"forever hushed..."

"And echoes
in the sound,
of silence..."

I wrote about this experience in a post from 2006. Having just revisited that post, I realized how much clearer its message is for me today. There is a sound to peace. It is a sound that overarches the noise of pain and fear. It is the  "Sound of Silence."  I hope you enjoy this Pentatonix version of Simon and Garfunkel's classic.

Here is, what I hope will be, a more concise version of this experience:

The routine was the same. Pick the girls up from preschool. Drive home while they stripped themselves of shoes, socks, sweaters. Arrive home. Open the door of the van. Watch them run in the back door. Gather shoes, socks, sweaters, books, totes. Find them in the kitchen, banging their sippy cups on the counter next to the refrigerator while screaming, "I want juice, I'm thirsty, give me juice." Over, and over, again. Day after day.

And I would drop everything, and get them juice.

Until one day, I stood in the kitchen looking at them and thought, "why don't they just get their own darned juice?" Good question. So I just stood there. I didn't rush to get them what they wanted, but just watched what was happening. And it occurred to me - quite quickly - that they were only screaming because they knew that they didn't have the authority - or the strength - to open the refrigerator, hold the heavy pitcher, and pour the juice without spilling it. They knew that I did, and they were trying to convince me to do what they wanted me to do.

They weren't screaming because they had power, but because they felt powerless.

So, I took a deep breath and said, "Girls, put down your sippy cups, put your shoes and socks in the mud room, hang your sweaters and backpacks on the hooks, go potty, wash your hands and come back downstairs, and I will get you juice. And they did it. Just like that.

As I stood there -- somewhat in shock -- I just knew this was a more profound insight for me, than how to manage our after school routine.

I had been in pain for days. A voice had been screaming in my head, "I am in so much pain, I cannot think." Over and over again. But all the while, I had been thinking. It hadn't been able to stop me. I had been thinking. I had been loving. I had been reading, and praying, and helping others.

It was as much a helpless, incoherent sound as the girls' urgent screaming had been. It was simply trying to get me to give up, lie down, go to sleep -- or worse. But, it couldn't make me do those things. It could only try to convince me to do those things myself. And I had been refusing -- but barely.

When I saw that pain -- and for that matter, fear -- were not powers, but powerless voices, I stopped thinking that they had information for me. They were sounds, rather than conditions. They were not informants.  They didn't have some underlying meaning about my life, my body.  They were not leading me to a "why."

With this realization, I began to stand up to them in a different way. I no longer felt bullied. I could look at each situation with dominion. I was not a victim of the noise. The noise had no authority. No embodied entity to push me around.

That experience happened almost twenty years ago. It has been a milestone in my understanding of the insidious nature of pain and fear. These passages - among many - from Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures have been the edifying authority in my understanding of how to silence their inarticulate voices:

"It requires courage to utter truth; for the higher Truth lifts her voice, the louder will error scream, until its inarticulate sound is forever silenced in oblivion."

and

"Spirit will ultimately claim its own, — all that really is, — and the voices of physical sense will be forever hushed."

Truth -- not Kate thinking about Truth --  is lifting her voice with supreme command and declaring: "God is All-in-all." And in the face of Truth's authority, the inarticulate sound of pain, fear, doubt is forever silenced in its own oblivion. Love hushes the screaming of the physical senses, and peace is forever Sovereign.

offered with Love,

Cate 

"Everywhere..."

"I need you everywhere,
and as long as you're beside me
I need never care
For to love you is to
have you everywhere..."
-     John Lennon

I know that the original lyrics to Lennon's "Here, and There, and Everywhere," were written for a girl...but, that's just not the way I hear it these days.   Please forgive the liberty I have taken here....again.

It all started last fall, when I was writing a post about the omnipresences of Spirit, sharing a healing I'd experienced on the heels of realizing that any suggestion of something -- good or bad -- being exclusive to one location, person, body part, activity, etc....and not to another...is a lie.  A lie.  The opposite of the truth.  Not even a little bit true.  Not containing even one tiny molecule of truth.  No matter how good it may look, or how bad it may feel, it is a lie.  Period. 

