"and oh my soul so weary..."

"When I am down,
and oh my soul so weary.
when troubles come,
and my heart burdened be.
Then I am still,
and wait here in the silence.
Until you come,
and sit a while with me..."

I was driving back from a full morning of office visits at the college, when a report on NPR about the shootings at another high school...this time in Ohio...stopped me, literally, in my tracks. I pulled off the road and sat next to the coursing Mississippi River and remembered another day, along another road...and a hawk's reminder.

I remembered how her trust in the power of the Unseen to, as Josh Groban sings, "Raise me up..." gave me something to cling to during, what could have been, insurmountable grief during some very dark days. She reminded me that the unseen power of Love, would, if I let it, lift me above the currents of sorrow and fear, as I drove towards Littleton Colorado in April of 1999.

Without a moment's hesitation, the tears of gratitude...for that experience and the lessons learned...flowed with as much power as the river in front of me.

And as I turned my face into the brisk wind off the river this afternoon, something caught my eye. It was an eagle lifting off the bluffs as she caught a thermal which took her higher and higher. I've revisited that drive to Columbine High School, many times over the ensuing years, especially when I've needed a reminder that God is there...however unseen He may seem to be...in each of the communities that have faced these tragic shootings. God is there, right now, to bring healing, comfort, courage, and peace. I wrote the following piece in September of 2006, after the Platte Canyon High School shootings...I share it again now in hopes that it may be helpful to someone.

It is offered with Love...

In April of 1999 two young gunmen entered Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado and opened fire on their classmates. 

On the immediate heels of this tragedy I had the privilege of joining scores of fellow pastors, psychologists, counselors and health care professional as we gathered to provide counseling and support services to students, parents, families, teachers and staff over the ensuing weeks of shock, grieving, healing, and recovery. 

When I read of the shooting at Platte Canyon High School this morning, I was reminded of my drive to Columbine that April afternoon and couldn't help but think of the drive parents made to that high school yesterday afternoon to connect with their children..fighting the terror, with hearts full of hope.

Hwy 285 in Bailey Colorado has always been my favorite stretch of road anywhere in the world.  It lies between my sister's house in Evergreen, and my summer home at the Adventure Unlimited Ranches in Buena Vista, and sits at the bend of the road just before the sweet mountain village of Shawnee. 

I have often stopped by the river to pray, and connect more deeply with God, before finishing the last leg of my trip to camp where I will be "on" 24/7, supporting campers, counselors, horses, and camp operations.  It is a deeply spiritual place for me.  An open air temple among the aspen and pine. 

Today I am cherishing its families. I am closing my eyes and remembering the deep peace of its endless blue mountain skies, the pure constancy of the rushing Platte River which runs between the folds of her meadows. And I am seeing her held in the palm of God's hands, comforted by Her tender love, and encouraged to focus on the good all around her as she find her peace.  Here is a small snapshot of my journey towards that kind of peace in 1999 as I drove towards Columbine High Schol that day:

It was a beautiful day in late April and yet that drive from our small town in northern Colorado to a suburb of Denver that afternoon, which I made quite often, was anything but ordinary. I strained my heart to find the presence of God. I searched the still beige and gold prairie for instances of order, beauty, peace. I knew that if I could focus on the presence of these qualities in nature I would be acknowledging the presence of their source, and one thing I was sure about God was that He was either All or nothing. So if He was at all present...He was all-present.

I needed to know His presence in very real and tangible ways that afternoon. My heart was heavy and I knew I couldn't let it stay that way. I had work to do and this work would require anything but a heavy heart. It would require the absolute certainty of God's presence and power that I was searching, the endless Colorado landscape, for evidence of.

My old jeep and I were on our own form of autopilot. I prayed and it just held to the road like the bottom-heavy friend it had been on our many trips into canyons and backroads visiting homebound patients and/or traversing ice and snow to reach someone in need. But today we were on a dry highway traveling briskly toward a place not yet trail-blazed in my experience.

It was April 20, 1999, and although the radio in the jeep was silent, the voices of newscasters and commentators seemed to be filling my mental airwaves. Words like gunmen, Columbine (which before that afternoon had only been the name of a delicate mountain flower my daughter and I admired each summer in high meadows), fallen, and victims punctuated that silence like gunshots.

I knew I had to find a peace so solid and secure before I arrived at the catholic church in Littleton where I would join religious leaders, spiritual counselors and social workers who were gathering to minister to the broken hearts and shattered families whose lives had been directly and indirectly touched by the days events, that nothing to move me.

Those mental voices were so loud and the tears on my cheeks were so hot with horror and grief that I couldn't seem to find the focus and deep-centered peace that was usually mine within milliseconds of any report of sickness, disease, fear or anger. Today that peace seemed illusive and ungraspable. I was ready to turn the Jeep around and head home knowing that I would do no one any good if I couldn't find my spiritual grounding.

