"location, location, location..."

"our house
is a very, very, very
fine house..."

I could find a perfect correlation between Crosby, Stills, and Nash's "Our House," with this post -- but it would be a reach. I just love it. And it's about a house. So....

This post is about a different kind of house. A house that is not just historic and well-built, but eternal.

In this week's Bible study is Jesus' parable of two houses:

“Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

"And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it."
 

As I have written about before, my first "aha" moment with this parable came some years ago, when I realized that  by building his house on the rock, it did not mean that the "wise" homeowner would not face storms. In fact, the same exact storm assails both houses. The only difference is -- one doesn't fall.

For so many years, I thought that by building my house on a rock, I was somehow insuring that I would not face storms -- or at least not as rough a storm as if I hadn't. So, when I faced the battering waves of fear, doubt, illness, lack, inharmony -- I thought I'd failed to build on the right foundation. It was somehow my fault. Back to the spiritual drawing board. This insight has helped me immeasurably. I don't go there anymore. The same storm assails both houses. The only difference - if I build on the rock, my house will not fall.

But this week's realization was just as profound for me. The parable is not about the house - at all. It has nothing to do with the builder's skill or the materials he/she has chosen. It is, in fact, all about location, location, location.

Where are you building? Are you choosing to cast about for "the right," view outside the window? Or, are you casting within -- building your house - your consciousness of things, on the gospel message of "the kingdom."

In Luke, when the Pharisees try to trick Jesus into laying the foundation of his ministry in a particular place -- Jerusalem or Nazareth, with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Greeks, Romans, Jews, Samaritans, or Canaanites, we read:

“And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there!

for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
 

Where are we founding our sense of being - of actual existence? Our own, or another's? Are we seeing ourselves - or our neighbor - as being planted in this dogma or that doctrine? This party or that side? One nation, race, religion, gender -- or another? Or, are we seeing each of our fellow creatures as houses built on a Rock -- the kingdom of God? A location that is ever-constant and never-variable - within?

I have lived in 61 houses to date. Here is what I have learned about house hunting. Houses can be renovated, added on to, fixed up, torn down, and rebuilt.  New carpet, fresh paint, window boxes, and shutters.  But...

The location is changeless. If a particular location gets intense western sunlight all day -- that's not going to change. If the soil is rocky or near the ocean, surrounded by rolling hills or majestic mountains -- that's not going to change. If you are building your sense of being on what is temporary, shifting, and variable -- it will, by its very nature, change.  If you are building the structure of your life on what is changeless, within -- that will always be there to cultivate. And when the storms come, you will not fall.

Location, location, location - within...

offered with Love,

Kate

"time after time..."

"if you're lost
and you look,
you will find me,
time after time..."

If this post had no other purpose than sharing my sister-in-law, Lisa Redfern's gorgeous recording of Cyndi Lauper's timeless "Time After Time," it would be enough. I hope you will listen to it in a quiet space -- when you want to feel something deeper than time.

I first heard Lisa share -- to say "perform," would cheapen what she gave us that day -- this beautiful ballad during a loved friend's celebration of life. I can't speak for anyone else who heard it, but for me, it was transcendent.

All sense of time and space receded. All that existed was our friend and her love for each of us -- and ours for her. I felt like only my skin itself was holding me in shape. For all that I knew, and all that I loved, was dancing in the air, like dust motes in the sunshine, with our friend and her friends -- and humanity itself.

Humanity felt like a verb, rather than a noun -- a collection of bodies with independent minds and stories. The dance was one of complete unity - and a dissolution of personal sense. There was not one being who had completed a "life cycle" and had passed on, and the rest of us still bumping around in skin-contained bodies -- we were all released from things of time and space. We were spiritual. And I felt it.

Later on in the celebration, we danced as a collective -- and the singing prayer, that we prayed as we danced, left me feeling cleansed, and healed, and full of childlike hope for each of us and the human mechanism we would each return to, when we folded ourselves back into skin, and clothes, and cars, and planes -- for the trip "back home."

Ram Dass once wrote:

“We are all
just walking
each other
home."
 

I've never felt the truth of that statement more clearly than during our Lisa's celebration of life and especially during Lisa Redfern's singing of "Time after Time."

I still feel it. Every day. The clock ticks, but it tells us nothing about the eternality of Life. The immortality of all beauty, and love, and grace.

We traverse space. We count steps. We measure the mass we take up. We drive miles and fly kilometers. We own acres, and build square footage. But do we? Is this all part of the distortion that says we are isolated, solitary ideas with stuff that we have accumulated -- and will one day leave behind?

Lisa's singing of "Time after Time," left me with a much different feeling. I glimpsed the substance of it all. All of those dust motes of consciousness that dance and swirl -- are simply gathering and coalescing in moments of purpose. We are not isolated solitary ideas with personal minds that control a limited number of those dust motes under a membrane of skin.

