"i was a free man in Paris..."

"I was a free man in Paris,
I was unfettered and alive..."

Whenever I hear Joni Mitchell's  "Free Man in Paris"  I think of a story that was shared with me over a decade ago. It was related to me as a true story, that has led to more than a few healings since I first hear it.

As the story goes, there was a slave who was promoted to the position of valet. He served his confederate, industrialist master faithfully. He was quiet, elegant, and unassuming. When his master would go on business trips, he would travel with him. Because he was a slave, he didn't sleep in the hotels where his master stayed, but remained outside or in quarters provided for servants.

Soon he was traveling the world with his master. On a particularly cold Parisian night, he finished his duties and returned to the entrance of the hotel where his master was staying, expecting to wait till morning for his master's first call. Bundled up at warmly as he could be, he huddled out of the cold in the alleyway next to the hotel.

Soon the doorman wandered over to where he was and asked him what he was doing. He explained that he was a slave and that his master was a guest in the hotel. He went on to say that he would wait there until his master needed him the next day.

The doorman looked at him and said, "Sir, this is Paris. Slavery is illegal here. You are free." The slave, waking up to the reality of his freedom, walked away. He never went back. He accepted his freedom.

You see, slavery was still legal in the United States. But in France, slavery had been abolished in 1794. He was not in a place where laws of slave ownership would be enforced. He was -- quite literally -- a free man in Paris.

How often to we walk around thinking that we are in a "country" that has laws that we are enslaved to, and under the enforceable jurisdiction of? That we live in a body with laws of decay and decline. That we operate in a world where laws of socio-economic privilege and penalty prevail. That we are under the thumb of educational hierarchies and intellectual tyranny?

We stand huddled against the cold wall of a building, thinking we are slaves and that if we were to leave, we would be hunted down, shackled in chains, and imprisoned for life. When in fact, we live, move, and breathe in Him. We are not citizens of a land where "enslavement to the most relentless masters" is enforced, or enforceable.

We are citizens of the kingdom of God. We are free men, women, and children in this safe place where slavery has been abolished. We do not live under the tyranny of laws that say we must subscribe to heredity, caste, class, health-predictions, educational hierarchies, socio-economic predestination.

We are free. We can walk away without looking back. I promise.

Not long ago I was struggling with a physical challenge that seemed to make movement very difficult. I was mentally slammed with all the reasons why this was not only reasonable, but expected -- at my age.

One Saturday, as I started a cleaning project, I put a favorite Joni playlist on my iPod - and yes, I still have one of my daughters' old discarded iPods. The first song that came up was "Free Man in Paris." I immediately thought of the story shared above. At the same moment, I bent down to clean under a table, and felt an all too familiar pain.

But this time I didn't just keep moving through it. Or huddle in the cold light of acceptance next to it. I decided to walk away from it. I was not mortal. I did not live in a "country" where the laws of birth, maturity, decay, death were enforced. I was not trapped in a body that was defined by those laws - or enslaved to them. I was a free woman in the kingdom of God.

Every step, every bend, every swipe of the dust cloth was a step away from the feeling that I was waiting for a false master to tell me where I could go what I could feel, and how I could experience my life.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy assures us:

"The enslavement of man is not legitimate.

It will cease when man enters into his heritage of freedom, his God-given dominion over the material senses. Mortals will some day assert their freedom in the name of Almighty God."

We answer to one Sovereign, one Law-giver, who is Love. This Love is omnipotent. There is no opposition to His supreme statutes of freedom and liberty. This is where we live. This is the country of our citizenship.

offered with Love,

Kate

 

"oh, i wish I had a river..."

"oh, i wish
i had a river
i could skate
away on..."

I hope this Sierra Eagleton cover of Joni Mitchell's "River," gives you some hint of how I was feeling the other night. Not so much the lyrical meaning -- but the "feel" of it. A bit of melancholy. A bit of "why?"

It wasn't that I was unhappy or feeling a lack of purpose. It was something unreachable. I felt detached. Not only from those around me, but from the meaning of the feeling itself. It felt deep and full of message, but in a language I couldn't understand.

That was, until a friend I hadn't seen in quite a few years, caught my eye across the room. As I walked in her direction, something said, "listen."

We embraced. We talked about "how long it had been..." And then she said the "something" that I knew was the message I was being asked to listen for. I felt it stir the fallow space in my heart.

"Thank you for your blog."

Really, I thought. I didn't even know she read this blog. Then, I stopped. She was giving me something profoundly dear. I realized what a gift her words were to me that night. I had been feeling like a stream overflowing her banks. Flooding a field that was already saturated. I had been feeling as if all the words that spill from my heart, had nowhere to go.

In that moment, I realized that if there was only one reader who found companionship in what I was writing -- it was enough. This blog is a conversation about God's love and how I have experienced that love. And that each post was as vital and relevant as a call from a patient, or a meeting in a coffeehouse, or an appointment in my office.

I have been sharing those experiences in words that feel as real as the clay in my hands in the studio - palpable, honest, and beautifully taking shape in sentences, paragraphs, epigraphs, font colors, a photograph, a title. They were as real as each prayer and treatment God unfolded in my heart throughout the day.

So, thank you -- if you are reading this, I hope you realize how much you blessed me the other night. I hope you feel the gift that you gave to me -- relevance.

I don't know how this will inform the future of this blog. I've been writing for it since June of 2005. That's almost 15 years of unlacing my mental corset and letting my heart be laid bare. A young friend, Megan Neale, once wrote these lyrics for a song, "You're a Good Man," that she performed in her senior presentation:

“I'll write you a letter,
my heart is dripping ink..."
 

For that is how I feel everyday. I take calls, I see patients, I pray, I give treatment, I listen deeply for God's messages of Love, and Truth, and healing -- of divinity's coincidence with humanity, but all day long my heart is dripping words. I have often wondered, "how many little pomes can you post, how many experiences can you share in one day? When will you reach that point - each day - where you seem self-important and arcane? So I have retreated into a place of restraint.

I am realizing that this is not what God wants of His daughter -- to give her beautiful experiences and the words to describe them, but then asks her to hold them back like a river restrained by self, and saddened with unshared views of goodness and grace.

I don't know how this will inform the next chapter of my blogging journey. But if you are the only one reading these posts, I will be here for you -- and with you. I will be honest. I will be as "laid bare" in my sharing as I think I have always been. And I will be faithful to the God who puts words in my heart -- words that beg to be shared. Even if just with you.

I will be the river that I, too, can skate away on -- if just long enough to let myself feel the words fly from my fingertips like sparks from the blades of my skates. And, perhaps, by writing them down, they willfind another heart to be in conversation with.

Thank you dear friend -- you gave me a great gift the other night. Your words were the voice on the other side of the conversation - and I needed them more than you knew.

offered with Love,

Kate

"we are one..."

"we were all,
looking up,
in the same direction,
in that moment,
looking up,
we were one..."

When my sister-in-law [once-removed] Lisa, suggested that I listen to Ana Egge's performance of "We are One," featuring The First Unitarian Brooklyn Choir, all the pieces of this post -- came together for me.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Each year, as my celebration of advent, I review the 24 questions in the chapter "Recapitulation," from Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. This chapter is the entire curriculum for those who are seeking to understand metaphysical healing through the lens of Christian Science primary class instruction.

Today is December 3rd. So today's question was:

“Is there more than one God or Principle?"
 

It's one of my favorite questions -- perhaps, because it is one of the first real "aha," moments in my study and practice of Christian Science.

Eddy's answer to that question is:

“There is not.
Principle and its idea is one,
and this one is God..."
 

Is one. Not are, one.

For most of my life, I thought that this question was asking about the possibility of multiple gods. But her answer pointed me in another direction. She was not asking if there were more than one god(s). But if there is more "out there" than one God or Principle? We are not off-shoots of divinity -- but part and parcel to divinity itself. The all-inclusive coincidence of God's wholeness as divinity embracing humanity. No separation. "...and this one is God." Wow.

Which gets me to an earlier piece of this puzzle for me. Question 1 on December 1, was: "What is God?" A question Eddy answers with: "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love."

Question 2, yesterday's question, was: "Are these terms synonymous?" And she assures us that, in fact: "They are..." She doesn't ask if these are the names for God. But if they are "synonymous," -- a word that means, "one directly implies the other."

For example, to say Mind, is to imply Soul. Therefore to feel the presence of Mind, is to directly imply the right to experience the presence of Soul. Thus, what we know to be true, we must be able to feel as the expression of Soul -- or spiritual sense. This is something I have written about  before - because it is such a vital part of how I understand metaphysical healing, but yesterday it came alive in a new way.

As I was deeply pondering this question again -- plumbing deeper for new insights -- my friend Kristin posted this video, "What Does Color Sound Like?" about synethesia [a word that shares an etymological root with the word "synonym"] and the artist, Wassily Kandinsky, on Facebook. It took my breath away. Oh my goodness! I am a synesthete. I had never heard either of these words before -- but that video was a window on my "soul," -- on the way I see, feel, hear, and experience the world around me. It is why poetry comes without intention or effort. I am experiencing color as words. I am hearing music as it takes shape in the clay I am holding in my hands.

But, perhaps this is also why I can hear a patient tell me that they are unable to feel peace, while at the same time, telling me that they love their children.  And, I am able to see - with absolute conviction - that this is impossible. For, if they love their child [an indicator of the presence of God as Love in their lives] I cannot even imagine - at any level - that this does not directly indicate the presence of Soul - and therefore, the sensation of peace.  It is why gratitude and inharmony - or unwellness of any sort - are absolutely mutually exclusive to me, for anyone.

On a more visceral level, this is how it feels for me:  I see a certain shade of blue, and I actually hear Joni Mitchell's song "River." I hear "River," and I feel that song's translation as a shape - in the clay I am holding in my hands. I feel clay under my fingers, and I sense the presence of Soul, as Spirit -- God moving, animating, skating my fingers through the clay, my arms around a horse's neck, the rise of words - like a murmuring of swallows above a river of ice --  swirling and lifting themselves into poetry.

It's all one.  We are all one. We are individually, all these things - colors, sounds, words, movement - working together for good, because we love - period. And we are collectively one - poetry and reader. Sound vessels and still water. We are blue and yellow - colors that compliment one another and reveal the deeper nature of the other, in hue, tone, meaning. But in the same spectral of light.

We are individually and collectively synonymous. Each one of us, directly implying the other. For example, if I say the word wife, I imply the concept husband. If I say God, I imply man. Principle and its idea - one. One directly and implicitly denoting the presence of the other.

I once asked my Sunday School class to put aside the "names" for God that Eddy listed [above] and imagine that they only had colors, sounds, textures, flavors, shapes to define the Allness and wholeness of God. What would the color of Spirit be? How would Life sound? It was refreshing. It was felt.  I actually do this regularly myself. It helps me to recognize the presence of God - Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love - in the world around me, and within me.

Practicing this re-framing, is like practicing a new language. We are translating sounds into shapes. We are hearing colors and feeling scents. We are seeing blue and feeling peace.  As a dancer translates music into movement, a spiritual healer translates love into health -- because Truth and Soul are synonymous.

I could go on and on -- and on. But I will leave this here. I am so grateful.

offered with Love,

Kate

"i was a free man..."

"I was a free man in Paris,
I was unfettered and alive..."

Whenever I hear Joni Mitchell's  "Free Man in Paris"  I think of a story that was shared with me over a decade ago. It was related to me as a true story, that has led to more than a few healings since I first hear it.

As the story goes, there was a slave who was promoted to the position of valet. He served his confederate, industrialist master faithfully. He was quiet, elegant, and unassuming. When his master would go on business trips, he would travel with him. Because he was a slave, he didn't sleep in the hotels where his master stayed, but remained outside or in quarters provided for servants.

Soon he was traveling the world with his master. On a particularly cold Parisian night, he finished his duties and returned to the entrance of the hotel where his master was staying, expecting to wait till morning for his master's first call. Bundled up at warmly as he could be, he huddled out of the cold in the alleyway next to the hotel.

