"i am able..."

"take,
these broken wings;
and learn to fly again,
and learn to live
so free..."

Mr. Mister's 1986 hit, "Broken Wings," will always remind me of that summer.

It had been playing on the radio for over a year, so by the summer fo 1987 it was ubiquitous in our circle. We'd moved to Boston to work for our church, and had made wonderful new friends. Our home was about an hour and a half outside of the city on a large estuary "pond" about two blocks from the ocean.

We loved having Boston friends come down to escape the city heat and water ski, brunch, watch the sunset from our back terrace or during a group walk along the beach. These were magical times in our young marriage. At least they should have been.

I was distracted through it all by a aching desire to become a mother. I could barely think - or pray - about much else. Yes, I did my job, I hosted weekend parties, I prayed for those who called for help, but the longing to be a mother never left the periphery of my heart's lens.

It became a practice for me during these times to stop and readjust the aperture of my thoughts. It wasn't possible to set this longing aside. It was as deep as my every breath or heartbeat, but I had to find a way to put it outside the focal distance of my every thought.

I am a person who needs metaphors and analogies to "get" something. And the act of focusing a camera's lens has always been helpful to me. I had to pause, often, and readjust what was central to the image in my heart.

At first it was circumstantial. I would tell myself that at work I needed to put work at the center of the lens. Then on a call with someone asking for metaphysical support, I would remind myself to adjust the aperture of my prayers to put them in the center of the image.

But this wasn't really working -- that is, until I realized that everything would be in perfect alignment, when I put God -- and His presence - at the center of every moment. Then, it always felt as if my trust was clear, my vision was clear, my heart was clear.

One thing that helped, was to remember that God's name is "I AM" -- so whatever my "I am" was at any given moment - was filled with God's presence. Wondering if I would ever become a mother, or if a project would come in on time, or if I was available "enough" to those who needed support - was not focusing on God -- I am. The same with allowing past mistakes, decisions, choices to pull me into I was, instead of "I am."

Mary Baker Eddy's statement from The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany was an ever-helpful reminder:

“Goodness never fails to receive its reward, for goodness makes life a blessing. As an active portion of one stupendous whole, goodness identifies man with universal good. Thus may each member of this church rise above the oft-repeated inquiry, What am I? to the scientific response: I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing."
 

Not I was able - once upon a time, or I will be able -- once I become a mother, but I am able. Right here, right now.

Did this happen easily? No. It was work, work, work -- but with watchfulness and prayer, I became more aware of when my focus had shifted from the fuzziness of "I will be," or "I once was," to the clarity of "I am." With God's I AM-ness right at its center.

Whatever seems to be pulling us out of our focus on the presence -- the present tense-ness of God as "I am..." is depriving us of a clear sense of God's abundant gifts for us in this moment.

I spent most of what I call "my year of longing" in the peripheral field of "when will I become a mother?" -- or "will I ever become a mother?" When, right in front of me were friends to play with, colleagues to listen to - with a mother's attentiveness, patients to pray for, and a budding family to nurture in our young marriage.

The wings of my motherhood were not broken -- they were learning to stretch in new ways, finding strength in patience, and discovering that to trust the unseen thermals of divine wisdom was essential to flight.

I would become a mother to three beautiful daughters, and it was everything I ever dreamed. But it was learning to "mother" right where I was - in the I AM of each moment  that helped me discover who I really was.  Not someone dependent on the fulfillment of a far-off longing dream come true, but empowered by an overwhelming love within.

In these days of "waiting" -- I hope we can all adjust the apertures of our expectations to focus on the presence of God -- the great I AM, who is here, now, giving us -- each moment -- this gift of grace.

offered with Love,

Kate

"you are safe..."

"One thing
I can promise you;
I promise
you're safe with Me..."

When I first heard Megan Nicole's "Safe with Me," it felt like a love letter from God.