We are so much more -- and we are, "one with the earth and the sky" -- and each other. We are constantly shifting like water molecules that become visible as a cloud or rain -- but then invisible as steam and mist. One form no less - or more - substantive and real than another. We are not static, but ever-evolving. We are not born into a shape, defined by a mind that accumulates stories and stuff -- starting with a birth story and continuing with a false narrative of mistakes and accomplishments, successes, accidents, surprises, and failures. We are so much more, than what appears to be.

Through love, we are drawn into, and released from, limited and limiting forms -- existing only in shifting shapes of purpose. But we exist eternally as spiritual substance -- changeless, infinite in scope, as eternal as Love itself.  We are as irrevocable as a molecule of water's capacity to be drawn into purpose as steam, mist, rain, river, sea, breath for a fish, sacred for a Savior's last lesson, humble in falling, exalted as a prism for revealing a bow of promise.

I have, as a friend would say, "gone off the rails." I could write about what this feels like -- at the depth of my heart and soul --  for hours and hours.  Listening to Lisa singing again this morning brought it immediately into focus. But I will leave this here. If it's something you would love to ponder together -- give me a call. Or text. Or email. Or just sit quietly in a sunny corner, listen to it again -- we will hear it together. And we will dance, like dust motes in the gathering space.

Thank you Lisa.

offered with Love,

Kate

"what am I worth..."

"I look to You,
I look to You..."

Selah's cover of  "I Look to You"  returned to my playlist this morning.

I was talking with a dear friend recently and she asked me a question that touched a very tender nerve:

"perhaps it's a self-worth issue..."

I heard her, but I couldn't imagine how what we were talking about - my desire to be of better support to those I loved - had anything to do with self-worth. But I trusted her and I knew she loved me. So I filed her question away for "someday when."  Someday, when I have the time. Someday, when I am willing to probe more deeply. Someday, when I am unable to breathe because I feel the walls crumbling around me - again. Then I will revisit self-worth.  But for now, I'm okay -- but thanks.

Then, a few days later I received a thank you card with this message on the front:

"One day she woke up
and decided she was worthy,

and her soul cried out
with joy"

"Hmmm," I thought, "today is the day to plumb this question."  But I had to start with another question. What defines worth?

First I turned to the dictionary. It said what I already knew: "the level at which something or someone deserves to be valued, is fit for, capable of, or suitable for." It's etymology however stopped me in my tracks. From Old English roots, the word "worth," hearkens back to the word, "woerp" which refers to "an enclosed space, or a homestead."

I sat back in my chair and let that sink in. Was I at home in my own sense of worth? Do I feel at peace with the value of what I bring to humanity? Has my sense of home been directly impacted by my sense of worth? Has my sense of my own worth been been informed by my home -  or more pointedly, my housing? What correlation might there be between home, value, and worth? It took me a few moments to take the next breath.

As I thought about the concept of worth, I realized that a thing's worth is not defined by the thing itself, but is based on its perceived value. For example, gold is intrinsically worth no more than lead or silver. We have assigned a higher value to gold. The same with sports heroes over teachers. Or celebrities over mothers. Those who have advanced degrees over craftsmen, or those in the trades. It is society that assigned that value. There is no intrinsic higher value in one, over the others.

I needed to have a clear sense of what I valued in order to see my own -- or another's -- worth. So, I dug deeper. What clues could scripture give me in finding a truer sense of worth. I looked at what prophets, disciples, apostles, and Christ himself valued. Humility, meekness, self-sacrifice, patience. These resonated with me, but I still couldn't feel the deeper  shift that I know comes with a transformation of thought. Then something I found in Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scripture hit that nerve again -- and this time, it was like a tuning fork. She writes:

"let worth be judged according to wisdom..."

It rushed through me like a lightning bolt. A few weeks earlier my Sunday School class had been examining the difference between intelligence and wisdom, and one of the girls said:

"Wisdom is intelligence
used with love."

When I heard it, I knew it was true. It immediately became my go-to definition for "wisdom." And here was Eddy saying that worth should be judged according to wisdom -- the loving use of intelligence. It all shifted into place. If I was feeling less than "worthy," I needed to examine how I was using the God-bestowed intelligence that filled my consciousness throughout the day.

For example:  Was I reading scripture, and delighting in every word, but not bringing these vital truths into Christian practice? Was I consciously bringing wisdom -- intelligence used with love -- to bear on every interaction? Was I vigilant in my daily defense of the wise use of intelligence? Did I affirm throughout the day that intelligence could only be used for good, for the benefit of humanity. Did I refuse to believe that intelligence could ever be corrupted or used "against" others?

Elsewhere in her Message to The Mother Church for 1902 Eddy assures us that:

"Conscious worth satisfies the hungry heart
and nothing else can..."