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

"Love (God) is impartial and universal
in its adaptation and bestowals."

In the study and practice of Christian Science, the word "Love," when capitalized, is another name for God...along with Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, and Truth.  These terms, or names, are synonymous - meaning that they are interchangeable...that the presence of one, directly implies the presence of the others. So, for example, if Love, as Eddy promises, is impartial and universal, so is Principle (order), Soul (beauty), Life (vitality), Mind (intelligence),  Spirit (substance), Truth (health).

I have come to see that this law of universal impartiality is the truth about God's relationship to each of us...individually and collectively.  It is a law that is reliable and foundational to our trust in Him as our Father...a Father who has no favorites. He never plays one child against another in His universal family.  And this truth holds us in a closer, gentler bond of sweet union and affection ...it embraces us in the gospel (the good news) of His generous, impartial Love.  The children in this family never need to compete for their divine Parent's affection, attention, resources, or time.  What a wonderful place to grow up!

I wonder sometimes, though, if we really live out from the liberty that this truth affords.  We talk about Spirit, God, being All-in-all.  And our prayers sing of a God who is omni-present...both present - as in everywhere, and present - as in always,  "now," in this moment.  But do we really trust these promises? Do we rest our hopes, our expectations,  and our freedom from the fear of "well, that's great for him/her...but not for me," upon them?

The other day I was listening to NPR (National Public Radio) on my drive across Kansas.  Reports of a stalled financial recovery and the ongoing collapse of the housing market, were followed by stories of congressional resistance to extended unemployment benefits, corporate corruption that continues to result in exorbitantly inflated bonuses for CEOs, and then, a heart-rending account of a young father who'd been the responsible provider for his family, until his middle management job had been cut and the loss of income was forcing them out of their home. Here was a man who desperately wants to work, but can't find a job...any job. 

My heart was sick, and soon my tummy was feeling sick, too.  I could easily see the cause-and-effect connection that wanted to present itself: "See Kate, you are completely upset by the ample evidence that God's love for humanity is partial and exclusive...resulting in growing a socio-economic caste system of haves and have-nots, therefore you are experiencing this unsettledness as an upset stomach."  But I knew that this kind of reasoning would get me nowhere. I needed to start with the truth of being, not lies, if I was going to get anywhere in addressing this turmoil.

I turned off the radio.  And as I began to pray for peace in my heart...and my tummy...I was reminded of the healing I'd experienced last fall, and the truth of God's universal omnipresence I'd come to trust, return to, and rely on, pretty consistently since then.  I reminded myself that if something...good, or bad...seems localized, it is a sure sign that it is a lie.   Truth, being synonymous with Spirit, cannot be contained, personalized, partial,  portioned, isolated, or exclusively experienced...by a segment of society, or a body part.

I prayed out from God's impartiality.  I claimed that the only things that were, or ever could be experienced as true and real, were those things that can't be localized.  Things like joy and peace...have you ever tried to feel peace only in your ear or your elbow, affection only in your wrist, or hope in your little toe.  But, even though my tummy was soon feeling well again, I couldn't seem to let the sense of sorrow go.  I found myself wrestling even more vigorously with the evidence of socio-economic inequity all around me.   I knew it wasn't going to dissolve without clear spiritual reasoning, so I persisted, continuing to go back to two of my base spiritual truths... over and over again:

"The starting point of divine Science is
that God, Spirit, is All-in-all,
and there is no other might, nor Mind."

and that:

"Love is impartial and universal
in its adaptation and bestowals."

As I prayed for clearer insights and spiritual guidance, I saw that although I loved these statements from Science and Health,  somehow they weren't quite enough.  I wanted scriptural bedrock...the inspired word of the Bible as a place to build my mental house on. This was what I knew I was reaching for. 

As a spiritual law student, the Bible is my constitution...it constitutes the foundation on which I build, and rest, my case in defense of our God-given liberty as spiritual thinkers.  It is my divine law library where I can often be found, at all hours...day and night...seeking precedence for placing unshakeable trust on the timeless, irrefutable laws of Spirit.

Persisting in prayer throughout the day, God led me quietly, and quite forcibly, to the exact Biblical truth that would ground my faith, and steel my trust.

