"As the ruby, in the setting..."

"...As the ruby in the setting
As the fruit upon the tree, 
As the wind blows over the plains...
So are you to me..."
- EastMountainSouth

I love this song...love, love, love it.  "So Are You to Me" has been one of my favorite love songs, since the first time I heard it performed by Kat Bode and Peter Adams.   And although it was used to keynote an earlier poem (on this blog), it serves to underscore a different message in this piece, for reasons that I hope will be obvious.

Today, as I was thinking about about Mary Baker Eddy's statement:

"Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man..."

it was this song that I came to mind.  

Over the years, I've have loved hearing it performed during marriage ceremonies. But I could easily see that it is not just a lovely romantic wedding song. It is a song about the kind of love that Jesus shared, so generously...impartially and universally...with everyone he came in contact with.  He loved them enough to behold their perfection (their wholeness) right where they were, right in front of their own eyes. And in doing so, it was possible for them, and others, to see the beauty, power, and grace within themselves. Innate spiritual resources that had the power, and potential to heal, and to bless . 

Not long ago  I wrote about an etymological discovery I had made.  I'd found a definition of the word, "behold," that read:

"to see, and call attention to"

And tonight, as I write this, I am realizing that this is a perfect, and accurate, description of what we do for those we love.  We are "the setting" in which their beauty and brilliance...their color and depth...is revealed, exposed to the light of love's illuminating grace, held high for all to see...each facet full of reflected, dancing light.

I see this in the lives of spiritual thinkers -- mothers, nurses, partners, husbands, healers, parents, teachers, healers, coaches - who see the good, the presence of God, in the lives of others...calling attention to it, for that very individual, and others, to see, experience, and appreciate.

I have experienced this kind of love.  I think that the first time I knew how it felt to "be the ruby in the setting" of someone's love, was with my younger sister.  She was so talented and confident.  She was willing to audition for roles, try-out for dance teams, put herself forward in ways that I was not able to do.  But what she would do...once she "made the team" or "got the part"...was to bring my talents to the attention of coaches and teachers so that I too would have opportunities...opportunities that I would never have had the courage to explore on my own.

So, why has this song become the pure and perfect, quintessential love song for me?  Because, I think, this is what real love is all about.   Holding our loved ones aloft, up to the light, high above even their own view of themselves, so that all of their unique spiritual gifts can be recognized, valued, and used for a holy purpose.

My daughters had a camp counselor last year who did this for them.   She saw that each of the girls had a very different, but equally remarkable, way of working with horses.   She identified one child's deep-settled calm, and placed her on a horse that, in partnership, would reveal how that same peacefulness...coupled with a growing inner confidence...brought out the best in their horse/rider partnership.   She recognized the spirited fearlessness in our other daughter, and put her on a horse that would enjoy her exuberance, while demanding that she develop a sense of quiet strength in her movements.


Each of our daughters' camp counselors have showed a deep, and abiding, love for them that I will never forget.  I think about what I have learned from them...often...in my own relationships with others -- my husband, my daughters, those who call me for help,  friends, colleagues, and those I meet in the course of my day.

When we really love another, we are willing to "be the setting," and not the gemstone.  My sister was never afraid to hold my gifts up to others, and point out how I could be a blessing, a contribution, a jewel of great value to their experience. To truly love another is to not only see, but to "see and call attention to" what they may not...at that moment...be able to see in themselves.

This is love...real love,
Kate

"So are You to me..."

"...As the ruby in the setting
As the fruit upon the tree
As the wind blows over the plains
So are you to me..."
- Eastmountainsouth

This lovely song, "So are You to Me," by  Kat Bode and Peter Adams, formerly known as Eastmountainsouth, has lived in my heart as a poem, since the first time I heard it. Writing poetry, for me, is like taking dictation from God...or in this case, writing a love letter:

You are my love
You are the love of my life
Yours is the first face I seek
when I wake in the morning
yours is the first hand upon my heart.

You are all that I have ever hoped for.

When I am empty
your love fills me with purpose
When I am full
you give me ways to empty my soul
into the hands of the hungry,
the sorrowing,
the sick and weary...
so that I am ready for more.

You are my  "safe place to fall"
No one else could ever really know the curves,
the rough places...the crooked and straight,
the narrow and dark spaces
of my life so well as You.
Our fit so perfect
that there are no pressure points
to leave me aching for relief.

When the world seems to crash
in around the edges of my peace
and demons scream
that I am vulnerable and small
You, and only You
whisper, "you are stronger than diamonds,
brighter than reflected light,
larger than the love you long for..."

You are my every reason for taking the next breath
my cause for joy, the only One who gives purpose
to my minutes
stacked one-by-one
until they create a hour, a day, a year....a life.