To be conscious of my worth -- my right to engage in the loving use of intelligence -- was all that would satisfy my hunger for peace. My worth is not based on an irreversible history of personal mistakes, failures, choices, or accomplishments. It is not defined by how others perceive me. My worth is founded on my day-to-day practice of wisdom. This is what has value. This is practice of wisdom is something I can monitor throughout the day.

It's not surprising that this "loving use of intelligence," aligns with a conscious application of The Golden Rule: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  The Golden Rule is not a human choice, but a divine imperative.  It is a law that operates unspent throughout the deep collective root system of humanity. It is ever-establishing our ever-active spiritual worth -- moment-by-moment,  heart by heart.

We are worthy of this intelligent view of ourselves and others. We are worthy of the peace and joy it brings. We are worthy of being conscious of our worth,  and the worth of being conscious.  Conscious of what we know, and how we use it.  This is a place we can homestead and abide in -- forever.

offered with Love,

Kate

"be still, be still, and know..."

"Be still, and know that I'm with you.
Be still, and know that I am here.
Be still, be still, and know..."

In the darkness, peace felt fragile. Every mistake I'd ever made seemed to parade itself across the backdrop of my closed eyes. Sleep evaded me.

I had been lying there for hours, rehashing decisions that seemed so much clearer in hindsight. I was so tired of being haunted by all the ways I could have done things differently: gone to the right -- instead of the left, paused for one minute longer, held my peace -- instead of speaking. I was exhausted from thinking and re-thinking.

I lay there awash in regret while the house breathed its winter sounds. I'd been praying -- without ceasing -- when a simple scripture from the Psalms -- and one that is central in this beautiful lyric from The Fray's, "Be Still." broke through.

Be still. And know. I am. It was the perfect reminder. I needed to get off the hamster wheel of human thinking. I needed to be still, and know. Not think, but know. I stilled, not just my thrashing, sheet-twined body, but my unsettled heart. I lay on my back, folded my hands, and took long deep breaths until I felt the sweetness of a quiet mind.

Then I asked myself: what do you know to be true? Not, what do you think is true? But what do you absolutely know to be true -- right now. Then I listened. Within moments it came. "I know I am." It was simple and pure. I know that I am conscious. I know that I am aware of loving my husband, my children. I know that I am capable of gratitude -- right now. I know that I still [always, persistently, nevertheless] love God, good. I know that I am able to be truthful, quiet, humble, loving.

It may not seem like a profound insight -- but in the dark, when the demons of regret are circling and thoughts rush around like wild creatures in an approaching storm -- it is like having the gentling hand of a divine Parent rest upon your heart.

I didn't fall asleep immediately that night. But the darkness changed from foreboding to comforting. I felt swaddled in the stillness like an infant -- it's closeness calming my heart and mind. Thinking gave way to knowing, and in that knowing there was a sweet peace.

In Scripture, John tell us:

"Yes shall know the Truth,
and the Truth shall make you free." 

He didn't say, "ye shall think the truth, and the truth shall make you free," but know. The different between thinking and knowing is a profound one for me. There is a peace in knowing what I know vs. thinking about something.

I didn't have to do battle with those demons -- Mind, God, had asserted Its divine authority. Knowing, overwhelmed human thought-taking. Gratitude for what I absolutely knew to be true, swept away the cobwebs of speculation, regret, memory, and imagination. The final chapter of Mary Baker Eddy's textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, titled "Fruitage," includes testimonies of healing. C.B.G. of Hudson, Massachusetts shares this experience - and it so perfectly describes what I felt that night -- and continue to feel, each time thinking yields to knowing:

"I closed the book and with head bowed in prayer
I waited with longing intensity for some answer.
How long I waited I do not know, but suddenly,
like a wonderful burst of sunlight after a storm,
came clearly this thought,

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

I held my breath — deep into my hungering thought
sank the infinite meaning of that “I.”
All self-conceit, egotism, selfishness, everything
that constitutes the mortal “I,” sank abashed
out of sight. I trod, as it were, on holy ground.
Words are inadequate to convey the fulness of that
spiritual uplifting, but others who have had similar
experiences will understand. From that hour I have had
an intelligent consciousness of the ever-presence
of an infinite God who is only good." 

For me, this knowing space, is a place of such profound peace that I never want to leave it. I find myself looking for ways to return to it throughout each day. I seek the quiet spaces, the covert places, where I can curl myself into the knowing -- the I am of being, the consciousness of Love alone as Life. It is the place of stillness -- nevertheless-ness. It is the place I love.

offered with Love,

Kate

"make this place your home..."

"Settle down, it'll all be clear.
Don't pay no mind to the demons
they fill you with fear
The trouble, it might drag you down.
If you get lost, you can always be found.

