"Nowhere else I'd rather be..."

"I'm runnin' down that mountain pass at midnight,
Those truckers they all flash their lights at me.
This highway ain't the very best companion,
'cause I know there's somewhere else I'd rather be..."

I love Dan Fogelberg. Over the past few decades, his High Country Snows album has been my companion on many a drive through the winding, narrow roads that criss cross the Rocky Mts.   And it was the first few lines, from his song, "Mountain Pass," that tried to be the soundtrack during one difficult late night drive, a couple of weeks ago.

My girlfriends and I had driven from camp, over Independence Pass, through Aspen, and up in to one of the most beautiful  high valley pastures I've ever seen for a polocrosse match my daughters, one friend's husband, and a handful of our beloved counselors and campers were competing in that weekend. 

The drive up was glorious.  Absolutely perfect...in every way.  Cloud-dappled Colorado blue skies, shimmering mountain lakes, the underflash of aspen leaves scattering light across the loam-rich forest floor.   Tears fell listening to Carrie Underwood's "How Great Thou Art," on Linda's ipod, and the scent of August's promise...cooler September days, aspen golds, sweaters, and hot cocoa were palpable in the air.

Once at the tournament, we were smitten...lost in the day.  Riders from Australia, Alburquerque, Durango, and beyond.  The dance of horse and rider...more intimate than a tango.  Old friendships, new acquaintances that would someday be old friendships.  The laughter of teens who share a love for horses and competition, the whinnying of horses who love "the game," and can't wait to parry on the field.  And the greenest grass I've ever seen inviting us to "relax, lie back, close your eyes and listen, stay...."   So we did. 

By the time we left we'd enjoyed watching our kids (and Lach) scrimmage in more than a dozen chukkas.  The fast-paced, precise, extraordinarily beautiful choreography of horse and rider...spinning, racing, turning on a dime, dipping to retrieve the ball, tearing down the field, cutting in front of an opponent...it took my breath away.  And all this without eating any of the ubiquitous dust that flavored every other polocrosse tournament I've been to.   Heavenly.  Sigh. 

By the time we tore ourselves away...riders still on the field playing as the sun turned the sky a shade of lavender-tinged salmon...we were wondering why we had to go.  oh yes, work...we reminded ourselves.

A quick dinner in Aspen, and we'd be "home" by midnight.  The food was great, and an hour later we hopped into the car under a quilted black sky scattered with a million stars.  It was going to be a lovely, cool ride back down the mountain...

Not.

I was the one I'd designated to do the driving, and it didn't take long before I was so ill I could barely speak.  This highway was not a good companion...at all.  Dancing headlights, shimmering snow reflectors, endless switchbacks....I wasn't doing so well.  A couple of emergency stops along side of the road helped...a bit, but there was a part of me that groaned inside, "I can't go one more mile, what if we just stopped here, and slept until the sun comes up?" 

But it was Linda's sharing of Carrie Underwood's beautiful How Great Thou Art," that afternoon, and her and Maree's clear love for God, and their trust in His love for me, that kept me going.  I knew, with all my being, that they were praying for me...and I could feel it.  I could truly feel their prayers, their love, their willingness to laugh with me.  And I could feel it more viscerally than I could feel the nausea or dizziness.  So I focused that, on actually feeling their love...which I knew, with all my heart, was an expression of God's love...and before we reached home, it was all I could feel. 

And you know what? Right where the highway didn't seem like the very best companion, I was already surrounded by the very best friends I could hope to be loved by.  Their love was all I needed to remember that the day was blessed, and all was well.

Thank you Linda and Maree...and thank you God...how great Thou art! 

There is nowhere else I'd rather have been that night.

It was the best!! 

Kate

" 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 it's run for the roses..."

"..It's the chance of a lifetime
in a lifetime of chance
And it's high time to join in the dance
it's high time to join in the dance..."

My husband and I went to see Disney's Secretariat at midnight, on the day before its opening in theatres. I was sure we'd be standing in long lines, and was surprised to see that we were the only ones at the ticket counter.  Where was everyone?  I was as excited as a school girl.   As we found our seats (30 minutes early) in the empty auditorium, I could barely contain my happiness.  I was nervously impatient with the silly previews (something I normally enjoy).  I wanted opening credits, a title screen, the first appearance of a "Big Red" stallion.  This was a story I'd loved for a long, long time.

I remember the 1973 Kentucky Derby, like it was yesterday.  Sitting on the avocado green, sculptured-loop carpet in my best friend's living room...eating popcorn and drinking TAB...while we waited for the horses to appear...emerging from the bowels of the stabling area...on their way to the starting gate.  My heart thumping, my palms sweaty, I searched the television screen for the first glimpse of him.  Then, there he was. 

Like so many girls (most of them much younger than I was at the time) I had a crush on a horse.   And not just any horse, this was a very special horse.  This was a horse whose story had captured the heart of a nation.  But I felt like I had seen him first.  From his first appearance in horse magazines, I'd been making pencil drawings of him on notebook paper, dreaming of him, wondering what it would be like to ride him.  I was short, I was little, why couldn't I be a jockey???


Secretariat was the object of my affection.  He was tall...16 hands of pure muscle.  He was fast...the Kentucky Derby in under 2 minutes.  He was handsome...a deep rich chestnut thoroughbred.  And he was much safer to be in love with, than any boy. 