Soon the doorman wandered over to where he was and asked him what he was doing. He explained that he was a slave and that his master was a guest in the hotel. He went on to say that he would wait there until his master needed him the next day.

The doorman looked at him and said, "Sir, this is Paris. Slavery is illegal here. You are free." The slave, waking up to the reality of his freedom, walked away. He never went back. He accepted his freedom.

You see, slavery was still legal in the United States. But in France, slavery had been abolished in 1794. He was not in a place where laws of slave ownership would be enforced. He was -- quite literally -- a free man in Paris.

How often to we walk around thinking that we are in a "country" that has laws that we are enslaved to, and under the enforceable jurisdiction of? That we live in a body with laws of decay and decline. That we operate in a world where laws of socio-economic privilege and penalty prevail. That we are under the thumb of educational hierarchies and intellectual tyranny?

We stand huddled against the cold wall of a building, thinking we are slaves and that if we were to leave, we would be hunted down, shackled in chains, and imprisoned for life. When in fact, we live, move, and breathe in Him. We are not citizens of a land where "enslavement to the most relentless masters" is enforced, or enforceable.

We are citizens of the kingdom of God. We are free men, women, and children in this safe place where slavery has been abolished. We do not live under the tyranny of laws that say we must subscribe to heredity, caste, class, health-predictions, educational hierarchies, socio-economic predestination.

We are free. We can walk away without looking back. I promise.

Not long ago I was struggling with a physical challenge that seemed to make movement very difficult. I was mentally slammed with all the reasons why this was not only reasonable, but expected -- at my age.

One Saturday, as I started a cleaning project, I put a favorite Joni playlist on my iPod - and yes, I still have one of my daughters' old discarded iPods. The first song that came up was "Free Man in Paris." I immediately thought of the story shared above. At the same moment, I bent down to clean under a table, and felt an all too familiar pain.

But this time I didn't just keep moving through it. Or huddle in the cold light of acceptance next to it. I decided to walk away from it. I was not mortal. I did not live in a "country" where the laws of birth, maturity, decay, death were enforced. I was not trapped in a body that was defined by those laws - or enslaved to them. I was a free woman in the kingdom of God.

Every step, every bend, every swipe of the dust cloth was a step away from the feeling that I was waiting for a false master to tell me where I could go what I could feel, and how I could experience my life.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy assures us:

"The enslavement of man is not legitimate.

It will cease when man enters into his heritage of freedom, his God-given dominion over the material senses. Mortals will some day assert their freedom in the name of Almighty God."

We answer to one Sovereign, one Law-giver, who is Love. This Love is omnipotent. There is no opposition to His supreme statutes of freedom and liberty. This is where we live. This is the country of our citizenship.

offered with Love,

Kate

 

"I've looked at clouds…"

"I've looked at clouds
from both sides now,
from give and take..."
- Joni Mitchell

I live along a river valley that runs between two mountain ranges. Each morning I rise, fill the bird feeders, water the flowers and return to the kitchen where I make a pot of tea. Then I spend a few hours studying spiritual texts, taking calls, and staring.  Yes, staring.

I've always been fascinated by clouds. As a child I couldn't wait to finish my chores and retreat to read. If the weather was inclement, I would go to my room, climb into my bottom bunk and disappear into a story about horses, a Nancy Drew mystery, a biography about strong women, or a book of fantasy. If the weather allowed, I would grab a book and head for a grassy place to lie on my back and alternate between reading words and reading clouds.

I loved watching a cloud change shapes -- from a bunny, to a dragon, to a castle -- and so on. The first time I heard Joni Mitchell's,"Both Sides Now," I thought it was the most brilliant song ever penned.

These days, I don't have to lie in the grass to watch clouds. All I have to do is look out our floor to ceiling windows, where I have a stretch of sky that reaches about 50 miles along the valley -- from north to south. I can watch a single cloud shift shape dozens of time. I can watch her start out as a puffy little thing, and over the course of a few hours, turn into a pouty, storm-sodden promise full of rain.

One day, as I watched a cloud morph, over, and over again, I realized that "the cloud" I'd been watching -- and which I'd identified as "that cloud," -- was not the same cloud, at all. Fifth grade earth science had taught me that throughout the morning, the sun had caused water molecules to evaporate up from puddles, lakes, rivers, streams, and back into the atmosphere. From there, they'd then been gathered (or condensed) into clouds. But all the while, as each cloud gathered new molecules of water, other water molecules were being released back into the atmosphere. There was a constant, ongoing exchange of water molecules.

The cloud that I had been watching move from the north earlier that morning, was actually not the same cloud I saw later in the afternoon. Even though I thought I'd been monitoring its southbound progress -- and its ever-changing shape -- there were probably very few water molecules left of what had started out as "that cloud" earlier in the morning.

And for that matter, what constituted "that cloud" anyway?  How was it so different from the atmosphere it seemed to be traveling through. The same molecules that made up that beautiful blue sky, made up the cloud. All that was different, was density. What I thought of as an outlined shape, was actually, in a constant state of transformation -- continuously changing and shifting.

For me, this realization felt -- in ways that are hard to explain -- like I finally understood Life. I could see that the atmosphere which seemed so invisible, became more visible when gathered into a denser form -- not a different substance -- just a different density. The essential elements that made up the atmosphere -- and the cloud -- were interchangeable, and changeless.

I had to ask myself, "how is this different from what I think of as my body -- a body in which each cell is replaced every seven years?" Could this be what Mary Baker Eddy is referring to in her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, when she says:

"Spirit, God, gathers unformed thoughts
into their proper channels
and unfolds these thoughts…
in order that their purpose may appear"  

and that:

"Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts
and replace the objects of material sense
with spiritual ideas." 

Gathering and resolving, gathering and resolving...

As Joni sings:

"something's lost,
and something's gained,
in living every day..." 

I couldn't help but think of God as the atmosphere -- invisible, but ever-present. And everything we experience -- bodies, trees, houses -- as clouds. Constantly gathering into forms that allow the atmosphere to express a new sense of purpose -- to provide shade, to move moisture from north to south -- or east to west, to sort sunlight into a rainbow of hues, to resolve into much-needed rain -- in short, to bless.