Just then something in the sky caught my eye. It was a hawk riding an invisible updraft over the prairie. I pulled off the highway and got out of the car. Other cars and tractor trailers whizzed past but as I watched that hawk soaring on an unseen thermal I found my peace. Right there on the side of the road I too could feel the same soft, but powerful, current of air moving through my hair, I could see the way that hawk used what was unseen to lift him higher and higher without beating his wings. I could see the way that same breeze was giving movement to millions of individual blades of tall grass and golden grains across farmlands and straight up into the foothills of the mountains where I knew pine trees and aspens moved like choreographed dancers directed by a great and all powerful director. I was ready.

I got back in my trusty Jeep and together we moved with the same syncronicity of mission towards, not a suburb full of broken hearts and shattered peace, but towards an enormous human meadow full of hearts ready to be moved by the breath of God's love towards a greater sense of peace, a more certain sense of life, a better view of themselves. I knew that God would show us all, in the context of each others need, our better selves. We would see one another not as an endless sea of hurting humanity, but as individual blades of grass moving and being moved by God's love to bend and reach and touch each other's hearts. Our weeping would be the music of our compassion and of our tenderness. To it's chorus we would help each other soar on the unseen thermals of God's love....as that very love expressed to and with and for each other.

By the time I reached the Light of God Catholic church near Columbine High School I was ready and eager to hear the symphony of spiritual care I knew would be echoing through the halls of that church, the streets of that community, and in the homes and hearts of everyone who needed it's "peace be still" to move and ground them in God's presence. I didn't see counselors, pastors and victims, but blades of long golden grass moving in a harmonious dance of care and compassion. I loved joining that dance.

Those were long, full days. The sadness, grief and horror still whizzed around and past me like those cars and tractor trailers on the highway that day. Some days I felt so tired that I wondered why I wasn't blown away...but I wasn't. From where I soared with the updraft under my wings I could not be moved or swayed by their force. I was riding on the thermals of God's love higher and higher where I could only see a sea of human grass dancing to a song of spiritual grace. I was watching love in action, love moving unseen through those around me to cause us all to reach out and touch someone with a word of kindness, to listen with an open heart. I watched as the sky I was in soaring in became filled with others who had spread their wings and caught the thermal and could better see God's unseen hand in each moment.

Today, almost eight years later, the color of the sky that day in April is still the color of peace to me. When I close my eyes in prayer I see an endless blue sky, a horizon-less sea of golden prairie grasses swaying and moving to a silent song as I let the thermals of God's presence lift me higher and higher for a better view of whatever I am being asked to pray about. That day lives in me, not as a day of infamy, but as a day of beauty and grace and seeing the very best that humanity can be when we let a silent song of love move us to help each other.

Those of us who were honored to be caregivers were given the best seats in the house for God's ballet of love.

Whenever the world tries to drown out peace with it's cacophony of horror....get off the highway and catch a thermal....the view is amazing from here.

I hope this is helpful...
Kate

"Each of us must find our truth..."

"Somedays we forget
to look around us.
Somedays we can't see
the joy that surrounds us.
So caught up inside ourselves.
we take when we should give..."

Once again, Josh Groban's "Thankful" has been a meaningful reminder for me, today.  I have had to ask myself, "how often have I been guilty of the kind of myopia that would trick me in to getting swept up in the whirling lies of lack and fear that are suggesting themselves each day?"  But I find it helpful, that this song identifies the door through which those sneaky thoughts enter...ourselves.  Our egos. We become so focused on what we want, need, wish for, that we forget that the key is to give....and give generously. 

When we are giving...from whatever well of resources we have at hand...joy, intelligence, kindness, compassion, inspiration...we are, in that very moment, proving that we -- in actuality -- are not lacking, at all.   If we have any good to give, we have the only measure of good there is...infinite, all.

"...So for tonight we pray for
what we know can be.
And on this day we hope for
what we still can't see.
It's up to us to be the change.
And even though we all can still do more,
there's so much to be thankful for...."

I long to be the change I wish to see in the world.  To claim, within my own consciousness of Being, that if God, good, is at all present, He/She is all that is present.   If I can find even one tiny glimpse, one single glimmer of goodness...love, light, grace...it implies the All-in-allness of its divine Source.  Just as "the first faint morning beams" portend "the full radiance" of a complete noonday sun, any indication of God's goodness, points to the absolute completeness, the only-ness and allness of good in our own lives, and in the lives of our brothers and sisters. 

"...Look beyond ourselves,
there's so much sorrow.
It's way too late to say,
"I'll cry tomorrow..."
Each of us must find our truth.
It's so long overdue..."

The other day I was facing down an inner demon, when the waves of self-sympathy that swept over me, cooed, "tomorrow...you can do this tomorrow...it's okay..."  And I almost got up from where I was silently standing toe-to-toe with that ego-based lie and walked into another, more pleasant inner room.  But the the clear-sighted angel that was wrestling with me (not against me) said, "don't you deserve to be free today...right now?  Come on, sweet child of mine, I will walk you forward out of this darkness of self, into the light of your true identity.  I will help you find your truth." 

And so I stayed there.  And you know what?  She did help me. I just let Her remind me of those refreshingly bracing, and awakening, truths that I knew were accurate about my life.  They washed over...and through...me like a river.  And in the same way that water turns smooth, opaque stones on the beach, into translucent sea alabaster, my heart's real desires...my divine purpose...became more transparent to me.