Just know you’re not alone.
I’m going to make this place your home..."

Phillip Phillips' beautiful song, "Home," must be singing through the spiritual ether tonight.

First, I found myself thinking about its lyrics in the car this evening, then discovered that it has been referenced in a new Question of the Week, "How come I still feel lonely when I'm not alone?" on TMCYouth, and then found that another friend had posted a link on Facebook. I am not surprised. This song speaks to the universal desire to know that we are not alone.

My own thoughts, in connection with its lyrics, have been resting with Mary Baker Eddy's spiritual interpretation of the final line of David's 23rd Psalm, from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"And I will dwell in the house,
the consciousness of Love,
forever..."

In my faith tradition, Love is another name for God. To know that I dwell in the consciousness (the Mind) of Love, of God -- forever --is my "dearest spot" on earth.  Or in heaven.  This is my one true home. This is where I know that I am always welcome, always safe, always secure. This is where I can rest my heart, and my hopes.

From as far back as I can remember, my favorite time of day has always been that moment when I first wake up in the morning. That space of time between being conscious of my thoughts, and becoming sentient -- or aware of my surroundings. Before I even feel the coolness of the sheets with the tips of my toes, or hear a bird, or open my eyes to make sure that the world is as I left it the night before, I am certain I am living. I have experienced conscious being.

I don't need to see, hear, feel, taste, or smell anything to know I am alive.  To know that I am me.  For me, this is "home."

I clearly remember a late fall day when I was 15. We'd just moved 2,500 miles across the country to a new state, a new town, a new house, and most unsettlingly, a new school.

Every day I felt like a stranger in a strange world. I felt foreign. My body was changing, I had no friends, the styles were different than "back home," and nothing made sense...except those moments before I became sentient.

I lived for them. I would try to make them last as long as possible. I would allow my sense of self to steep in the warmth of "just being" with God, Mind. I had thoughts. I had dreams and ideas. I had beautiful images, words, feelings. I was me.  I was at home in this place.  

The longer I stayed there, the better my day went. I wasn't getting up, rushing to get ready, and then waiting for the world to confirm for me who I was.  I wasn't asking it to tell me  whether I deserved to be liked, appreciated, or seen as a viable person to talk to, befriend, or even just acknowledge as a legitimate being.

From this space, I knew I was worthy.  Before the first blush of dawn I'd already connected with the "me" who was chock full of wonderful thoughts and feelings.  I'd already spent time with the "me" who had interesting ideas, thoughts that delighted me.  From this conscious place, I realized that I had questions, and those questions were ones that I could never have "made up" on my own.

I don't know that this will make much sense to anyone else, but in that place of consciousness -- of my oneness with God -- there were no strangers, no demons, no loneliness.

I still go there...now, more than ever. It is my favorite place to be. It is the home of my heart, my work, my life, my very sense of being.

It is where I can always be found...

with Love

Kate

"I need...."

"We used to laugh, we used to cry,
we used to bow our heads then, wonder why.
And now you're gone, I guess I'll carry on,
And make the best of what you've left to me,
Left to me, left to me.

I need you like the flower needs the rain,
You know I need you, guess I'll start it all again.
You know I need you like the winter needs the spring
You know I need you, I need you..."

My senior year of high school I suddenly discovered that I would need to live away from my parents for the last semester.  I ended up staying with a family I'd never met before, and didn't think I had much in common with.  They were lovely people with a wonderful home, but they were not my family, and it was not my home. 

This probably wouldn't unseat most people, but for me it was as seismic a shift as anything I'd ever experienced.  From the time of my birth I had never, ever, been away from my mother.  And other than a very infrequent overnight with a friend from Sunday School, I'd always been surrounded by my entire, very large family.   We moved a lot, so I'd never been able to maintain many close friendships. This made my family uber-important to me. They were my everything. 

To be away from both my mother and my sister was catastrophic.  There were nights when I thought I would collapse with grief.  I'd never missed anyone or anything in quite the same way...before or since. 

One of the ways I would get through those days and nights of heartache was to go down to my host's family room in the middle of the night, put on a big pair of headphones, and listen to one of three albums I owned while lying on the carpet in the dark.  America's self-titled album was one of them...and "I Need You," was one of my favorite songs for reaching a cathartic emotional release.  I would listen to it first for a good soul-spilling cry.  I cried hard...the kind of tears that spill down your temples and soak your hair.  I cried for so much.  I felt that I needed my mother and my siblings...I felt that I needed all that was familiar...all that was "home" to me.

But then I would listen to it again, and this time, I would think about what I really needed.  I would question all of the things that I had always thought I couldn't live without:  my family, my home, to be surrounded by my favorite things, a ride to school, books I loved...and on and on the list would go.   And something would shift.

