"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

"Carried by the surprise of its own unfolding..."

"When you hear the sound from
far enough away
even dynamite can purr..."
-     David Wilcox

The following post from December, 2010, has been such a great reminder of late. Some things are enduring and changeless...

Those who know me, know that I love quotes.  I love the feeling of "relationship," I discover in a shared love for ideas...and for a writer's succinct articulation of those ideas.

I also love the connections, the synapses, made between seemingly disparate ideas as they move through the corridors of my heart.  That happened for me today on a number of fronts. 

It started when I came upon a tiny scrippity scrap of notebook paper, on which I'd written the following quote one wintery afternoon, a couple of years ago. 

"She liked unfinished.  She liked process.
She liked moving things -- rivers, clouds, heartbeats."
-  Alice Hoffman  (The Third Angel)

The quote struck me immediately the first time I read it...and it did again this morning when I found it in the leaves of Hoffman's book. It resonates with how I feel about things.  I like process...I am not at all eager for things to be "done."  I like the feeling of Life (vitality, creativity, serendipity) flowing through our lives like a river...changing and shifting its outline and form moment-by-moment. 

And by reciprocity, the river has a transformative effect on the landscape.  The "ground" which gives the river its surprisingly beautiful, undulating, and meandering boundaries, is changed by the river's course.  It alters those same banks...molecule-by-molecule...moment-by-moment as it carves and sculpts its host landscape.  There is something so organic and alive about things that are pulsing with process.  There is a relationship that cannot be one-sided. 

So, this morning, as I was reading this quote, I started thinking about rivers and couldn't help but start humming, "Just Around The River Bend," from Disney's Pocahontas. 

"What I love most about rivers is
You can't step in the same river twice
The water's always changing
always flowing..."

"Yes," I thought, "it all fits."  That serendipitous sense of Life in which we allow one moment, to flow into another.  When we surrender to a divine surprise.  When we are more in love with the process, than a product. 

And then I caught my friend Randall's posting of a David Wilcox house concert performance of his song, "Dynamite in the Distance" on Facebook. 

In his opening remarks David gives words to what I feel in my heart, about the process of writing, praying, living.  He says:

"I have loved the process of writing for a long time...not the product, so much, but the process.  It's my way of finding the elements of my story that I don't want to miss, before it's too late.  

"It's about finding places in my heart that have been covered and buried, and locked in storage, and getting them back so I can be more alive. 

"So, it is bewildering for people who come, when I teach songwriting, because they are expecting me to tell them how to make a song sound like a song, how it ought to sound...how to fill out the form.  

"But I don't want to fill out the form,
I want to be informed.

"I want the song to tell me what it knows, I don't want to make it do anything.  If I start out with a guitar riff, or a little phrase, and it moves me, I trust that it moves me because it's coming from a place that I am going.

"And my heart catches a point of view as if it's a vista that I haven't even hiked to yet.  But it's a way of seeing.  It's almost as if I could see from the point of view of who I could become.  Wow...now that saved my life.

"I need music.  I need it to remind me."

"Wow," I thought, "just wow..."

Then I remembered the writings of the late Celtic sage - poet, philosopher, and spiritual luminary - John O'Donahue.  I have been swimming, floating, drowning in his words for the past few years. His quotes have been the thoughts I've wrapped myself up in -- like the old quilts hanging on walls, folded in piles, and stacked cupboards throughout our home.  Here are two that I especially love tonight. They are like snipped pieces of fabric from favorite old dresses, now sewn into a patchwork blanket of ideas.   They are so softened by wear, that I often find myself stroking them whenever I am snuggled under the weight of his words:

"As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become."

"I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding."

So, I don't know that this post has a punchline.  Tonight there really is no clear "message," or "product."  Just some thoughts to flow through the landscape of your heart.  If they carve a new bank...or just eddy for a while...wonderful.  I hope you enjoy the sound of this river's song...

with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Kindness in your gaze..."

‎"May there be kindness in your gaze,
when you look within..."
     - J. O'Donohue

Sometimes the joy in revisiting an old post (thanks L. for bringing it to my attention) is that I have the opportunity to include a link to a musical performance that wasn't available at the time of the original posting. Such is the case with this piece from June of 2008. Not only to I get to share with you a rare video of Johnsmith singing his beautiful song "Kickin' this stone.." at the Beltany Stone Circle in Ireland, but I get to revisit a subject that is so dear to me...self-compassion.

Jesus said that we must love others, as we would have them love us. But how would we "love us?' Do we really show ourselves the kind of compassion and mercy we would like to be known for showing others? If we would learn how to love others, we must start with ourselves. We must foster a deep and abiding understanding of the feeling of being loved, forgiven, and restored...within ourselves, if we would know the depth of its value to others...and devote our lives to giving it.

For many years, I thought my failings were just that...failings. I am starting to see that I have been given a post-graduate course (and by the way, the hardest and most rigorous course I've ever taken) on the value of mercy, the achingly beautiful power of forgiveness, and the knee-buckling sweetness of redemption's kiss. Here is the post from 2008. May you love your own innocence with as much tenderness, as you show others...

"Kickin' this stone..."

"Kickin' this stone
kickin' this stone…
kickin' these blues out into the open light
where moss can't grow…

…Kickin' this stone
down this long highway
all across the countless miles
from the cradle to the grave
past all my mistakes
with all their guilt and shame
through the gentle rain of tears
sweet forgiveness came…"
-     Johnsmith

I love church…especially the Wednesday evening tradition of my own faith.  I am never too inspired, too peaceful, too sure of my own spiritual ground to not have it bless me in unexpected ways. 

