"Faith, and trust, and pixie dust..."

"I am not a child now
I can take care of myself
I mustn't let them down now
Mustn't let them see me cry
I'm fine, I'm fine

I try and try to understand
The distance in between
The love I feel and the things I fear
And every single dream…"
- Jonatha Brooke
- From Disney's "Peter Pan – Return to Neverland"

Another recommendation from a friend -- to revisit a post from a few years ago -- was the perfect gift today. It was lovely to be reminded that God's love for each of us...is all that persists in our lives. And, that "storms come." But, the foundation we build on, makes all the difference. Here is the post:

"A house that will not fall..."

I love Jonatha Brooke's "I Try," because I do try...and try. But sometimes, I just don't feel fine.  This was the case one day last week when I simply felt like a total failure.  And it's not the first time. 

Sometimes it just feels like I pray, and study, and pray, and listen, and pray, and pray, and pray..and still things don't work out the way I thought would certainly be God's way. At least, not what I thought God's way should look like.  Am I the only one who wonders, "How could a hurricane take away a grandmother's front porch? Why shouldn't a job come through quickly, for an out-of-work friend? Why can't we find a perfect little cottage, for a loved one? Why doesn't a relationship issue resolve quickly? And will the check, the widow is waiting for, really be "in the mail" as promised? 

Yes, everyday I do see countless instances of physical healing, resurrected hopes, and personal, collective and global transformation. But sometimes I just want to have one day, when I don't feel as if I am leaning into the winds, and waves, of misunderstanding, self-doubt or regret. Just one day, when I am not gripping the rock with my toes, and hanging on for dear life. 

Shouldn't all that prayer and study prevent misunderstandings,  unkindness, alarming physical symptoms, and the threat of  hurricanes each season? 

Well, I was sitting in my office, just last week, deep in the midst of a personal storm...while studying scripture and taking calls...when I came upon one of Jesus' parables. One that I had read so often, I could recite it word-for-word, by heart:

"…whosoever heareth these sayings of mine,
and doeth them,
I will liken him unto a wise man,
Which built his house upon a rock;

And the rains descended,
And the floods came,
And the winds blew,
And beat upon that house;

And it fell not:
For it was founded upon a rock..."

But this time it spoke to my heart in a new way.  As I broke it down, it came to me with such clarity: this guy does everything right. He hears Jesus' sayings, he does what Jesus asks of him, he is wise and builds his house upon a rock. Spiritual rock star, right? You would think that this would lead to only good.   Sunny days, light breezes, gentle rain, calm seas…not!!! 

The rains descend, the floods come, the winds blow, and his house gets beaten.  So what is different for this guy, who does everything right and the guy who builds on the sand? 

So back I go to the text:

"And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine
and doeth them not,
shall be likened unto a foolish man
which built his house uon the sand;

And the rains descended,
And the floods came,
And the winds blew,
And beat upon that house;
And it fell:
And great was the fall of it."

So, hmm…both guys get hurricanes, monsoons, tornadoes…but the wise guy's beaten house just doesn't fall. It still gets buffeted, flooded and beaten…it just doesn't fall. 

So, I thought, "what have I done wrong, I always pray, study, listen, obey as best as I can to what God is saying…"  But then the question came…out of the blue, "What is your house…is it a job, a marriage, an arm, a bank account, a day without challenges?"  And immediately on the heels of that question, came Mary Baker Eddy's spiritual interpretation of the last line from the 23rd Psalm, "And I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of [Love] forever" (Science and Health pg. 578).

There it was.   A sweet peace swept over my heart like a soft breeze after a long storm.  The rains, winds, floods and beating hail were not prevented, by the "wise" man who listens to Jesus' sayings, and does them, building on the rock.  

Both the wise and the foolish experience them.  And these storms take many shapes.  Joblessness, a marriage that ends in divorce, financial uncertainty, a life-threatening diagnosis, an actual hurricane, feelings of depression, sadness or despair…or even just the day-to-day suggestions that we are cranky, resentful, judgmental or petty mortals. 

These tornadoes of personal sense swirl around us but they are not the house that is so ill-founded, that it falls.  Nor is owning a home without a mortgage, a secure job, a comfortable bank balance, or a symptomless body, a measure of a house that doesn't fall...no matter how lovely those circumstances may be, or how grateful I am for every bit of good I am blessed with. Otherwise, my house is constantly moving. 

One day I am debt-free, but my conversation with a friend is rife with misunderstanding, or the next I find a suspicious growth, but my marriage is  happy.  Where do I find my ground in this kind of ever-changing, always moving measure of being a wise or foolish man/woman.

But, the house that doesn't fall isn't found in a job, a marriage, a bank account, a healthy organization or a beautiful body.  The house that doesn't fall is found in the "consciousness of Love", our consciousness -- our awareness -- that even when we can't get out of bed...we can always love, we can always find God as Love being expressed…somewhere. In the world, in our world and the world at large, and find our hope restored, our faith buoyed, our desire to go to God in prayer…one more time…resurrected. 

For me, this is the house that is built on a Rock and will not fall. 

I realized that I may not always have sunny days with calm winds out of the East, that the waves of self-doubt may lash at my foundation and the winds of "what if" may try to take the roof off of my little cottage on a Rock, but my house, my consciousness of Love, will not fall.  Even if I am picking pieces of weathered clapboard off the beach and re-pointing the foundation the next day…I can always go into my little house on the Rock, and find God there in all His eloquent silence and listen for His "Peace be still (never-the-less)…and the wind ceased, and there was a great calm." 

"I can finally see it
Now I have to believe
All those precious stories
That the world is made of...
Faith, and trust... and pixie dust

So, I'll try
Because I finally believe
I'll try, cuz I can see what you see

I'll try, I'll try
I will try…"

Enjoy a cup of tea in God's house by the sea…because it is in this house, in this "consciousness of Love", that:

"the winds and waves can shock
oh, nevermore…"
-Mary Baker Eddy

with Love,

Kate

"I will open my hands..."

"I believe in a peace
that flows deeper than pain.
That the broken find healing in love.
Pain is no measure of his faithfulness.
He withholds no good thing from us,
no good thing thing from us.
I will open my hands,
I will open my heart."

I've been thinking about the insidious nature of pain this week. How loudly it screams, and how it tries to convince us that it resides within us, and therefore must be our pain. But it's not.

Pain, disease, fear, poverty, sorrow are never ours. They are impersonal. They only try to parrot, or mimic, the impartial and universal nature of God's goodness, healing, and peace, that Sara Groves' sings about in her new recording, "Open My Hands."

This week, as I've prayed deeply about the power of peace, and the impotence of pain, two experiences, in particular, have been constant reminders that I can rest my case on the law of Love. That precedence has already been established, cited, and ruled admissible in the court of Spirit. And that finding freedom from pain's unjust sentence is man's inalienable right...right here,and right now.

I return to the power, and authority, of these experience, as shared in: "Screaming has no authority..." (from October of 2006), and "Turn the beat around..." (from July of 2010), more often than you might think.

I know that I've often felt helpless in the face of pain, but Mary Baker Eddy has provided me a lifeline, in those moments of darkness, when she says in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: :

"Evil is not supreme; good is not helpless;
nor are the so-called laws of matter primary,
and the law of Spirit secondary."

