"to be known, rather than remembered.."

"memory,
i can dream
of the old days,
life was
beautiful then..."

I've never really liked this song. But, that said, it is the perfect keynote for this post. And if I have to listen to it, I would prefer to hear Barbra Steisand's version of "Memory," than any other.

This experience was pivotal in my understanding of healing. It happened over thirty years ago, but the Truth I discovered that day, is as fresh today as the day it flooded my heart.

A relationship that meant everything to me was falling apart at the seams. It would seem that whatever had drawn us together in the beginning had been lost forever. For the other person, but not for me. I wanted our relationship to continue so desperately. I loved him with every ounce of my being.

It was clear to me that he was just not remembering how good it was. How amazing it had been. All the reasons that we had come together in the first place. So I sent him cards filled with reminders. "Remember our first date? Remember those early months when we couldn't wait to meet at the end of the day and share our inspiration and insights. Remember that trip to...

The more I remembered, the farther away he moved from the closeness we had once enjoyed. I felt bereft. It was so easy for me to remember. And I thought those memories were our lifeline back to all the good we had known together.

One day, when things were at their darkest, I woke to a late spring snow storm. The roads were impassable. It would be a "snow day" for me whether I wanted to be home alone or not. And during that time, home alone was excruciating. So many reminders of "how good it had been."

I knew I couldn't "go there," so I made myself a cup of tea and pulled my books, the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, off of my desk and curled up in front of the wood stove for a morning of study.

I don't remember what the theme of that week's scriptural study was, but I do remember two things that shifted my heart. One, was the story of Peter's raising of Tabitha from Acts 9, starting at verse 36. Following her passing after an illness, Peter is called to her home, where he finds her friends - weeping widows who who brought him to the upper chamber where she lay surrounded by some of the coats and garments she had made while she was alive.

But it is this next passage that woke me up:

“But Peter
put them all forth..."
 

I got it. It was suddenly so clear to me. I, too, was clinging to memorials. When all along, divine Love was breathing fresh purpose into our relationship. Immediately on the heels of that realization, a statement from Science and Health came to mind:

“If a friend be with us,
why need we memorials
of that friend."
 

I knew I had to let go of all the "reasons" from the past. My loved one didn't need to be bombarded with memories, he needed to be trusted. He needed for me to release us both from the past. If we were to continue, it would be because God's purpose for our relationship was still vital to His plan for us.

Another statement from Science and Health helped me arrest that behavior. Eddy says:

"Make no unnecessary inquiries
relative to feelings or disease."
 

So I stopped. Cold turkey. I stopped asking him how he felt. I stopped wondering "what if..." I worked every day to simply show up in the presence of God's purpose for us.

This isn't about a nice, neatly tied up "healing" of a relationship. Each day we each showed up willing to discover more about our love for God, through our love for each other. But most importantly, I stopped looking backwards to affirm or define my relationships -- with God, with my loved ones, with my body. It allows relationships to evolve with purpose. It requires the discipleship of knowing -- versus remembering It's a spiritual demand that takes devout focus on loving God as the only "I am."

And isn't this what Peter was so clear about. Tabitha wasn't a memory, she was an idea of God. A reflection of divine Mind. And I love the definition of the word "reflect," as "deep thinking or pondering." Tabitha was God was thinking, not what he was remembering. And Peter knew that he too could know her, not through the widow's memorials, but through an understanding of her present identity.

This would have been so edifying for Peter -- the last thing we would have wanted, was to be remembered for his past denials of Christ, but known for the faithful man of God, the faithful apostle he was day-by-day as he fulfilled his holy purpose.

This spiritual demand to know, rather than remember, blesses everyone and everything. I once thought of myself as someone with a great memory. Now I know myself as someone who knows - not remembers - God. As someone who knows Love. It is enough.


offered with Love,

Kate

"Like a circle in a spiral…."

"Like a circle in a spiral,
like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning
in an ever-spinning reel..."