Dan Fogelberg's "Run for the Roses" talks about "chance" but for me, Secretariat's success on the racetrack had nothing to do with chance, and everything to do with heart.  I'd been following his story like the rise of a young rockstar.  and there was no question in my mind that Secretariat had the heart of a champion.  He certainly had mine.   I rankled at any suggestion that his potential was based on chance, luck, breeding, or investors, rather than his right to run...to do what he was meant to do because of his relationship to God.  Even when I wasn't sure about this spiritual fact for myself, I was sure of it for him.

One of my favorite Bible stories is that of the man who was "born blind."  Jesus disciples are baffled that they cannot heal him of his blindness and so they bring his case to Jesus.  Jesus gently rebukes their question, "who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?" with the paradigm-shifting, "neither did this man sin, nor his parents, but that the works of God may be made manifest." 

He then spits in the dust, makes clay of the spittle, anoints the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and then asks him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam - "which is by interpretation, 'Sent'".  The antidote to being born blind, was seeing oneself as sent...sent by God, sent for a holy purpose, sent to manifest the works of God. 

How often do we see ourselves as "borne (carried) blindly through life by chance, circumstances of family...wealth, poverty, academic legacy, genetic-predisposition to a certain level of intellectual rigor...political leanings, acculturation, nature, nurture...you name it. 

But we are not "borne blindly."  We are "sent" into each moment with a heart for every task put before us.  It is our fidelity to that "heart" that fulfils our right to be the manifestation of God's work...the coincidence of divinity with humanity, moment-by-moment...every second of every day. 

I believe this was true for Secretariat.  He just "showed up" with a heart full of wonder.  He was not genetically predisposed to winning.  He was not an anomaly of chance.  He was spiritually predisposed to being Secretariat.  To being the manifestation of God as "horse"...full of wonder, joy, eagerness, determination...heart.  He was a horse with a heart for every task put before him. 

He was verb-driven, not noun-defined.  He wasn't running Belmont any differently than he ran his home track at Meadow Farm.  He didn't run for jockey Ron Turcotte, differently than he ran for trainer Eddie Sweat, or beloved owner Penny Tweedy...he just ran.  

There's a lesson in this story for each of us.  When we run, really run, our race...the race that is "set before us", day-by-day, moment-by-moment, with a heart that fully understands it has been sent, and is bursting with a desire to live in service to its divinely appointed purpose, we "win" our own spiritual triple crown...self-knowledge, humility, and love.

I love you "Big Red"... still do,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

Here is a link to Secretariat's hear-stopping win of the 1973 Preakness which wrapped up his Triple Crown.

"If I could ever say it right..."

"If I could ever say it right
And reach your hostage heart...despite
the doubts you harbor
Then you might,
Come to believe in me.

If I could only do one thing,
Then I would try to write, and sing
A song that ends your questioning
And makes you believe in me
Oh, you can believe in me...."
- Dan Fogelberg

Does God say it right...to you?  Does Love reach your hostage heart...despite the doubts you harbor?  He does in my life...and often, through "the Word."  The Word comes to us in many forms.  There are the more accepted and obvious literary vehicles.  The Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the poetry of Hafiz, tablets of stone carried down from Mt. Sinai, spiritual texts from many philosophies, religions, belief systems...all satisfy our hunger for something enriching, comforting, and edifying.  And then there is the presence of the Word as the Logos.  The Logos is often defined as "divine reason" the presence of Truth in the heart, divine discourse, an indwelling grace.  This is where God's voice feels most real to me.  This doesn't lessen, but enhances, my love for reading the Bible, Science and Health, and other spiritual texts. In their company, I find a timeless sense of community. 

Someone asked me recently, "Why do you read the Bible?  Is it so that you will have the right ideas to heal someone?" I didn't have to pause long to think about my answer.  It's one that I've given a lot of thought to.  It came in the form of a quote I read once on a Celestial Seasonings teabag:

"We read to know we are not alone."
- CS Lewis

I believe that CS Lewis got it right.  Since Mind is All-in-all.  We already include all intelligence, all knowledge, all inspiration.  So we are not reading to discover something new.  We are reading to discover we are not alone in the thoughts that keep us company in our silence, in the sweet sacred waking hours of the night, in the holiest of holies...the space of prayer.

I do not read the Bible to find something I think I have never known. I read the Bible, the Tao, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" to remember more of what I already know, already include, already delight in.  I read to feel fellowship with another thinker who can't stop him/herself from writing a "song" that forwards someone else's questioning, and helps them believe in themselves...in the presence of the great I AM within themselves.

Spiritual thinker and thought-leader, Mary Baker Eddy, said it so beautifully when she wrote:

I have nothing new to communicate;
all is in your textbooks.
Pray aright and demonstrate your prayer;
sing in faith."

Tonight I was listening to Dan's song, "Believe in Me" and I found myself wandering into the pages of the Gospels, walking with Jesus on his journey from the baptism, through the wilderness, and towards his destiny as a healer and pathfinder for spiritual thinkers of every age and tradition. 