What a promise! Pain [evil] is not supreme, and good is not helpless. Quite the opposite. Good is supreme, and therefore pain is helpless in its presence...in the sovereignty of peace. Peace is not the absence of pain. Peace is not an absence. Peace is a presence. Peace is not found in the vacuity of pain's retreat. Peace is substantial. Peace is a power. Peace is self-assertive and confident. Peace has authority, and pain flees before its strength...as naturally as darkness flees before the light of day.

In the final stanza of her poem, "The New Century", Eddy assures us that:

"The dark domain of pain and sin
Surrenders — Love doth enter in,
And peace is won, and lost is vice:
Right reigns, and blood was not its price.."

Pain can often feel like a vice...racheting a tighter and tighter hold on our freedom, but Love comes in, and pain surrenders, fleeing from the authority of impartial and universal goodness that is irrespective of person, unburdened by the false fears of human thought-taking and self-determinism...of what we could of done, thought...even prayed...differently. But peace isn't waiting for us to think the right thought. Peace is the voice of Love speaking to human minds, and bodies...a tuning fork that realigns everything according to His purpose for us.

Just as pain is not a personal failing or weakness, peace is not a personal achievement. Peace is God's impartial and universal substance. It constitutes every mental molecule of our being, and we can no more be denied its power in our lives, than we can do something to suddenly make light retreat in the face of darkness.

It's a promise...it's the Law.

of Love...
Kate

"When troubles come..."

"When I am down, and oh my soul, so weary.
When troubles come, and my heart burdened be.
Then I am still and wait here in the silence.
Until You come and sit awhile with me..."

A friend recently suggested, with absolute confidence, that I must be "beyond" the weariness of the soul, which I'd reffered to in the below-copied post from 2010. It was was a favorite of hers, and she saw it as a personal milestone for me. I smiled, and assured her that if there is one thing I have learned, as a spiritual journeyman, is that, for me, it is sooo not personal.

For me, this means that we don't "achieve" some level of personal "beyond-ness" in our wrestlings. The false suggestions that come to us, come irrespective of past milestones, cornerstones, fingerposts, belt notches, or pass/fails...they just come. Sometimes they come from without (a call from a friend or a patient who is facing a challenge and wants our support) and sometimes they from within (a dark night of the soul where morning seems a lifetime away) but they come. And they don't come because we are (personally) spiritually weak, and we don't avoid their attacks because we are, somehow, more spiritually accomplished. They just come. They come, because that's what suggestions do...they suggest themselves...to anyone and everyone.

Any false sense of personal accomplishment, as a spiritual pilgrim, opens me wide up for the belief in hierarchy in the kingdom of heaven...a luxury, that I have learned, I can't afford to indulge...ever. Otherwise, the lives of my dear friends, Jesus, Mary Baker Eddy, Paul, Stephen, etc., don't make sense to me. If it were all about achieving a progressive sense of mastery over the errors of the ego mind (or mortal mind) and its lie of self-determinism, Jesus wouldn't have needed to ask for the cup to be taken from him...just prior to the crucifixion, Mary Baker Eddy would have healed Josephine Woodbury of her betrayal...long before it needed to go to trial, Paul would have never been imprisoned, and Stephen would have walked calmly away from the stoning...amid the jeering crowd of hate-mongers, and gone on to have a successful ministry.

But the suggestion, the one and only "false suggestion" (in all its myriad disguises...sin, disease, death, hatred, self-righteousness, pain) that God is absent, is irrespective of person.

Oh yes, sometimes these suggestions seem absolutely personal...often, heart-bucklingly so, in the cunning way they seem to target our vulnerabilities. They seem to come right after "me," targeting that very "thing" I think I just "can't bear...". Pointedly aiming their daggers at my "anything but this" issue. And other times, the suggestion is more subtly "someone else's" problem...so detached from my life, and history, that I might be tricked into thinking it makes some bizarre sort of sense that, perhaps, they really are dealing with it. But, as I said, it's never personal.

The other day, it was an "anything but this..." suggestion, that drove me to my knees. It felt so personal. It felt so full of historic synapses and connections that it seemed justifiably "mine as it hissed, "see, this issue really is about you. Remember when you faced this before..." But it wasn't so... It never is.

This following post, referenced by a loved reader in an email later that day, helped me. Maybe it will remind you, too, that it is in these moments of darkness, when we feel so personally targeted, that the light of the universal and impartial Christ...that glimmering glimpse of holiness within us all...shines most resplendently at the core of our being. And remember, you are never alone in the darkness...never, ever alone... Sometimes it's nice to have someone nearby to remind you that it's not about you..it's not yours...or mine. It never is.

"And my heart burdened by..."

My heart was burdened this morning.  Overwhelmed beyond measure.  I thought I could push through the tightness in my shoulders, the strain in my step...so I read, studied, took calls, prayed, checked in on my Facebook office, and posted an inspiring quote by Mary Baker Eddy that had meant so much to me through a long night of prayer. And lastly, I'd uploaded a Youtube video I'd been led to view earlier by a thoughtful friend. But the personal pall persisted. My husband remained a gentle, willing support, but even he knew...what I had yet to discover in the midst of such heaviness...that what I needed to hear, whatever it was that I needed to hear, had to come directly from God...and from God, alone.

The work...the joy of serving...was my peaceful resting place.  In "the office" it was all so clear.  Inspired truths that felt so alive and substantive in praying for others, were warm companions and reliable colleagues there, in the sanctuary of books, and prayers, and gratitude..  In the fellowship of our common purpose, all was light. But whenever I seemed to get up from my desk, walk out of my "praying for others" door, and into the space of "my life, my family, my decisions," those truths somehow felt distant and flat, like two dimensional cardboard cutouts of superheroes. 

And, as much as I established my spiritual ground, and claimed that God was in charge of all the affairs of my life and the lives of those I loved, I still felt something akin to a cold, gray, stone of sorrow resting on my heart.  Too many questions, decisions, choices, demands. I didn't even know where to begin in sorting them out, and prioritizing all that needed to be addressed metaphysically.  Where should I start listening for direction, first?  What should I pray about next? 

The clarity I felt "in the office" seemed to be spectre-like, just out of reach, and ungraspable in my kitchen. 

That was where this Youtube clip of Selah's "You Raise Me Up" found me...in the kitchen.  The kettle was whistling and I'd gotten up to steep a pot of tea, when I heard the next clip in the Selah playlist coming from my office.  I poured boiling water over the Ginger Peach tea in the teapot, and returned to my desk while it steeped.  And that's when I heard:

"...You raise me up to walk on stormy seas.
I am strong when I am on your shoulders.
You raise me up to more than I can be..."

And, as Mary Baker Eddy says:

"Tears flood the eyes, agony struggles, pride rebels, and a mortal seems a monster, a dark, impenetrable cloud of error; and falling on the bended knee of prayer, humble before God, he cries, "Save, or I perish." Thus Truth, searching the heart, neutralizes and destroys error."

I fell on my knees beside my bed, letting my tears dissolve the false veneer of control, to shake and shatter the shell of personal sense...me, my, mine...allowing it to fall in shards of vanquished "self" from the core "me", the innocent and willing "I AM" within my heart...and:

"listened for His voice
lest my footsteps stray.."

And when:

"My heart bent low before the omnipotence of Spirit, ...a tint of humility, soft as the heart of a moonbeam, mantled the earth.  Bethlehem and Bethany, Gethsemane and Calvary, spoke to my chastened sense as by the tearful lips of a babe.  Frozen fountains were unsealed.  Erudite systems of philosophy and religion melted, for Love unveiled the healing promise and potency of a present spiritual afflatus."  - Eddy

In that moment of divine care, my tears changed from the hot, aching sting of want and woe, to the gentle bathing waters of promised peace.

I'd asked God for answers about things that were in the realm of tomorrow, down-the-road, and someday when...and his message was:

"I cannot give you tomorrow, I can only give you Myself, and you know Me, you know that My name is I AM, not 'I will be,' or 'I was.' I am giving you this very moment on your knees with Me, I am giving you today...and isn't today beautiful?  Don't you have all you need...every answer you are hungering for...for today?"

And the heavy stone of carrying around a burdened ego was lifted from my shoulders, and replaced with humility, "as soft as a moonbeam."

I got up from that blessed posture of "on my knees," grateful for every tear that had fallen, and dried in salty trails upon flushed cheeks.  I'd been given a glimpse, a window, a portal into the living power of a simple statement of spiritual fact...the very quote I'd prayed with all night long, for someone else in need, and had posted earlier on Facebook:

"Each successive period of progress
is a period more humane and spiritual."
-     Mary Baker Eddy

I rose from "on bended knee" with a more humane sense of my brothers' (and sisters') journeys. With a very here-and-now appreciation for Bethany, Bethlehem, Gethsemane, and Calvary...oh yes, especially for Calvary. And with a more spiritual sense of the power of The Word...a present understanding of my Father's love for me, and mine, and most importantly, for all.

He is, constantly, raising each of us up...from our knees...so that we can go forward in service to one another, and thereby serve Him.

otherwise, I remain, on bended knee...yours,

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"I'm holding on..."

"...I'm hanging on another day
Just to see what you will throw my way
And I'm hanging on to the words you say
You said that I would...would be ok

I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart that's still beating
In the pain there's the healing
In your name I find meaning
So I'm holdin' on
I'm still holdin' on,
I'm holdin' on
I'm barely holdin' on to you..."
-     Lifehouse

Yesterday was not easy...for many reasons. But there were moments of grace...moments so pure and clear...that my knees buckle in remembering them.

One came, just after I thought I couldn't navigate one more heart-wrenching detour, in an already swirling day. I was able to stay above the storm...by the grace of God alone, but there wasn't a moment when a prayer wasn't playing its song in my heart and on the growing tip of my day.

I was driving, from one appointment to another, when the phone rang. Now this, in and of itself, is nothing new...at all. But it was the gift of this call that brought me to my knees.

It was a reader of this blog, calling from another part of the world, to tell me that he/she didn't feel alone because of the "space" that these posts provide for her. I wanted to cry. But I held it together. I really wanted to be there fore her. To listen deeply to what his/her story was, and how to be "just a friend." It was a blessing on my day, to be able to "just show up," without a role, a title, an office, or a history. His story was not unlike my own...filled with moments of heartbreak, confusion, doubt, sorrow, inspiration, questions. But because of that, I also knew it was filled with joy, and opportunity, and growth, and...yes, grace.

Little did he/she know, that I needed to "not feel alone," yesterday afternoon, just as much as she did.

Thank you, dear reader, for the gift of your friendship...someone else sent me this link, to a previous post (from 2009), later in the day because it had been helpful to her. Again, it was just what I needed. Funny how God sends us His "angels" of comfort...in the voices of friends...old and new, a passage from Isaiah, the demands of motherhood, and, sometimes, through something we've written, about an experience we've already had, reminding us that precedent has already been set in our lives...we just need to remember. Here is the post my friend linked:

"In Your name I find meaning..."

The other day I felt like I was "falling apart," in much the same way that Lifehouse articulates in this lovely, plaintive song of hope, and longing, titled "Broken."  But it was also just the reminder I needed.   When I heard it, I was feeling particularly lonely in the aloneness of a moment, and it immediately brought me peace. 

I love that line, "in your name I find meaning."  And the "you" in whose name alone I "find meaning" is the great "I AM" whose presence feels as intimate to me as my own hopes and dreams, sorrows and joys...the very private thoughts I cherish in the dark silence of the night. 

When I was still a very young woman, but thought I was all grown up and more than ready to fly solo, my mother and siblings...with whom I had been living since my dad's passing...moved to another state.  In some ways one might think I would have been happy and relieved.  I'd worked two or more jobs for a few years in order to help pay for our rent, utilities, food and family expenses, and this might mean a bit of a break from those demands.  But that wasn't how I was feeling.

Yes, I was excited to be out on my own.  I'd found a Manhattan couple who'd purchased a gentleman's farm in our rural community and talked them into letting me renovate the loft of their beautiful barn into a loft apartment in exchange for rent.  And I was thrilled by the opportunity to creatively redefine the space, by their trust in my twenty-one year old chutzpah, and for my first real privacy...I'd always lived in other people's spaces and had always dreamed about my own apartment.  But there was also a sadness about living away from my mother, sisters, and brothers.

I moved my few belongings into a small storage space in the barn that was heated, had been insulated for winter, and had a tiny bathroom in the corner.  I'd cook on a hot plate and use a tiny little dorm-size refrigerator until I'd finished the renovation.  I had a twin bed pushed under the barnwood eaves and a little table with two chairs. I'd brought three small paintings I done in high school, ones that the school had had framed for an exhibit at the local library.  I used my simple cedar hope chest for storing my clothes and I'd hung my three dresses (and two waitress uniforms I needed for my second job) on a nail at the end of the room.  An antique embroidered linen pillowslip folded over a wooden dowel served as a curtain on the one small window framed by rough barnwood.  I loved way the sunrise looked through the ripply green-tinted glass each morning and vowed to make that window a centerpiece in the renovation. 

That first night after I washed my mug and bowl out in the bathroom sink, dried them with the worn blue and white checked dishtowel I'd begged my mom to let me keep with me, I brushed my teeth and climbed between the soft white sheets and under the colorful quilts that represented the entirety of my dowry.  I'd always loved vintage linens and had gathered bits and pieces over the years from my grandmother, a generous neighbor who'd shared her treasures, and a dusty antique shop in the village we'd lived in while I was in high school.

I turned off the small lamp that sat on an upturned fruit crate that served as my first bookcase and lay in the dark.  I'd grown up in a family of eight children.  I'd shared a bedroom with as many as four of my sisters, depending on the size and number of bedrooms a house had, all my life.  We'd always lived in small houses.  Houses in which our rooms were so cozy, and close to one another, that I could hear my brothers whispering in their room while I read in my bottom bunk across the hall.  I'd never, ever, heard or experienced the kind of visceral silence I was greeted by that night once I'd turned the lamp off.  It was as if someone had sucked every bit of sound out of the room.  I was aware of my heartbeat, my own thoughts, the sound of my nightgown rustling against the soft cotton of my sheets.  I was aware of the unique rhythm of my own breathing, in and out, in and out, in and out. 