It's probably important to explain, here, that as a student of Christian Science, I accept the premise that the first Chapter of Genesis (through the third verse in Chapter 2) is the spiritual record of Creation.  And the fourth verse of Chapter 2 through Chapter 5, as allegorical examples of how the opposite of truth...or the opposition to truth...would present itself to our thinking, and thereby color our experiences.

And in the midst of my Scriptural study I found this:

"We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, 'Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."

YES!  Because this statement appears in the second chapter of Genesis, the record of creation that we believe is a lie...we get to thumb our nose at anything that mocks divine Love, anything that parades itself in front of humanity as injustice, inviting us to limit our hopes and defile our view of our Father and His love for us.   This false story refers to, and tries to get us to accept the false premise of a partial God, with a "special" tree.  It asserts that good and/or evil could be localized in one exclusive, and isolated, tree.  A lie.  And the fact that this story was placed in this "lying" second chapter of Genesis gives us the Biblical basis, the scriptural authority, for dismissing it as a fallacious tale...as an inversely instructive fable.  And by inversion, by stating what the lie, the opposite of the truth, looks and sounds like, it serves to point us towards the truth, God's impartial love...constitutional law for every citizen of the kingdom of heaven.  It gives each of us authority for rejecting this suggestion of divine selectivity, out of hand.

If something tries to say that goodness is here, and not there; that health is in one body part, but not throughout the entire system; if it tries to convince you that some have, and some don't, or that one person/group deserves good..justice, mercy, joy, peace, prosperity, wellness...and another doesn't, it is a bold-faced lie.  If you buy it in any form, it will come sneaking in through the back door of your experience, and bite you in the proverbial donkey.

Dismiss this lie of partiality with as much conviction as you would reject an imposed penalty for breaking an inhumane and unconstitutional law...therefore, a law that was never really a law to begin with...a law that never has, never is, and never will be... a law!  Dismiss it as confidently as if your neighbor came up to you one day and said that you were going to prison because you smiled on a Tuesday.  Well, you know, with absolute certainty, that there is no law that prevents you from smiling on Tuesday...so smile, laugh, kick up your heels, dance in the streets...you are free.  You are always free...impartially, universally, absolutely, spiritually, Biblically, joyfully free.

with Love, 
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit: Nathaniel Wilder 2010]

"Screaming has no authority..."

"...and a great strong wind rent the mountain
and brake in small pieces the rocks before the Lord,
but the Lord was not in the wind:
and after the wind an earthquake;
but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
and after the earthquake a fire;
but the Lord was not in the fire:
and after the fire a still small voice."
- I Kings

The twins were active four year old preschoolers when we moved into the cottage.  Once the original house on a large piece of property in "the country",  the only remnant of its homesteader status was that it still sat on almost a half acre in the middle of our sweet historic village nestled in the middle of urban sprawl. Our modest cottage was surrounded by mini mansions and rambling ranches on postage stamp lots.

This little farmhouse was as close to "home" as we could find on this latest move from "the land of light and space" to a Midwest metropolis where nothing felt familiar.  I couldn't find a grocery store that had the same feel as our small organic market "back home" and our older daughter has gone through every ballet school in the city and still wasn't comfortable in her slippers.  Every day I felt as if I slogged from one necessary task to another with a headache knocking (no...banging) at the door of my thoughts begging me to just give up and crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head.

About this same time the girls were finding their own way of coping with the move.  The preschool that served the University community where we had come from was only a block from our home and the drive took less than three minutes...door to door.  If they had to go potty when we left the back door of the school they were home before the need was urgent.  If they were hungry or thirsty as they waved goodbye to Miss Zorina (really...it was perfect name for this wonderfully magical preschool teacher...sigh) they had snacks in hand and their thirsts quenched before they could say "John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith".

Our move had increased the door to door travel from two minutes and twenty seconds to twenty minutes if we fortunate enough to hit all (and only) green lights.   By the time we arrived at the back drive and I had parked the car, they were ready to explode out of the Jeep and into the back door of the mudroom that led to the kitchen.  I would be left to gather backpacks, shoes, wrinkled art projects and by the time I jostled it all into the kitchen they were at the counter with sippy cups in hand, banging them on the counter next to the refrigerator screaming "We're thirsty....we want juice"....not once, or twice, or even six times, but in a constant stream of urgency.