Poetry is "my native tongue" as I wrote in this linked post from September of 2007.  And the poem that follows below, is one that I found my heart singing...again..as I kept pace with him along the dusty road earlier today.  The words and rhythm felt familiar but I couldn't remember where I'd heard it before, until I was led to finally clean out a folder that had been recovered from an old hard drive two years ago.  This poem was there.  It is one I'd written in 2005 and had not read since.  It had poured out late one night when I was hungry for a more genuine relationship with Jesus.  I'd been feeling a like he was someone I spoke about...not to...or more importantly, with.  This poem was the beginning of something more timeless, present, and rich with fellowship between us.   

This is just the first poem of dozens.  Dozens of conversations with him that flow in poems.  Conversations that I've experienced on our walks through the holy land of consciousness:

the gift
descended
like a dove
...surprising

surprising
to see a dove
descending from
heaven

to hear
a
voice

to
feel the water
pouring
like
silk over
my forehead
and through dust-coated hair
and lashes

the gift descends
from
where there seems to be no
reservoir of
hope

and yet from the
unseen...
from somewhere
beyond the
clouds
there is a voice
that whispers
thunders
roars
a promise
of
love

the gift descends
and
we are caught
off guard,
breathless,
driven to our knees
in awe
wet from the
baptism,
spent with
surrender,
dazed by the
anointing

we are
on our
tiptoes
waiting
without
sandals
feet bare
unshod
on holy ground

we are
naked before
His
knowledge of
our hearts' most
unspoken
longings

egos are
shattered by His
grace,
by His
love,
by His
gift....

I am His son
He is pleased?


then why
then...
ah..."then"

the wilderness
the hunger
the temptations
the taunting
the false promises and
coercion,
hypnotic offers of bread and
celebrity

but
we
are
not
afraid
of this jeering...
snake
pharoah
satan
baal
herod
devil...

I am well-prepared...
a childhood of study...Hebrew school
Shabbat, Passover
conferring
with the elders
a stolen afternoon at twelve
alone with
doctors, lawyers, holy men
learned Rabbis
hours with the Torah
mornings in the temple
I am ready

I remember

I know...I have always known

"It is written..."

and the Word was made flesh...
and angels
ministered...
the sweetest bread
the Word...

ah yes, the gift...

you remember too...
don't you?

shared with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit: Stacey Vandermast Barton 2010]

"I'm running down this mountain pass..."

"Well, I'm running down this mountain pass at midnight
Those truckers they all flash their lights at me
This highway is the very best companion
It knows there's nowhere else I'd rather be…."
- Dan Fogelberg

Okay, so I have played with Dan's lyrics just a bit here.  If you want to hear them the way he wrote them you can listen to "Mountain Pass" through this link.  But from the very first time I heard this song, these were (at first) what I thought he was saying…and from that moment on, it was the only way I every heard it.  

This is a post about a road.  It is about a 100.02 mile stretch of the most beautiful highway on earth…to me.   I think of it as my "birth canal."  On this stretch of road, I leave a place I was…each time…and come thorugh to a place where I will have been borne anew…again.

Colorado Highway 285 from Evergreen to Buena Vista is littered with the shedded snakeskins and cast-off chrysalises of my life.   By the time I reach my destination I am as naked and child-like as a babe.  I never arrive burdened…heavy-laden…with the baggage of self and sin.   Somehow the high country wind that blows through the rolled-down windows of my Jeep and the music pouring through the speaker system - washing over me like a Rabbi's blessing at a bris - strip me clean.

I am ready for camp.  I am ready to have my heart tried and tested and made new by the demands of loving and caring for "the children of the Most High."

Leaving Evergreen, I wind my way past Evergreen Lake, up Hwy 73 till I reach its junction with 285.  My trip doesn't really start for me until I am actually on this incredible "highway of our Lord"."   I am never in a hurry.  As eager as I am to get to camp, I don't want to rush this part of the journey.  I pull onto the highway at the Safeway and something changes in me.  I am not my past mistakes.  I am not my former good deeds and published words…or works.  I am Kate and I am going to camp to have a summer of transformation.  I have no agenda, I have no "to do" lists.  I only have a pure, hungry heart for this journey. 

Coming down Crow Hill into Bailey I feel like I am flying.  Flying beyond all that would want to hold my feet in the concrete of doubt and drown me in regret.  The car soars over the road…and I soar past my "once upon a times."

Weaving my way through Shawnee, past the Santa Maria shrine looking down from her mountain altar, winding through Grant…stopping long enough beside the rushing river to clasp my first handful of mountain-fed water and drink deeply of her gifts…I feel the ache lifting from my heart and a child-like joy springing from a place so deep it makes me weep to even write these words.

I return to the Jeep and sit for a moment in the pine-filtered Colorado light…now, so close to the sun…and whisper just one of a thousand prayers of gratitude I will breathe over the course of this 100 miles.

My heart leaps as the Jeep starts and I take her deeper into "a place that I love, to the Piney Wood Forest, and the High Country Snows" (D. Fogelberg - "High Country Snows").  We crest Kenosha Pass and as we round the bend I can see the high country meadows and ranges of South Park stretching before me like Shangri-La.  Because it is June there will be wild irises along the irrigation ditches, and new foals will be kicking up their heels in tall grass next to patient mothers and resolute cattle "on a thousand hills." 