This was so new to me.  New, and lonely.  Soon I was aware of more than just my breathing, and my heartbeat.  I was aware of the sound of my own crying. I was alone in the dark, I was falling apart, and I was hyper-aware of everything around me.  And more importantly, everything within me.  I discovered that if you listen closely you really can hear the sound of tears dropping from your eyelashes, rolling along your cheek and falling to the pillowcase under your face. I discovered just how much I really did miss my family.  I missed all the sounds I'd complained about throughout high school when I'd thought all I wanted was "a room of my own."  I missed my sister purring in her sleep, my mother's tapping of her fingers on the kitchen table as she enjoyed a late night cup of tea in the quiet of her own house long after midnight.  I missed the mewing of babies and the turning of more than a half dozen children in their beds while I read.

I missed them. And I was aware of missing them.  It was quiet enough that nothing distracted me from the sound of the love that was happening in my heart.  

This missing them in the silence of the dark was my first awareness of the deep intimacy we each have with our God.  In my aloneness, I discovered that I was really not alone.  There were new thoughts coming to me every moment.  I was feeling the seeping in of a new awareness of my love for my mother, appreciation for my sisters, I could feel the presence of my dreams for the future, and my hunger for meaningful love and purposeful work.  I could actually feel my desire for my sister Nancy's bony spine against mine as we slept back-to-back in the double bed we'd shared at times during childhood.

This awareness of "me", my hopes, my desires, my thoughts, my sadness and longing, was rich with being, was full of the "I AM" of conscious being...God. For me, this is what Mary Baker Eddy is talking about when in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures she refers to:

"...the conscious infinitude of existence and of all identity..."

I learned to love the silence of that small bed under the eaves, because it introduced me to myself...the self that had an inner life.  The self that was no longer being drowned out by all the hustle and bustle of being one of many voices, movements, breathing in a big family.  The self that was conscious of the infinitude of her identity and was discovering that right there, within her own conscious being, lay all the important answers she'd been looking for. 

My silent life in a drafty barn didn't last long...but I have never forgotten it in the ensuing years, as the quiet spaces started filling in with husband, children, phone calls, patients, guests, dogs, washing machines, dishwashers, computers and babies. 

And to this day, when I am feeling most alone in the world, it is not people I seek to surround myself with...even the people I love the most...it is the silence of a darkened room.  My favorite time of day, the time of day - the space - that fills me, and satisfies me most...so that I have something real to give others...are those moments just after waking, when I have not heard a sound, moved even a single finger or probed a toe seeking to feel the sheets or rustle the bedclothes. Those are the moments before I have opened my eyes to see the light of day playing on the pear colored walls of our bedroom. And it is in this timeless time that I am aware, in that profound silence, of the "great I AM" that is me, my conscious being. 

In these moments of great intimacy with my God, I am most keenly atune to the "pain" of missing loved ones...a profound love that heals.  I am most appreciative of the joys of having thoughts that are beautiful and rich with purpose...even if just to me.   I am most conscious of knowing that I am never alone...but always filled with Him...with Her...with the I AM that is the only real oneness that matters...the only I or US that all other relationships spring from.

In the silence of a my first waking thoughts, I find God...the kingdom of heaven within. And this same infinite nearness of the divine is there for each of us...all the time.

with Love, 
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"So like still water..."

"...Let the noise and clamor cease
Be still and know that He is God
Be still and know that He is faithful
Consider all that He has done
Stand in awe and be amazed
And know that He will never change
Be still and know that He is God
Be still
Be speechless..."
- Steven Curtis Chapman

A sweet note from a friend, referring to this post from February of 2010, was just what I needed today...the reminder of what I truly, authentically, and genuinely hope to be...every moment, of every day..."so like still water..."

Sara Groves, sings of staying wide open "like a lake..." This is the posture I am surrendering to. To stay wide open to the blessing in each moment, trusting God to have so choreographed my life, that every story...the lovely, as well as those blessed (although, perhaps, not so picture perfect) opportunities for growth in grace...is a testament to His power and love.

This experience was a turning point for me...reading it, and remember that morning by the lake, still takes my breath away...

I share it here, again, with Love:


Sometimes, on a day like today...raindrops streaming down the sides of the birdfeeder outside the kitchen window like giant tears falling from heavy gray clouds, the bare black branches of still leafless trees reaching out with dark knuckled fingers, pointing to an empty heaven...on a day like this, there is no time or space for me.  In an instant, I find myself on a tender journey back to an early spring morning almost two dozen years ago, and I am as empty as a discarded barn swallow's nest.

It is in the sanctuary of this space that Steven Curtis Chapman's "Be Still," reminds me that, as Kahlil Gibran wrote:

"The deeper sorrow carves into our being,
the more joy we can contain."  

That spring, the son we were in the process of adopting had been taken back by his birthmother, relationships seemed shattered, my body was riddled with a life-threatening disease, I'd given up my career to be a full-time mother, and we lived in a remote summer community that was practically empty until June. 

As I sat on the sofa in the living room, looking out at the lake our property sloped down to, I wondered why my body still had the ability to function and move.  I moved my fingers and was surprised to see them express life.  I felt absolutely empty and lifeless within, had already accepted the final stages of my disease, and almost wished it would hurry up and put me out of my misery. 

I'd called a friend, who was also my teacher in Christian Science, the night before and told him that I didn't know why I was still alive.  He had chuckled kindly, and suggested that I sit quietly and listen for God's desire in my life...since, as he reminded me,  I was still living, so I might as well live with some sense of spiritual reason.  I agreed that this might be a good idea, and promised to give it my whole heart.

And I did.  I sat in the same place, practically in the same position, all night long with my eyes closed just listening and praying.  I heard nothing.  Nothing.  It was an inspiration-free zone.  My thoughts felt as empty as my body and my life. Deteriorating health, all alone, no job, no purpose...and most devastating, no baby.

Dawn came, and with it the realization that I hadn't heard anything and I was just as empty and in pain as I had been the day before.  I felt exhausted and hopeless.  That was when Winnie, our sweet puppy "daughter," sidled over and nudged my elbow with her nose...over, and over, and over again.  No matter how many times I suggested she "just go lie down,"  she kept returning.  So, I gave in and pulled on a pair of jeans under my flannel nightgown, a pair of boots over my wool socks, and opened the breezeway door leading out into forest just beyond the brick-paved walkway. 

Winnie was a hunting dog, so her normal path from "here to there" was to weave her way through the brush and bramble...stopping every few moments to point a squirrel or flush out a bunny.  But this morning she made a b-line for the lake's shoreline.  And once she arrived, her nose was down and her entire attention was focused on whatever was at the water's edge.  And no matter how many times I called to her, she ignored me and kept her complete focus on whatever she saw in the shallow water at the edge of the lake.

I made my way down the hill, reached her side, and got down on my haunches to see what had her attention.  But all I could see was my own face clearly reflected in the still surface of the lake at dawn...and everything that was just below the surface...tiny minnows, pebbles, and bits of grass. 

