachers.  If we open our eyes and allow our hearts to soften, we realize that all of these experiences are here to teach us.  Everyone is our teacher and our most difficult situations show us where we have blockages to love.

I am learning that I’d rather be love because it feels better.  I am learning how to communicate my needs without being unloving ~ because I want to contribute to what is good in the world.  There is enough aggression.

Join me on this return to Love?