I could actually feel the give and take of being spiritual -- and yet, having form -- without the membrane of duality. To be as at-one with God, as the cloud is one with the atmosphere it travels through, and exists in.

There is so much more I am learning from clouds. But for tonight -- this begged sharing.

offered with Love,

Kate

"I really don't know clouds, at all..."

"I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
from up and down and still somehow,
It's clouds illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all..."

I have so many stories associated with Joni Mitchell's song, "Clouds."  But today, when I saw this photo on Facebook, and the following description, I realized how true it is.  I really don't know clouds...at all.  The description read:   

"A Dutch artist named Berndnaut Smilde has figured out how to create a white cloud in the middle of a room. This requires careful regulation of humidity, temperature and light. Once conditions are perfect, he uses a fog machine to create the cloud."

It made me laugh out loud.  It was the perfect depiction of what I seemed to be experiencing.

I was sitting in my office all morning, feeling as if I was on the verge of an emotional downpour.  I couldn't pinpoint which direction the storm was blowing in from, but it was looming on the horizon.

Then, one little trigger and the tears started falling.  When pressed for a "reason," it all came rushing in.  A recent incident, the fragile emotional season,  memories associated with a similar experience...they were all there.  The ego (or mortal mind) had been perfecting the atmosphere, just waiting for just the right conditions to introduce a trigger...and voila, what looked like a real cloud ready to dump a downpour of tears into the middle of the room.

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

"Disease arises,
like other mental conditions,
from association."

I like thinking of disease...as any dis-ease -- mental, emotional, financial, relational, physical, etc. -- that would suggest God, Love, is not the only Cause and Creator...of anything.

In an attempt to forward it's story of our isolation from God's allies -- either as victim or perpetrator -- the ego dips into the muckery of regret, guilt, "what if," and "why, oh why..."  

From there, it gathers the right atmospheric elements -- mistakes, choices, fears, doubts, anger, hurt -- and sets up the perfect environment for blowing in the fogginess of self and separation.  A perfect storm. 

 The past contributes regret, the future its imaginings, and blow in a little meaningless incident or chatter, and it's a swirling nor'easter.

Yup, that's how it works...a cloud in the middle of your office ready to break into torrents of anger, a downpour of tears...bearing down in sideways sheets of misunderstanding.

But, we are not victims.  We can know what is going on.  

When the humidity in the room begins to skyrocket with a heavy sense of emotional vulnerability, or the barometric pressure of spiritual charity dips into the single digits of "me, my, mine" -- open the windows.  Turn on the fan which Eddy defines, in Science and Health, as: 

"the separator of fact from fable;
that which gives action to thought." 

...and change the atmosphere.   When we open our hearts to the freshness of divine inspiration, the ego can't create a cloud of self and sin.   Those false elements can't find ways to associate themselves into reasons for sadness, regret, guilt, or sorrow, when we stir the environment with Truth.

Just a thought...

 shared with Love,

Kate

And if you love the original Joni version of "Both Sides Now" here is a link that includes a bonus...the original "Circle Game" at the end. Enjoy.

"a river so long..."

"It's coming on Christmas,
they're cuttin' down trees
They're puttin' up reindeer
and singing songs of joy and peace.
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

"Oh, I wish I had a river so long
I could teach my feet to fly
Oh, I wish I had a river,
I could skate away on…"

Joni's original version of "River" always speaks to a place in me that hungers for mercy. But it is James Taylor's recording of "River" that I turn to when sorrow rattles the window casings. His voice wraps mercy around my shoulders like a heavy wool blanket on a cold winter night.

Tonight, like a skater gliding backwards -- with my face forward -- I am hoping to gather in the fading light of the past, a perspective on a story which I pray might help someone else.

It was decades ago, but I will never forget the lessons learned.  I'd been struggling with a gathering cloud of depression for months. But that winter, its pall lowered -- cold and dark. It screeched through my bones like a bitter wind.  It threatened to rend my heart. A heart that already felt so brittle, it might shatter at the slightest touch of human warmth.

I was sad and empty. I felt a dead silence within. Not even the sweetest strains of Christmas music could penetrate that vacuum of feeling.

It didn't make sense. I should have been happy. But I couldn't shake the dull edge of depression's cold knife cutting me off from everything I loved and cared about. It was a feeling akin to being disconnected from myself. And there were time when I wondered if I'd actually passed on, and was somehow just observing myself from a place outside of my body. It was a vast detachment, and it seemed to leave me beyond the reach of kindness.

Nothing seemed to matter -- and everything hurt.

I'd been praying for so long -- just to feel something, anything. I was absolutely drowning in hopelessness. And I felt helpless as I wondered if I would ever be able to find even a glimmer of hope, again.

Depression is a strange hollowness. It holds nothing. Whatever love is given, seems to seep through through its black emptiness and get lost in the void.

I remember loved ones urging me to "just be happy," to
"recall all the things you have to be grateful for," and eventually, to "just snap out of it." But I couldn't. It wasn't that I didn't want to. I just couldn't remember what any of those things felt like.

I went through the motions. I prayed, studied, made gratitude lists, sang hymns, carols, lullabies, songs. But it was as if I was doing it all under water. I could hear the words, I could pray the prayers, sing hymn-after-hymn, and make notes in the margins of inspirational texts about inspiring "revelations," but I couldn't actually feel anything. It wasn't just that I couldn't feel joy. I couldn't feel anything.

But this song, "River," seemed to have an odd effect on me. When I heard it -- even just the sound of it, I somehow knew that Joni understood what I was feeling.

It was as if she were stretching a mittened hand out to me -- where I sat on a log at the edge of the frozen Raritan River -- calling me to skate with her. I could almost hear her whispering: "yes, you can do this -- just a little further."

And I'd think, "perhaps I can."  I could take her hands, close my eyes, let myself glide out onto the ice, and allow my heart, my mind, my spirit to feel the silence of a frozen river.