In light of recent news reports about the latest pandemic threat, safety seems to feel fragile for many people. The other day someone asked me why I wasn't afraid. It was clear form the way she asked the question,  that there was a deep longing for peace of mind and freedom from fear.

I didn't answer quickly. I din't want to appear cavalier. I wanted to be sure that there was nothing but compassion in my heart. But they had detected something so deep that I felt a spiritual receptivity in their inquiry.

So I explained that in Scripture, when Moses is asked by God to return to Egypt -- the place he had fled for fear of his life -- and free His people from generations of slavery and bondage, Moses asks God who he should tell the Israelites had sent him to do this great thing. The ensuing conversation between God and Moses goes like this:

“And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."
 

For me, this is the clearest name for God that I know. The Children of Israel hadn't read the chapter of Exodus. They hadn't heard this scriptural account before. So for them, "I am..." wasn't code for God.  It was simply what it was -- their own sense of conscious being.

The very fact that they could feel that sense of "I am..." was all the authority they needed for their emancipation from slavery.  "I am" indicates the presence of God, and assured their right to freedom from bondage.

And it assures the security of our health. The safest place on earth, is where the "I am..." of your being is present. Because this is where God -- the great I AM is.  Every time you say, "I am..." you are declaring the presence - and power - of God. You are affirming your oneness with divine Love.

A number of years ago, a work colleague and I were having a conversation about feeling safe. I asked him if he'd ever felt afraid. He recounted a time in the early 1970s when he'd been a young man at the height of the Viet Nam War, and his birthdate was assigned a very low draft number. He said that he was a pacifist and besides being opposed to war, he was also very afraid. He thought about filing as a conscientious objector or fleeing to Canada to avoid serving in a war that he was opposed to.

In the midst of this moral wrestling, he called a spiritual mentor who told him that since God was the only "I am.." wherever "I am" was, was the safest place on earth. It stilled his fears, and strengthened his trust in God's ever-present care for him -- and for all the boys, girls, men, and women who would be deployed to serve in Viet Nam.

Soon after that realization, his draft number was called, he showed up for his physical, went through basic training, and was deployed to Viet Nam. He was assigned to an intelligence unit and spent his entire time sequestered in the highest level of security. But every day, he prayed that each man, woman, and child - touched by that conflict - could feel safe in the presence of their own consciousness of  "I am..." -- which always points to the presence of God -- the great I AM.

We are all safe in this knowledge that God's presence is assured every time we think or say, "I am..." In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy assures us:

“Security for the claims
of harmonious and eternal being
is found only in divine Science."
 

Divine Science -- the Science that overarches all other natural sciences - laws of nature -- is sovereignly self-enforcing. This Science is based on the irrefutable law of God.  The law that states God's All-in-allness. All good, in all. All purity, in all. All innocence, in all. All safety for all.

I am safe. You are safe. We are all safe...

offered with Love,

Kate

"I and my Father -- are one..."

"i know,
i know,
i am, i am;

i and my Father,
are one..."

Sometimes it starts with a statement of Truth - and then I go looking for the song that I sense must be out there. Today's post happened that way. I woke up with Jesus' declaration "I and my Father are one," filling my heart. And then, Kathy Sarada's, "I am,"  found me. I'd never heard her voice before -- I will not forget it.

The world seems so divided. But it isn't. Don't be fooled. The "friend" who posted a meme that hurts your soul, is as much you, as she is herself. The hatred that fills the news each night is begging for you to give it an identity -- him, her, them, theirs -- but the only identity available is your brother or sister in Christ. Refuse to name it. Refuse to claim it.

For the last few years, one word has tried to take up residence in my heart. That word is, "idiot." It is not a word that I could ever remember saying aloud, or silently to myself -- about anyone. It has always been an offensive word to me. And yet, it has hissed like a snake almost every day for months.

When it first started, I wasn't as alert to its tactics as I should have been. It seemed justified. It seemed like the only outlet I had for venting my sorrow and frustration. It had a name. It had a face. It had a history of reasons for letting that word live. But it wasn't living in "that person," it was taking up residence in my heart. And it was an ugly tenant.

