"leave a tender moment alone..."

"and if that's how i feel,

then it's the best feeling 

i've ever known; 

it's undeniably real, 

leave a tender moment alone..."

 I was in a friend's waiting room this morning and Billy Joel's  "Leave a Tender Moment Alone,"  came on her office playlist. Because I didn't have a book with me, I sat back and listened to the lyrics. I hadn't heard that song in twenty years. But today, it really spoke to me.

I can't tell you how many times in my life I have felt like I had to say something -- and often, it came out so wrong -- "just to have something to say." 

If there is any one thing that I am most grateful for in this last decades of spiritual growth, it is a willingness to "leave a tender moment alone."  To be at peace with having nothing to say.  To be comfortable with a pause in the conversation so that we - regardless of who I am with -- can listen more deeply for what is right, kind -- truly worthy of saying.  

These "tender moments" are not empty -- they are filled with humility and grace.  They are not full of uncertainty, but rich with confidence. Confidence in our mutual trust -- in the other's deeper conversation with God.  In the silence that informs every next word.  

What a gift this is in a marriage, my relationship with our children, my friendships and my communities of care.  I have never felt that more peacefully than in a recent meeting with a friend.  

It had been weeks since we'd been able to sit across the table from one another.  But with the promise of a beautiful, early autumn day -- and the gift of an outdoor seating area at a nearby cafe, we were able to drop our masks and share a smile.  

We caught up on eachother's "news." We laughed over tea and shared inspiration.  And then there was that pause.  It was so filled with gratitude and love -- that we let it linger.  There was a deep, shared willingness to: 

"Leave a tender moment along..."

 When our conversation resumed, it was with the purest kind of heart-rich wonder.  That tender pause had made space for even more beautiful sharing.  

May all of your conversations today include a pause.  Even the ones that you carry on -- completely within.  As I think about it, I wonder if perhaps this is what I have learned from spending so much quiet time with our dogs.  How to listen-- and how to enjoy tender moments without the need to fill them with words.  Leaning into an interlude of grace.  Poised in the pause. 

with Love, 

Cate 

"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