That was when a divine message finally came through, and it came through with such striking clarity that I was knocked back onto my bottom.  "This is what I want you to be...as still as this water...just "like a lake*"...this lake.  In this stillness you will be able to see what is true within yourself, and anyone who is in your presence can see the truth of who they are in the stillness of your being, a stillness that only reflects truth and never attracts attention for your ego...or their's."   

And then, on the heels of that message,  in that very moment, a strong wind picked up and within seconds the entire lake was choppy and disturbed.  And at the water's edge, all was foamy and what lay within, obscured.  I couldn't see my own reflection on the surface, or anything below the surface, for that matter. 

The message continued, "And this is what happens when you allow yourself to be stirred up by emotion, anger, and drama."  The message was as clear and pointed as it could have been.  As Winnie wandered off into the nearby bramble to search for bunnies, I stayed at the water's edge transfixed on the moment, begging for direction.

"But just tell me what you want me to be, and I will be the best "it" there has every been.  If you want me to be a mom send me a child.  If you want me to be a wife, bring my husband home.  If you want me to be a career woman, tell me what job to focus on.  If you want me to be a healer, a poet, a lawyer, a writer, an artist, a publisher, a teacher...just tell me, and I will be it, and I will give it my everything.  Just tell me!"

But God said, "You aren't supposed to be just one thing forever.  You are my All-in-all.  You have all that it takes to be whatever I need you to be at any given moment.  You cam be all that you have asked, and more that you can ever even imagine.  Just like the water in the lake...just as every single drop of water is made up of H2O.  Two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, you, as my reflection...my child...are all that I am.  You have the same elemental balance that I have...I am Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love to the infinite degree and measure, so are you.  You are not a portion of my being, but the allness of all that I am."

I was suddenly reminded of a statement in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy which assures each of us that: 

"As a drop of water is one with the ocean,
a ray of light one with the sun,
so God and man, divine Principle and idea,
are one in being."

I got it.  I could be anything God wanted me to be in any moment.  Just as a drop of water could be refreshing, nourishing, cleansing, purifying, buoying, serve as ballast, revive a man thirsting in the desert...depending on the demands of the moment...I had all the qualities and attributes as part and parcel of my being in infinite measure, just waiting to be drawn upon.  In a fishbowl a drop of water is the breath of life to a little goldfish. On the tip of your tongue the same drop of water is refreshing, on a child's dirty face it is cleansing, It's individuality and identity are defined by the demands of a moment and the context it finds itself in.  The water doesn't decide to be refreshing, it doesn't get a degree in being cleansing and then is only capable of serving in that capacity.  Any drop of water is able to do any water-like function.

God was telling me that this was true of my identity....and not only mine, but it was the truth about each of us...impartially and universally.  We are all identical with God's character and nature.  We don't bring a measured portion of God's allness to each moment as our unique identitiy,  talent base, or skill set.  The moments and opportunites themselves, draw from our infinite individuality what is needed or required of us in any given moment or situation.   And sometimes it is what we least feel we have to give, that we most need to learn about ourselves...humility, grace, patience, meekness, kindness, non-judgment...which we find being  called forth.

All I needed to be was still....not just peaceful, quiet, and motionless, but constant, changeless-in-my-allness, and nevertheless...nevertheless than the allness of God's being in each and every moment.  This never-the-less-ness was the river-like being, the selfhood and identity, I would one day realize was my only purpose and calling.  That was over two decades ago, and I think that I am just starting to "get it".

A friend recently gave me this poem by poet, William Butler Yates, as a blessing...and as a gift:

"We can make our minds
so like still water
that  beings gather about us
that they may see,
it may be,
their own images,
and so live for a moment
with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life
because of our quiet."

Thank you dear friend...

In stillness...always and never-the-less,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS


*And here are the lyrics to Sara Groves' "Like a Lake" (linked above):

"so much hurt and preservation
like a tendril round my soul
so much painful information
no clear way on how to hold it

when everything in me is tightening
curling in around this ache
I will lay my heart wide open
like the surface of a lake
wide open like a lake

standing at this waters edge
looking in at God's own heart
I've no idea where to begin
to swallow up the way things are

everything in me is drawing in
closing in around this pain
I will lay my heart wide open
like the surface of a lake
wide open like a lake

bring the wind and bring the thunder
bring the rain till I am tried
when it's over bring me stillness
let my face reflect the sky
and all the grace and all the wonder
of a peace that I can't fake
wide open like a lake

everything in me is tightening
curling in around this ache
I am fighting to stay open
I am fighting to stay open
open open oh wide open
open like a lake "

[photo credit: Gabe Korinek 2010 all rights reserved]

"and oh my soul so weary..."

"When I am down,
and oh my soul so weary.
when troubles come,
and my heart burdened be.
Then I am still,
and wait here in the silence.
Until you come,
and sit a while with me..."

I was driving back from a full morning of office visits at the college, when a report on NPR about the shootings at another high school...this time in Ohio...stopped me, literally, in my tracks. I pulled off the road and sat next to the coursing Mississippi River and remembered another day, along another road...and a hawk's reminder.

I remembered how her trust in the power of the Unseen to, as Josh Groban sings, "Raise me up..." gave me something to cling to during, what could have been, insurmountable grief during some very dark days. She reminded me that the unseen power of Love, would, if I let it, lift me above the currents of sorrow and fear, as I drove towards Littleton Colorado in April of 1999.

Without a moment's hesitation, the tears of gratitude...for that experience and the lessons learned...flowed with as much power as the river in front of me.

And as I turned my face into the brisk wind off the river this afternoon, something caught my eye. It was an eagle lifting off the bluffs as she caught a thermal which took her higher and higher. I've revisited that drive to Columbine High School, many times over the ensuing years, especially when I've needed a reminder that God is there...however unseen He may seem to be...in each of the communities that have faced these tragic shootings. God is there, right now, to bring healing, comfort, courage, and peace. I wrote the following piece in September of 2006, after the Platte Canyon High School shootings...I share it again now in hopes that it may be helpful to someone.

It is offered with Love...

In April of 1999 two young gunmen entered Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado and opened fire on their classmates. 

On the immediate heels of this tragedy I had the privilege of joining scores of fellow pastors, psychologists, counselors and health care professional as we gathered to provide counseling and support services to students, parents, families, teachers and staff over the ensuing weeks of shock, grieving, healing, and recovery. 

When I read of the shooting at Platte Canyon High School this morning, I was reminded of my drive to Columbine that April afternoon and couldn't help but think of the drive parents made to that high school yesterday afternoon to connect with their children..fighting the terror, with hearts full of hope.

Hwy 285 in Bailey Colorado has always been my favorite stretch of road anywhere in the world.  It lies between my sister's house in Evergreen, and my summer home at the Adventure Unlimited Ranches in Buena Vista, and sits at the bend of the road just before the sweet mountain village of Shawnee. 

I have often stopped by the river to pray, and connect more deeply with God, before finishing the last leg of my trip to camp where I will be "on" 24/7, supporting campers, counselors, horses, and camp operations.  It is a deeply spiritual place for me.  An open air temple among the aspen and pine. 