I wanted to hear the simple scratching sound of my skate blades scoring the rippled ice. I longed to feel the bitter cold bite at my cheeks.  I ached to hear the crackle of branches as the wind rocked the bare arms of marsh willows at the river's edge -- back and forth  -- like keening mourners in blackened shrouds.

Day-after-day I would play "River." And day-after-day, I would let her take my hands in hers. Till one day, I began to feel.

At first the feelings were grief, and cold, and loneliness. But there was also the warmth of a mittened hand in mine. And there was the sweet voice of my friend, Joni. She was whispering a song about "wishing" and being "weak in the knees" with love.

Eventually I began to feel the tingle of living, like fingers coming back to life in front of a bonfire. Tears started to fall and burned in my throat like the hot chocolate I sipped - as a girl - from the stainless steel cup of my old plaid thermos. The feeling that she understood me -- that anyone understood what I was going through -- warmed me to the core.

Through her music Joni was taking my hand and skating me forward into feeling alive again.  She was skating me into spring, where my heart began to thaw.  It saved my life that winter.

By mid-April, Mind and Soul -- the spiritual sources of all true knowing and feeling -- had become synonymous again to me. What I knew (or could think of) I could actually feel (in my heart) again.

This was a different kind of healing for me.

For some reason, I needed to be met where I was. I couldn't seem to move from the edge of that frozen river -- cold, sad, and numb -- without the help of her mittened hand.

Her music quietly led me out onto the ice. And before long, I began to make my way forward -- pushing off on Love-angled blades, one against the other. Realizing that I was feeling something, anything -- no matter how painful -- sliced through the lie that I was living in a void.

I was so grateful to discover that I had never stopped feeling. Even my awareness of the vacuum was a feeling to be grateful for. I was alive to my own simple desire to feel. And since I could feel, I wanted to feel God, good.

Joni, pulling me onto the ice with her words -- words which made me realize that I was not alone in my sadness.  Words that woke me up. And although it may have started out as a bone-numbing cold, turning into a painful tingling as I slowly woke up to the full warmth of my living -- I was feeling again. And it was enough.

It was enough to keep me coming back to the river's edge each day for the tender warmth of her now-husky voice. It was enough to keep me leaning towards the soft angora of her mittened hand. She was reaching out to gently pull me forward.  And I was reaching out for life again.

There is an old song from our hymnbook that says,

"Sometimes 
a light surprises
the Christian while he sings..."  

And sometimes what surprises me is the way a song can come "with healing in its wings." It pours the balm of understanding on a cold heart, and warm it back to life.

Mary Baker Eddy promises in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures that:

"Whatever inspires with wisdom, Truth, or Love 
— be it song, sermon, or Science —
blesses the human family
with crumbs of comfort from Christ's table,
feeding the hungry
and giving living waters to the thirsty."  

By Spring I was feeling again. I was feeling joy -- genuine, palpable, break-into-song, dance-in-the-streets, do backflips in the park, laugh-like-a-child, sleep-like-a-baby -- joy.

The trees began to bud and flower. The river languorously carried apple blossoms from our yard, past the old mill down river, under the covered bridge, around the bend, through the state park and eventually out to sea. And I was singing "songs of joy and peace."

I'd found a river I could skate away - and back - on. Again, and again. 

No matter how deeply sorrow had carved it's name on my heart, I could never, be made to believe that I was unable to feel again. And if I could start with the fact -- that I was feeling -- I could let those icy feelings swell the space in my heart and expand my capacity for compassion until all the world fell in.

Just like water. When it finds a small fissure in a rock - that in extreme cold turns to ice -- expanding and causing the space to grow -- so my sorrow could only expand the space in my heart, making me more open to the needs of others.  Making it more understanding, more compassionate, more alert to someone else who might be sitting on the edge of the ice.  Now, it is my hands that are mittened.

 Thanks Joni. I will always be grateful. always...

Kate

"It's cloud's illusions I recall..."

"Bows and flows of angel hair
and ice cream castles in the air;
and feather canyons everywhere,
I've looked at clouds that way.

But now they only block the sun,
they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things I would have done
but clouds got in my way.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
from up and down, and still somehow,
it's cloud illusions I recall.
I really don't know clouds at all."

Bows and flows of angel hair...does anyone say it better than Joni?  Looking at clouds, love, and life from "Both Sides Now" is a concept that I have waited over 40 years to understand.  But, I think I caught a glimpse of something recently. An insight that holds so much promise, so much hope, for me, that I almost dare not speak it...

Memories...we love them, we don't...we love them, we don't.  They define us, they haunt us.  They seem to hang on to us, like the fangs of a snake one minute, and we hang on to them like a loved talisman the next.  Our relationship to memories, are as complicated and convoluted as sibling rivalry, or passive-aggressive behavior...we wonder if we are actually going crazy when we experience their subjectivity.

But there is a way of thinking about memories that frees us from the twisted insanity of their haunting.  There is a way of experiencing our remembered moments that is as full of joy and sweetness as a breath of spring.

Alan Lightman, in his small, but profoundly thought-provoking book, Einstein's Dreams, allegorically explains how Einstein may have explored various models of time, as he penned his "theory of time."  He walks us through time that meanders, time as a locality, time as a sensory experience, and time as memory.  In a chapter titled, "27 June 1905,"   Lightman sets up the memory-based model of time with this story:

"Every Tuesday, a middle-aged man brings stones from the quarry east of Berne to the masonry of Hodlerstrasse.  As he passes people on the street, his eyes are on the ground.  Some people know him, try to catch his eye or say hello.  He mumbles and walks on.  Even when he delivers his stones, he cannot look the mason in the eye.  Instead he looks aside, he talks to the wall in answer to the mason's friendly chatter, he stands in a corner while his stones are weighed.