"...So for tonight we pray for
what we know can be.
And every day we hope for
what we still can't see.
It's up to us to be the change.
And even though we all can still do more.
There's so much to be thankful for..."

I know what can be.  But more importantly, I know what is. I know that in every single moment of every single day, I can love what I know is always, already, there...God's omni-presence.  I can see it as goodness, love, order, charity, beauty, harmony, grace, patience, persistence, kindness, compassion, non-judgment, hope...especially hope.  With the spiritual discernment and perspicacity that comes from standing with Him...rather than looking at Him, or for Him. Standing here, in the radiant light of His presence...looking out from His point of view...I can always see what He sees.  I can see that there is never anything, at any moment, devoid of His light, His All goodness, in all. 

"...Even with our differences,
there is a place we're all connected.
Each of us can find each other's light..."

I think this is the real gift...the one that keeps on giving...from out of that Peniel moment in my life.  To see, without doubt or question,  that we are not separate minds, or beings, defined as selves, or egos, by a think layer of skin...but we are one beautiful spiritual organism...an aspen grove of individual branchings, from one invisible root system.  And the inner "sap" of consciousness that runs through our entire system is light...it is radiant love, illumining purpose, transformative grace. 

"...So for tonight we pray for
what we know can be.
And on this day we hope for
what we still can't see.
It's up to us to be the change,
and even though this world needs so much more...

...there's so much to be thankful for..."

And so tonight...I am praying for what I know we can be...kind, compassionate, honest, forgiving, hopeful, trusting, patient, meek, peaceful members of that one body of divine goodness.  No warring, no want, no fear, no competition...but all the members working together for good.  There's so much to be thankful for.

This is my purpose:

"To love what is."

Because what is, is always His...and it is divinely wonderful. 

As Mary Baker Eddy says:

"All that is is the work of God,
and all is good..."

That's enough for me....every moment, of every day.

with love...and hope,

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit:  Christian Hagenlocher 2010]

"Dreams are calling...like bells in the distance..."

"...Believe in what your heart is saying
Hear the melody that's playing
There's no time to waste
There's so much to celebrate
Believe in what you feel inside
And give your dreams the wings to fly
You have everything you need
If you just believe..."

As we move towards the new year, I have been thinking about this Josh Groban song from The Polar Express, "Believe" and its message of hope and encouragement to dreamers and believers...of every age, in every place.

And today, I couldn't help but remember a conversation I had with a woman I met in South Africa last year.  Sitting under a canopy of trees outside The Wild Duck, a charming coffeehouse in a coastal village on the edge of the Indian Ocean one day, I discovered how universal our most dearly cherished hopes and dreams, actually are. 

I'd been writing in my journal, picking at a salad of sun-ripened tomatoes, fragrant, leafy basil hand-picked from the kitchen garden near the back door, and fresh mozzarella from a local farm...all drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil, syrupy, aged balsamic vinegar, and sprinkled with flaky sea salt...I was in heaven.  The African sun beating down on my shoulders was laser-like in its penetration, reaching deep beneath my skin to where it warmed my bones to the marrow, while a cool ocean breeze curled around my ankles in the shade under the table.

This was where I met Maggie.  She was also sitting alone, at a nearby table.  She asked me if I were a writer and when I answered, "yes," and introduced myself, she quickly picked up on my American accent and asked if she could join me for tea.  I was eager to learn as much as I could about my host country and urged her to move her things to my table. 

Our conversation moved easily...and briskly...from American myths and South African traditions, to our personal dreams for the future and our hopes for our families. She was a single mother of two who worked as a paralegal and was on a weekend holiday, I was...and still am...a married mother of 5 who practices spiritual healing and writes.  But when it came to our hopes and dreams, we couldn't have been more alike.  We were like  "twins daughters of different mothers".

We both longed to know that we had always (at least tried) to "do our best" in raising our children.  We both hoped that we would be "around" to see those children happily launched in their lives...professionally, personally, spiritually, and emotionally.   We each prayed/hungered for our children to be healthy, for our parents to feel honored and loved, and to see our siblings find peace.   But what was most arresting about what we held in common, were our dreams for ourselves. 

We both wanted three things...to love and be loved, to know that our lives have purpose, and to know that we are making a difference in the lives  we touch, and the world we live in.

Time seemed to stand still that afternoon. We had boiled our deepest hopes and dreams down to these three fundamental desires after only a couple of hours of talking and laughing and crying together.  And we did.  We talked and laughed, and cried...as if we were long-time best friends.  And in those hours I discovered that this was all it took to actually find the very thing we were most looking for.  And we found it by spending those hours, just listening deeply to one another's heart. 

And in that space, we each discovered that:

1.     we could love and be loved.  I felt really listened to by my new friend.  I felt her love and her care.  And in exchange, by listening to her dreams, hopes, and desires...I had loved her, just by caring about what was most important to her. 

