"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

" to more than I can be...."

"I only hope
someday you find,
that you can believe
in me..."

I was reading some of the emails and notes I have received about a post I wrote, for this blog last winter, about my niece, Lily, and her mom, Laurie.  It brought to mind both Dan Fogelberg's, "Believe in Me," and Westcliffe's version of "You Raise Me Up."

The emails, notes, and FB messages only confirmed for me, how much we all hunger to have someone in our life whole believes in us with all their being. 

Some wrote about their own mothers, fathers, aunts, teachers who encouraged them to live their lives boldly and courageously.  Others wrote of their heartbreak, their hunger for someone, anyone to believe in them.  There were so many teens who felt that "if only" they had someone's encouragement, they could become someone who would change the world.  And there were the moms, dads, and grandparents who still wondered if they could have made a difference in the world themselves...if only.

Today's post has a simple message.  It is never too late. 

I want to repeat that again.  It is never too late.  If all it takes is for someone to believe in you...then its done.  I believe in you.  But that isn't going to do it.  That isn't going to make it happen.  You have to believe in yourself.  You have to believe in the you that God created you to be...perfect, whole, complete, filled with inspiration, beauty, creativity, fully resourced with all that you need to "make it happen."

When I was a girl, I was a dancer, a writer, a painter.  I loved these things.  I saw myself as these things.  My mom and dad had seven (count 'em) seven other children...all younger than I was.  I mourned the fact that my parents could never see me dance in a performance, rarely had a moment to read my report card...much less my poetry, and didn't have the resources to support the purchase of canvases, paints, or charcoal. 

So, slowly my vision of myself as a deeply creative person seeped away like a slow-leaking pool...until all that was left were a few hobbies that I indulged in when everything else was done and all my real tasks were accomplished.

Until one day, I started spending time with the best cheerleader in the universe...God.  I began spending lots of time listening to what He had to say about me.  In the silence of this listening I started to remember what I loved and Who it was who put that love in my heart.  In honor of my love for God, I started honoring those loves.  Not self-indulgently, but God-encouraged, God-inspired, God-impelled.

I loved to write, so I wrote.  And if I wrote, I was a writer, a poet, a lyricist.  I loved to paint, so I painted.  And if I was painting, I was a painter, an artist.  I loved to sing, and if I was singing, I was a singer.  Get my drift?

The more I wrote...the more I would find myself writing.  I put writing, not at the end of my list of the day's priorities, but at the beginning...right after my time with God.  I let that first-things-first time with God, set the agenda for my day.  And God is Love, so if Love said "write first," that's what I did.

You, every one of you...every one of us...has someone who believes in us and stands behind us, saying, "You are amazing, you can do it.  Go ahead...sing, write, paint, climb, run, speak....

Don't let anyone tell you anything about what you can't do.  They are lying to you.  I don't care who they are.  They can be a parent, a school administrator, a church leader, a counselor...it doesn't matter.  If God, Love, is telling you that you love to sing...then sing. 

As Dan sings:

"Too many hearts have been broken,
failing to trust what they feel..."

Trust what you feel.  Trust that it is Love, that is moving you to love...whatever it is you love.  You do it, and keep doing it.  Practice really does make perfect.  Do it because you love it, and others will love it too.  You will inspire them with your courage...and God will always be there to celebrate with you...to encourage you, to cheer you on. 

I hope that you will never forget to love the you that dreams big...

always,

Kate
Poet

*the photo is of my dear friend, and talented artist, Brooks Anderson...I thought you might enjoy visiting his website.  His paintings bless our home with generous beauty.

"...and my heart burdened be..."

"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..."

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

"Lord, free me of myself..."

"Lord, free me of myself
so I can please you."
- Michaelangelo

The above quote from Michaelangelo was shared by Al Pacino when James Lipton questioned him on Bravo's Inside the Actor's Studio about his Academy Award winning performance as the blind, tango-dancing colonel in Scent of a Woman. 

