"I can hear a distant singing..."

"I've been feeling kind of restless.
I"ve been feeling out of place.
I can hear a distant singing,
a song that I can't write,
And it echoes of what
I'm always trying to say...

There's a feeling I can't capture.
Its always just a prayer away...

And I cannot wait to be going home..."

Mmmm...Sara Groves' "Going Home" conveys the warmth of finding yourself snuggled into the sofa, wrapped in quilts, after Thanksgiving dinner.  You are watching Little Women...the Winona Ryder/Susan Sarandon version...while your mom strokes your hair, and you sink deeper and deeper into the comfort of her soft body.

I know this feeling.  It is the feeling of returning to your own "ground zero" for recalibration.  It's like plugging yourself into a giant cosmic wall socket for recharging.  It is a spiritual act, and it is deeply grounding.

And as much as it may seem like we are going backwards towards our childhood, in a time long past, it is really a deeper, fuller, more-alive-with-promise exploration of what is inherently changeless and true...our innocence. 

A reader recently wrote and asked me to write something about purity.  She had searched the index to this blog, and couldn't find a post that addressed this topic.  I was stunned.  Over 400 posts and not one had been tagged "purity." 

This is shocking to me, because "purity" is a spiritual concept that I work with almost hourly.  Purity is the allness of good, the fullness of innocence, the power of God asserting itself. 

Purity is not the absence of infection, violation, imposition, mistake, or bad choices.  Purity is not passive.  It is not something that can be lost, taken, or destroyed.  Purity is not vulnerable.  It is the self-assertion of grace, the insistence of hope, the radiance of divinity, the affluent coursing of Love's universal "I AM" springing from an inner core so deep, that it cannot be touched by darkness, doubt, or fear.

Another friend shared this quote from Woman, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Anything by Geneen Roth, the other day:

"…there is a natural inclination to want to keep exploring, keep discovering, keep touching the place that has never known suffering-which is, after all, the function of any spiritual practice."

This innate hunger to revisit the "place that has never known suffering," is the power of purity voicing itself to human consciousness.  It calls to us from a deep knowing, a persistent certainty that we are, and always have been,  good, pure, worthy, capable, untouched, and whole. 

This, for me, is the place of my Mother-God's soft lap.  It is the longing for this "place" that calls me...deeper and deeper towards its core.  It is this space of divine fullness and innocence that is inviolate and unsullied.  It is the purest light drawing us to itself like a leaf towards the sun.  It is home.

She wanders the
street...
looking nowhere
and yet
searching for
something,
her eyes
are lowered,
heart shattered,
wings broken,
hope unraveled...
where is
kindness,
is there a return
to innocence for
the child who
is no longer...a child?
Is there a
mother's lap to
fall asleep, and
rest her
head and
her dreams in...
without
fear?
Go deep,
go deep...
this longing to
be
a child again,
is
calling you
to Her
arms...
listen
it is
within
you...
singing.

Thank you for the prompting, Liz...with Love, 
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

Here are two more, profoundly beautiful quotes, from Woman, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Anything by Geneen Roth, that were shared with me:

“The third journey—the Journey in God—is the same in both the Sufi tradition and the path-of-food version: In this journey, you end the search for more and better. You no longer live as if this life is a dress rehearsal for the next. Authenticity, not trying to be good, begins to infuse your actions. Through practices like the Eating Guidelines, meditation and inquiry, you slowly realize that you are already whole and that there is no test to pass, no race to finish; even pain becomes another doorway, another chance to recognize where love appears to be absent.” (200)

“…real holiness is not in what you achieve…if you are willing to refrain from dieting and needing an instant solution, and if you want to use your relationship with food as the unexpected path, you will discover that God has been here all along. In the sorrow of every ending, in the rapture of every beginning. In the noise and in the stillness, in the upheavals and in the rafts of peace. In each moment of kindness you lavish upon your breaking heart or the size of your thighs, with each breath you take—God has been here. She is you.” (201)