This is where I will slow the Jeep to a pace just fast enough to keep more hurried drivers from expressing disdain in gestures and symbols.  I am in no hurry and do not hesitate to pull aside for any and all vehicles that wish to pass.  I will drink long at this visual fountain of God's bounty. I will be languorous on this leg of my journey.  I will imagine myself a pioneer wife on a Conastoga wagon reaching the summit of this ridge and finding a paradise of flat land just waiting for the seed she's brought all the way from…I will not imagine her first winter and the snow that will drift higher than her rooftops because of those same flat meadows and strong mountain winds.

I will thread my way through the last 36 miles from Fairplay, past Como, near the Midland Trail to Johnson's Corners.  Every inch of landscape visually absorbed as if I were breathing in each molecule and as it entered my system it begins preparing me for what the next five weeks will be all about…living Love...accepting the opportunities for service, humility and compassion, with grace.

As I come over the last pass my heart is racing. I am holding my breath. Tears flow as rapidly as the Arkansas River is rushing from Buena Vista to Salida.  I am home.  My valley has her arms open to receive me. And right between them is the palm of her hand over her heart - and the center of my affections, my home - the Adventure Unlimited Ranches.  I pull over to the side of the road somewhere between where I have crested the pass and  where I will reach the turn-off for Hwy 24 leading into Buena Vista to just take it all in.

Once I can see again to drive I pull up at the three way stop, turn right and make my way through my only real hometown, Buena Vista, Colorado 81211.   Bongo Billy's in on the right.  On the open deck is a table once painted cobalt blue with a big cup and saucer in the middle where I have journaled, and read, and gazed up at Mt. Princeton for more summers than my sun-burned shoulders can count.  Further down on the left is Merrifield's nursery where I will return later in the day to pick up pansies and wildflowers in clay pots and hanging plants for my porch.  Do I stop now for ice cream at Kay's or take a short detour down Main Street for a hot chocolate at Mother's and a quick peak at what's new at Serendipity? Do I really want to pick up nubbly wool in rich deep colors even before I have walked through the door of my cabin?

No!  I have only one destination….I want to go home.  I stay on course through town.  I will return later to visit with Prana - my favorite Weimaraner in the world - at Trailhead, and pick up dried cherries and Dakoba dark chocolate bars laced with lavender at Nature's Pantry.   But for now I have my sights set on a series of avalanche chutes filled with late Spring snow, and at their base my little cabin in the woods next to a burbling stream that feeds Valerie Lake.   I am hungry for the scent of Aspen, lodgepole pine, and yarrow.  I am thirsty for the sound of hummingbirds and children laughing.  I am aching for home.

I turn left at Swishers Diesel Repair shop with its lot full of old school buses.  Five Fingers are now right in front of me and by the time I make the right at the entrance to Game Trail and the left into camp property I am both electric with excitement and absolutely still inside as if I haven't needed to even breathe for the last few minutes. My life is not dependent on air or water or forces of nature. My life is fed by the stillness of this place, the history of joy and healing that has become her cellular memory…imprinted on every rock, leaf, and flower.

I stop at the gates and climb out of the Jeep walking gingerly in my flipflops across the cattle guard to wrap my arms around one of the big pine logs that make up the vertical posts for her gate.  I hug tight, kiss her squarely on her bark-less long cylindrical cheek and thank God…again…for gracing me with another year in this place I call home.

I climb back into the Jeep and drive up the road that bisects our lower pasture.  Horses, antelope, picket pens, rabbits, birds of every name and nature barely notice I have arrived.  I take the right fork at the "Y" and circle up around Coyote's Den, past the Sky Valley corral, behind the Horseshoe cabins where each of my girls will have made their transition from little girl to young woman, up and around the tennis courts to the parking spaces in front of the Hub where my friends  will greet me as if I am the most awaited guest…ever!  But then they do that with everyone that arrives home!  After today I join them as part of the greeting committee.  I will be there in the Hub with them as often as I can...rolling out the welcome mat for others who will be arriving at the door for the first time…or the fifiteth. 

But for today I am the lamb who has found her way back to the place where she feels most the Shepherd's care, has known His staff and His rod, and recognizes his Voice in the wind as it whistles through the pines, and sees His face in the eyes of the children…of all ages.

This is a post about a road…a road I will travel next week…a road on which each deeply drawn breath of mountain air will hold a thousand prayers of gratitude....for one more year...
Kate

"The promise that guides me..."

"...Your love is the promise that guides me
All of the days of my life..."

This line from Dan Fogelberg's "Missing You" has been playing through my heart for the last few days.  For many years this song has been all about the relationship between two people who love and miss one another.  But this week I have been thinking about this line in a new way.  For me, today, it is all about the love that divine Love, God, puts in my heart as a promise of His ever-present direction and guidance in my life.

Okay, so I had it made.  But I have skipped to the middle of this story...let me start again...

My dear, funny, sit-in-Starbucks-and-laugh-yourself-silly, smart, kick-in-the-butt, hold-you-accountable friend Jill got married last summer to her childhood sweetheart…I couldn't have been happier to know that she was cherished and adored by this precious man.  But, he lived in Iowa.  Iowa!?!?!?  This was not good.  It took us 7 hours (one way!) to drive up for the wedding.  I was going to miss her terribly.  Then she told me the other good news…that she would continue to teach at the community college here each week and would be coming down on Monday and staying through Thursday evening.  We could still meet at Starbucks once a week to connect and catch-up.  So, it wasn't really going to be that bad after all.   Well, at least not for me.  I wasn't making that commute, I wasn't going to be away from my husband four days (and nights) a week.  I wasn't going to have to coordinate raising two still-in-school age children from 7 hours away. 