2.     we each felt that our lives had purpose...profound purpose...that afternoon.  For me it was arrestingly clear...I was over 10,000 miles from my home, my office, my community...all that was familiar and represented years of developed connections and networks...and yet I felt alive with a genuinely focused sense of being, and an incredible awareness of my place in the world.

3.     we had each, undoubtedly, made a difference in the other's life.  I know that I felt a clear confirmation of my relationship with, and service to, something greater than myself.  And I think we both knew that we had helped the other find clarity of purpose, a thread of divinity in the sweetness of our humanity with one another, and had seen something of a release from things of time and place at a seaside table, with a stranger, on the edge of the world.

I don't think of Maggie everyday...or even every week.  But I remember our conversation, and the universal divinity I discovered in our common humanity...constantly. 

I believe in those common hopes, dreams, and desires.  I know that they are the common spiritual DNA we share as children of one Father-Mother God...regardless of age, race, gender, spiritual practice, socio-economic background, profession, nationality, hereditiy...anything.  This common hope is what I now hear in the voice of every person I speak with, see in the eyes of everyone I meet, expect in the heart of every man, woman, or child I am blessed to share even a moment of my life with.

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

"With one Father, even God, the whole family of man would be brethren; and with one Mind and that God, or good, the brotherhood of man would consist of Love and Truth, and have unity of Principle and spiritual power which constitute divine Science."

I can't think of a law, a science, or a Principle I would rather spend my every moment in the research, practice, pursuit, proof, and affirmation of.

Thank you Maggie...and each of you...
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit: Jon Belmont 2009]

"There's so much to be thankful for..."

"Somedays we forget
To look around us
Somedays we can't see
The joy that surrounds us
So caught up inside ourselves
We take when we should give..."

I am really enjoying Josh Groban's new Christmas CD, Noel and can't seem to get the song, "Thankful." out of my head...and heart...today.   I've enjoyed letting it inform my prayers and recalibrate my thoughts.  It's brought me to my knees in humble recognition of how abundantly God has blessed my life.  Working with one verse at a time, and letting the chorus dance me from task to task, call to call, prayer to prayer, has been love-ly and awakening.  By reclaiming all that I have to be thankful for, I realize that I can take an even bigger bite out of the harvested blessings we've experienced this  year.  My heart is full...and yet...

"...So for tonight we pray for
What we know can be.
And on this day we hope for
What we still can't see.
It's up to us to be the change
And even though we all can still do more
There's so much to be thankful for..."

I love the spirit of expectancy and promise this verse is filled with...to overflowing.  To think that we can hope for things we can't even see as yet.  Especially when it comes to the changes...in ourselves, and in our world...that we pray for.  And even though I know that there is so much more that we can be doing to care for our neighbors, promote peace, bring balance to socio-economic variance, end domestic violence, hunger, and pain...I can be thankful for all the ways we have seen progress this year.

"...Look beyond ourselves
There's so much sorrow
It's way too late to say
I'll cry tomorrow
Each of us must find our truth
It's so long overdue..."

Sometimes I am myopic and near-sighted about where, and how, I might direct my day-to-day desire to make a real difference.  I get caught up in worrying about how other people might view my choices, if my children are happy, whether my hopes are being fulfilled...my prayers are being answered.  But today, this verse kept my heart stretched and expanding like a great white balloon larger and larger with every breath of the divine, filling me with more love, more love, more love.  My truth is, I know that I have many moments throughout the day that could be more focused, more devoted, more conscientiously given to praying, serving, living for others, working for social change, economic equity, and standing up for the spiritual dignity of man.

"...So for tonight we pray for
What we know can be
And every day we hope for
What we still can't see
It's up to us to be the change
And even though we all can still do more
There's so much to be thankful for..."

This chorus is gracefully moving me forward, filling me with such profound gratitude for all the ways that the spade of Spirit is digging in and stirring the settled, hard-packed spaces in my heart.  As I watched the leaf-gatherers come through our neighborhood today, their rakes and pitchforks lifting up the rain-soaked piles of leaves, loosening them so that they could be vacumned up and turned into municipal compost, I was reminded of all the ways that this song was loosening time-packed healings and transformative moments I'd experienced this year, allowing me to see them again in their true light. Each an extraordinary blessing that will nourish and inspire my life's work, my spiritual confidence, my trust...for eternity.

"...Even with our differences
There is a place we're all connected
Each of us can find each other's light..."

I think this brief lyrical bridge meant the most to me tonight.  I have spent hours sitting with it...like a new friend...trying to fully understand its message, get to know its promise, rejoice in its application...moment by moment. You know, Facebook, cable news television and satellite radio, political and philosophical blogs (including my own), religious programming, conversations with those whose opinions we do, or don't agree, are constantly telling us, in so many ways, how different we are from one another.   And how justified we are in our own personal sense of rightness.  But this little verse is a gentle, but firm, correction.  We may think we are different, we may think we are right, and therefore, someone else is certainly wrong...right (?)...but there is a place where we are all connected and it is in this space of the heart...this love, love, and more love...that searches for another's light, not their darkness, or the absence of light in them, or in their views, choices, or decisions. 

"...So for tonight we pray for
What we know can be
And on this day we hope for
What we still can't see
It's up to us to be the change
And even though this world needs so much more
There's so much to be thankful for..."

So tonight, as I tuck the girls into their little (I know, I know...they are almost teenagers...sigh) beds under the eaves, cover them with soft, colorful quilts, and turn down the lamps before singing them lullabies and hymns, I am thinking of all the ways I can be that "so much more" the world needs, while not losing sight of the "so much to be thankful for" all around me....I am starting with being thankful for each of you...thank you for the ways you have blessed my life, my family....your world.

I am thank-full...deeply so...
Kate


[photo credit:  Hollister Thomas 2009]

"after all, you're still you..."

"...Time changes everything
One truth always stays the same
You're still you
After all
You're still you..."
Josh Groban
"You're Still You"

I was talking to a friend the other day about a butterfly's journey from caterpillar to winged beauty.  I shared with her that the caterpillar sheds her entire skin four times before she finally enters the chrysalis. Four complete surrenderings of all she knows of herself and still the real transformation hasn't even begun to happen.  

 I have been thinking about this -- alot.  Each time she loses every inch of her outward being.

And each time she must think, "Whew, this was BIG!!  I am brand new -- I am in a completely new skin."  

 But what she doesn't realize is, that this shedding of her entire outer layer is nothing compared to what will happen once she enters the chrysalis of her own making.  That's the real metamorphosis -- the dissolution of her entire being into a black soupy liquid from which will emerge as a butterfly. 

But she has no known frame-of-reference for this "becoming." 

She doesn't just go from being a fuzzy caterpillar to a skinnier, sleeker caterpillar that sprouts beautiful diaphanous wings. She completely dissolves. 

I shared with my friend that - of late - I had become a bit obsessed with the spiritual implications of this necessary "soup" stage in the butterfly's metamorphosis.  I couldn't stop thinking: What was still present during this soup stage?  What is left of the original?  

 And what did that original being know - or think - during this time of "soup"?  Was she even aware that there was nothing left of the old form?  Or was she oblivious of the changes to her form - in light of the "sanctuary space" she was occupying? 

Questions, questions, questions -- thank goodness I am most at home in the space of the question, eh!  

 Since that earlier conversation, my friend had also begun pondering these concepts and she said that Josh Groban's song "You're Still You"  had come to mind as inspiration.   Wow!  

It was a perfectly wonderful answer for me, too. 

No matter what transformational shifts we seem to go through in our lives, we are never less that who we are, who always have been, and ever will be.  Our spiritual essence -- the radiant Soul "soup" of our identity as the reflection of the Great I AM -- a child of God, the All-in-allness of God expressed as individual humanity. This, I believe, is the fundamental substance of our being that never changes. 

 It all leaves me speechless with wonder and in awe of His majesty.

These are concepts I have been thinking about for a very long time. And I don't think I am anywhere near the end of mining the butterfly's metamorphosis for spiritual lessons.  

But, I am finding that just the title of Groban's "You're Still You" brings me great peace.  It is inciting an even deeper stirring within.  I wonder if it doesn't give us a glimpse into what is.   Perhaps even a deeper spiritual centering.  A clearer lens on our indwelling core identity -- one that is untouched by changes in form, surroundings, or self-referencing points.  Self-stories that make us feel safe and securely hooked into a familiar reality.

The following is a poem I have been writing for some time. I was finally led to put it down on paper during a recent workshop I participated in with some extraordinary spiritual thinkers.  It continues to morph, and evolve, as insights unfold.   

 I offer it with a profound love for the butterfly, and her willingness to enter the chrysalis of faith.  I am humbled by her as she yields to the hand of her Maker -- an Artist who paints diaphanous wings of beauty -- from soup.  I simply love this God of ours!!

"You're still you...after all...You're still you"

Does it hurt...
     this becoming?

four times
she sheds a past she'd come to own
    
does she wonder
     "will it ever end?"

if she knew of the
dissolving that would follow...
the melting of the only
          "ego" she had ever known

would she plead
"take this cup"
and then surrender all to...
               "Thy will be done..."
         
do butterflies
     weep
when wings burst  from soup
       that was once
          tight skin she thought defined her

Does the call
     to fly
terrify one
     who, until the moment of her release
          had only crawled with
     all feet firmly planted on
          what...to her...was solid ground
         
hanging in
     the dark chrysalis
          does she realize
     that her
          becoming
     shakes leaves and branch and stem
    
the entire world of ants living on the edge
     busy with their scurried gathering

I asked her once
     she said,
          "I can't remember
               when I was not a butterfly..."

Mary Baker Eddy must have lived in the space of the butterfly, for her to understand the faith it takes to be able to yield to the dissolution of the ego -- for the promise of wings.  I love that she wrote:

"Faith is higher and more spiritual than belief. It is a chrysalis state of human thought, in which spiritual evidence, contradicting the testimony of material sense, begins to appear, and Truth, the ever-present, is becoming understood."

The Truth of who we are is ever-present.  The butterfly must have great faith in this promise of eternal self-awareness to be able to surrender all outward evidence of her identity to the spiritual evidence of conscious being.  There is still so much to learn from her.  I sit at the butterfly's feet waiting for the next lesson...
Kate

Addendum:

A frequent reader and long-time follower of this blog reminded me that I had posted a butterfly poem three years ago.  Here is the link to it: "Chrysalis Surrender" I had forgotten how long this fascination with butteryfly consciousness had been inhabiting my heart. 

with Love,
Kate

postscript:

two of my dear friends have posts on their blogs that are directly related to this discussion...Travis Thomas and Duncan Wilder...click on their names to go to these posts...with Love,
Kate

"We ask that life be kind..."

"...We ask that life be kind
And watch us from above
We hope each soul will find
Another soul to love

Let this be our prayer
Just like every child

Needs to find a place,
Guide us with your grace
Give us faith so we'll be safe..."
-     Josh Groban (The Prayer)

Sam sent an email earlier today.  She is going to University in London and "posts" me a daily update on her activities so that I won't be shocked when she returns next summer and is all "pip, pip," "cheerio," and ordering "chips" at Kay's instead of French fries.  I love hearing all about her life in "the big city" and her adventures through the looking glass of dollars to pounds and yards to meters.

Today's email included a midday shopping trip and the bus ride home:

"We took the bus back and all the school kids were on there in
their blazers and skirts and amazing accents.  This one little
kid was really sad and she was telling us how all her friends
had their back to her.  I felt bad."

I read it and burst into tears.  I was that little girl so much of my childhood.  I would have given anything to have some "big girls" take an interest in me on the bus, notice my aloneness, and show compassion by talking with me.

So this is a post celebrating all the big girls (and boys) who take notice, who are aware, who remember that being a child can sometimes be lonely and confusing, and who stop, for a moment, to make a difference.

Jesus celebrates the kindness of a traveling foreigner on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, in the story of The Good Samaritan…I have my own Good Samantha story now.

Sam and her friends may never see that little girl again.  The color of her school uniform, the length of her hair, the town she was from will fade from their memory, but I can almost promise you that the sound of their voices, the kindness in their eyes, the hope they inspired...will never fade from hers.

As Mother Teresa once said, "There are no great things to be done, only small things done with great love."

I am very proud of you Sam…I know your mom is too.

Love,
M- Kate

"Home to stay..."

"…When every town looks just the same
When every choice gets hard to make
When every map is put away
Then I'll be bringing you back
Home to stay…"
-     Josh Groban

Coming across South Park…on my way to camp three weeks ago…I was reminded of a similar day in 1997 when I brought our daughter "home" to camp.  We had moved the year before, traveling by Jeep and Ryder moving truck 2,000 miles East.  This was not an easy move…is there such a thing?  And the promise of flying back to Colorado for camp was what gave our hearts hope.

We landed at Denver International Airport late that June morning and within an hour we were in our rental car…just the two of us…heading southwest down Hwy 285 towards the Arkansas Valley.  It was a perfect Colorado day.  Bright blue skies overhead…dark black clouds to the west promising crisp evenings and cool nights for sleeping.

Camp has always been my heart's home.  I think of it as the place where even though I "work" 24/7 while I am there, it is also the geographical location that best articulates where, as Hymn 297 from the Christian Science Hymnal says, 

"…the dove may close her faltering wings…"

and not just my wings, but for every heart that seems to beat its wings madly searching for a place to rest…it is a place to call home….to just be.

And we were on our way there.  As we drove through the glade-like forest just west of Shawnee and past the toe-dipping waters of the rushing north fork of the South Platte River, I realized that I was already there…and had been all year long.

Camp was a place that existed in my heart.  I could recall every nook and cranny of Valerie Lodge, mentally run my fingers across the rough bark of the large evergreen just off my porch, sense the shifting sky as a storm approaches from the South…from right from behind the wheel of our rental car.

It was a remarkable realization.  To know that although I was in the process of driving to camp, there was a big part of my camp experience that I was taking to camp with me, packed in my heart…like the luggage in the trunk…to share with those I would be serving while I was there. 

My daughter and I each had gifts that we would be bringing with us, like care packages, to share with our friends…old and new.

We had memories of challenges overcome, healings experienced, friendships formed, resumed, and resurrected, of laughter shared and tears shed.  We were bringing our appreciation of this place to it, not waiting to be there to feel our appreciation for it.

I had this overwhelming sense that even if we were to turn the car around right there and then, never again crossing the cattle-guard onto camp property, nothing could take camp away from us as our hearts' home.  Camp lived in us.  Camp was never further away from us than our own hopes, our own desires, our own dreams.  

And these "memories" weren't just about a long-gone past…these were abiding, living, breathing present thoughts.  And more importantly, these very alive thoughts were constantly making a difference in my life.  They were, moment-by-moment, demanding new approaches to problem solving, requiring new ways of thinking about myself and others, providing new views of my relationship to the environment, my work, our world.  Camp and my thoughts, "memories", and experiences centered around camp and those glorious weeks in the mountains each summer are alive with purpose and potential every day throughout the year.

I have been thinking alot about that drive and my realization about the living presence of camp in my life…whether I am here in the Rockies or in my office near the Mississippi River…especially now that my daughter, and her friends,  have graduated from the days when camp was a "given" in their summer planning.   It gives me great comfort to know that if camp lives in her heart as a present place of joy…that I am there too.  We share this space within each of us called "camp"….it is a place we can return to whenever we want to mentally sit on the porch, look out over the lower 280, breathe in the vastness of God's beauty, hear the song of angels and hummingbirds…and open our hearts to the touch of His hand in our lives. Whether we are actually "on property" or somewhere else this summer by choice, circumstance, or "just because", camp lives in us. There is no "camp" without our love and appreciation for what it means to us, what it has done in our lives (and the lives of our children, friends and loved ones), and how it lives in our hearts.

From camp,
Kate

"You're still you..."

"Time changes everything
One truth always stays the same
You're still you
After all
You're still you…"
- Josh Groban

My dad was a mystery to me.  A farm boy from a large immigrant Irish family of very humble means, his formal education was curtailed by the demands of agricultural seasons and crop schedules. By the time he was 30, he and mom had 6 children under the age of 10.  At 31 he was introduced to Christian Science and his desire to understand words he was reading about God, and the world around him, launched him on a personal quest for knowledge and wisdom. 

As the oldest child in my family, my dad and I were often (in those days as he took up his self-education where he had once left off) studying the same things.  Our reading levels advanced concurrently and I would often find him picking up my science or history textbooks when they were laying on the table during long homework sessions…and reading them.   His tools for self-instruction were as diverse as his interests.  I was neither surprised to see him with his nose in a volume of our World Book Encyclopedia (reading it through - page after page - like a novel) or a Nancy Drew mystery I had finished.

What always surprised me was his humility in letting us see him struggle with words that were new or foreign to him, and ask for help…or the dictionary…in order to self-solve the mysteries of language-usage or meaning.

When I was in high school I went through a very rough patch of self-doubt and loneliness.  I had always been a small child, girl, pre-teen, but with the onset of womanhood my body seemed to betray me.  All my new body parts seemed to appear over the course of one summer.  Unfortunately, it happened while I was away from all the kids I had only just met when we moved into the district just before the end of the previous school year.  In their eyes I went from being a skinny little kid to a young woman overnight…or at least over the summer. 

When I arrived back in school that September I was soft and round and I don't think there was an angular feature left on my once rather gangly body. Before I knew it rumors were swirling.  No one knew me well enough to deny the rumors as lies…in my defense, or to come to me and ask whether they were true…for themselves.

As a new kid I was a blank canvas for painting a titillating picture on…and my new rounder, softer body provided the paint for doing just that.  Of course, it all added up to a fantabulous story in which my parents must have moved our family away from wherever we had lived to this small farming community, because I was in the early stages of pregnancy.   Over the summer I must have had the baby, and I was still padded with post-baby fullness.  It didn't help that my mother had just given birth to twins (yes, numbers 7 and 8) and they didn't look anything alike.  One of them must have been mine…right?  Wrong!

When I finally became aware of what was being said, I was devastated.   I remember coming home after school that day and wanting to quit school and never go back.  I went to my bed and picked up the "autograph dog" I had sewn together from two panels of pale blue gingham printed with the front and back images of a floppy eared puppy and stuffed with poly-fill.  These were popular at my former school and everyone would bring them in to have their friends autograph.  I had made one for myself over the summer, but the only autographs I had on it were from my parents and my two sisters who were old enough o write in cursive.

I hugged it to my chest and tried to pray.  But nothing really helped.  At one point, I looked at my dog and there, written in my dad's pretty horrible handwriting, were the words "She walks in beauty and grace like the night - Dad."  Something about his writing of those words made me feel braver about everything.  I felt like I could walk with my head held high knowing that what was being said about me wasn't true.  I felt an inner elegance and dignity that looking in the mirror, and seeing the all too obvious reason for the rumors, didn't give me.

I went back to school the next day...and the next.  The rumor blew over with some help from my parents, and I ended up loving my school year and the friends I eventually made.  

The blue gingham dog moved through my young adulthood with me from room to apartment to house.  The ink from my parents' and sisters' autographs faded.  I never let another person sign that dog and if I close my eyes, still today, I can see that exact shade of turquoise-y blue gingham with those four autographs in faded black ball-point pen as if I were holding it in my hands. 

It was years before I discovered that my dad had quoted Lord Byron (adding the word grace) in his autograph.  When I did, it made me cry.  I never knew he had read, and loved, Byron well enough to quote him.  It was such a new and different view of my dad.  His addition of the word "grace" is still a gift.  He was not an emotionally expressive kind of guy...and we had our issues and differences, but to think that he chose such a word in thinking of me, and that he'd had the audacity to insert it into a quote by a famous poet makes me smile. He must have trusted a Voice that told him that his own inspiration and ideas were as valid and immutable as Byron's.  His use of the word "grace" still gives me courage when navigating through rough waters and facing down my own demons. 

I would like to think that no matter what mistakes we make, or misunderstandings we face…whatever rumors may swirl or fears may poke at soft places in our hearts where we feel vulnerable or fragile, we all have a Father who is constantly writing His message of Love on our hearts telling us that, in His eyes, no matter what, "You're still you…after all, you're still you."

with Love,
Kate

"Lord, free me of myself..."

"Lord, free me of myself
so I can please you."
- Michaelangelo

The above quote from Michaelangelo was shared by Al Pacino when James Lipton questioned him on Bravo's Inside the Actor's Studio about his Academy Award winning performance as the blind, tango-dancing colonel in Scent of a Woman. 

Lipton remarked that playing a blind person is a very difficult undertaking for any actor.  He asked Pacino how he prepared.  Pacino returned that he had asked his young daughter to "do" a blind person and that she did it so convincingly that it gave him pause. Watching her he soon realized that it required total focus on everything and everyone else outside of yourself to "do blind," and that as a child she had that kind of ability to live outside of her self...her ego.   This, he said, was what he brought to the development of his character...this total focus on others…and it won him what some in the industry consider the highest honor in his field.

Ahh...to live outside of oneself…to focus totally on others…these were concepts I longed to truly understand.  To be able to walk through one’s world without colliding with your surroundings...that's an achievement.

This all resonated with me because of what I had learned during childhood. 

When I was a little girl I had this premonition that someday I would be blind.  I never said I wasn’t a “strange” child.   In anticipation of this expected development, I would practice "being blind" for long periods of time…once I had finished my Saturday afternoon chores.  I would tie a scarf or bandana around my eyes and memorize my room, our house, how to get to the bathroom without bumping into walls and how to pour a glass of water without spilling.   What I remember most about these exercises was my awareness of everything and everyone else around me.

I listened for the echoes and soft sounds that might betray an impending ambush by younger siblings.  In doing so I was keenly aware that our dog was having a bad dream by the way her breathing changed, or that my youngest sister was thirsty by the way her voice became dry and raspy as she read out loud to one of her dolls.    

This kind of awareness was empowering.  But it required total focus on everything beyond the boundaries of my own skin.  I had to listen on a deeper level to "survive" my forays from the safety of my bedroom…out to the kitchen or the back porch.  Failure to listen, to be aware on a very deep and focused level, left me bruised and frustrated.

Pacino went on to share that this exercise in getting outside of himself has helped him in all of his subsequent roles.  When Lipton asked him why he thought his colleagues considered him the consummate actor, Pacino replied that he felt the most important skill he brought to his preparation for a role was his ability to listen.  He said every role is really about a relationship.  That he best prepared for his character by listening to what the other characters were saying and doing.  His “character” was just a response to what he heard from the other characters around him.  His character was best articulated by him, as an actor, when he was attentive to what others were saying, doing or needed.

When asked about Al Pacino as an actor, award winning director Martin Scorcese replied that when Pacino plays a part, "Al's not there"....meaning that Al Pacino has so disappeared that the character can shine through transparently.

I think these ideas are helpful to me in bringing my best to every "role" God is asking me to take on....wife, mother, friend, sister, colleague, healer.  I am able to “do” mother best when I am truly listening to those I am in relation with…my son and daughters.  This is a skill that I am working on every day.  Am I really listening to those around me...consciously aware of what I need to bring to the table?  Am I putting off my personality, my history, my "non-negotiables" (the things I think I can or cannot live with our without), the conditions whereby I think a situation is love-able…in order to be a transparency for what God needs in that moment?

Am I living my life out from me…or am I living in relationship to a larger body of spiritual life and being?  Do I see myself as an autonomous body of existent matter, or as the arm, hand, eye of the "body of Christ?"

These are all questions that I am pondering a lot these days.

I wonder whether Jesus gave us his "Lord's Prayer"...all in the language of relationships...us, we, our...rather than…me, my, I…as in,  "My Father which art in heaven" or "give me this day my daily bread"....in order to help us see that it is in the context of one another that we learn the most about ourselves as the reflection of the divine, the heir of an all-loving Parent.

Regardless of Jesus’ intent, I am realizing, like Pacino, that life is all about relationships...that we do not exist in a void of self-determinism.  It helps me understand that, as Mary Baker Eddy suggests in Science and Health, I can only be me in the context of you...because we are always and only "finding our own (goodness) in another's good."   I need YOU in order to be the best me I can be…just as Pacino could not be a great actor, developing a memorable character, without the other characters to listen to and perform with.

So, to each of you who have so generously shared "space" with me on this stage of life...thank you...I hope to listen better in the future…our relationship, as Breanda Graham says in his lyrics from the song "You Raise Me Up", made popular by Josh Groban, "fills me with wonder":

"When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;
When troubles come and my heart burdened be;
Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me.

There is no life - no life without its hunger;
Each restless heart beats so imperfectly;
But when you come and I am filled with wonder,
Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up... To more than I can be..."
-Brendan Graham

I hope you know that each time you let me "be with you" you give me an opportunity to be "more than I can be" without you.
Kate