Evicting it was not as easy as you may think it should have been.  It was there banging on the pipes when I woke up each morning.  And it tried to be the last one to turn off the lights at the end of the day.  But I have been vigilant.

Once I realized that my mental or audible voicing of the word "idiot," -- to vent sadness and frustration -- was not stinking up anyone else's "home" -- only mine, I was more alert to its disguises as it approached my door. It would often come in the mask of alertness.  As if I needed to be alert to how ugly the world had become.  But I didn't need to be alert to the stench of cruelty.  That was the lie. What I really needed to be aware of, was beauty, kindness, holiness, honesty. Then anything unlike a beautiful thought, was clearly inadmissible.  And I could start with the word, "idiot." What an ugly word.

To "voice" that word -- silently, or audibly -- was my admission that I was detached from Truth.  To even think it about someone else, was to be detached from another being -- one that I shared a consciousness of our collective humanity with.  It was to separate myself from humanity itself, and thus, to feel detached from my own humanity. And it always felt like I was flailing in space without a tether.

My tethering, which was only, always, ever to God, was found in claiming that "I and my Father were one." This meant that I needed to see every being as an extension of my own family. To feel oneness with God was to feel oneness with those I had cruelly dismissed as "idiots." I am embarrassed to even type that sentence. But to completely and irrevocably evict this word from my house -- my "consciousness of Love," -- I must name it, and claim it, as the mental trespasser it is.

To be one with my Father is to be one with His heart -- to love what, and who, He loves. Impartially, universally, unconditionally. It is to know "grace" -- the unearned and unmerited favor of God.  This is where Christian Science has been a haven of rest for my weary soul. I don't have to figure out who to love. I don't have to determine what is lovable. Christian Science has taught me that love isn't a sorting hat, it is a lens through which everyone and everything is seen in its true nature.

I keep coming back to the story of the Prodigal Son and how often I have sorted myself - or others - either into the younger son's "I am a screw up, but I am so humbly grateful for Your mercy" camp, or the older son's "what about me -- I've done everything right - where's my party" camp. When who I really needed to identify myself with -- the Father.

To be one with the Father -- to feel the beating of His heart -- is to be unconditionally loving.  To love both of your sons with all that you have in your heart. To be waiting for the younger to come home to receive his inheritance, and to be sitting with your lap piled high, just waiting for the older son to realize that "all that you have is already his" and always has been. And to remind him that it is his own brother that had come home.

No matter how his younger brother had behaved, that boy was still his own Father's loved son. It didn't matter how justified the older brother felt by his younger brother's choices. Nothing could deprive him of his own expression of grace. He had every right to know himself as a faithful son -- standing at his Father's side, celebrating the return of a beloved member of His family.

So, although I could write about the healing of this crack in my heart's door all day, suffice it to say that the only five letter word - that starts with an "i" -- I am now admitting into my heart is, "image." There is only the image of God. The image and likeness of Love.  Anyone else doesn't belong here.

Everyday, I still have to ask myself, "What is the image you are admitting? What are you image-ining about your Father's son or daughter? What image is taking up residence in your heart?" And if that other "i" word is banging around, I can't afford the luxury of enjoying its rental income -- and I can't hesitate in serving an immediate eviction notice.

I will leave this here. We are one. We cannot be fooled by the lie that man -- any man -- is a liar. The lie and the liar are one -- that is because, the only lie is, that there is a liar to call ugly names. Man has only one name.  He is the image of Truth. Period.

offered with Love,

Kate


postscript May 6, 2020 -- someone shared this information with me and I feel like I should share it here:

"For the Greeks, “idiot” carried a very precise and special meaning. The person who was only interested in private life, private gain, private advantage, private circumstances and who did not care about the public good or the public welfare.
In both ancient and modern Greece, idiots are those had/have no conception of a public good, common wealth or shared interest in society.

"To the Greeks, the pioneers of democracy, the creators of the demos, such a person was the most contemptible of all. Because even the Greeks seemed to understand: you can’t make a functioning democracy out of idiots."

"i am not my story...."

"there is a reduction
of identity to biography..."

Krista Tippett's On Being team created this 45 second "video," to illustrate a profound point that John O'Donohue made in a recorded conversation with Krista, before his passing in 2008.

Let me make this very clear. I love this man. I love his poetry. I love his heart. I love his wisdom. There is, in me, no objectivity about his words. I love them. His books of prose and poetry some of my dearest companions.

There is not a song to keynote this post - at this moment. But, the above video plays in my heart like a song. To hear John's voice - lyrical and resonant - is a gift that sings to my heart.

As for the content of this 45 second video (which I have to admit I would have listened to even if he had only been reading of the Dublin telephone directory) takes my breath away. Not because it is something new, but because it so nails what I believe to be true at the deepest level of being.

We are not our stories. We have stories -- just like we have bodies -- but they do not define us. They are instruments of language for communicating the very listings of what we know at the deepest level -- but they are not "us."

If you have been one of those sweet faithful readers of this blog, you know that after over 750 posts since 2005, I have a bunch of stories. In fact, each of these posts is based on experience. I am not a rhetorical writer. I do not know how to speak or write from the standpoint of thesis. But I can tell you what I have experienced -- a story -- and how that experience was meaningful to me, and further awakened in my a deeper spiritual understanding.

So, to say that I am not my story -- here on this blog -- might seem a bit (or a lot) paradoxical. But it is what I know to be truer than true. And to have it in John's words and spoken by his voice is only more wonderful than i can say.

We are not our stories. Sandy Wilder once shared an exercise with me that took my breath away. It shook me -- the storyteller -- to the core. I felt that false sense of who I was shatter and crumble to the ground like a statue turning to rubble at a feather's touch.

It began with helping me see that although I had chosen the shirt that I was wearing that day, when I took that shirt off, I was still me -- I was not my shirt. And it ended with a realization that I was also not the thoughts I held, the stories I told, or the experiences that I'd carried around like self-defining badges and burdens.

I use these stories to illustrate some spiritual awakening in my heart. But I no longer think that these stories define me or are the historic construct of who I have become, or foundational to who I have yet to discover about the "I am." One that is continuously welling up from the depths of a spiritual wellspring in divine Love.

In thinking of this story-free spiritual identity, I can't help but remember that Mary Baker Eddy wrote her own autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection, in 95 pages. And that at page 54, she stops telling "her story," and the last half of her autobiography includes nothing of her human story, but is all about sharing her love for the Science she had discovered as Life itself.

In the last chapter of this autobiography, Waymarks," Eddy offers:

"Hear this saying of our Master:
"And I, if I be lifted up from earth,
will draw all me."

The ideal of God is no longer impersonated
as a waif or a wanderer..."
 

Without saying it, she says it all. Having been lifted up from her own earth-story -- by the cross of experience -- she was no longer the once-sickly child, or the homeless women who had lived in over 60 homes -- she was spiritual. Her story was "immovably fixed in Principle."

I will leave this here. I hope you feel the depth of your own spiritual identity. I hope you know -- at the very core of your being -- what is pre-existently and eternally "you" as the reflection of the "I AM," -- ever-unfolding, ever-fresh, ever-new. I hope that you can look at your stories as narrative language for sharing what you have discovered, not as an accumulation of experiences that define you.

And since I can't stop a song from scoring a post in my heart -- after I start writing -- I will share Kate Edmonson's beautiful recording of "A Voice." Perhaps our stories are simply the songs we sing to each other to say, "you are not alone."

offered with Love,

Kate

"a small voice..."

"a thousand prayers,
a million words,
but one Voice
was heard..."

Almost 20 years ago the video for Billy Gilman's "One Voice," was released. I remembered it this morning in light of this week's Bible lesson.