I realized that I really didn't need need most of those things...obviously.  There I was, living in a stranger's house with none of those things I loved, and I was still me.  I was still thinking my own thoughts, making my own choices, breathing, loving, wanting to be loved, longing for opportunities to be creative, to make a difference, to learn. 

I was learning the difference between wants and needs.  And I was discovering that what I most needed was the space to think and question....to realize that I was conscious and that ideas were constantly coming to me for how I could navigate a challenging situation, find solutions to almost insurmountable problems, and find my way in the world.

Looking back on this time...almost 40 years ago now...I can see that it was one of the most important times in my life.  I learned the most valuable skill I would ever need.  To think...to question...and most critically, to listen to that inner voice, that still, small voice within...for what to question, where to find answers, and how to be at peace with a home that is defined by "the kingdom of heaven within."

I discovered that I needed very little.  I loved a lot.  But I needed very little.  What I loved and what I needed were different.    It's never too late to remember it again, and again, and again.

shared with Love,
Kate

Kate Robertson, CS

"We are one person..."

"...They are one person,
they are two alone,
they are three together,
they are for each other..."
- Stephen Stills

I love CSN's song "Helplessly Hoping." In the 1993 film Phenomenon John Travolta is transformed by a paranormal experience that increases his perspicacity.  He becomes a voracious reader with a hunger for information that is insatiable.  Sharing insights from the booth at a country fair he expounds on a fact that has his character animated with fascination. 

He explains that for many years scientists believed that an aspen grove near the Continental Divine in Western Colorado was a sea of individual trees.  Tens of thousands of willowy, delicate populas tremula stetching down the ravine, across a high country meadow and along the ridge at tree-line as far as you can see.   But in 1992 scientists discovered that it was one organism.

I had to know if this was just great film writing, or if it was true.  My research led me on a journey through scientific journals and academic papers, magazines and newspapers that confirmed the screenwriter's research.  One source reported  "Many people think when they're hiking through the mountains that they're hiking through an aspen forest, but in many cases what they're hiking through is aspen clones," says Dr. Jeffry Mitton of the University of Colorado. Along with two colleagues, Dr. Michael Grant and Dr. Yan Linhart, he nominated the system of cloned aspens as the world's biggest organism in a letter in the Nov. 19 issue of Nature. Common Root System

"If you could look into the soil and trace the roots of all these things that look like independent trees," Dr. Mitton said, "you would find that they are in fact connected by a common root system, like the leaves on a silver maple tree are connected by the branches and the main stem." As the organism sends out its roots, he explained, it also sends up new sprouts, called ramets.

The result, he said, is a single organism "that can literally climb over mountains and across meadows." (New York Times Dec. 15 1992)

This information stunned me in the most wonderful way.  It was the perfect illustration of something I had been pondering all summer…the nature of individuality.  The word "individual" comes from the root "in (not) divided".  But how often do we think that our individuality is found only in what makes us different from one another…what separates us.  But I was discovering that the root of our spiritual individuality is our indivisibility from our divine source, our wholeness…the root system. 

Just like each tree in the aspen grove, from above ground, seems to be an autonomous entity, but is in fact just a branch or offshoot of the source root system, so do we seem to be autonomous entitites with personal histories, proclivities, wills, impulses, and trajectories.   But are we really?  I am convinced that this is just a "surface" corporeal (or skin-defined) sense of what constitutes our individuality. 

Could it be that we are really just one undivided entity?  One divine whole.  With God, Mind, the source of all consciousness,  as our singular root system.  Could it be that it is only as we allow a very fine layer of dermis (skin) to convince us that everything inside that layer of skin is "me" (or you) and everything outside of this same layer of skin cells is not me (or you)…is something outside of our individual selfhood, or ego that we feel this separateness and isolation from one another. 

But, what if what we "are" is what is included in our consciousness, what we include in our thought, what we love,  embrace in our hearts.  And what if this is loving is impelled by a self-assertive Mind that is God.    What if what we call "free will" is really only an indication of how intimately near that Mind that is God is within our own being as consciousness? 

Perhaps we really are…

"…one person
…two alone
…three together
for eachother…"

It reminds me of the Biblical admonition,

"For as the body is one, and hath many members,
and all the members of that one body,
being many, are one body:
so also is Christ.
For the body is not one member, but many. 

If the foot shall say,
Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body;
is it therefore not of the body? 
And if the ear shall say,
Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body;
is it therefore not of the body? 
If the whole body were an eye,
where were the hearing?
If the whole were hearing,
where were the smelling? 

But now hath God set the members
every one of them in the body,
as it hath pleased him. 

And if they were all one member,
where were the body? 

But now are they many members,
yet but one body. 
And the eye cannot say unto the hand,
I have no need of thee:
nor again the head to the feet,
I have no need of you. 