This hauntingly beautiful version of Alan and Marilyn Bergman's 1968 classic, "The Windmills of Your Mind," by Barbra Streisand leaves me speechless. For this song so closely mirrors how it felt. But I am getting ahead of myself.

In my late teens and early 20s a series of tragic events left me feeling as if my well-planned future was no longer my own. I felt as if all I'd come to count on had been yanked out from under me. And even though I may have seemed to be rolling with the punches on the outside -- on the inside, I was spinning out of control. I was terrified.

I needed to find my ground. But the landscape was foreign. I felt a quiet desperation roiling within. It was like being chased in a dream, but not being able to scream. I didn't know where to turn. Everything I had grown to trust -- hard work, obedience, patience, even God -- seemed to have let me down or disappeared. So I turned to what I knew -- patterns of order and repetition. It was the one thing I felt I could control. Keeping things tidy, and being hyper-vigilant in my habits and pursuits felt soothing. I made lists -- of everything. I had routines -- for everything.

One day, a work colleague -- who also happened to be the school psychologist -- casually observed that I always repeated the same series of steps while carrying out a task. She casually accused me of being obsessive and compulsive. But there was nothing casual about it for me. From that point on, she would just say, "O.C.D." whenever she saw me trying to control my environment or self-soothe through repetitive or perseverant behaviors. She thought it was a bit crazy, but endearing. I felt exposed and vulnerable. But again, I coped by trying to hide the behaviors under the cloak of a love for "order."

When I returned to the study and practice of Christian Science, I prayed deeply for freedom from what I had come to accept as a case of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I'd vacillate between feeling truly free of the anxiety that seemed to trigger my need for control, and a blind self-justification for my odd routines and peculiar habits. Citing the rigorous personal demands of thought-leaders I admired brought little comfort. I was ashamed of my frantic need for control, yet couldn't seem to live without it.

Then one afternoon I was reading a paragraph from the "Preface" of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. It was one that I'd loved deeply from early childhood:

"The physical healing of Christian Science results now,
as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle,
before which sin and disease
lose their reality in human consciousness
and disappear as naturally and as necessarily
as darkness gives place to light
and sin to reformation.
Now, as then, these mighty works
are not supernatural, but supremely natural.
The are the sign of Immanuel, or "God with us,"
-- a divine influence ever present in human consciousness
and repeating itself..." 

Something shifted in my heart. For the first time in years I wasn't fighting the anxiety. I glimpsed that I didn't need to hypnotically repeat behaviors to soothe my anxiety. I didn't need to perseverate. I didn't need patterns to assure me that things were under control. Truth was repeating Itself, Truth was asserting Its control in my life, Truth would persevere without my help, Truth would insist, Truth would not let go.

Trusting in the active, ever-operative presence of Truth started to bring peace in ways that I'd never felt before. Whenever I would begin to feel frantic and need to self-soothe, I would remind myself that I could trust that God was with me as:

"…a divine influence ever present in human consciousness
repeating itself, coming now as was promise...." 

Truth -- God -- is insistent, demanding, relentless, untiring, determined, perseverant, importunate, relentless, continuous, perpetual, incessant in Her love for each of us. She whispers,

"Peace, be still..." 

to our hearts. She is an alert Mother who never loses sight of her children. She is tireless and watchful of us and knows our need. She urges us to rest in Her Love. And because I love Her, I trust her. Isn't this the most perfect expression of love -- to trust and be trusted.

By giving those qualities of repetitiveness, persistence, perseverance back to God, I found my freedom from the identifying them as "mine" -- as negative features of a personality separate from God.

I am so deeply grateful. It wasn't about destroying or fixing a broken me, but realizing that, as John promises in the book of Revelation:

"The kingdoms of this world,
are become the kingdoms of our God
and of His Christ,
and He shall reign forever." 

The control was never mine to lose. Taking it back was not the answer -- trusting God was. She holds us, like a circle in a spiral.

shared with affection,

Kate

[photo of Jess and Ava Norsic by Jason Norsic]