As summer turned into Fall I started really looking forward to our visits.  I had missed her laugh…and her wisdom.  Each week those visits left me feeling like a girl.  We had a blast.  The hours flew by and I felt refreshed.  But it was becoming more and more obvious with every visit that this was not the very best situation for Jill and her family.  She loved her job at the college, but needed to be with her husband and children.  It was clear that a job near home would be a perfect solution. 

I joined her in scanning postings for a great job in Northern Iowa.  I prayed with all my heart that she would be seen as the perfect candidate.  And she was!  Just before Thanksgiving she was selected for a wonderful position that would eliminate the 14 hour round trip commute and would put her home each night with her family.
I was thrilled. 

What???

Then it hit me.  I was THRILLED!!!!  Really thrilled for her.  I wasn't bummed, depressed or heart-broken that I wouldn't see her every week.  I was so happy for my friend.  So happy for her family.

My love for her had over-ridden any selfish desire to have her here each week so that I could enjoy her company…to laugh and talk with her.  It was, once again,  a powerful indication of God, as Love, working in my heart…causing me to desire, truly desire, what was best for someone else. 

I love these reminders.

When someone asks me how or why it is that I am so sure that there really is a God, these are the kinds of things that I think about…and share.  I'm not as inclined to talk about the physical, emotional, financial or relationship healings I have experienced and witnessed, however powerful those experiences may have been.  No, I am more likely to share an experience where God, as Love, has so filled my heart with unselfishness, over-ridden self-interest, and has made me WANT, really want something good for someone else that it goes against all that is "me" oriented. Because it is in these moments that I am reminded that I am, at my core, just plainly and simply, his child, a good person…the instrument of His love.  That He has the power to govern my heart, to steer it with this love.

At the end of her, very brief, "Daily Prayer", Mary Baker Eddy encourages us to pray:

"…And may Thy Word
enrich the affections of all mankind
and govern them."

God is enriching my affections, my love for others, and this is the way he guides and governs every moment of my life.  This is how he moves each of us towards our purpose, establishes our mission, and defines our legacy…each day. This is why I can trust Him with my heart…because He has shown me over and over again that He has the power to make me want something that it would make no sense for me to want if I were only a self-defined, self-determined, self-protective, self-ish mortal.  The desire to parent, to unite with another in marriage, to serve others, to work out a relationship problem…it could only be this larger hand of Love guiding my heart so completely away from self. 

This love is, for me, the promise that guides me…all of the days of my life….
Kate

"The farther you reach, the more that you touch..."

"The more that you see,
The less that you know.
The less that you know,
The more that you yearn.
The more that you yearn,
The higher you climb.

The farther you reach,
The more that you touch.
The more that you touch,
The fuller you feel.
The fuller you feel,
The less that you need.
The less that you need,
The farther you reach..."

News of Dan Fogelberg's passing reached me early this morning.  My heart goes out to his wife Jean and to his precious family and closest friends.  His music has comforted me, encouraged me, and provided a soundtrack for many of my life's most poignant moments.

In February I will make my next trip "home" to Colorado's Arkansas Valley.  I will drive over Kenosha Pass and through the high country expanse of South Park with Fogelberg's "High Country Snows" at full volume.  I will weep. 

I know that I have quoted Carly Simon's "Life is Immortal" before, but today it seems especially relevant:

"Life is immortal
and Love is eternal
and death is only a horizon
and the horizon is nothing
save the limit of our sight…"

The limit of our sight, not the limit of our loved one's life.  I can just imagine Dan climbing higher and higher toward the summit of one of his beloved Rocky Mountains…turning to us and waving before cresting the peak. 

So today I will pop High Country Snows, Twin Sons of Different Mothers, or River of Souls into the CD player, I will lean into the wind that blows down from the mountains and across the prairie…sending new snow swirling around my ankles…and I will smile.  How long have his fans in that "next" valley been waiting for a live performance.  How many new listeners will discover this gentle troubadour who,

"gave to me
a gift I know
I never can repay"

Thank you Dan...
     "for your music and your stories from the road",
Kate

Here are links to other Fogelberg-inspired posts:

A Place that I Know

The Higher you Climb

Part of the Plan

There's a Song in the heart of a Woman

I'm sure there will be more...

"The higher you climb...

“The higher you climb,…The more that you see.
The more that you see,…The less that you know.
The less that you know,…The more that you yearn.
The more that you yearn,…The higher you climb…”

I am still in my Dan Fogelberg phase.  But since we are in Colorado on spring break, my CD of choice has moved from his 1974 Souvenirs to the perfect soundtrack for traveling the canyons and high meadow basins…1985’s High Country Snows.  If you have never driven across the open range of South Park on Hwy 285 with the windows open, the dry mountain air blowing through your hair and this CD cranked so loudly that it resets your heart’s beating…then you’ve missed something truly significant.

The above lyrics perfectly illustrate my spiritual journey of late.  In “The Higher You Climb,” Fogelberg articulates the frustration that I have often heard my mountaineering friends describe as they summit peak after peak, always searching for the next “Everest”.

For me this feeling started almost 20 years ago when I felt like I was going through “the valley of the shadow of death” and wasn’t sure there was any way out.  Day after day I searched for an egress from the valley in a way that didn’t look like I was throwing myself off the edge of a sandstone cliff into a dark abyss.