Nay, much more those members of the body,
which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: 
And those members of the body,
which we think to be less honourable,
upon these we bestow more abundant honour;
and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. 
For our comely parts have no need:
but God hath tempered the body together,
having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: 
That there should be no schism in the body;
but that the members should have the same care one for another. 
And whether one member suffer,
all the members suffer with it;
or one member be honoured,
all the members rejoice with it. 
Now ye are the body of Christ..."

To me this means that we are all the same.  We all reflect the wholeness of the original.  We can all do EVERYTHING, but we have, in each moment been assigned an office, a task, a calling...sometimes honorable, sometimes comely, sometimes I may seem to be lacking, but in that lack I may give another the opportunity to be more abundant, generous, giving...and sometimes we may find ourselves humbled that another may discover their capacity for mercy or forgiveness.  

One "moment" I may be the foot of the body of Christ, another the hand, another the heart…but I, you, everyone…we are each, and all, wholly equipped as the full and complete offshoot of the rootsystem, capable of anything and everything that the rootsystem gives each of its offshoots the capacity to do, and to be. 

My individuality is not in my differences from you, or anyone else…my individuality is defined by my undivided-ness from the original…the root system.  My identity is discovered in my identical-ness with the Source…but then so is yours.

"...We are one person,
We are two alone,
We are three together
We are for eachother…"

Or, at least,  shouldn't we be…
Kate

"Whatever you wish for, you keep..."

"A dream is a wish your heart makes
When you're fast asleep
In dreams you lose your heartaches
Whatever you wish for, you keep
Have faith in your dreams and someday
Your rainbow will come smiling thru
No matter how your heart is grieving
If you keep on believing
the dream that you wish will come true..."
- David/Hoffman/Livingston

I love it when a Disney song, like Cinderella's "A dream is a wish..." speaks to me of God's redemptive, transformative love. Here's the story that goes with this song.

It was a cool, cloudy day in Boston. It had been a very long season of heartache, and I was ready for the quietness of the soft air and less brilliant light.  I took solace in its promise. I needed time to sift through the ashes of the year, and find the gold -- lessons to glean after so many firy trials. 

That year, I'd been stripped of every dream I'd ever cherished. And yet, I was still standing, still breathing, still dreaming.  I was grateful that hope was still alive in me -- that there were desires I still cherished. The devastation hadn't destroyed my ability to dream.  And yet, some days were easier than others.

For the most part, I could navigate all that came in the wake of that year's deep disappointments -- as long as I kept my hand in God's, and my sights on the tasks at hand.  In truth, there was so much to be grateful for. And this space of gratitude became my resting place. Especially when I grew weary of the constant ache -- a longing for the joys of motherhood and family. 

The insidious disease that had lain waste to my body -- earlier that year -- was healed.  The job I'd loved -- but had given up in order to parent our son -- was mine again. And although my husband and I were finding our way through some dark days, we were finding our way. Each day brought us closer to God, if not to each other.

On this particular day, I was truly happy.  I loved my job. I was immersed in projects that stretched me professionally, made great demands on me as a spiritual thinker, and brought me immense joy.  That morning, in the midst of negotiating a contract for outside services, I realized that I needed a signature from a member of our Board of Directors. The Executive Assistant in our office was not at her desk.  But, it was a gorgeous, blustery day in Boston. So I took her absence, as an excuse to wrap myself in a sweater and scarf, and drift across the plaza for the needed signatures myself. 

I took the elevator to the ground floor, and exited the large brass doors that stood sentinel over our building. But as I rounded the steps of the large church to my left, I caught a glimpse of something that stopped me in my tracks.

There, sitting on the curbing that hemmed a rare stretch of urban lawn, was a young family.  Mom, dad, and preschool-age daughter taking time out for a midday visit.  It was easy to see that these were adoring parents. Their hearts were devoted to this precious little girl.  And the look on her face, as she smiled up at them, was something I'd long been dreaming of. 

It stopped me cold.  In one heart-wrenching moment I went from the joy of feeling purposeful and mission-filled, to heart-broken and hopeless.  Envy flooded my being.  You aren't really happy it screamed."  "You want that!"

I did. I did want what they had. I wanted a child. I wanted to be a mommy. I wanted to be a real family -- not just two people trying to make it work. 

But I was also bone-tired. I felt like I'd been through a war -- within, and without. I was battle weary and sad. This feeling of emptiness -- this gaunt want -- just couldn't continue. It had to stop.

So I plopped myself right down on the marble steps of that church, and tried to get a grip on myself.  I was so tired of that feeling.  I was so ready to be free of baby-envy.  It had been going on for too many years.  I really didn't want to want something I couldn't have.  I wanted to be happy with my lot in life.  I was tired of this feeling and I wanted it to stop. 