What has stood out to me -- from all the wonderful ideas and stories -- is one word: small. Specifically as it is used in this familiar Scripture from I Kings:

"And =, behold, the Lord passed by,
and a great and strong wind rent the mountains,
and brake in oyes the rocks before the Lord;
but the Lord was not in the wind.

And after the wind, an earthquake;
but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

And after the earthquake, a fire;
but the Lord was not in the fire.

And after the fire,
a still small voice..."

I've often thought about the stillness of the Voice of God. The quiet invariability. The nevertheless-ness of its comforting presence. The constancy of its calm assurance.

But I had never really thought of what it meant, that the Voice was small. I went to Strong's Hebrew Lexicon and found this definition of the word "small" as it relates to this specific passage:

"lean, fine,
nothing extraneous
simple, gaunt..."

I held my breath. Isn't this what I have been learning for the past decade -- and especially in the last year? The simplicity of the Christ message. The piercing clarity of Truth. Nothing extraneous. No exaggeration. The smallness of "the still small Voice..."

I immediately thought back to every healing I have experienced and witnessed of late. What did they have in common: the lean-ness of the Truth. The simple shape of The Word -- free of words. The raw childlike wonder of honest hearts.

This Truth is unencumbered by "more than enough," - because in its simple Allness, it is always infinite. Or as Mary Baker Eddy assures us:

"The Scriptures plainly declare
the allness and oneness of God
to be the premises of Truth..."

"God is one.
The allness of Deity
is His oneness."

So, I went back to sifting through all the mental chatter -- the human mind's thinking about God -- to what I know at the very root-of-the-root of my being. And it was that very word. Being.  I AM.

I started there. Not just in listening for spiritual guidance about my own experience, but in relation to those who had asked for treatment -- as well as, those whom my thoughts and prayers natural rested upon within the all-inclusiveness of spiritual community and care.

"I am." This statement of spiritual fact suffuses every molecule of conscious being.  It is constantly repeating itself to each of us.  This Truth is affirming the presence of God. I AM (the only name God give Himself in Scripture) over and over again throughout the day - and night.

In the morning, I wake to, "I am..." And as I close my eyes, I rest my day upon, "I am..." I trust that what follows that opening coda of Truth, is also spoken by the same Voice. I am whole. I am loved. I am loving. I am honest. I am able to "listen for Thy Voice, lest my footsteps stray..."

It is echoing still in the hearts and minds of individual and collective consciousness.

And one Voice was heard...


offered with Love,

Cate

"Be here now..."

"Be here now.
No other place to be.
All the doubts that linger,
just set them free.

Let good things happen.
Just let them come --
into every moment,
like the rising sun..."

 There is something so peaceful about Mason Jenning's "Be Here Now." It reminds us that there is really no other place we can be, but here...now.

But how many hours have I wasted thinking "if only." If only I could be "there," then I would be happy. If only I could be back in a time "when," then I could make changes that would have brought healing. If only I could fast forward and know what was coming, then I could relax and be at peace with things as they are today.

But I clearly remember the day I realized that every one of those hours spent anywhere but here, and now, was time spent focused on something besides God.

God's name -- the only name He give Himself (excuse the gender assigment) is "I AM." So for me to let my thoughts dwell anywhere but in the "I AM" of being -- I am here, I am now -- is to feel separate from God. To feel separate from love, beauty, peace, goodness, grace.

I've spent way too many hours wondering "if only." Wanting to go back and make different choices, live in a different place where I'd have different choices, chase a future where the choices are boundless. But it's all fruitless. I am here. I exist now. This is the truth.

Mary Baker Eddy says, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"The spiritual sense of truth must be gained,
before Truth can be understood."

 For me, this says, that until I understand the presence and power of God -- operating as the only Cause and Creator of my life - as it is right here, and right now -- I will never find God, Truth, anywhere else...ever.

Sobering, and beautiful.   At least for me.

Shared with love,

Kate