I remember calling a friend one afternoon, someone I often turned to when the spiritual road seemed most treacherous.  He laughed and said that although I thought that this adventure had become worse than an off-course cruise ship in the Bermuda Triangle, there would be a day when I’d look back on this leg of the journey with longing. 

That really made me laugh.  I couldn’t imagine ever longing for pain, suffering, sorrow, relentless depression.  Nope, I was sure that day would never come.  While I knew I had many personal issues to deal with, masochism wasn’t one of them.

Boy, was I ever wrong.

It wasn’t even a year later that my health had stabilized, my relationships were stronger and I was feeling the peace I thought would never come again.  But I was also feeling something new.  I was feeling hunger.  I was hungry for those days when I woke each morning with only one desire…the desire to know God, to hear His voice, to feel His touch. 

My friend had been right.  I was missing my “wilderness days”…days when I thought the valley of the shadow of death had been my Cancun spring break gone bad.  I was hungry for the hunger.  I was thirsty for the thirst. Not the sorrow, sadness, pain, and depression...those had faded. I loved the longing.

One morning while praying for direction, it occurred to me that I might want to revisit Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, ten verses from Matthew that he delivers, as Mary Baker Eddy says, “from the summit of devout consecration.”  It was there that I found this statement:

“Blessed are those who do hunger and thirst after righteousness…”

In the Bible that I was reading from, the verse stops at the bottom of the page.  So I let myself pause there and think about this statement before going on…and it was so beautiful.  There I was at the summit and I could see that I would never be without another mountain to climb.  There in front of me was the promise of an endless range of peaks awaiting me if I wanted to scale them.

The blessing wasn’t in getting to the top and congratulating myself on a victory.  The blessing was in getting to the top for the sheer joy of discovering that there were more mountains to climb.  I loved the climb.  I loved every icy handhold, every boulder field, every gale force wind above tree-line that made my eyes sting and my hands chafed. 

I still love the climb.  To discover that there are more adventures ahead of me is the whole blessing….it is the filling of my soul. 

"...The farther you reach,...The more that you touch.
The more that you touch,...The fuller you feel.
The fuller you feel,...The less that you need.
The less that you need,...The farther you reach."

So today as I sit here in the middle of one of the most breathtaking canyons in the world, I am filled with questions.  I am absolutely aching with questions rather than the answers that the world would love to convince me I need in order to take important next steps in our life.  I feel blessed by this hunger, filled with a thirst that makes me want to weep with gratitude.  I am so grateful that I can still feel the longing for His voice in my heart, telling me to not let go…His touch at my shoulder encouraging me to reach for the next handhold on this climb…

It is the hunger to reach that is the blessing today…not reaching the summit.  Of this I am sure.

And the view from the edge of this cliff…why it’s wonderful!

K

"That's a part of the plan..."

"...Be who you must
That's a part of the plan.."

As is often the case, I am in a phase...this week it has been a Fogelberg phase.  It started with last Thursday’s post and I haven’t been able (or wanted) to shake it. That said, at any given season you can replace ”Fogelberg” with Taylor, Krauss, Wilcox, Williamson, Rice and…well, you get my drift.  But for the last week I have been officially immersed in Fogelberg.  When I don’t have one of his CDs filling up the airspace in the house/office, he is singing in my head and heart.

Dan Fogelberg is a lyricist who navigates my inner landscape with the deftness of a surgeon.  I let him in and he rearranges my heart.  This week I have lived in the space of his song, "Part of the Plan." Written in 1973, it perfectly describes chapters in my life…page after page so full of moments that afford spiritual growth at the expense of any inflated sense of self.  The word picture he paints of a heart that walks the line between spiritual strength and personal humility takes my breath away.  Or as Fogelberg says,

"..I have these moments all steady and strong
I'm feeling so holy and humble
The next thing I know I'm all worried and weak
And I feel myself starting to crumble..."

I’d think I have it all figured out, and then something happens…a memory washes over me, I come across a photograph, someone says something that triggers regret, or sleep just doesn’t come quickly enough…and I am back on my knees ready to lay everything I have…or ever have had…or ever dreamed of having…at the altar of hope.  My hope being, that for just one single moment I can hear His gentle “peace, be still”…resonating in my heart like a mother’s “hush,hush…” when a nightmare wakens.

"...The meanings get lost and the teachings get tossed
And you don't know what you're going to do next ..."

But these days of emotional vertigo are also full of simple, sweet moments of deep importunate listening.  Moments when it is clearly just God and me, and I don’t want to move an inch or say a thing…just in case He is ready to speak. In the last couple of years I have spent more hours than I can ever remember on mental tiptoes waiting for His whispered “This is the way, walk ye in it.”  For months I would scour sacred texts waiting for just the right sentence, stanza or citation to serve as a guidepost marking the way.  Scanning the mental horizon for some lightning bolt that would illumine the vast dark night of my waiting with a beacon of direction.  But the real waymarks have been soft as an Indian maiden’s moccasins in the forest.  A gentle rustling, the barest of nudgings, the tender voice that says, “I am here, I have always been here…don’t you see?  Come, come with Me…”

"...You wait for the sun but it never quite comes
Some kind of message comes through to you
Some kind of message comes through
And it says to you..."