You are the place
I run to
but never from
The "home away from home"
I never leave

You are the voice I listen for
in the quiet of the morning when I
am conscious of life, but not yet aware of
colors, people, sounds....my own skin.

You are my Life. 

I am your life.

We live in a dance of Father and child
Mind and idea...
Love and loved.

I love you with all my being
I cannot live without your love...
because you are all that is...
the I AM that I am...
You are the center of my
being, my home, my heaven within
...my God.

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit:  Nathaniel Wilder 2008]

"Show me the river that leads to my home..."

"...Show me the river that leads to my home
back to the one that I love
show me the wind that constantly blows
and I will fly away, fly away home..."
- EastMountainSouth "Show Me the River"*

For the most part, when I have wandered off course it has always been in a way that, to a casual onlooker, might go unnoticed.  And although to someone glancing in my direction it may seem as if I am still sitting in my normal place...in the chair by the window...I'm sometimes quite alone and far away  My wanderings sometimes take me so far away from "home" that I am left shivering inside like an abandoned pioneer child on the windswept edges of a barren winter prairie...grasses beige with cold and the sky steely and lowering with a gathering storm in the East.

This "space" of desolation was where I found myself bedded down one night a few years back.  Long after my family was fast asleep under heavy quilts...dreaming with heads upon soft downy pillows, I was tossing and turning on the hard frozen ground of a Kansas prairie...or so it felt.   I finally realized that I'd mentally left my warm bed, when I found I was shivering, arms wrapped around me, as if I were grasping a threadbare shawl about my shoulders in order to stay warm.  It was this very clutching of "my tatters close about me" that wakened me from the aimless mental wandering and stopped me in my tracks, and allowed the words from East Mountain South's "Show Me the River" to penetrate through a deep-seated cold, bringing the much-needed inspiration that would begin to wing me "homeward".

I love rivers.  I love the spiritual metaphors they evoke, the visual inspiration I find while sitting on their banks, the realization that a congregation of individual drops of water when flowing in a single direction can carve canyons out of mountains and buoy a fleet of schooners down the Nile, the Amazon, or the St. Lawrence.  But mostly, I love Mary Baker Eddy's definition of "River" in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: 

" Channel of thought. When smooth and unobstructed,
it typifies the course of Truth; but muddy, foaming,
and dashing, it is a type of error."

It was this definition, following EastMountainSouth's wake-up call to me while I lay cold and shivering on that barren stretch of mental prairie, that pointed me in the direction that would lead "home".   I could imagine lowering myself into the calm waters of a warm river, a channel of thoughts...smooth and unobstructed. When rocks or debris crossed my path, the river would either flow around them...dismissing them as inconsequential...or calmly and persistently dissolve the hardness of those suggestions with an unrelenting spiritual confidence.  Any rigidity in my thinking, any suggestion that I should be afraid, doubt the "supremacy of Spirit" or ever think that my life...or the life of anyone...was out of His control, was washed away in the affluence of God's abiding Love.

Having reached new mental shores I could rise up out of the river's arms, be dried by the warm sunshine of Soul's ever-reminding evidence of beauty, love, and peace surrounding me and calling to me from every direction...the gentleness of my daughter's touch, the precise placement of the stars hanging above me in the cloudless winter sky, the constancy of Life proven in every leaf that falls and bud that bursts from the rich Spring soil...then allow myself to be lifted and carried by the winds of Spirit towards the familiar landscapes of peace, faith, and grace-filled moments of trust in His care.

"Wind" is my other favorite spiritual "element." a term that Eddy, in part, defines as:

"That which indicates the might of omnipotence
and the movements of God's spiritual government,
encompassing all things."

I like thinking of myself (and others) as God-blown, God-carried, God-choreographed, God-sent, God-breathed...as a blessing upon the earth.   Not one of my movements is self-determined or "born of a woman"...even myself...but borne on the wings of God's divine breath.

As I let myself be carried from the cold barren landscape of fear and doubt by a river of trust and faith, around the inconsequential obstacles of confusion and the boulders of self-doubt,  dissolving the bleak suggestions of "remember when" and "what if"....I could feel the constancy of His deep, low song, "I am All, I am here"...singing me all the way home.

Finding my way onto the shores of His kingdom within...I could finally rest in His arms...I was home.

If you find yourself far from home in the middle of a dark night of doubt, or even in the glaring light of a busy day, lower yourself into the river of God's presence, surrender to the constant flow of His peace-filled thoughts, be carried towards new landscapes of opportunity for blessing others, then rising and rising on the winds of His breath... let yourself be God-blown towards home.

with Love,
Kate

*this is the only video I could find with the soundtrack of this song...if you don't like superman, I'm sorry...please feel free to just listen to the music.