"Forty years ago in school, one afternoon in March, he urinated in class.  He could not hold it in. Afterwards he tried to stay in his chair, but the other boys saw the puddle and made him walk around the room, round and round.  They pointed at the wet spot on his pants and howled.  That day the sunlight looked like streams of milk as it poured whitely through the windows and spilled onto the floorboards of the room.  Two dozen jackets hung from the hooks beside the door.  Chalk marks stretched across the blackboard, the names of Europe's capitals.  The desks had swivel tops and drawers.  His had "Johann" carved in the upper right. The air was moist from the steam pipes.  A clock with big red hands read 2:15.  And the boys hooted at him, hooted at him as they chased him around the room, with the wet spot on his pants.  They hooted and called him, "bladder baby, bladder baby, bladder baby."

"That memory has become his life.  When he wakes up in the morning, he is the boy who urinated in his pants.  When he passes people on the streets, he knows they see the wet spot on his pants. He glances at his pants and looks away....

"But what is the past?  Could it be, the firmness of the past is just an illusion?  Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images, that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought?

"In a world of shifting past, one morning the quarry man awakes and is no more the boy who could not hold it in."

Oh my goodness.  Do you know how it felt to read this for the first time?  It was like glimpsing the very moment when a golden ray of sunlight breaks through heavy black storm clouds, and arcs the sky with a rainbow of colors so new, so surprising, that they have yet to be named. 

Lightman then reflects:

"In a world of shifting past, memories are like wheat in the wind, fleeting dreams, shapes in clouds.  Events, once they have happened, lose reality, alter with a glance, a storm, a night.  In time, the past never happened.  But who could know?  Who could know that the past is not as solid as this instant..."

This was a deeply forgiving paradigm shift for me. 

As most of you are well-aware, I have a photographic memory.  How else could I recall the minutiae of detail from my own life's stories with so much specificity in this blog.  But, and this is a big but, this same level of recall has also felt like a curse at time.  Besides having a photographic memory, I also have a very visceral emotional memory.  When I remember life events...big and small...I not only recall the details of color, smell, and taste, but the deep emotions experienced as well. It is sometimes as if a wave of memories is crashing over my present, and pulling me out to a roiling sea of sorrow in its undertow.

At other times,  these memories seem to "set up" my present and future experiences in a way that undermine any opportunity to "be new" in Christ.  Much like the stonecutter in Lightman's story I have lived my life as a prisoner of past events.  When I would see my present through the lens of a mistake, accident,  life-transforming, or compelling event, I couldn't look up into the eyes of my future with even a modicum hope that genuine innocence, or forgiveness, could ever be mine.

But, when I look at my life through this new lens of "shifting cloud" images, experience that take shape for a moment...dark and lowering in one instant, fluffy and childlike the next...I am able to benefit from the filtered sunlight, cooling shade, bright rays that ripen tomatoes, and gentle rains upon the tender herb...each in their moment of appearing.   By allowing these "clouds" to shift into the next blessing, without letting them define my past, present, or future...or anyone else's, for that matter...I can live with wonder, and stand in awe of God's ever-evolving creation of individual and collective good.

In this space of "shifting clouds," the shapes that are a delightful bunny one moment, or a fire-breathing dragon the next, inform rather than define, what I experience.  I am able to see that those shifting moments are as subjective as the "eye of the beholder" and that my "eye" can always be in synch with the heart of Christ which is always focused on God's face.

In their biography of Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Healer, Yvonne von Fettweiss and Robert Warnack  write that Eddy once offered her "household worker," Adelaide Still, a glimpse through this lens of Spirit.  Still shares:

"On several occasions I saw Mrs. Eddy dispel a storm; the first time was on August 3, 1907, in the late afternoon. 

"The sky was overcast and it was very dark.   Mrs. Eddy sat in her chair in the tower corner of her study, watching the clouds with a smile and a rapt expression on her face.   She seemed to be seeing something beyond her present surroundings, and I do not think that she was conscious of my presence.

"In a few moments the clouds broke and flecked, and the storm was dissolved into its native nothingness.   About have an hour later I took her supper tray to her, and she said to me, "Ada, did you see the sky?" I replied, "Yes, Mrs. Eddy."   The she said, "It (meaning the cloud) never was;  God's face was never clouded."

"This agrees with what another student has recorded as having been said by Mrs. Eddy, namely, "When I wanted to dispel a storm.  I did not say, 'there is no thunder, and no lightning.' But I said, 'God's face is here, and I do see it.'"

Through the lens of shifting memory-clouds, we can let the flash of anger pale, the thunder of pride die away, and the clouds--that would hide the face of God in one another--fleck and dissolve.  And in this light, we find ourselves, and others, innocent, beautiful, pure, and free.

"Bows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
and feathered canyons everywhere..."
- Joni Mitchell

Ahhh, Joni you were not just the poet laureate of our time, but a gentle shepherd, a friend who took my hand on a very special journey through the poetry of your song.

with Love,

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit: Forrest Wilder 2009]

"...a river so long..."

"It's coming on Christmas,
they're cuttin' down trees
They're puttin' up reindeer
and singing songs of joy and peace.
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

"Oh, I wish I had a river so long
I could teach my feet to fly
Oh, I wish I had a river,
I could skate away on…"
-     Joni Mitchell

I linked to Joni's version of "River" in a post about a Christmas spent far from home and family, called, "I Wish I had a river..." on this blog in 2007, but it is this recording of "River" by James Taylor, that has a gentle, but firm, grasp on my heart tonight.

Sitting in my office at 4 in the morning I'm going back, I've skated away from the "things" of 2009, and am gliding backwards...with my face forward in hopes that going back to gather the story will help someone in their own darkness...to a winter some years ago.  I'd been struggling with a gathering pall of depression for months, and this winter day it lowered cold and dark, screeching through my bones like a bitter wind threatening to make my heart so brittle that it would shatter at the slightest touch of human warmth.

I was sad and cold and felt a dead silence inside that not even the sweetest strains of Christmas music could penetrate.   It didn't make sense.  I should have been happy. But I couldn't shake the dull edge of depression's cold knife cutting me off from all I loved and cared about.  It was a feeling of being so disconnected from myself that I wondered at times if I'd actually passed on and was observing myself from a space outside my body, however close it seemed to be.

Nothing mattered...and everything hurt. 

I'd been praying for so long,  just to feel something...anything...that my hopelessness in finding help, was turning to helplessness that I would ever find even a glimmer of hope again.

