"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

"So when days grows dark and cold..."

"So when day grows dark and cold,
Tear or triumph harms,
Lead Thy lambkins to the fold,
Take them in Thine arms…"
- Mary Baker Eddy

For me, yesterday's tragic incident at Virginia Tech brought back so many memories of those weeks following the Columbine High School shootings when I joined hundreds of other spiritual, health care and social service professionals in providing counseling to students, faculty, administrators and their families. 

However much I long to be there to help lift the heavy mantle of sorrow from the shoulders of those whose lives were touched by yesterday's brutal rampage, this time I don't live just 45 miles away.  I can't grab my Bible and Science and Health and hop in my Jeep and within an hour be sitting with parents and students, teachers and administrators holding hands, offering support or just listening to them tell stories about loved ones they feared were in danger.  I can't sit in the middle of this community whose peace was shattered by the sound of gunfire and speak directly…face to face…of God's tender care for their loved one.  The sons and daughters who may never again come home for Thanksgiving dinner, the ones who may be in surgery, or the ones who feel traumatized by sights and sounds they never imagined experiencing when they received their acceptance letter to Virginia Tech.   But… I can begin the same way I began that journey towards Columbine High School in mid-April of 1999…I can pray.  And from the summit of prayer I have a new perspective… I can reclaim the undeniable and certain spiritual peace I found during those weeks of providing care and counseling in the wake of the tragic shootings at Columbine High.

I have already recounted some of the lessons I learned during that time of rigorous spiritual caregiving in "A Peace that Can't be Shattered by Gunmen or Fear" and "Love, not Terror, is Contagious"…but today my thoughts and prayers are with the mothers, fathers, sisters, uncles, grandparents of Virginia Tech students.  Family member and friends who may have spent yesterday afternoon and last night wondering if their loved ones were safe, wondering if they would ever feel peace again, wondering if it could happen again.  The same suggestions of doubt and fear that many of us today may be wrestling with in the wake of such tragic news… accompanied by a never-ending stream of sound bytes and images we probably wish we could hit a delete button and erase forever.

But these feelings of horror, doubt, fear, helplessness, and hopelessness cannot steal from us our right to feel God's presence every moment…even when the sights and sounds of gunfire wrack our being, we can focus on the images of fellow students rising to help a friend, or a police officer carrying a wounded student from a classroom. These instances of kindness, grace and courage are our "faint morning beams" of God's presence in the midst of darkness.   We can still our wondering…our uncertainty, doubt and all the "what if"s of fear…with a spiritual knowing that is often not reinforced by the images being presented, but as powerful as the wind we cannot see yet still bends the tree to its will.

I recently had an experience one rainy Saturday afternoon that left me shaky with dread.  I had been quietly praying for myself and others, when suddenly I had the sensation of being violently slammed into something or having something slam into me.  This was arresting.  I had been so thoroughly immersed in that peaceful place of conscious communion with the divine that the abruptness of the sensation sent me reeling.  I immediately shook myself free of it, claiming that I was conscious, and that I could only be conscious of good.  Then I closed my eyes and returned to a meditative state. 

Within a very short time I was completely at peace again, fully engaged in listening for divine direction and watching for each glimpse of the spiritual nature of all "things" from a God-sourced perspective.  I was awake and aware of my surroundings--although my eyes were closed--when I felt someone come and sit on the edge of the sofa next to me. 

I have had enough experiences with things that seem unexplainable that I am rarely surprised.  I knew that I was alone in the house and that no one had unlocked, opened or closed our very noisy doors.  So I just stayed still and let "it" be there with me and share the space in consciousness that was so filled with peace and inspiration.  Within a few minutes I felt the weight against me shift away.  I felt the sofa cushion return to its natural shape and it was as if someone had walked out of the room.  At first I sat there celebrating life…affirming the all-presence of God as life…indistinguishable and eternal. 

And then it hit me square in the middle of my forehead.  Hannah!

My daughter, as many readers will know, is living in South Africa.  I then remembered that she was on holiday with friends during her spring break, camping in a remote area.  Suddenly my thoughts were in turmoil.  Had she been in an accident?   Had she been injured, mugged, or even mauled by lions (don't laugh…they were camping in the middle of South Africa)?  I wondered what it meant that I had felt a violent intrusion on my prayers and then felt the presence of someone.  I had had one too many experiences where a friend or a pet, when leaving this experience through "death," had spent a moment or more in transition with me, or with someone I knew,  before fully moving on.