I would drop the gear I had dragged from the car onto the kitchen floor and soothingly say, "Okay girls, okay calm down and I'll get you juice" in my own constant stream of yogi-like calm with a silent underscore of "oh please just be quiet my head hurts so badly I can't think".   I felt bad.  I felt bad that we had moved them to this place where they were not close to preschool, where they were thirsty and starving by the time we got home, where it was cold and I felt lonely.....heck, I just felt bad all around.

One day after about two months of our little song and dance at full volume by the refrigerator door, I was at the end of my rope with the pain in my head....and my heart.  All morning long I had prayed for some relief from the discomfort.  I had tried to quiet the endless loop of "This pain is screaming so loudly I cannot think" praying  with affirmations of God's all-presence as the only source of my thoughts, but I was still in battling pain mode  when I picked the girls up from preschool.  The ride home was typical and our arrival at the house was what I had come to rely on as our new "routine".  By the time I made it into the kitchen like a beast of burden layered in backpacks and sweaters, shoes and sundry construction paper-based projects...there they were next to the refrigerator screaming "I want juice...I'm so thirsty...I want juice."

I stood there like a pack horse and thought, "Why don't they just open the refrigerator door and get their own darned juice? Then, on the wings of my morning of prayer I heard whisper from somewhere deep and knowing within me,   "Ahhh,  but don't you see, they are screaming because they know they don't have the authority to do what they are demanding that you do for them! If they thought they had power or authority they'd just DO IT!  They are screaming at you because they want you to give them the permission they know they need."   Well, once  I realized that I was the grownup in authority in this little scene I said, very calmly, "Girls, you can have juice when you put your backpacks on the hooks, your shoes in the mudroom and your sweaters in your room."  They looked at eachother, put down their cups and ran off to do their chores coming back to the kitchen where I stood waiting with the juice pitcher in hand. 

The screaming in my head stopped with as little drama when I realized that it was only screaming because it had no authority to do what it was threatening.  It had been telling me for months (and using my voice, in my head, to do it) "I am in so much pain that I cannot think", but I had been thinking all along.  It was using pain to scream its suggestion because it couldn't actually make me stop thinking.  When I realized that it really hadn't ever been able to accomplish it's threat I stopped listening.  Whether it had said you can't think, or you can't love...I always could...in some way.  I started focusing on what I could (and was) doing...rather than what it was suggesting I couldn't do.

Over the course of the next few weeks the girls would occasionally try to revert to running in the house and screaming, sippy cups in hand, banging on the counter next to the refrigerator, for juice.  But I knew, they knew, who was in charge.  I could calmly say, "First we put our backpacks away...." until one day I realized they hadn't even tried to scream for a long time.

Screaming, pain, fear, dissatisfaction are the "out of control" tactics used when someone or something knows it has no authority.  Kindness, honesty, peace, goodness, love don't need to scream to accomplish their goals, their plans...they just quietly, and with authority, go about being loving, good, peaceful, kind.

The little cottage, that for the first few month was a retreat from the reality of our move, became the very center of a wonderful neighborhood, church and school community full of new friends and activities for us all. And the new preschool, I cried when our twins graduated into first grade and left the "Pooh school" behind. Miss Zorina's shoes were magically filled and overflowing by Mrs. Warner, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Lines... And our older daughter turned her ballet slippers in for volleyball kneepads and went to national with her team four years later.

You don't have to be alarmed when something is jumping up and down and screaming for your attention, whether it comes in the guise of a fear that shakes the ground you walk on, or pain that swirls within or without ripping through your life - cold and biting like the wind in December, or the fire of dissatisfaction that would try to lick at your heels and devour your peace...these "voices" are only  threatening to do something it needs you to consent to...remember it's only trying to engage you because it can't accomplish a thing on its own...and it feels helpless..because it is.

"Breathe through the pulses of desire
   Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
   O still small voice of calm."

                                                                                     - J. G. Whittier
with Love,
Kate