Depression is a strange hollowness.  It holds nothing.  Whatever is given, seeps through through the black emptiness and is lost in the void.   I remember loved ones urging me to "just be happy", "recall all the things you have to be grateful for", and eventually, to "snap out of it".  I couldn't.  I prayed, studied, made gratitude lists, sang hymns, carols, lullabies, songs.  It was as if I was doing it all under water.  I could hear the words, I could pray the prayers, sing each hymn and make notes in margins about inspiring "revelations", but I couldn't actually feel anything.  It wasn't that I just couldn't feel  joy...I couldn't feel anything. 

But this song, "River" seemed to have an odd effect on me.  When I heard it...even just the sound of it, I somehow knew that Joni understood what I was feeling.  She was stretching a mittened hand out to me where I sat on a log at the edge of the frozen Raritan River calling me to skate with her, whispering: "yes, you can do it...just a little further.".  To take her hands, close my eyes, glide out onto the ice, and let my heart, my mind, my spirit feel the silence of a frozen river, hear only the scratching sound of my skate blades coursing through the rippled ice, feel the bitter cold bite at my cheeks, and listen to the crackle of leafless branches as the wind rocked trees back and forth like keening mourners in blackened shrouds.

Day after day I would play "River". Day after day I would let her take my hands in hers.  And I began to feel.  At first the feelings were grief and cold and loneliness...but they were also the warmth of a mittened hand in mine, the sweet lowing of my friend humming a song about "wishing" and being "weak in the knees" with love.  And I began to feel the tingle of fingers coming back to life in front of a bonfire, and the burning in my throat as hot chocolate from the stainless steel cup on my old plaid thermos, warmed me to the core.

Skating with Joni, knowing that she understood, and that through her music she was taking my hand and skating me forward into feeling alive again...into Spring, and the thawing of my heart, saved my life that winter.

By April, Mind and Soul...the Sources of knowing and feeling...were synonymous again to me.  What I knew, or could think of...intellectually, I could now actually feel in my heart. 

For some reason I had to start where I was...on the edge of a frozen river, cold, sad, and numb...and have her mittened hand, quietly lead me out onto the ice, before I could begin feeling my way forward...pushing off on Love-angled blades, one against the other, indirect reminders that sliced through  my icy heart and poured in the warmth of remembering that I could feel something, anything right in that moment.  In fact, I was feeling...it may have started out as a bone-numbing cold, that turned into a painful tingling as I slowly woke to the full warmth of living love....but I was feeling.  And it was enough.

Enough to keep me coming back to the river's edge each day for the tender warmth of her now-husky voice, the soft angora of her mittened hand reaching out to take my life in her own and gently pull me forward. 

There is an old song from our hymnbook that says,

"Sometimes a light surprises
The Christian while he sings..."

And sometimes what surprises me is the way a song can come "with healing in its wings" to pour its balm of understanding on a cold heart and warm it back to life.

Or as Mary Baker Eddy promises in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"Whatever inspires with wisdom, Truth, or Love
— be it song, sermon, or Science —
blesses the human family with crumbs of comfort from Christ's table,
feeding the hungry and giving living waters to the thirsty."

By Spring I was feeling again...and what I was feeling was joy...genuine, palpable, break-into-song, dance-in-the-streets, do backflips in the park, laugh-like-a-child, sleep-like-a-baby joy. 

And as the trees began to bud and bloom, and the river languorously carried apple blossoms from our yard, past the old mill down river, under the covered bridge, around the bend, through the state park and eventually out to sea, I was singing "songs of joy and peace"  I'd found a river I could skate away, and back again, on. And it was "the river of His pleasures"...calm, constant, fresh, and new each day...flowing in my own heart.

Thanks Joni...I love you...
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"I wish I had a river..."

"It's coming on Christmas,
they're cuttin down trees
They're puttin up reindeer
and singing songs of joy and peace.

I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

It don't snow here, it stays pretty green
I'm gonna make a lot of money
And I'm gonna quit this crazy scene.

I wish I had a river
I could skate away on...

I wish I had a river so long
I could teach my feet to fly

Oh, I wish I had a river,
I could skate away on…"
- Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell's "River," was my anthen one Christmas almost 30 years ago.  I was house-sitting, living alone in the hills above Malibu and I knew no one.  I had accepted my sister's offer to come to Los Angeles, while she and her husband worked out of state for six months.  She had suggested that it might be the perfect opportunity for me to clear my head…and my heart…after a long-term relationship had ended.  It sounded like a good idea,   I needed a fresh perspective on everything – relationships, life purpose, dreams and desires –  and a change of scenery would do my heart good.  It also came at a good time for me as a teacher.  So that summer I decided to not renew my teaching contract, sold (or gave away) everything that wouldn't fit in a small suitcase and an orange crate, and drove over three thousand miles in five days.  I arrived in the land of movie stars and palm trees on Labor Day weekend and had a job by the time my sister left to join her husband a week later. 

However, by Thanksgiving Los Angeles had lost its romance and sparkle for me.  I was lonely and scared.  My daily commute took an hour each way and my paycheck didn't go as far in the land of milk and honey, as it had in rural New England. 

I wanted to go "home", but I couldn't afford the gas or a plane ticket, and I had committed to caring for my sister's house and pets until they returned. 

Each evening I would return to their tiny cottage in the Malibu hills, walk and feed the dogs, and then I would put Joni on the turntable and wait for the first strains of, "It's coming on Christmas…" - and cry.  

I thought about buying a little tree and decorating it with tiny white lights, like I had every year since high school.   But each night as I drove past the Christmas tree lot on my way home from work I would see this wild-haired guy selling them in a tee-shirt and shorts, while Christmas carols blared in the background against the roar of the flocking machine…and I'd get even more depressed.  Just the thought of a pink, blue or yellow flocked pine tree made me want to point the nose of my car east and drive until I ran out of gas…wherever it was…and never look back.  And anyway, my mother and six of my younger siblings would all be in the Midwest for Christmas, so who would I have to enjoy it with.