But this was not a peaceful thought that Saturday.  In fact, it sent me into a tailspin.  I called my husband and I was grateful that he didn't scoff at my concern.  He reminded me to pray, offered to pray with me, and suggested that I call my daughter's birthmother (whom she is living with during her time abroad) to check in.  I was in the perfect state of reception for any wise and calm counsel.  Okay, I was desperate.  I hung up the phone, closed my eyes, and returned to that space of prayer that always gives birth to deep spiritual peace.  I was flooded with images of Hannah as a fearless child at play "popping up" after a horrible fall only to giggle and try some alarming highwire act again with perfect confidence.  Or Hannah, coming back from a day on the river at camp with her usual buoyant smile and reply to my question, "How was the river?" with an off-handed, "Oh, fine."  Only to find out later that she had been wedged between two boulders in a "hole" in the river and had to be rescued by a senior counselor when her efforts to free herself had failed and she had actually been quite frightened. (Kim, if you read this could you explain what a "hole" is?)

A parade of healings that I had witnessed with Hannah swept over me like a cool stream and I was washed clean of the frantic terror that seemed to have me in its grip.  But as I walked through the next hours of my day, concern continued to poke at the borders of my heart.  I would stop and pray…again and again…until I found peace.  Finally I felt that I could call her birthmom, my friend, without betraying any concern.  I reached her on the first try (not an easy feat from here to there) and she sounded relaxed and happy.  Whew.  So I asked if I could talk to Hannah.  My alarm meter went right back up into the red zone when she said, "No, they won't be back until tomorrow."  I chatted for a few moments more before hanging up the phone and I returned to that silent place of prayer.  I prayed all evening and through the night.  With the dawn I felt a complete peace…invulnerable and grounded.

At some point in the night my prayers had taken a turn.  I went from praying for Hannah to embracing all children "abroad", all children on spring break, the concerned parents of children on spring break and abroad...and finally to a solid place of seeing that it really wasn't about what I knew to be true about Hannah (as wonderful as she is to me, her over-adoring mom) or children on spring break…or their parents.

My prayer came down to…what did I know to be true about God?  Did I really know God to be all-powerful Love?  Did I trust Him to care for His children?  Or did I just pay lip service to a spiritual philosophy about Him…and always because of what had happened to us…me, my children, my community, my world, my humanity?

I realized that if Hannah had come to "visit" on her way forward in her life's journey, I could be grateful that God had given her the wisdom to understand that I might need to know, and feel that she was at peace.  If it was just her way (and His) of asking me to prayerfully support her in a moment of extreme need…well, thank you God for giving me the opportunity to celebrate with her the constancy of Your love…and the ONLY source of love…ever.

The next day I called South Africa and Hannah was back home and tired from a busy camping trip…and she would tell me all about it later. 

When she did I was not alarmed.  She began by saying, "Don't be concerned, Mom…I was alright, but…"    It was that "but"…that got me.  She went on to share that during her camping trip she had decided to take a flying leap off a very, very high cliff into a body of water.  Because of the height and the air currents, she missed her mark and had slammed into a rock.  A friend had come to help her and she had come away from the experience not only unharmed, but had returned to the cliff's edge to try it again…correcting her trajectory.  That kid!

Each parent, sister, brother, friend…today, tomorrow, next week…who spent time wondering (or is still wondering) about the safety of a loved one at Virginia Tech…or in Darfur…has really just been engaged (with God) in cherishing someone….their spiritual identity, the love they inspire and the space of good they represent in the universe.  In celebrating the certainty of God's wonder-ful loving care for His creation.  .

Thank you God for putting your love (not fear) in our hearts as we consider our children…the world's children.  Every parent and child is living, right now, in the warm embrace of that love.  Nothing can convince us that we are afraid…because we love our children so much.

As John says, "There is no fear in love…"

We either love them…or we are afraid…they don't mix any more than light and darkness can coincide.  As a parent, I choose love.  I have the right to reclaim this icky feeling in my gut.  I'll be darned if I will let anything tell me that I am afraid.  I am deciding that this feeling is and can only be, my overwhelming, unsettling in its magnitude,  love for humanity, my family…for Hannah.  I am NOT afraid… because I love.

Let's take the weapons of fear out of the hand of the "enemy" (whatever would say that God is not all-powerful and loving presence in our lives at all times and in all circumstances) and choose to be honor Him as His sons and daughters…and love, love, love…

Let's love the families and friends of students, teachers and administrators at Virginia Tech and around the world…let's shower them with our prayers of love…and with the way those prayers lead us to act…and by this loving honor the lives of those they love.  God will shepherd us all through these days, that seem so dark and cold, with His tender care…

We need not wonder…

"…Feed the hungry
Heal the heart
Till the morning's beam;
White as wool,
Ere they depart,
Shepherd, wash them clean."
- Mary Baker Eddy

with Love,
Kate

Love, not terror, is contagious

With today's latest news of yet another attempted school shooting, this one thwarted by a courageous school administrator, buzz about the contagious nature of these copycat acts of "playground terrorism" seems to be reaching a feverish pitch. 

At the same time we are already being overwhelmed by a flood of well-meaning recommendations that we get early flu inoculations to preempt the contagious nature of viral elements that seem especially prevalent during the winter months.  