Over and over His message speaks to my heart.  “Just be who you are.  Just let your heart guide you.  Trust Me to be the only voice you can hear, the only touch you can feel, the only light you can see.  Trust Me to speak to your loved ones and give them peace.  Trust Me to keep My promises.  I feed the famished, I setteth the solitary in families, I take care of the fatherless and widows, I lead the lost home… home to Me…only Me”.   This divine voice tells me to be honest with myself and others, and to:

"...Love when you can
Cry when you have to
Be who you must
That's a part of the plan
Await your arrival with simple survival
And one day we'll all understand
One day we'll all understand
One day we'll all understand…"

And it’s enough…for today.

When I think of my daughter in South Africa and how we have both arrived at this point in our relationship where we realize, and can say, that we love one another so deeply – that is when I am almost shattered by His mercy.   When I consider the steep climb it required to get to this juncture where she and I can see one another as we are…without judgment, but with great understanding and affection…I am as humble and naked before Him as I have ever been.

"...I had a woman who gave me her soul
But I wasn't ready to take it
Her heart was so fragile and heavy to hold
And I was afraid I might break it..."

Part of this journey has been filled with nights where I chase my demons.  Dark hours when I feel as though I am lying exhausted and panting on the ground doubled up with the pain of thinking I am no closer to wrestling them to the ground than when I started.  Endless hours when sleep would have been a welcome escape.   Nights when I have begged God for just a modicum of the peace I took for granted for so much of my life. 

"... Your conscience awakes and you see your mistakes
And you wish someone would buy your confessions
The days miss their mark and the night gets so dark
And some kind of message comes through to you
Some kind of message shoots through --
And it says to you..."

And this is the part of the song that I have sung as my mantra this week:

"...Love when you can
Cry when you have to
Be who you must
That's a part of the plan
Await your arrival with simple survival
And one day we'll all understand
One day we'll all understand
One day we'll all understand…"

But, I ask myself, where am I hoping to arrive at?  Where will I finally come home to that will be a resting place for my soul…

"...There is no Eden or Heavenly gates
That you're gonna make it to one day
But all of the answers you seek can be found
In the dreams that you dream on the way..."

So today, I long to be at peace in my dreams, in my deepest desires for just one thing…to be content with each moment that Life, God gives me, to be truly satisfied with this greatest of gifts…the opportunity to:

"...Love when you can
Cry when you have to
Be who you must
That's a part of the plan
Await your arrival with simple survival
And one day we'll all understand
One day we'll all understand
One day we'll all understand…"

For today that’s my plan…and, I believe…His.

With Love, Kate

Art credit: Pensive Woman by R.C. Gorman
Remarkable Editing:  Jeff

"There's a song in the heart of a woman..."

I hope Dan Fogelberg will forgive me, but I have been walking around all night singing a song that I was sure he wrote.  The words went like this:

"There's a place in the world for a Christian
There's a burden that only he can bear
There's a place in the world for a Christian
And he sees...oh, yes he sees...
And he sees...oh, yes he sees.."

But Dan didn’t write those lyrics…oh, he wrote the song alright.  And it has been a song that I have long loved since the first moment I heard his “Souvenirs” album from the front seat of an old Jeep while driving with the windows wide open through the hills of northern West Virginia in the fall of 1974. 

Those were the days when singer/songwriters like Dan Fogelberg and Carole King, James Taylor and Carly Simon, John Lennon and Joni Mitchell wrote the sermons that fed my deepest spiritual hunger.  That year of my life had been one day after another of just getting through…just making it to the end of the day without having the power turned off, the food run out, or the rent check bounce. 

My dad had passed on in June of the previous year and we had all been through hell.  But that weekend I felt uncaged.  My sister had offered to help our mother care for the six youngest children, two of which were still not even old enough to be in school, so that I could go visit a friend who was away at college.  I hadn’t been away from job, school, or the demands of helping mother raise my siblings in eleven months, and I was like a bird set free.  I wanted to drive until I reached the horizon and couldn’t find my way back. 

I don’t think I ever really knew Fogelberg’s actual first verse lyrics for this song until I looked them up for writing this post tonight.  I have always sung that verse with the word Christian in place of what Fogelberg intended in his line, “There’s a place in the world for a gambler”…which I now know is also the title of the song.  But for me on that day in 1974 I heard “Christian” and I’ve been singing it that way ever since. 

When I first realized tonight that I have been singing it incorrectly, I was stunned.  I am a lyric-aholic.  I eat, drink, dream, breathe and bleed lyrics.  But now that I’ve sat here for the last hour or so thinking about that first listen through on a winding road just north of Morgantown West Virginia, I think it was God who recast the lyrics in my heart that day.

I was tired.  I was so bone tired of being responsible, strong, and resilient.  I wanted to be a kid.  I didn’t want to be working three jobs, clipping grocery coupons, negotiating a payment plan with the utilities company.  I was twenty years old and I wanted to be in college like the rest of my friends.  I wanted to go to concerts and football games.  I wanted to live in a dorm and buy textbooks, not toilet paper in bulk.  I wanted to be…what…a senator, a lawyer, the editor of Mother Jones magazine, or in time…my time…a mother.  I wanted to be reporting on Watergate, not reading about it in the New York Times.  I wanted to be a teacher, not attending parent/teacher conferences for my siblings.