One evening I decided to walk the dogs by the lake at the bottom of my sister's hill, and there I saw a flyer posted on the bulletin board outside of the village community center.  They were looking for volunteers to help with the Annual Christmas pageant.  The children in this small village put on a show each December and it was completely run by parents and other volunteers from the lakeside community.  I was a teacher, or at least I had been "back home" (sniff, sniff) and I loved working with children on theatre projects.  I took the dogs back up the hill, fed them and grabbed a sweatshirt before heading back for that night's rehearsals. 

Within minutes of walking through the door I was put to work.  There were shepherd's crooks to make out of wire and duct tape, a baby doll needed to be painted a soft cocoa brown to match the ten-year old "Mary's" complexion, and they actually needed someone to take the lead on designing flyers to advertising the one performance of the season, and I got tapped to do it.  All of a sudden, I was part of something…I belonged somewhere.

Within days I had neighbors, friends, and invitations for one Christmas gathering after another.  Soon, the play's director was calling me at work to see if I could look for the blue satin for Mary's scarf on my lunch hour.  A mom would bring an extra croissant to rehearsals in case I hadn't had time to eat after work.  A dad who worked for the school district brought me the postings for open teaching positions in the district and offered to act as a local reference.  And the nicest thing of all… if, because of my commute I was late to rehearsals, there were people who actually knew that I wasn't where I was supposed to be, and were relieved when I finally arrived.

One night after rehearsals I offered to bring some costumes home for altering and suggested that a mom and her three young actors come by for a fitting very early the next morning before school and work.  The littlest girl noticed immediately that I didn't have a Christmas tree and I assured her that I was fine since most of my time was spent at the community center where we had a big Christmas tree set up.  And I was…I was loving my time with my neighbors, and I had been invited to join the family of three shepherds and an angel for Christmas dinner.  I didn't need my own Christmas tree.  We finished the fittings and we were all out the door as the sun came up. 

Later that day, I stopped at the tree lot and bought a tiny little tree from the guy in shorts. As I pulled up in front of my sister's cottage to walk the dogs before rehearsals I realized that my little tree wasn't just for me…it was for everyone who loved me and needed to know that I was going to be alright.

I pulled the tree, already positioned on a small stand, into the living room and before long I had it strung with sparkling white lights and had carefully placed the glitter-covered pine cones and hand-cut paper snowflakes I had received from some of the children I had become friends with through our rehearsals, on its branches.

The dogs had been let out, but were eager for their walk in the hills behind the house so off we went as dusk set in.  When we came back up over the hill toward the house I stopped in my tracks.  Through the front window I could see my Christmas tree.  It sparkled like diamonds and beckoned me home. 

As I left for that night's rehearsal I felt the warmth of home and hearth…family and friendship…something I never thought I could feel in a place where they sell Christmas trees in shorts and tee-shirts under palm trees.

I had learned that when you give your heart…and your hands…in helping others…you can find home, family, community and friendship anywhere. 

As we sang Silent Night holding hands in our drafty community center at the close of the Christmas pageant, I could actually feel that sense of home and family radiating out from this small village through the starry night to embrace those who felt lonely or lost…wherever in the world they might be.  Today I realize that I always had a river to skate away on. God had given me a heart from which a river of love, a river of giving, a river of service to others flowed…and that I could always skate away on it's solid presence…far, far away from loneliness, depression, or sadness.  We all do.
Kate

"And the seasons they go round and round..."

"And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return
we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game..."

As the seasons change and patterns seem to emerge, both good and…well, not so good, I find myself humming this song almost unconsciously.  I love Joni Mitchell, and I love this song. There is a magic to it that is all wrapped up in being a young woman with dreams of staving off the slow slide into a life of consumerism and conformity, and living a purpose driven existence full of social activism and global responsibility.  Just hearing Joni's voice is like a clarion call to something noble and selfless. 

But as much as I love this song…any Joni song…Circle Game does seem to be an anthem for the kind of carousel riding – round and round, up and down and you can't get off –thinking that leave you feeling a bit unsettled and dizzy with blurred vision.

One symptom of this kind of thinking…thinking that seemed to surface every year for me as winter approached, was influenza…or the flu.  That unwelcome cycle of colds and coughs which tried to get my attention by screaming "my turn, my turn…let me jump on the carousel with you and sit on the next horse chattering all the way…round and round, up and down…can I, can I, can I?".  And before I knew it I would find myself running in place at a full gallop, with a running nose, but getting nowhere …before I realized it.

For a long time I would just battle with the whole suggestion that there could even be cycles.  I would avoid carousels at all cost.  I would absolutely deny the premise that anything could return, repeat, persist, or persevere.  But one day I came across this statement from one of my favorite passages (passage below with this particular statement in bold) from Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,

"The physical healing of Christian Science results now,
as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle,
before which sin and disease lose their reality in human
consciousness and disappear as naturally and as
necessarily as darkness gives place to light
and sin to reformation.
Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural,
but supremely natural. 
They are the sign of Immanuel, or "God with us,"
--a divine influence ever present in human
consciousness and repeating itself,
coming now as was promised aforetime,

To preach deliverance to the captives [of sense],
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised.

This was a powerful realization for me.  I wasn't in the business of destroying the "repetitive", but of claiming it for God.  The only influenza, or influence that was repeating itself in my life, or in the life of my children or neighbors…local and global…was that divine influence.  And this divine influence had as its source God as Mind…the only Mind that even had the intelligence to remember, to recall, to repeat…and the divine could only repeat the truth…that which was good, perfect, enduringly present in human consciousness.

All that can go "round and round and round" within our schools, our neighborhoods, our villages, and outposts is this divine influence.  It spreads quickly through our system warming us with its promise of love, grace, joy.  It's radiant love shows itself in selfless behavior, it's flush of joy is evidenced in bright smiles, it's persistent song is "peace, be still" echoing through the chambers of thought and it circulates a message of "God is All-in-all" through every heart…it is the music on my carousel.

Truth is repeating itself.  Truth is insistent, health is imperative, purity is assertive, and God is All-in-all.

This is what goes "round and round and round" in my heart today…
Kate