Both of these concerns, virulent in their ability to move through the system of social consciousness, are quite aggressive and frightening to parents and children...therefore, to families...locally and globally.

But there is a way of looking at contagion that leaves us  feeling the dominion and authority that Light must feel in it's association with darkness.

There is an old tale of three elements (and many versions of this tale, so please bear with me if this version is not consistent with the one you have heard)....water, cold, and wind...these three pals are walking in the wilderness one day when they come upon a cave in the side of a mountain.  Sitting a the edge of the cave is their friend, Heat....trembling with fear.  "Why what's the matter dear friend, why are you so afraid?" they asked.  Heat could barely get the words out, "Darkness..." he whispered.  "I went in and turned up the temperature of my heat as high as I could and still I could not get rid of it....it wouldn't budge!" 

So sure of her abilities to roust out such demons, Water says, "I will go in and drown darkness."  So, in she goes and before long she comes dribbling out with her droplets scuttling into the corners...."I poured every drop of myself into that cave and filled it to the brim and still the darkness wouldn't budge...this is one very scary enemy." 

Wind, the blustery blowhard of the group, says with a flourish, "Well, show me the way because if there is one thing I am sure of it's my ability to blow anything out of my path..."  So in he goes blowing with all his might...but after only a few moments, out he comes with a gasp....reduced to a little puff, and says with barely a breath, "Oh my goodness...that is one immovable foe!"

Cold, with her frigid stare and icy touch has had enough.  "I will freeze this darkness until it shatters and lies in cold shards on the ground" and in she stalks.  But it is not long before she darts out in terror.  Her icy touch melting in the heat of her own fear.  "I don't know what that is, she says, but I can't seem to make it even shiver, much less shatter." 

So there they sit on the edge of the cave's opening licking their wounded pride and terrified of an adversary they cannot budge when along comes Light.  Full of warmth and radiating her love for everything her hand touches... revealing its inherent beauty,  she sees her comrades broken and afraid.  Her heart leaps to warm them and she asks, "dear friends, what could have possibly left you so unsettled and afraid."  "Darkness.." they whisper.  "Hmmm...I don't know of this darkness," she marvels.  "And you don't want to" they murmur in hushed tones.  Then they begin to tell her their story.  "Oh," she says, "I will go in and see if I can find it and talk with it about sharing the space with us."  "Oh no, please don't" say her three comrades, but Light is fascinated.  She has never seen Darkness, so in she goes.  A few moments later she returns to the opening of the cave, perplexed and baffled.  "I couldn't find this darkness you are talking about," she says, "everywhere I went, it was not there...not even in the corners."

Water, Cold, and Wind, being the smart (and now humbled) elements that they were decided then and there to join forces with light and enter that cave...today they live in one of the most beautiful places in the world....the Grand Canyon. 

Now, before you jump all over this sweet story and point out all of the inconsistencies...yes, at night there is darkness in the Grand Canyon...etc....just take the point intended into your heart for a moment.  When we are "walking as children of light" we cannot detect darkness...around us or in others.  When walking as children of health (this word comes from the root word "whoelth" which is "wholeness") there is no disease....absence of health.  Are we trying to freeze out terrorists, are we attempting to blow the cover off hatred...or... are we walking so completely as the very light of love, the very light of goodness...illuminating the inherent beauty, spiritual reality, and grace in every situation, person, season...that we can't even find darkness, fear, harm, terror, hatred.

Mary Baker Eddy says, "To light there is no darkness, all is light."  To love there is no hate, to appreciation there is no criticism, to the presence of health (wholeness, wellness, well-being) there is no dis-ease...no absence of health or well-being to antidote.  This is not a blind denial of a problem, quite to the contrary, it is an acknowledgment and appreciation of the presence of the truth...the truth that at any given moment and in any given situation we can find the presence of God...the presence of Love, Principle, Soul...in the concern of a family member, the orderliness of nature...all trees grow towards the light, root systems seek out water....in the precision and reliability of a mathematical equation.   And since there is only one "measure"  of God ... infinite ALL....each (however faint) instance of God's presence is the promise of His All presence...no matter how obscure at that moment...keep watching, keep your focus on presence of the light...because it indicates the presence of the Sun....the full radiance of the day.

So....what about contagion....don't be as concerned with what the news would try to spread or what it is trying to convince you is spreading....be so occupied with what you are broadcasting,  spreading...are you spreading joy, love, appreciation, goodness, kindness, compassion....then like our friend Light, not only will you never find the darkness...even in the corners, but those who accompany you in thought or experience....those whom your thoughts dwell on (intimately, locally, or globally) or who share your company....will be thereby benefited.

Spread light...remembering how fast it travels and how pervasively it reaches...if you need a reminder of how quickly and broadly joy and laughter spread visit this wonderful video in which a very serious yogi shares his practice of Laughing Yoga

with Love,





Kate