Today I am cherishing its families. I am closing my eyes and remembering the deep peace of its endless blue mountain skies, the pure constancy of the rushing Platte River which runs between the folds of her meadows. And I am seeing her held in the palm of God's hands, comforted by Her tender love, and encouraged to focus on the good all around her as she find her peace.  Here is a small snapshot of my journey towards that kind of peace in 1999 as I drove towards Columbine High Schol that day:

It was a beautiful day in late April and yet that drive from our small town in northern Colorado to a suburb of Denver that afternoon, which I made quite often, was anything but ordinary. I strained my heart to find the presence of God. I searched the still beige and gold prairie for instances of order, beauty, peace. I knew that if I could focus on the presence of these qualities in nature I would be acknowledging the presence of their source, and one thing I was sure about God was that He was either All or nothing. So if He was at all present...He was all-present.

I needed to know His presence in very real and tangible ways that afternoon. My heart was heavy and I knew I couldn't let it stay that way. I had work to do and this work would require anything but a heavy heart. It would require the absolute certainty of God's presence and power that I was searching, the endless Colorado landscape, for evidence of.

My old jeep and I were on our own form of autopilot. I prayed and it just held to the road like the bottom-heavy friend it had been on our many trips into canyons and backroads visiting homebound patients and/or traversing ice and snow to reach someone in need. But today we were on a dry highway traveling briskly toward a place not yet trail-blazed in my experience.

It was April 20, 1999, and although the radio in the jeep was silent, the voices of newscasters and commentators seemed to be filling my mental airwaves. Words like gunmen, Columbine (which before that afternoon had only been the name of a delicate mountain flower my daughter and I admired each summer in high meadows), fallen, and victims punctuated that silence like gunshots.

I knew I had to find a peace so solid and secure before I arrived at the catholic church in Littleton where I would join religious leaders, spiritual counselors and social workers who were gathering to minister to the broken hearts and shattered families whose lives had been directly and indirectly touched by the days events, that nothing to move me.

Those mental voices were so loud and the tears on my cheeks were so hot with horror and grief that I couldn't seem to find the focus and deep-centered peace that was usually mine within milliseconds of any report of sickness, disease, fear or anger. Today that peace seemed illusive and ungraspable. I was ready to turn the Jeep around and head home knowing that I would do no one any good if I couldn't find my spiritual grounding.

Just then something in the sky caught my eye. It was a hawk riding an invisible updraft over the prairie. I pulled off the highway and got out of the car. Other cars and tractor trailers whizzed past but as I watched that hawk soaring on an unseen thermal I found my peace. Right there on the side of the road I too could feel the same soft, but powerful, current of air moving through my hair, I could see the way that hawk used what was unseen to lift him higher and higher without beating his wings. I could see the way that same breeze was giving movement to millions of individual blades of tall grass and golden grains across farmlands and straight up into the foothills of the mountains where I knew pine trees and aspens moved like choreographed dancers directed by a great and all powerful director. I was ready.

I got back in my trusty Jeep and together we moved with the same syncronicity of mission towards, not a suburb full of broken hearts and shattered peace, but towards an enormous human meadow full of hearts ready to be moved by the breath of God's love towards a greater sense of peace, a more certain sense of life, a better view of themselves. I knew that God would show us all, in the context of each others need, our better selves. We would see one another not as an endless sea of hurting humanity, but as individual blades of grass moving and being moved by God's love to bend and reach and touch each other's hearts. Our weeping would be the music of our compassion and of our tenderness. To it's chorus we would help each other soar on the unseen thermals of God's love....as that very love expressed to and with and for each other.

By the time I reached the Light of God Catholic church near Columbine High School I was ready and eager to hear the symphony of spiritual care I knew would be echoing through the halls of that church, the streets of that community, and in the homes and hearts of everyone who needed it's "peace be still" to move and ground them in God's presence. I didn't see counselors, pastors and victims, but blades of long golden grass moving in a harmonious dance of care and compassion. I loved joining that dance.

Those were long, full days. The sadness, grief and horror still whizzed around and past me like those cars and tractor trailers on the highway that day. Some days I felt so tired that I wondered why I wasn't blown away...but I wasn't. From where I soared with the updraft under my wings I could not be moved or swayed by their force. I was riding on the thermals of God's love higher and higher where I could only see a sea of human grass dancing to a song of spiritual grace. I was watching love in action, love moving unseen through those around me to cause us all to reach out and touch someone with a word of kindness, to listen with an open heart. I watched as the sky I was in soaring in became filled with others who had spread their wings and caught the thermal and could better see God's unseen hand in each moment.

Today, almost eight years later, the color of the sky that day in April is still the color of peace to me. When I close my eyes in prayer I see an endless blue sky, a horizon-less sea of golden prairie grasses swaying and moving to a silent song as I let the thermals of God's presence lift me higher and higher for a better view of whatever I am being asked to pray about. That day lives in me, not as a day of infamy, but as a day of beauty and grace and seeing the very best that humanity can be when we let a silent song of love move us to help each other.

Those of us who were honored to be caregivers were given the best seats in the house for God's ballet of love.

Whenever the world tries to drown out peace with it's cacophony of horror....get off the highway and catch a thermal....the view is amazing from here.

I hope this is helpful...
Kate

"We now redeemed through Love..."

""and I know,
my Redeemer lives
let all creation testify
let this life within me cry,
I know my Redeemer lives..."

I was checking out at the grocery store this afternoon, when the clerk asked me, "Do you have any coupons to redeem?"

I smiled. I'd been thinking about "redemption" all week. Salvation, and redemption....but mostly, redemption. An earlier piece about my grandfather, and his salvage business, "You can't take that away from me..." has been a helpful reminder that we all have an untouchable, inviolable, essential spiritual core that is always ready for salvaging. But once salvaged, it needs to be redeemed. And that is where this week's deep listening has been focused for me.

So, I guess it's not surprising that Nicole Mullin's song, "My Redeemer" has been one of the songs praying through my thoughts.

One of the definitions of the verb, "redeem" is: "to exchange for something of value or substance"

This is what the store clerk was referring to. She was asking me if I had a coupon, a small piece of paper, that could give her in exchange for something of value. Behind that coupon, was a sponsor who was willing to give the store money, or product, that would represent the face value of the coupon itself. If the coupon said $1 and the store accepted it, the sponsor would reimburse the store that amount, when they were presented with the same coupon. It could have been a coupon for a discount on the purchase of product, or a voucher that I could exchange for actual goods, merchandise, or services. But behind the symbol, was the substance of its value.

So, what does this have to do with spiritual redemption.

For me, it represents the full measure of the working of Christ in our lives. Whenever my grandad" salvaged sixteen feet of copper tubing from a discarded refrigerator, he had a clear plan for its redemption. He didn't just leave it in the barn to gather dust and chicken feathers. He took it to the redemption center where they would weigh it in a balance, determine it's worth, and then purchase it from my grandfather so that it could be sold to someone else for recycling into a product that had current usefulness and value.

God has the same foresight with me. When He gives me the spiritual intuition to see below the surface rust and chipped enamel...the peeling paint and battered dreams of a broken heart... to the core value, the essential goodness and worth in someone's life (including my own) He has a plan for redemption.

He needs our essential goodness to be redeemed for a holy purpose, to be used in humility, and through grace to fulfill a sacred calling. He doesn't want us to hide in shame, or sit in the corner licking the wounds of regret and self-doubt, He wants us to see that nothing has ever touched the purity of who we are at our core. An ounce of copper (or gold) once salvaged and purified in the fire of self-knowledge, humility, and love, is just as valuable and useful as what we might purchase from jeweler or find in a bank vault.