These thoughts were providing sympathetic company as I tapped out the rhythm from each song on the steering wheel.  I had listened to the car radio all along the turnpike, but once I left it for the final leg of my journey through the twists and turns of rural back roads, there was nothing but static to tune in to.  I found the cassette a friend had loaned me for my drive on the seat beside me.  I had forgotten it was there and was excited to be able to hear Fogelbergs’s newly released “Souvenirs” album now that the radio had gone silent.  I popped it into the cassette player and cranked the volume as high as I could. I wanted to feel the cool mountain air blowing through my hair and hoped Fogelberg’s always inspiring lyrics and hauntingly beautiful melodies would clean the cobwebs of resentment and frustration out of my head and, more importantly, out of my heart. I had been mulling over my sad plight while listening to the first tracks and by the time this final song came on, my self-pity had reached a fevered pitch and I was ready for its message .

Hadn’t I been on my way to a prestigious university, hadn’t I gotten the grades that afforded me a full ride scholarship so that my parents wouldn’t have to bear the burden of my educational goals, hadn’t I always been obedient and cooperative?  Then why me?  Why was I bearing the burden of a widowed mother and her seven children. 

When I heard (or at least thought I heard) Dan sing that line…

“There’s a place in the world for a Christian
There’s a burden that only he can bear…"

…something in it struck a chord.  I was very familiar with the behavioral standards for a Christian.  I had been exposed to the Gospels and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy since the age of eleven.  I had heard over and over again that the goal was to do unto others as ye would have done to you, to love your enemies, to give of your cloak and coat when asked.  My dad had been a dyed-in-the-wool socialist.  “Nobody wins until everybody wins” was a frequent maxim woven into every family decision and consequent action.  It permeated everything from who got the first shower (and consequently the only real hot water) to everyone keeping only 10% of their income—from my little brother’s paper route, to the $135.76 paycheck I collected each week from my job at the A&P, all the way up to Dad’s own modest salary from the two jobs he always held—while the rest, 90% of each person’s earnings, went into the family pot.

But in that moment I didn’t want to be a Christian.  I wanted to be a kid.  Hadn’t I eschewed the trappings of organized religion and all things "churchy"?  What good had any of that done to save my dad from the accident that left his young family of nine near destitute?   Why did I have to be burdened by the lyrics of a song?  But I was.  Especially when, after listening to it a few more times, I began making a connection between that first verse and the next:

“There's a song in the heart of a woman
That only the truest of loves can release
There's a song in the heart of a woman
Set it free...oh, set it free
Set it free...oh, set it free
Set it free...oh, set it free”

This really got me.  I wanted nothing more in life than to have the song in my heart set free by a true love…the truest of loves.  I wanted to be free to sing songs that I had written…songs of love and devotion.   Could this truest of loves actually be the love that I felt for my mother, brothers and sisters…and not just love from a boy/man… and could this be the love that would set the song in me free?  Or might it even lead me to a truest of loves, a husband or partner, that would help me find the deepest of songs in my heart?  I wanted it so desperately.  I wanted to be someone who had sung a song so true that it would bring peace and kindness to the world.  I imagined that if I started singing my song of peace and social justice that others would begin humming along and without even realizing it they too would be singing an “ohm” of global responsibility and kindness.

But I had given up on myself as someone who could make a great difference.  People who made a great difference in this world went to prestigious universities like the one I had been enrolled in before my dad had been killed.  Didn’t it take a PhD. from Harvard or Yale? Columbia or at the very least UCLA to really have a voice anyone would listen to?  How could I have great thoughts unless I sat in classes with other SAT high scorers, and was taught by noted great thinkers?

But this song was saying that all I needed was to be a Christian and to have the truest of loves.  “Look at Jesus”, the voice was saying.  He never went to university, but he sat with the rabbis and lawyers at twelve, and not only listened but spoke.  He had the truest of hearts and his love-based legacy is still making a difference 2,000 years later.  That’s when the last verse kicked into third gear for me. 

“There's a light in the depths of your darkness
There's a calm at the eye of every storm
There's a light in the depths of your darkness
Let it shine...oh, let it shine
Let it shine...oh, let it shine
Let it shine...oh, let it shine
Let it shine”

I don’t know that I really fully “got it” back then.  But it was enough to give me the resolve I needed to go back home at the end of the weekend and continue to do my best as a daughter, sister, employee, student, and yes, global citizen. 

And eventually I did become a teacher, a mother, and have an office as a Christian Science practitioner where I am privileged to be in the practice of spiritual law.  I have campaigned and voted for senators I believe in and I have subscribed to Mother Jones.  I read the New York Times each Sunday and have written for an international daily newspaper whose mission it is to bring a spiritual perspective to bear on subjects I care about and am committed to.  I have loved with a true heart and written songs with the truest of loves. 

It’s taken me 33 years to discover that what I had actually heard that day, as I drove through the changing colors of an Indian summer afternoon just outside of the Monongahela State Forest, was God’s voice…his song.  I had been given a gift…the gift of hope where all seemed lost…and the promise that when we love with the truest of hearts we can each make a difference.  I am still learning that if we are true to our song…the song we are hearing and singing in the deepest regions of our own heart…we may just find ourselves humming along with others who are looking to make a difference.  

And who knows…before long maybe we’ll all learn the words….His words

K