In my desperation I said to God, "I am not moving from these steps until you heal me of this envy.  I'm going to stare at that family until I can look at them, and not want what they have." 

And then I just sat there watching them.  I couldn't help but notice how tender this young father was with his daughter. It was impossible to not see how devoted this mom was to her young family. 

The love in the child's eyes, the trust in her reach, the joy in her laughter -- as her daddy lifted her up in his arms -- was undeniable.  I could almost feel it from across the gray pavement where I sat perched on the cold marble steps.  

They were oblivious of me -- and my envy.  While I sat there feeling so utterly helpless -- unable to banish my love that image of family and parenthood sitting squarely and heavily on my heart -- the thought came with such tenderness, "If you are able to be conscious of how wonderful and good that picture is, then it is already in your consciousness. And if it is in your consciousness, you already include it -- it is already yours."  I "got it" instantly. 

If I could appreciate something. That it was good, lovely -- and love-able -- it was already mine.  I included it.  Since, as Mary Baker Eddy says, "Consciousness constructs a better body..." The good that I was clearly conscious of, was already present within me. And it was constructing a better body of family, motherhood, life -- moment-by-moment -- in me. 

No one could take, from me, what I was conscious of. Nothing could deprive me of my right to appreciate good -- in any form.  It was mine.  Everytime I saw a young family, a happy home, a satisfied professional, a charitable colleague and appreciated that "picture," I was realizing it in my consciousness. Therefore, I already included it.  And as I appreciated (realized the value of, and was grateful for) each instance of good, that good appreciated (grew in value -- just the way money placed in an interest bearing account "appreciates") in my own life.  I could trust this law of appreciation.  I could rest my hopes upon it. 

As I unfolded myself from the cold church steps, I found that I was actually warmer than I had been in a long time.  My heart was full of appreciation for that young family -- who were now becoming a distant blur as they walked "daddy" back to his office at the far end of the plaza. 

It didn't matter whether there was a young family right in front of me, or just the memory of them that I held in my heart, I included what they represented. It was already mine and no one could take it from me. I was pregnant with the promise.

I have spent the ensuing years exercising my right to be conscious of good.  To realize that what I am conscious of, ismine. And by virtue of its presence in my thought, in already part of my experience. For me this has been the key to having all of my dreams already come true.  Everytime I appreciate seeing girlfriends laughing at a café table, I feel closer to my own friends -- even though they may be hundreds of miles away.  Everytime I see a mother and her teenage daughter shopping, I know that I include that unique mother-daughter joy -- even though my own daughter is now living half a world away. 

Whenever I am suddenly aware that a checker at the supermarket, or a customer service representative at the other end of the phone, is happy in her work -- helping others as she carries out her job -- I feel that "job satisfaction" as part of my own work.

Mary Baker Eddy, in her short volume, Unity of Good, says:

"Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. 
What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness,
and can have no other reality than the sense
you entertain of it….All that is beautiful and good in
your individual consciousness is permanent."

Walking through life is an amazing adventure.  I now know that what I appreciate of a husband's tenderness, a child's respect, a mother's devotion, a family's security, a home's warmth, an executive's integrity -- is all of my dream's coming true -- wherever I see i. It is mine. I am conscious of it. It is part of the body of my thinking.  What a vastly wonderful world we live in. What promises there are for us as we walk out the door and commit to seeing good everywhere. And when we do, we are having our part in the wholeness of impartial and universal good.
Kate

Camp and global consciousness

From the Porch of Crowsnest

(written while looking out from my porch, across the lawn and toward Valerie Lake)

Someone recently asked me how I, as a spiritual thinker deeply committed to global healing and the actualization of the divine  within each individual ...impartially and universally, could spend my summer at a camp high in the Rocky Mountains that serves the children of one religious denomination exclusively.

I have spent many, many hours thinking about this question this summer.  Here are my musings (discovered through in prayer)…. for what they are worth:

The days here are filled with opportunities to see the depth of diversity in those things which seem so alike.  A field of daisies when observed from a distance seems to repeat a pattern of yellow circular center and white petals, but when I get up from the Adirondack rocker on my porch and wander through that same meadow, carefully observing each flower, I note diversity and individuality that escaped my purview from a safe distance.  To get up close and personal, to be able to examine each flower in the context of its surrounding flora (how a blue columbine brings out the sharp loveliness of a daisy's simplicity, how a larger more mature daisy highlights the petite freshness of a new small bud) helps me better appreciate each daisy's uniqueness, as well as the divine intelligence that repeats such a lovely pattern of beauty.

So it is with camp.  Yes, each of our campers comes to this glorious place (in the palm of “five fingers” at the base of Mount Columbia) from the common genus of being a student enrolled in a Christian Science Sunday School.  But when seen in the context of one another's approach to this common perspective diversity (of inspiration, study styles, application and language for sharing those perspective) becomes clearer in the bas relief of another's individual way of approaching their spiritual journey.   We have campers from private boarding schools and urban public schools, from small islands in the Caribbean and from suburban midwest neighborhoods.