Once purified in the fire, where the dross is burned away, what is essential...the pure elements - gold, copper, silver, Life, Truth, Love...are the same. The gold that was once embedded in igneous crust, mud, and soot, is no less valuable than the gold that has grace the crown of kings and pharaohs.

This fervent (a word that means "hot, burning, glowing, a passionate intensity") desire for "growth in grace," that Mary Baker Eddy refers to her statement:

"What we most need, is the fervent desire for growth in grace,
expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds."

This desire, this passionate desire to be good, to live honestly, to grow in grace, is purifying the gold in our natures. In this fervency of desire for salvation, we are so softened that we are able to receive the engraving of His name and nature on our hearts. And it is here -- in this fiery furnace of a humble, meek, honest heart -- that we are most pure, and as ready as we ever will be, to be useful to Him. To be recycled by to our Redeemer - our God - according to His holy purpose.

There is a line from a hymn (#356) that we sing in our church services...it has a new ring to it for me tonight:

"We, now redeemed through Love, return to Zion,
singing to Thee our deeply grateful praise;
For we are Christ's, and Chrsit is Thine, O Father;
His joy remains in us through endless days."

I feel this truth in the core of my very being. Joy is an essential element. In fact, Mary Baker Eddy says that sinless joy, actually, constitutes our being. It remains in us through endless days. It may seem battered by grief, buffeted by pain, tarnished by regret, but below the surface of our day-to-day experiences, challenges, and exercises in discovering moral courage, lies this essential element...like humility, innocence, beauty, grace, honesty, purity...that is always ready and waiting to be used in His field of service.

Eddy define "Zion" as:

"Spiritual foundation and superstructure;
inspiration; spriitual strength.

Emptiness, unfaithfulness; desolation."

The first part of this definition, I believe, refers to the spiritual, the redeemed, sense of "Zion." The second, to the chipped, battered, and bruised that would try to call itself the home of the pure and true. It would try to say that the coupon, the symbol...gaudy colors, crammed with codes, folded, tattered, even ripped from being stuffed in pockets...is the real. But what is redeemed is all that is real. When you give the store clerk that tattered coupon, and get the actual product, or service, you never think that the coupon's condition would define its value or worth.

I know, my Redeemer lives...and redeemed, through Love, I return to Zion (my spiritual foundation) singing with Love...

my deeply grateful praise...
Kate

"Carried by the surprise of its own unfolding..."

"When you hear the sound from
far enough away
even dynamite can purr..."
-     David Wilcox

The following post from December, 2010, has been such a great reminder of late. Some things are enduring and changeless...

Those who know me, know that I love quotes.  I love the feeling of "relationship," I discover in a shared love for ideas...and for a writer's succinct articulation of those ideas.

I also love the connections, the synapses, made between seemingly disparate ideas as they move through the corridors of my heart.  That happened for me today on a number of fronts. 

It started when I came upon a tiny scrippity scrap of notebook paper, on which I'd written the following quote one wintery afternoon, a couple of years ago. 

"She liked unfinished.  She liked process.
She liked moving things -- rivers, clouds, heartbeats."
-  Alice Hoffman  (The Third Angel)

The quote struck me immediately the first time I read it...and it did again this morning when I found it in the leaves of Hoffman's book. It resonates with how I feel about things.  I like process...I am not at all eager for things to be "done."  I like the feeling of Life (vitality, creativity, serendipity) flowing through our lives like a river...changing and shifting its outline and form moment-by-moment. 

And by reciprocity, the river has a transformative effect on the landscape.  The "ground" which gives the river its surprisingly beautiful, undulating, and meandering boundaries, is changed by the river's course.  It alters those same banks...molecule-by-molecule...moment-by-moment as it carves and sculpts its host landscape.  There is something so organic and alive about things that are pulsing with process.  There is a relationship that cannot be one-sided. 

So, this morning, as I was reading this quote, I started thinking about rivers and couldn't help but start humming, "Just Around The River Bend," from Disney's Pocahontas. 

"What I love most about rivers is
You can't step in the same river twice
The water's always changing
always flowing..."

"Yes," I thought, "it all fits."  That serendipitous sense of Life in which we allow one moment, to flow into another.  When we surrender to a divine surprise.  When we are more in love with the process, than a product. 

And then I caught my friend Randall's posting of a David Wilcox house concert performance of his song, "Dynamite in the Distance" on Facebook. 

In his opening remarks David gives words to what I feel in my heart, about the process of writing, praying, living.  He says:

"I have loved the process of writing for a long time...not the product, so much, but the process.  It's my way of finding the elements of my story that I don't want to miss, before it's too late.  

"It's about finding places in my heart that have been covered and buried, and locked in storage, and getting them back so I can be more alive. 

"So, it is bewildering for people who come, when I teach songwriting, because they are expecting me to tell them how to make a song sound like a song, how it ought to sound...how to fill out the form.  

"But I don't want to fill out the form,
I want to be informed.

"I want the song to tell me what it knows, I don't want to make it do anything.  If I start out with a guitar riff, or a little phrase, and it moves me, I trust that it moves me because it's coming from a place that I am going.

"And my heart catches a point of view as if it's a vista that I haven't even hiked to yet.  But it's a way of seeing.  It's almost as if I could see from the point of view of who I could become.  Wow...now that saved my life.

"I need music.  I need it to remind me."

"Wow," I thought, "just wow..."

Then I remembered the writings of the late Celtic sage - poet, philosopher, and spiritual luminary - John O'Donahue.  I have been swimming, floating, drowning in his words for the past few years. His quotes have been the thoughts I've wrapped myself up in -- like the old quilts hanging on walls, folded in piles, and stacked cupboards throughout our home.  Here are two that I especially love tonight. They are like snipped pieces of fabric from favorite old dresses, now sewn into a patchwork blanket of ideas.   They are so softened by wear, that I often find myself stroking them whenever I am snuggled under the weight of his words:

"As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become."

"I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding."

So, I don't know that this post has a punchline.  Tonight there really is no clear "message," or "product."  Just some thoughts to flow through the landscape of your heart.  If they carve a new bank...or just eddy for a while...wonderful.  I hope you enjoy the sound of this river's song...

with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Kindness in your gaze..."

‎"May there be kindness in your gaze,
when you look within..."
     - J. O'Donohue

Sometimes the joy in revisiting an old post (thanks L. for bringing it to my attention) is that I have the opportunity to include a link to a musical performance that wasn't available at the time of the original posting. Such is the case with this piece from June of 2008. Not only to I get to share with you a rare video of Johnsmith singing his beautiful song "Kickin' this stone.." at the Beltany Stone Circle in Ireland, but I get to revisit a subject that is so dear to me...self-compassion.

Jesus said that we must love others, as we would have them love us. But how would we "love us?' Do we really show ourselves the kind of compassion and mercy we would like to be known for showing others? If we would learn how to love others, we must start with ourselves. We must foster a deep and abiding understanding of the feeling of being loved, forgiven, and restored...within ourselves, if we would know the depth of its value to others...and devote our lives to giving it.