Lipton remarked that playing a blind person is a very difficult undertaking for any actor.  He asked Pacino how he prepared.  Pacino returned that he had asked his young daughter to "do" a blind person and that she did it so convincingly that it gave him pause. Watching her he soon realized that it required total focus on everything and everyone else outside of yourself to "do blind," and that as a child she had that kind of ability to live outside of her self...her ego.   This, he said, was what he brought to the development of his character...this total focus on others…and it won him what some in the industry consider the highest honor in his field.

Ahh...to live outside of oneself…to focus totally on others…these were concepts I longed to truly understand.  To be able to walk through one’s world without colliding with your surroundings...that's an achievement.

This all resonated with me because of what I had learned during childhood. 

When I was a little girl I had this premonition that someday I would be blind.  I never said I wasn’t a “strange” child.   In anticipation of this expected development, I would practice "being blind" for long periods of time…once I had finished my Saturday afternoon chores.  I would tie a scarf or bandana around my eyes and memorize my room, our house, how to get to the bathroom without bumping into walls and how to pour a glass of water without spilling.   What I remember most about these exercises was my awareness of everything and everyone else around me.

I listened for the echoes and soft sounds that might betray an impending ambush by younger siblings.  In doing so I was keenly aware that our dog was having a bad dream by the way her breathing changed, or that my youngest sister was thirsty by the way her voice became dry and raspy as she read out loud to one of her dolls.    

This kind of awareness was empowering.  But it required total focus on everything beyond the boundaries of my own skin.  I had to listen on a deeper level to "survive" my forays from the safety of my bedroom…out to the kitchen or the back porch.  Failure to listen, to be aware on a very deep and focused level, left me bruised and frustrated.

Pacino went on to share that this exercise in getting outside of himself has helped him in all of his subsequent roles.  When Lipton asked him why he thought his colleagues considered him the consummate actor, Pacino replied that he felt the most important skill he brought to his preparation for a role was his ability to listen.  He said every role is really about a relationship.  That he best prepared for his character by listening to what the other characters were saying and doing.  His “character” was just a response to what he heard from the other characters around him.  His character was best articulated by him, as an actor, when he was attentive to what others were saying, doing or needed.

When asked about Al Pacino as an actor, award winning director Martin Scorcese replied that when Pacino plays a part, "Al's not there"....meaning that Al Pacino has so disappeared that the character can shine through transparently.

I think these ideas are helpful to me in bringing my best to every "role" God is asking me to take on....wife, mother, friend, sister, colleague, healer.  I am able to “do” mother best when I am truly listening to those I am in relation with…my son and daughters.  This is a skill that I am working on every day.  Am I really listening to those around me...consciously aware of what I need to bring to the table?  Am I putting off my personality, my history, my "non-negotiables" (the things I think I can or cannot live with our without), the conditions whereby I think a situation is love-able…in order to be a transparency for what God needs in that moment?

Am I living my life out from me…or am I living in relationship to a larger body of spiritual life and being?  Do I see myself as an autonomous body of existent matter, or as the arm, hand, eye of the "body of Christ?"

These are all questions that I am pondering a lot these days.

I wonder whether Jesus gave us his "Lord's Prayer"...all in the language of relationships...us, we, our...rather than…me, my, I…as in,  "My Father which art in heaven" or "give me this day my daily bread"....in order to help us see that it is in the context of one another that we learn the most about ourselves as the reflection of the divine, the heir of an all-loving Parent.

Regardless of Jesus’ intent, I am realizing, like Pacino, that life is all about relationships...that we do not exist in a void of self-determinism.  It helps me understand that, as Mary Baker Eddy suggests in Science and Health, I can only be me in the context of you...because we are always and only "finding our own (goodness) in another's good."   I need YOU in order to be the best me I can be…just as Pacino could not be a great actor, developing a memorable character, without the other characters to listen to and perform with.

So, to each of you who have so generously shared "space" with me on this stage of life...thank you...I hope to listen better in the future…our relationship, as Breanda Graham says in his lyrics from the song "You Raise Me Up", made popular by Josh Groban, "fills me with wonder":

"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.

There is no life - no life without its hunger;
Each restless heart beats so imperfectly;
But when you come and I am filled with wonder,
Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
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..."
-Brendan Graham

I hope you know that each time you let me "be with you" you give me an opportunity to be "more than I can be" without you.
Kate