This lesson was so clear to me one summer not long ago when we had a camper arrive who, although enrolled and in faithful weekly attendance at a Christian Science Sunday school throughout the year, considered himself an agnostic (someone who believes it is impossible to know whether or not God exists) and professed to feel a growing alliance with atheism (disbelief in the existence of God).  Not only was he not sure that you could prove, or experience, the presence of a God that might exist, but he wasn't sure that God even existed at all.

This was unsettling to others who felt that a belief in Christian Science was the common ground that camp was based on.  But the requirements were not intellectual buy-in only a willingness to attend a Christian Science Sunday School, which this young man met on a weekly basis throughout the year.  In fact, this boy not only attended Sunday School, but was an active and vigorous participant in those classes, often frustrating teacher and fellow students with his genuine and well thought out questioning of what seemed to him to be pat answers to his deep and conscientious probing of  mass acceptance of cultural and religious paradigms.

Our first Sunday School class (I have to admit I begged to be assigned to his class) the question was asked of him, by another student, why he didn't believe in God.  I intervened and asked her to explain, rather, why she did.  And her answer followed the same patterns of scholastic rhetoric that had long frustrated this young man.  An answer that seemed well rehearsed about God being all and Truth being reliable.  I then asked her (and the rest of the class) to tell us of a time when she had actually experienced the presence of God and why she/they had attributed that experience to the divine.  She thought for a few moments and then shared with genuine tears, that revealed deep feelings connected with that experience, about a time when she was alone in the dark and too afraid to get out of bed to go to her parents in the middle of the night and the words from a hymn popped into her head and how she had felt a pure warm peace flow through her and she knew that there was indeed a God.

One after another the students in the class shared their examples until it finally came back to our resident agnostic/atheist.  He didn't say anything for a few moments and then shared an experience that he had had as a child that he always came back to when he was afraid.  By the end of that class not only had each of us been shown that just because we had all come to camp from the same starting point as Christian Science Sunday School students, but that in that sameness there were diverse ways of thinking through our common desire to know what was true.  It was also clear that there was a common thread of experience with the divine that united us.   It was our common experiences that nurtured a trust in the diversity of one another's journey towards the arrival at answers that would be satisfying and would bring peace.

So what does this have to do with my own inner confidence that this time at camp is contributing to the pool of spiritual seekers who are becoming well-prepared globally conscious thinkers?

Each day at camp our campers must go through the demands of keeping cabins clean, meeting schedules and deadlines, dealing with critical weather or environmental challenges from a spiritual perspective. These ever-changing demands require them to partner with other campers and counselors who bring a diversity of experience and approach to finding solutions they may have assumed, based on everyone being a Christian Scientist, would be handled in the same way they might.  Yet, the fact that they are each bringing new perspectives and vantage points to those challenges or the issues at hand offers important freshness and balance to the process of thinking and praying together for those solutions.   What they often realize is ... that what they really have most in common is the simple desire for a solution.  That this desire for good, for peace, for harmony or wellness is enough to bring about the needed change.   This new perspective has the potential for a new United Nations….a new spiritually confident “security council”.   Mrs. Eddy says that “security for the claims of harmonious and eternal being is found only in divine Science” (which she elsewhere defines as “God’s government of the universe inclusive of man”).  I love thinking that camp is giving our young men and women the opportunity to find secure and lasting peace.  And that they can discover that this deep peace is rooted in their certainty that no matter how different (or the same on the outside) we may appear, we can always trust that the message of Eddy's "Daily Prayer" is not a great humanly designed suggestion, but a divine imperative that promises this kind of lasting peace.   It reads:

               “Thy Kingdom come
               Let the Reign of divine Truth, Life and Love
               Be established in me, and rule out of me all sin.

               And may Thy Word enrich the affections of all mankind
               And govern them.”  - Mary Baker Eddy

As we grow in our experiences of trusting that there is a divine impetus working in each of us to enrich our affections for good, our hunger for peace, our desire for harmony, we will have confidence as peacemakers....surrounded by a glocal community of like-minded, like-hearted peacemakers. 

Isn’t this what camp is all about.  Starting out thinking we are the same, finding out that we are different, then discovering and resting upon the realization that what is common in us is God working in each of our hearts.

We are raising global  thinkers here in the "palm of five fingers", in the heart of the Collegiate peaks and I can’t wait to see where they find their niche in this vast global community.  Already we have counselors from this summer heading off to Peace Corps duties in South America, Asia and Africa.  We are a training ground for global transformation and I feel privileged to be part of this new generation of spiritually prepared ambassadors for good. 


K