For many years, I thought my failings were just that...failings. I am starting to see that I have been given a post-graduate course (and by the way, the hardest and most rigorous course I've ever taken) on the value of mercy, the achingly beautiful power of forgiveness, and the knee-buckling sweetness of redemption's kiss. Here is the post from 2008. May you love your own innocence with as much tenderness, as you show others...

"Kickin' this stone..."

"Kickin' this stone
kickin' this stone…
kickin' these blues out into the open light
where moss can't grow…

…Kickin' this stone
down this long highway
all across the countless miles
from the cradle to the grave
past all my mistakes
with all their guilt and shame
through the gentle rain of tears
sweet forgiveness came…"
-     Johnsmith

I love church…especially the Wednesday evening tradition of my own faith.  I am never too inspired, too peaceful, too sure of my own spiritual ground to not have it bless me in unexpected ways. 

I have learned that if I leave all my costumes, roles and titles out on the sidewalk, and just enter the door with a hungry heart…I leave fed.

Last night was no exception…and the blessing was so surprisingly BIG.  The inspirational readings were on "opinion."  Our little group meets in a storefront on a wonderful walking neighborhood street full of shops and restaurants and coffeehouses. So we place a sandwich board out on the sidewalk.  It lists the theme of our meeting and invites everyone to feel welcome.  When my husband saw the sign last night, he initially thought it said that the meeting was going to be about "onions"…thank goodness he was wrong.

The readings were strong and compassionate.  The impotence (vs. importance) of opinions rang through every citation.  I could easily nod my head in agreement.  Mary Baker Eddy says, "…mere opinion is valueless." I concur.  But as much as I agreed with where the readings and hymns took us, I felt like crying…church often does this to me. 

It was so easy for me to see that this spiritual promise, regarding the valueless-ness of opinion, is true.  I can readily accept that any mere opinion about someone, or something, is absolutely valueless to me, as a spiritual thinker.  So why was this message stirring up so much sadness in me? 

As I probed around in the darkness while sitting quietly in our small congregational circle, I came upon the stone that was gathering moss in my heart.  It wasn't my opinion of others - or others' opinions about me - that made me heartsick.  It was my opinions about myself.  I realized that I was entertaining opinions about my own mistakes and choices that left me filled with regret and remorse. 

I sat there, wondering if those feelings would ever abate, when I heard a young college professor and research scientist begin to speak about a recent healing he'd experienced.  I heard him say, "people often think that science is about proving something. But, science is really all about disproving a hypothesis…and it only takes disproving it once to prove that it is not scientifically true." 

He went on to explain that if something is scientifically true, it must be true EVERY time. So if it can be disproved even once, it is not really true.

This sent a shockwave through the dark places of self-doubt I had been wandering around, and resting, in.  I was wallowing in a space where I was sure I could possibly be trapped forever. I figured I could easily spend the rest of my life trying to prove that the bad opinions I held, about myself, were not true.  That I would have to prove in hundreds of thousands of different ways, that I was not a bad mother, a negligent sister, a forgetful friend, a less than perfect wife. 

But I suddenly saw that each time I was able to be a good mother, an attentive sister, an alert friend, a compassionate neighbor, a good wife, I disproved those false opinions I had harbored in the dark regions of my heart, kicked around over and over again, and often stubbed my toe on. 

Instead, I could kick them into the light of day, and let them become good and precious stones…cleansed by tears, bleached by the sun, strong and ready to use for building a better view of myself...a foundation strong and sure. A home I might even want to share with others.

It only takes one act of kindness, fidelity, attentiveness, patience, humility to disprove the validity of false opinions about ourselves...and others.   It's good to be a scientist.  To be Christian...kind, merciful, honest, loving, compassionate...in my practice of this Science - even with myself - is heavenly.

You can see why I love church…

Gratefully,
Kate

"I will...."

Last night, as I thought about Valentines Day and considered songs that spoke to me of enduring love and the beauty of "being known," it was Lennon and McCartney's I will…" that came to mind. Here is a post from 2008...with a few tweaks...that still rings true for me. Have a blessed day as you celebrate the eternality of Love...in all its forms.

"Who knows how long I've loved you..."

"Who knows how long I've loved you
You know I love you still
Will I wait a lonely life time
If you want me to I will

For if I ever saw you
I didn't catch your name
But it never really mattered
I will always feel the same

Love you forever and forever
Love you with all my heart
Love you whenever we're together
Love you when we are apart…"
- Lennon/McCartney

I have always felt this way about my children…and my husband.  It is as if I have always known them.  And when I say "always" I don't mean as far back as their birth…or mine…but to, and from, "infinity and beyond". 

"Meeting" each of the people I love has been more of an "oh, I remember you," than a "nice to meet you" (for the first time) moment.

There is always something vaguely familiar poking at the edges my heart, like a memory, when we are together.  It is almost as if I've seen them somewhere before, just as they turned a corner on a crowded street, but then the memory of where and when alludes me.  There is an "oh yes, there you are..." to the shade of green in my eldest daughter's eyes, or the way my sister's fingers feel slender and cool in my hand as we talk about hopes, and dreams, and heartbreak.

It is found in the graceful beauty of my girlfriend's gestures and mannerisms whenever she's animated about something, my mother's sharp intake of breath, and then a shy girlish giggle, if she's startled. I hear it in the sound of my younger daughter's voice singing from behind my seat in the car – something she will do only if she thinks I'm not listening..  And the way her sister's eyes cloud up with tears by the thought of a homeless puppy, waiting for adoption, at the neighborhood Petsmart.  The color of the African veld at sunset. All these things feel as timeless, and familiar, as the strains of an ancient lullaby.

I have often written about my confidence in the eternality of life...in the face of a loved one's passing…but I don't think I have related it to how powerful those same insights have been in thinking about  my children's birth, meeting a new friend, or discovering love after decades of freindship.  

Carly Simon sings in "Life is Eternal":

"Life is eternal
And Love is immortal
And death [birth] is only a horizon
And the horizon
Is nothing save
The limit of our sight..."

I believe that the horizon we call "birth" is nothing but the limit of what we remember.  I am so certain that this "timeline," of measured moments between birth and death which we call "life (and then try to extend as long as possible)...is just one chapter, in a very long book. Or to stay with the "horizon" metaphor…just one more expanse of prairie between mountain ranges.  It is simply the stretch of landscape we can see, but not the end…or the beginning…of the journey. 

Memory, our own...or that of someone who claims to have "been there,"…seems to define the beginning of each chapter.  But what if those moments when we recognize something familiar…in someone we are meeting for the first time…is just a glimpse beyond the horizon behind us.

I know that when my husband laughs, I feel as if I have heard that sound longer than I have known my name…or his.  I know that his hand in the small of my back, as he gently steers me out of harms way, is as enduringly familiar as my own hand against my cheek in sleep.

It gives me great pause to think that none of us are really meeting for the first time, but perhaps are just reconnecting on this side of the last horizon.

"…And when at last I find you
Your song will fill the air
Sing it loud so I can hear you
Make it easy to be near you
For the things you do endear you to me
And you know I will
I will…"

[here is a link is to my favorite recording of
I will…" by Alison Krauss]

always...and again,
Kate