I have learned that if I leave all my costumes, roles and titles out on the sidewalk, and just enter the door with a hungry heart…I leave fed.

Last night was no exception…and the blessing was so surprisingly BIG.  The inspirational readings were on "opinion."  Our little group meets in a storefront on a wonderful walking neighborhood street full of shops and restaurants and coffeehouses. So we place a sandwich board out on the sidewalk.  It lists the theme of our meeting and invites everyone to feel welcome.  When my husband saw the sign last night, he initially thought it said that the meeting was going to be about "onions"…thank goodness he was wrong.

The readings were strong and compassionate.  The impotence (vs. importance) of opinions rang through every citation.  I could easily nod my head in agreement.  Mary Baker Eddy says, "…mere opinion is valueless." I concur.  But as much as I agreed with where the readings and hymns took us, I felt like crying…church often does this to me. 

It was so easy for me to see that this spiritual promise, regarding the valueless-ness of opinion, is true.  I can readily accept that any mere opinion about someone, or something, is absolutely valueless to me, as a spiritual thinker.  So why was this message stirring up so much sadness in me? 

As I probed around in the darkness while sitting quietly in our small congregational circle, I came upon the stone that was gathering moss in my heart.  It wasn't my opinion of others - or others' opinions about me - that made me heartsick.  It was my opinions about myself.  I realized that I was entertaining opinions about my own mistakes and choices that left me filled with regret and remorse. 

I sat there, wondering if those feelings would ever abate, when I heard a young college professor and research scientist begin to speak about a recent healing he'd experienced.  I heard him say, "people often think that science is about proving something. But, science is really all about disproving a hypothesis…and it only takes disproving it once to prove that it is not scientifically true." 

He went on to explain that if something is scientifically true, it must be true EVERY time. So if it can be disproved even once, it is not really true.

This sent a shockwave through the dark places of self-doubt I had been wandering around, and resting, in.  I was wallowing in a space where I was sure I could possibly be trapped forever. I figured I could easily spend the rest of my life trying to prove that the bad opinions I held, about myself, were not true.  That I would have to prove in hundreds of thousands of different ways, that I was not a bad mother, a negligent sister, a forgetful friend, a less than perfect wife. 

But I suddenly saw that each time I was able to be a good mother, an attentive sister, an alert friend, a compassionate neighbor, a good wife, I disproved those false opinions I had harbored in the dark regions of my heart, kicked around over and over again, and often stubbed my toe on. 

Instead, I could kick them into the light of day, and let them become good and precious stones…cleansed by tears, bleached by the sun, strong and ready to use for building a better view of myself...a foundation strong and sure. A home I might even want to share with others.

It only takes one act of kindness, fidelity, attentiveness, patience, humility to disprove the validity of false opinions about ourselves...and others.   It's good to be a scientist.  To be Christian...kind, merciful, honest, loving, compassionate...in my practice of this Science - even with myself - is heavenly.

You can see why I love church…

Gratefully,
Kate

"What water can do..."

"Isn't it amazing
Isn't it amazing it's true
Isn't it amazing,
what water can do.."

I hope you enjoy Johnny Diaz' song, "What Water Can Do," his tribute to the courage and generosity of the Nashville community in reaching out to flood victims, and his reflection on the power of baptism in the lives of Christians.

I love thinking about the nature, and power, of water.  To lift a ship off of its moorings, to inspire neighbors to service and sacrifice...to cleanse, refresh, nourish, and buoy us.

One of my favorite quotes is by the late celtic poet, John O'Donohue.  He writes:

"I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding."

This is my deepest desire tonight.  To be like a river of water.  To let love flow, so unconditionally, so gently...over, and around, all that would  obstruct its only purpose...to reach the sea...that its touch only softens and hones all the sharp edges in the world. 

I long to live in the space of the question...to know nothing "for sure" but that: "I AM that I am"...and to still (never the less) be at peace.  I yearn to have only one reason for being...to flow in such deep stillness that it doesn't matter what is thrown in my path...I am still me...and I can still love.

So what does water do.  It just is. It refreshes the thirsty, and inspires the photographer.  It is breath to the fish, and nourishment to the plant.   It brings the dry savanna to life, and cleanses the feet of the Master.  It baptizes, and christens, and weeps, and purifies.  It carries cargo across the sea, holds aircraft carriers aloft, and safe, and, as Mary Baker Eddy reminds us, "yields to the touch of a finger..."

It softens shards of broken glass, and hones boulders with the tenderness of a mother's tear.  It reshapes fields, carves new paths through mountains, and sets boundaries for tribes.  It is home to the sea turtle, and fills a mother's womb.  It sits on the petal of a rose, and falls from a canyon wall with a thunderous roar.  It powers cities, and drives mills, it dilutes, and moistens, and sweeps the plains with healing rain.

I want to be like water.  To just show up each moment in the elemental balance of my spiritual identity...the complete and undiluted reflection of God's Allness-in-all.  And to flow.  To just flow in stillness, in the never-the-lessness of who I am, wherever I am sent. To love all that I see, and come in contact with, on my journey towards the sea...towards a greater understanding of the unity and wholenss of divine Being.  To be, as Eddy suggests,  "a drop of water, that is one with the ocean."

To be like water...

to be love...to just be love -- moment-by-moment, drop-by-drop,

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS