"God is a River - let go..."

"In the ever-shifting water
of the river of this life,
I was swimming, seeking comfort;
I was wrestling waves to find
A boulder I could cling to,
a stone to hold me fast
Where I might let the fretful water
of this river 'round me pass..."

I’ve always loved stones and water -- two elements that are at the core of my being.  When I hear those two words I feel both grounded and fetter less -- free.  I love to call that space in my heart, a studio. Because it best describes my the in-vironment of my home as an artist and healer.

For me, an artist is someone who applies a principle. Like the principle of perspective in drawing. Or the law of gravity in sculpture. These principles serve as a matrix for what Robert Peel writes of as the ultimate goal for working Mary Baker Eddy’s household, “a breathtaking genius for improvisation”.

I have always loved order, neatness, form, beauty, and creativity.  The marriage of stones and rivers have always spoken to me of this concresence. 

One day while sitting on a sandy Cape Cod beach, I considered what it might look like if my “office," were an artist's studio.  The Christian Science healing practice - for me - is the perfect marriage of art and science.  I’ve never felt the balance of those two elements more than in this work.  This blog has been a chronicle of the experiential journey towards greater trust, balance, honesty, perspective, and grace.

One morning, my husband sent me this video clip from Peter Mayer’s Front Porch concert in Boulder, with this note:

“Good morning...

"Please check this out. 

I think he wrote this with you in mind somehow.”

The subject line of his email said, “An anthem for our home”. This touched me deeply.  And then I watched the video clip of Peter's performance of God is A River and it made me weep with abandon. 

Peter perfectly and completely captures what I hope each of these posts are trying to say about what I am learning.  This song is now the anthem -- not just for our home, but for this blog, this office, and, most profoundly, what I think it is that I am learning about God.   I will let Peter’s words speak for me today.

This song is a home.  I dwell in its space of surrender and trust. I  find in its message, a security that is without the conventional walls and mortar, bricks or beams, of always knowing what’s next, or how it’s supposed to look.  I will let go of any false sense of "safety" I’ve been clinging to -- and trust the River.

“Home” for me, is a conscious power, a movement that is vital and active - it is a verb. And yes, this sense of “home” - as a verb - has often given birth to nouns: a house, a marriage, a family, purposeful work, or a posting on a blog. But it is first, and foremost, a verb.

Thank you Jeff. Thank you for honoring me by thinking -- even for a moment -- that this song was written with me in mind.

Thank you Peter -- for writing me a home -- and an anthem for my life:

“In the ever-shifting water
of the river of this life
I was swimming, seeking comfort;
I was wrestling waves to find
A boulder I could cling to,
a stone to hold me fast
Where I might let the fretful water
of this river 'round me pass

And so I found an anchor,
a blessed resting place
A trusty rock I called my savior,
for there I would be safe;
From the river and its dangers,
and I proclaimed my rock divine
And I prayed to it "protect me"
and the rock replied:

God is a river, not just a stone
God is a wild, raging rapids
And a slow, meandering flow
God is a deep and narrow passage
And a peaceful, sandy shoal
God is the river, swimmer
So let go

Still I clung to my rock tightly
with conviction in my arms
Never looking at the stream
to keep my mind from thoughts of harm
But the river kept on coming,
kept on tugging at my legs
Till at last my fingers faltered,
and I was swept away

So I'm going with the flow now,
these relentless twists and bends
Acclimating to the motion,
and a sense of being led
And this river's like my body now,
it carries me along
Through the ever-changing scenes
and by the rocks that sing this song:

God is a river, not just a stone
God is a wild, raging rapids
And a slow, meandering flow
God is a deep and narrow passage
And a peaceful, sandy shoal
God is the river, swimmer
So let go..."
 

What a gift.


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

"And the river's like my body now..."

"In the ever-shifting water

of the river of this life

I was swimming, seeking comfort;

I was wrestling waves to find

A boulder I could cling to,

a stone to hold me fast

Where I might let the fretful water

of this river 'round me pass



And so I found an anchor,

a blessed resting place

A trusty rock I called my savior,

for there I would be safe

From the river and its dangers,

and I proclaimed my rock divine

And I prayed to it "protect me"

and the rock replied:



God is a river, not just a stone

God is a wild, raging rapids

And a slow, meandering flow

God is a deep and narrow passage

And a peaceful, sandy shoal

God is the river, swimmer

So let go



Still I clung to my rock tightly

with conviction in my arms

Never looking at the stream

to keep my mind from thoughts of harm

But the river kept on coming,

kept on tugging at my legs

Till at last my fingers faltered,

and I was swept away



So I'm going with the flow now,

these relentless twists and bends

Acclimating to the motion,

and a sense of being led

And this river's like my body now,

it carries me along

Through the ever-changing scenes

and by the rocks that sing this song



God is a river, not just a stone

God is a wild, raging rapids

And a slow, meandering flow

God is a deep and narrow passage

And a peaceful, sandy shoal

God is the river, swimmer

So let go



God is the river, swimmer

So let go ..."

- Peter Mayer

Sometimes you think a song just says it all...until an angel comes along, all dressed in stripey leggings and short skirts, sassy dresses and western boots...and she leaves a poem on your pillow to sing you to sleep while you dream along the river's edge, Sam Hopple wrote this poem, and sent it along today. I am so grateful she was willing to let me share her beautiful words:



she breathes in the water of the arkansas valley

flowing with the current over mossed rocks and sleeping boulders

her path is sometimes met by churning and sharp wavelengths

slamming her to shore and caking her with mud

a strong faith calls her to dive back head first

and the moment she arrives in the space of a placid eddie

she is peaceful



down the stream she dances

gliding in perfect rhythm to the beat of the stream

a melody shines forth

and she joins the chorus...

like a river song....



I have nothing to add to this...it is practically perfect in every way...



Kissing your eyelids goonight...sweet dreams in London town Miss Samantha Demarest King Hopple. The River and the Valley are waiting for you to fly in from the East on the angel wings you discovered in a little shoppe on Carnaby Street.Your mommy and daddy would be so proud of you, and your devotion to all that they stand for...goodness, faith, strength in adversity, peace in a storm, children on horses, in cabins, rafts...and the River...oh, how they love that River!!



thank you for honoring me with your words,



mum

Kate Robertson, CS



Another friend suggested that I include this link to,"God is a River...let go"a post written in 2007 about Peter Mayer's amazing song.